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Indiana man charged with theft for removing police tracking device from car
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Re: Indiana man charged with theft for removing police tracking device from car
#52If someone drops something in my car, and I unwittingly drive off with it, it is still not mine. But I did not steal it. If the person asks for it back, and I refuse, then I am stealing it. All the police had to do was knock on his door and ask for it back. If he refused, that's grounds for theft. If he denied knowledge of it (like if it had just fallen off somewhere) that doesn't sound like sufficient grounds for a…
If you hide something on my car to spy on me then it's not reasonable to expect it back if I find it. Charging somebody with theft for something like this is effectively rewarding the police for being incompetent. One of the worst mistakes in modern government is pretending that the people 'serving' have more rights and privileges then everybody else. They should have less.
I'd settle for experimenting with "same".
If a regular citizen can't plant a bug, neither can police. If police can conduct a stakeout, so can regular citizens. They just have to follow the same process. That might include going in front of a judge and getting a warrant.
If a regular citizen could break up a bar fight, the police should be able to take the same actions. If police can set up a sting operation, so should citizens be allowed.
Obviously, we don't want everybody running around conducting sting operations or traffic stops. So we set some bar for regular citizens that makes it less likely. But police should have to face the exact same bar. The difference is that we pay for their time, training, equipment, etc. If a certain level of training is required before anybody can make a traffic stop, that training should be open for anybody. We just pay the admission and the salary for police to take the training. Regular citizens foot their own bill.
Edit: poor proofreading
Re: Indiana man charged with theft for removing police tracking device from car
#53Let’s check some scenarios:
1) Police puts a mic inside your house, you step on it, and destroy it. Is it ok or not?
2) Police puts a mic on a guy who comes to your house, you find it, and destroy it. Is it ok or not?
3) Police puts a nano-mic (nano-gps) on you, you find it, and destroy it. Is it ok or not?
My answer to all of the above is that anything put on your property without you knowledge is up for grabs and destruction without further notice. Hour, car, or body is irrelevant.
Re: Indiana man charged with theft for removing police tracking device from car
#54Disgusting abuse of power manages to catch a criminal. Is that our only metric for success now? Putting people in prison? Might as well shred the constitution, apparently we're ready to burn everything it stood for to prevent people from getting high. I know I sound dramatic but it is honestly impossible to overstate how damaging to privacy rights and how much horrific police militarization can be directly and indire…
>Is that our only metric for success now? Putting people in prison? Might as well shred the constitution You just threw that straw man straight down a slippery slope. >apparently we're ready to burn everything it stood for to prevent people from getting high This falls under "punching Nazis". Do you want some guy going around punching people? No, of course not. But if he's punching Nazis, then hey, let him do his thi…
If we permit police to develop a taste for abusing meth nazis, they might turn it into a hobby and start abusing people like you and me too.
There can't be any exceptions when it comes to holding law enforcement accountable.
Re: Indiana man charged with theft for removing police tracking device from car
#55UK Security Intelligence Services, will use school reports, NHS records for surveillance purposes on everyone and have been known to carry out operations on primary school age kids, which the kids wont know about until later on in life.
Re: Indiana man charged with theft for removing police tracking device from car
#56However you may feel about the theft charge, if you find a tracker on your car, don't take it off. It's an occasion to call the police. Someone is either committing a crime by tracking you illegally or you're letting the police know you found their tracker. Maybe they'll remove it, as once the tracker is known to exist it's useless.
If you want to go the route of civil disobedience and take it off on moral grounds, you can do that too, but you'll probably go to jail. This isn't the first time I've heard of this, the FBI has charged people for tampering with the trackers they've put on people's cars.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/afontevecchia/2011/05/09/heres-...
Re: Indiana man charged with theft for removing police tracking device from car
#57Disgusting abuse of power manages to catch a criminal. Is that our only metric for success now? Putting people in prison? Might as well shred the constitution, apparently we're ready to burn everything it stood for to prevent people from getting high. I know I sound dramatic but it is honestly impossible to overstate how damaging to privacy rights and how much horrific police militarization can be directly and indire…
Worse is the whole guilty until proven innocent scenario the media (and our society) has created. All it takes is being a suspect once to have your life turned inside out. For years people will suspect you of whatever horrors were committed by someone else. The founding fathers are rolling over as they say if they heard where this country has gone.
You can't say that media and public shame are worse than the abuses of the criminal justice system. Your life may get turned upside down if you are simply accused of some crimes (especially sexual crimes), but you may very well bounce back.
Getting rightly accused of possession of light drugs and ending up in prison is a much worse outcome, and it happens to many, many times more people. And unlike the celebrities that usually fall on the wrong side of public opinion, most people who are absurdly put in prison for petty crimes will never bounce back, since they don't have the resources (money, social circle) to do so.
Re: Indiana man charged with theft for removing police tracking device from car
#58If someone drops something in my car, and I unwittingly drive off with it, it is still not mine. But I did not steal it. If the person asks for it back, and I refuse, then I am stealing it. All the police had to do was knock on his door and ask for it back. If he refused, that's grounds for theft. If he denied knowledge of it (like if it had just fallen off somewhere) that doesn't sound like sufficient grounds for a…
If you hide something on my car to spy on me then it's not reasonable to expect it back if I find it. Charging somebody with theft for something like this is effectively rewarding the police for being incompetent. One of the worst mistakes in modern government is pretending that the people 'serving' have more rights and privileges then everybody else. They should have less.
> the people 'serving' have more rights and privileges then everybody else
I was told the difference between a policeman and a citizen (via citizen's arrest) is that a policeman can arrest someone for a misdemeanor.
Re: Indiana man charged with theft for removing police tracking device from car
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Disgusting abuse of power manages to catch a criminal. Is that our only metric for success now? looking back over the years, from the outside, I think that's been the american attitude all along.
I'd like to hear more about this if you don't mind expounding on it some. I realize that in a certain light that's how it looks (I'm no stranger to a lot of what used to be called conspiracy theories, including the long history of illegal surveillance) but honestly it's always looked to me like the powers that be, in America, genuinely try to operate in a benign fashion. I realize that's not the same as operating in…
> honestly it's always looked to me like the powers that be, in America, genuinely try to operate in a benign fashion
Chomsky has a good point about this, that often the most heinous crimes in history have been done with a genuine belief that they are done for good. So, intentions should play a limited role in your judgment of someone's moral outcome.
On the other hand, there have been clear cases where the powers that be in America have gone to violent extremes to protect their interests. Some major examples would be the southern slave holders going to war with the rest of the country to protect their 'right' to hold slaves. Or large industrialists getting help from the army or national guard to stop large scale protests and strikes. Or COINTELPRO, where the FBI used infiltration, blackmail and even assassination against the civil rights movement.
Re: Indiana man charged with theft for removing police tracking device from car
#60If you find something like that, you put it in a box and mail it back to the police. Be sure to include an invoice with a hefty charge for shipping and handling.
Also mileage degradement due to extra weight and wind resistance.