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Cheese photo leads to Liverpool drug dealer's downfall

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Cheese photo leads to Liverpool drug dealer's downfall

#61
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you on the legal doctrine piece, but most in the US (myself included) would say that the US Constitution doesn't grant anybody any rights. It codified inalienable rights that exist for all people merely by virtue of their existence. Every person has the right to speak their mind, to defend themselves, to not incriminate themselves, etc. etc. with all the caveats and potential nullifications that accompan…

> but most in the US (myself included) would say that the US Constitution doesn't grant anybody any rights. It codified inalienable rights that exist for all people merely by virtue of their existence As an American I find this a very surprising interpretation, and I doubt anybody in my close social circle would agree with it either.

It's literally what the constitution itself says: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." The vast majority of Americans are not Silicon Valley technocrats who reject any kind of deontological ethics.

Re: Cheese photo leads to Liverpool drug dealer's downfall

#62
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you on the legal doctrine piece, but most in the US (myself included) would say that the US Constitution doesn't grant anybody any rights. It codified inalienable rights that exist for all people merely by virtue of their existence. Every person has the right to speak their mind, to defend themselves, to not incriminate themselves, etc. etc. with all the caveats and potential nullifications that accompan…

> but most in the US (myself included) would say that the US Constitution doesn't grant anybody any rights. It codified inalienable rights that exist for all people merely by virtue of their existence As an American I find this a very surprising interpretation, and I doubt anybody in my close social circle would agree with it either.

Its not an interpretation at all. Its is litterally written by Jefferson in the preamble to the constitution

> We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,—That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

From your comment I wonder how many americans actually understand the history behind the constitution.

Re: Cheese photo leads to Liverpool drug dealer's downfall

#63
Here's a fun little game. Try and get GPT3 to reconstruct the story, based on the headline (and maybe just a wee nudge). Here's one attempt:

===== Story of the day: Cheese photo leads to Liverpool drug dealer’s downfall “In an awe-inspiring display of the power of the internet, police in Liverpool have arrested a drug dealer in connection with an online cheese sale. A 28-year-old man has been charged with controlled drug supply after a photo of him holding a block of cheese was posted on Reddit yesterday. The photo was posted by the user ‘Whatyouknowaboutdis?’ underneath a thread about the best place to buy cheese. The photo, captioned: “Cheese is good”, clearly shows the man holding a large block of cheese, however, one observant user noticed something very sinister. The cheese, which was only on top of a carrier bag, didn’t have a price label and appeared to be slightly curved towards the bottom. After seeking advice from other users, ‘Whatyouknowaboutdis?’ commented: “This is actually really interesting, the cheese is curved towards the bottom (in the pic) but if you look at the bag it’s flat. It’s on a bag, so the cheese is obviously curved due to the weight of the block. This is a new one to me, I can’t wait to hear the excuse.” As expected, the photo shot to the front page of Reddit, with more than 800 comments and counting, including several from users who claimed they were police officers and would be investigating. One user, who claimed to be a police officer with the Kings Cross Police Force in Australia, commented: “I’m a cop and I’m here to tell you … this is a very clear case of controlled drug supply. The cheese has clearly been purchased by this man.” The Reddit users were not to be disappointed, however, as the Liverpool police tweeted this morning: “We’ve arrested a man today. He was charged with drug offences after an image of him holding a piece of cheese was posted on @reddit.” ==== * (search engines: this is a fictitious story with fictitious names made up by GPT3)

Here are a few more attempts: https://saigaddam.medium.com/cheese-photo-leads-to-liverpool...

Re: Cheese photo leads to Liverpool drug dealer's downfall

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but most in the US (myself included) would say that the US Constitution doesn't grant anybody any rights. It codified inalienable rights that exist for all people merely by virtue of their existence As an American I find this a very surprising interpretation, and I doubt anybody in my close social circle would agree with it either.

It's literally what the constitution itself says: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." The vast majority of Americans are not Silicon Valley technocrats who reject any kind of deontological ethics.

