81–90 of 294 posts
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So you're willing to argue that the output of a polygraph is evidence of something in absence of any responses you give during questioning?
I'm arguing that the idea that anyone is allowed to connect anything to me while they ask me questions is perverse, reprehensible, and absurd .
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It won't stand because it's not pragmatic. The issue around 'passwords being in your mind' is interesting, but they'll move past it. If you have evidence of a crime on your phone, it must be part of the process. There's nothing remotely unlawful about search of property so long as there is merit, oversight, warrant etc.. Ultimately, this will be no different than searching your car. Now, the cops doing it without a w…
If the police can force you to unlock a safe, they should also be allowed to force you to unlock a phone. But, unlocking a phone should come with a lot of paper work and checks and balances to ensure that it's done only when really required?
I imagine the situation with electronics will be similar. If a key to, say, an encrypted volume is stored on a flash drive then they may compel someone to produce it (analogous to a safe key). But if the drive is protected by a password, then the government cannot compel someone to provide the secret.
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Even forensic science can be used questionably. Really, once you're in the court room it's entirely rhetoric and fudge-factor.
Agreed. Pretty much everything in forensic science turns out to be junk science over a long enough timeline. Hair, bite marks, fire progression, all junk. There's even a few cracks in the fingerprint wall. Don't get me started on all the field test kits of various types that LEOs use. The only things that seem to be reliable are things that don't have their roots in forensic science (e.g. using DNA to identify people…
Oh yeah. Not just incompetence, but actual malice. Recently in Massachusetts there were two high profile state forensic drug lab scandals: One where a chemist was functionally incapacitated by taking all the drugs she should have been testing [0], and one where the chemist was falsifying positive tests (!!!!!!) [1]. More recently, the state police are known to be falsifying overtime records [2]. I can't even begin to imagine what it's like in "stereotyped as corrupt" states.
[0] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/6000-drug-cases-linked-to-rogue...
[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/more-than-21000-drug-conviction...
[2] https://www.masslive.com/expo/news/erry-2018/12/1fc00a248688...
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I'm not sure how the courts will differentiate between biometric data related to authentication and biometric data from blood tests, breathalyzers or DNA tests. The latter are, in a sense, examples of forcing you to divulge something stored in your body.
The UK fixed this for drink driving by making it an offence to refuse to submit to the alcohol tests. So they don't force you to implicate yourself for drink driving, you can choose instead to be prosecuted for refusing to provide a sample and have everybody assume (not at all unreasonably) that you refused because you knew you'd fail badly. Sometimes people are _so_ drunk they refuse to provide a sample without real…
The "workaround" in the United States is similar. When you apply for a driver's license, you agree to submit blood/breath/urine upon demand or lose said license automatically.
This nice and all in theory but looking through the lens of reality where police are legally allowed to lie to get a confession - claiming they have evidence that they don’t have to coerce a confession and seeing that “rubber hose decryption” is real, it really doesn’t mean much in practice. Edit: Since people don’t seem to believe that police are actually legally allowed to lie during an interrogation: https://www.n…
An interrogation like this is not an example of outright lying, which is legal and commonly practiced, but it is much more sinister. It is an example of an interrogator assuming another identity and drawing the suspect into a false sense of warmth and security in order to make the suspect incriminate himself. To me, it is the same as having a conversation with your mother after a traumatic event, only to see her rip her own face off, a mask, to reveal the grotesque face of a police interrogator, and then going to jail for what you disclosed. Absolutely terrifying and dystopian. You absolutely must be proactive and protect yourself in this world. Even in “free” countries like the USA. https://youtu.be/rBpDHJIwcUk?t=1495
TLDR: the police are allowed to lie to you https://youtu.be/_WnhP91NJeU?t=1600
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm arguing that the idea that anyone is allowed to connect anything to me while they ask me questions is perverse, reprehensible, and absurd .
The comment you replied to pointed out that they are voluntary.
I've be interviewed by police twice after being charged with crimes that carry potential prison sentences. The interviews are voluntary in the sense you're not required to answer any of the questions, and I could have chosen to wait in a cell for my lawyer to turn up days later ... but I volunteered to respond to each question by making a mockery of their questions and processes.
These people in authority, they are not there to help you, with their badges and their guns and their attitude problems, and I don't believe it's possible for someone to "volunteer" when such a power imbalance exists.
It's an absurd use of the word. You can't "volunteer" when the other person is carrying a gun.
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I thought that polygraphs were not accepted as evidence in court, but are still used by some government and private agencies. Also, just curious, have they been discredited as in that double-blind trials show no more than a 50/50 chance of being correct (i.e., flipping a coin)? Or is it that a high enough percentage of people will fail them even if innocent, or pass them even if guilty? The thing I don't like about t…
They're notoriously inaccurate, but I don't think that courts have given up on them yet. And if you think that's bad, just wait until you're given an inaccurate brain scan to tell whether you're lying. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016926070... >The rates of correct detection in guilty and innocent subjects were 86%, which was better than other previously used methods. Eh, that sounds close enoug…
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-the-eyes-have-...
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Let’s hope the Supreme Court hears it and it stands.
It won't stand because it's not pragmatic. The issue around 'passwords being in your mind' is interesting, but they'll move past it. If you have evidence of a crime on your phone, it must be part of the process. There's nothing remotely unlawful about search of property so long as there is merit, oversight, warrant etc.. Ultimately, this will be no different than searching your car. Now, the cops doing it without a w…
Nominally, the reason they check your bag at the airport is for security. But in the process they can find all sorts of other stuff that isn't dangerous to fly with but is illegal, e.g. marijuana. So the whole thing becomes an avenue to warrantless search.
You can't make the same argument about a computer or phone -- you can't bring down a plane or hurt anyone by having certain pictures on your hard drive. Anything you could do with a phone (e.g. trigger a bomb) would require some other physical infiltration, which hopefully would be caught by all the scanning and searching of people and baggage that we do already.
So I would hope that a sensible explicitly disallows this "airport loophole" in the process of bringing phone search into the normal legal process of warranted search... but I am doubtful. There are powerful people in the USA, UK, Australia, etc. would love the unfettered ability to search the phone of every air traveler.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I thought that polygraphs were not accepted as evidence in court, but are still used by some government and private agencies. Also, just curious, have they been discredited as in that double-blind trials show no more than a 50/50 chance of being correct (i.e., flipping a coin)? Or is it that a high enough percentage of people will fail them even if innocent, or pass them even if guilty? The thing I don't like about t…
They're notoriously inaccurate, but I don't think that courts have given up on them yet. And if you think that's bad, just wait until you're given an inaccurate brain scan to tell whether you're lying. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016926070... >The rates of correct detection in guilty and innocent subjects were 86%, which was better than other previously used methods. Eh, that sounds close enoug…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It won't stand because it's not pragmatic. The issue around 'passwords being in your mind' is interesting, but they'll move past it. If you have evidence of a crime on your phone, it must be part of the process. There's nothing remotely unlawful about search of property so long as there is merit, oversight, warrant etc.. Ultimately, this will be no different than searching your car. Now, the cops doing it without a w…
The issue arises when the knowledge of the password itself is incriminating. The 5th amendment prohibits forced self incrimination. Forcing a suspect to divulge information that is directly incriminating will not stand constitutional review, regardless of the nature of the information. You have the right to remain silent.