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Police can’t demand you reveal your phone passcode then tell a jury you refused

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Re: Police can’t demand you reveal your phone passcode then tell a jury you refused

#221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Though that's not really the point of those things in the legal code; the point is not for you to stop a cop from doing it at the point of abuse, but for you to have a legal arm to sue the fuck out of them afterwards, or to get a pass out of jail because the cops violated procedure. Yeah, it sucks for you, but it's supposed to be a deterrent to prevent cops from abusing their power in the future. Now, that obviously…

The problem with expecting accountability is that system will fail you at the next step: the courts. You have to survive that process too, where the judge and prosecutor will believe the cop nine times out of ten. As a sitting federal judge once said, “truth and justice have no relevance; it is a court of law.” The law will take the side of the system.

You're being unnecessarily negative here. You're claiming that the system is broken wherever it could possibly be broken as evidenced by...your own paranoia.

If you want to suggest an alternative, you have a captive audience including myself. Otherwise you're just fearmongering to fearmonger.

Re: Police can’t demand you reveal your phone passcode then tell a jury you refused

#222
post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you say more about your employer suing you if you cave under pressure and unlock the laptop? That sounds to me like your employer is asking a lot of you! Or, if you are bluffing to security about the suing, why are you putting your personal safety on the line to protect your employer?

Anecdotally, I can confirm that my employer requires me to: 1.) Not allow my phone to be unlocked by fingerprint/face. 2.) Not carry USB sticks or similar portable storage devices on my person, to only transport them by courier. 3.) Not unlock my computer for anyone, including the police, unless directed to by our compliance office. Or it's breach of contract and they can reclaim part of my compensation. I don't work…

Yikes, I hope you are well paid! (Re: 1 and 3. 2 is table stakes in this day and age. In fact re: 2, would you be willing to share a scenario that calls for sneakernet by courier vs a network storage/transfer?)

Re: Police can’t demand you reveal your phone passcode then tell a jury you refused

#223
post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Citation needed?

https://thebaffler.com/salvos/all-effd-up-levine

https://www.wired.com/2011/11/eff-palantir/

If you know something or someone's name, which / who claims to be some sort of advocacy for individuals against the overreach of an industrialized nation's government, and that person / thing is not being COINTELPRO'd, MKULTRA'd, GLADIO'd, PAPERCLIP'd, etc, it's because that person / thing is complicit in some way with the thing they are claiming to be against.

Re: Police can’t demand you reveal your phone passcode then tell a jury you refused

#224
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On Android, rebooting the phone will disable biometric login until the passcode is re-entered.

You can do the same by pressing and holding the power button on the lock screen to pull up a menu, then press Lockdown. I'm not sure if it's enabled by default, but it is a security option on at least Android 11+.

At least 10+, and I think it may have been introduced in 9 if I remember past upgrades correctly. I don't think it's something enabled by default, but it is available to turn on in the default security settings page.

Re: Police can’t demand you reveal your phone passcode then tell a jury you refused

#225

I'm a long-time EFF supporter, but I am always concerned when they (or any other organization that defends civil rights) chooses to intervene in a loser of a case like this. The defendant will likely be convicted of kidnapping, and hopefully the Supreme Court will not use some form of twisted logic to rationalize what the cops did. The correct ruling here is to force a mistrial and forbid any testimony about refusing…

It's about Due Process. It doesn't matter if you are guilty, you still have the same rights as someone who is not guilty.

That's not how it works: you're [supposedly] not guilty until conviction and so, like all not guilty people, have the same rights. But, on conviction your rights are severely curtailed if the sentence is custodial.

So I guess you could say "It doesn't matter if you are later found guilty [...]" to be consistent with the presumption of innocence.

Re: Police can’t demand you reveal your phone passcode then tell a jury you refused

#226

Formally the police can't demand a lot of stuff. Informally, they'll put you in a room and tell you that they have the legal right to keep you anywhere from 24 to 72 hours in there and they definitely can make you reconsider during that period -- to put it very mildly. Hint: some cops are really good in the skill of inflicting pain to people without lasting medical trace to prove it afterwards. Until there's true acc…

Seems this case isn't so much about what the police can do in the interrogation room, as what evidence is admissible in court. It's quite easy to enforce the provision that they can't tell juries you refused to hand over a password.

That's a moot point if you do reveal your password, but coercion is a separate issue we could try to address, which would be pointless to address if they could get you convicted simply because you refused.

Re: Police can’t demand you reveal your phone passcode then tell a jury you refused

#227
post #52

Sortof off topic question. I've never owned a smart phone but might get one soon assuming I can find a decent one that will run grapheneOS. Is there an app that can be given permission to intercept the unlock code and upon receiving the panic/under duress code, discretely put the phone into a "parental controls" configuration that sandboxes all your data and only presents the storage you want the law enforcement chil…

I think an easier approach is not to do anything incriminating on your phone.

If no one is testing the rights we're supposed to have, then it's unclear that we actually have them. Auditing should seem eminently sensible to all the engineers here.

Re: Police can’t demand you reveal your phone passcode then tell a jury you refused

#228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"X:Y :: A:B" an anachronistic way of saying "X is to Y as A is to B". Meaning, "A and B are related to one another in a similar kind of way that X and Y are related to one another".

I don't think it's anachronistic, maybe arcane. Its a formal logic symbol which was also used by standardized test writers like the SAT. The SAT removed those questions because they were ineffective at assessment, not because the notation was out of favor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colon_(punctuation)#Mathematic...

> Its a formal logic symbol

I've never seen this notation used in modern mathematical logic papers. I've even had (non-US) logic phds ask me about this notation.

> which was also used by standardized test writers like the SAT. The SAT removed those questions because they were ineffective at assessment, not because the notation was out of favor.

Yeah, standardized tests that have since phased it out were really the only place it was used. Hence anachronistic. If you didn't take the SAT during a certain period of time there's a god chance you didn't see this notation.

Re: Police can’t demand you reveal your phone passcode then tell a jury you refused

#229

Formally the police can't demand a lot of stuff. Informally, they'll put you in a room and tell you that they have the legal right to keep you anywhere from 24 to 72 hours in there and they definitely can make you reconsider during that period -- to put it very mildly. Hint: some cops are really good in the skill of inflicting pain to people without lasting medical trace to prove it afterwards. Until there's true acc…

You can beat the rap, but not the ride.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Freddie_Gray

Edit: Just to be clear, this is an illustrative example. Not a flippant response. Gray should not have died in police custody.

Re: Police can’t demand you reveal your phone passcode then tell a jury you refused

#230

Formally the police can't demand a lot of stuff. Informally, they'll put you in a room and tell you that they have the legal right to keep you anywhere from 24 to 72 hours in there and they definitely can make you reconsider during that period -- to put it very mildly. Hint: some cops are really good in the skill of inflicting pain to people without lasting medical trace to prove it afterwards. Until there's true acc…

That's why you need a good lawyer, to bring your story to the public, sue the damn police department and get justice!

And then the cop gets 2 weeks of paid suspension, taxpayers pay you 20k in 'damages', and your lawyer costs only 35k.

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