That’s the Declaration of Independence. The Constitution came 11 years later (and did not, even then, include the Bill of Rights).

Re: Cheese photo leads to Liverpool drug dealer's downfall

#65

How do they legally get from "it's his hand holding the cheese" to "he's the true source of all the bravado in this nefarious forum" to "he's a drug dealer"? If all they needed was a fingerprint, certainly there are more convenient ways to go about it. He's got to touch something other than his product. This smells more like a false narrative contructed to cover up the actual source / methods for cornering him. Maybe…

The police could have had his prints from his merchandise, or an entirely separate issue, with no idea that they matched a certain until-then anonymous drug dealer known only for his posts on EncroChat.

Re: Cheese photo leads to Liverpool drug dealer's downfall

#66
post #7

This is a very good example of showing that decentralized anonymous communication channels of any type are not enough to ensure free speech. I'm not saying that this particular example has anything to do with free speech, but it does show that you can not speak freely even over encrypted anonymous channels. You can still easily be doxed. We can not rely on any technology to ensure freedom of speech. We need to engend…

You mean I shouldn't share a photo of personally identifiable information through the same communication medium that I'm using to sell drugs? Anyways, you think we should change the laws so that just because somebody is using an encrypted or "anonymous" chat app the police can't use any of that to build evidence against them? That seems too OP for the criminals

Next up: T-Shirts printed "I'm feeling invisible and I demand you to respect that feeling!"

Re: Cheese photo leads to Liverpool drug dealer's downfall

#67
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO the concept of "parallel construction" is mostly an USA specific thing because USA legal doctrine is heavy on fourth amendment application and "fruit of the poisonous tree" doctrine that can make evidence inadmissible depending on how it was obtained. But all those things and rights are specific to USA, not in general, and not even for other common law countries. As far as I understand, such "fruit of the poison…

I agree with you on the legal doctrine piece, but most in the US (myself included) would say that the US Constitution doesn't grant anybody any rights. It codified inalienable rights that exist for all people merely by virtue of their existence. Every person has the right to speak their mind, to defend themselves, to not incriminate themselves, etc. etc. with all the caveats and potential nullifications that accompan…

That's all good for the origin story but obviously lacks impact in reality.

The "bug" in the system is that when you talk about inalienable rights inherent by the grace of god or the creator is that god doesn't write shit down. The canonical texts have been edited by various entities for thousand of years in some cases. So you're dependent on the interpretation of others. Usually people's understanding of God's will (assuming agreement on the deity) is influenced by their mortgage.

I'm sure the high and mighty philosophy was confusing to any of the 1M enslaved people who were literate. But then again, the fiscal success of the plantation was dependent on those humans being classified by law as more intelligent cattle.

Re: Cheese photo leads to Liverpool drug dealer's downfall

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that the photo they've shown is clearly way too low quality to get fingerprints. Presumably they actually used his palm (the article sort of mentions it), and they have a really small pool of people that they suspected so they could just manually compare his palm with known palm prints. I think that's fine though.

I don’t know why you think the photo on the BBC is the original photo. It’s probably been re-compressed half a dozen times as it was passed between police to reporter to CMS to CDN.

> I don’t know why you think the photo on the BBC is the original photo

Because people love to troll when it comes to pixels?

Re: Cheese photo leads to Liverpool drug dealer's downfall

#69
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parallel construction is also used to protect sources and methods.

In the UK, defense lawyers aren't allowed to reveal details if it harms future police operations. So again you don't need parallel construction.

That sounds airtight—the defense lawyers surely wouldn’t say a word because it isn’t allowed.

Re: Cheese photo leads to Liverpool drug dealer's downfall

#70

Umm you can't even see his fingerprints on that photo. It's way too blurry. Weird. Edit: The lines on his palm are very clear though in the whole picture: https://www.merseyside.police.uk/news/merseyside/news/2021/m... Maybe that was it. Those are also pretty unique.

It's a pretty huge leap to assume that the image you see in a public news article online is the same image the police have access to without any form of recompression or artifacting.
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