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

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441–450 of 615 posts

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

#441

Sorry-- this is totally unrelated and maybe even inappropriate-- but how do people sort through 300+ comments on HN to consume a topic? I understand that /. introduces bias with its system, but I honestly find myself abandoning alot of deeper HN threads because it's so difficult to parse all the comments. Perhaps I'm missing something.

If by “consume” you mean “acquire the contents” of all those comments, well, you’ll have to read them all. A more interesting question to me for a while has been, how to follow the evolution of a deep thread in which the time it takes to read a larger amount of comments, even more are made. How to know where all the new ones are? It’d be cool to be able to diff a thread based on timestamp.

https://github.com/insin/hn-comments-owl does exactly that. Makes following threads so much better.

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

#442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The intent of the Bill of Rights is that all humans have those rights, and the document restrains the federal government concerning them. So the people in the UK have the right against self-incrimination, but the state systematically violates it.

This is such a hilariously weird take on how rights work. I don't want to tar all Americans with the same brush, but I think only someone from the US could possibly have come up with this

If the US government can selectively apply Constitutional protections to citizens and noncitizens worldwide, others should be able to claim those same rights if in a jurisdiction arguably subject to US control, presence, or influence. Not sure whether a UK citizen in the UK would qualify in that case, but I don’t find the idea absurd on its face.

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

#443
post #432

This happened to me. The police wanted my password and refused my right to silence, wouldn't let me call a lawyer. I wouldn't talk. Then they threatened my wife and I gave up my password to stop them from hurting her. The password was suppressed by the court, but they let the police use it anyway because one of the officers (with no formal computer qualifications) testified he could have broken 2048-bit AES encryptio…

> he said he would unsolder the chips off the circuit board and put them onto another board ... The judge allowed the testimony and believed it. I've experienced similar issues with judges. When evidence hinges on something very technical - they generally allow it and place the burden of arguing it on the defense. ...which often allows any other evidence gotten by that means. ...and even if/when it's struck out - the…

What you are describing is corruption. It’s actually a crime. But government will never hold government prosecutors or judges to account for corruption that favors government interests.

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

#444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, if you do use biometrics and ever find yourself in a sticky situation most modern operating systems have built in features to quickly disable them on demand. iOS, for example, allows you to quickly disable Face/Touch ID by holding the side+any volume button for two seconds and then quickly tap the side button again when the shutdown slide appears.

With iPhones you can say, "Hey Siri, whose phone is this?" That will disable biometric unlock.

I just tried this with my iphone 11, just out of curiosity... Siri ratted me out and my face still unlocked it.

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

#445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Per his other comments, he spent 8+ years in Cook County so it would almost certainly have to be first degree murder.

I can't reconcile the amount of time in jail with apparently being offered a plea deal with no custody

The criminal justice system in Chicago is a total mess. None of it makes sense on any real level.

Total speculation, since obviously I don't know the details of this specific case, but I would guess pled down to 2nd degree murder and received a sentence of time served.

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

#446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But wait, does this say that another court order can compel you to unlock it anyways? If a court can compel speech, then they may as well go ahead and compel the suspect to confess. There's no difference, once the courts compel speech.

It does not make sense to compel someone to confess, because that presumes the person is guilty. But it may make sense to compel someone to share factual information ("the PIN is 1234") or to provide access to information.

> But it may make sense to compel someone to share factual information ("the PIN is 1234") or to provide access to information.

No, it does not, because "compel" means that if they do not comply you punish them until they do.

How are you to know whether or not they actually remember the information you are asking ("The PIN was, err .. 1235?"). This leads to effectively punishing them for not giving the "correct" answer, which is no different from punishing them for not confessing.

Once you go down the path of punishing people for not divulging the contents of their mind, you may well just punish them for the crime itself and not bother with a trial.

If you allow compelled speech, there is no reason to have a trial.

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

#447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trooper lied to "the court", twice. It was a bench trial. Both lies took place in front of the magistrate with no jury present. I have documentation that shows the statement were factually incorrect and that for one of those statements he said the opposite a few minutes beforehand and the evidence supports the out-of-court statement.

Do you mind just explaining in simple terms what actually happened? I'm not really following. Do you have a hidden audio recording of him outside court or something?

The situation would require a book, but here's the simplest I can do, yet it will miss many of the more detailed legal points and citations.

My wife an I both witnessed him say he was amending the charge because he made a mistake. He then went into the court and told the magistrate he was amending the charge to "cut us a break". The magistrate then issued a continuance (instead of dismissing if he knew the true reason). The incorrect charge carried pretrial restriction only found under that charge and the trooper knew that the charge was incorrect for about 6 weeks. State law only allows amendments if the rights of the defendant were not violated (there were 2 other rights violated later, and multiple procedural mistakes too). Subjecting someone to pretrial restrictions under a charge that is known to be wrong is unusual punishment and also a violation of the state constitution. So it would require dismissing the case. We found proof supporting this in the trooper's later testimony where he stated that he knew it was incorrect for those 6 weeks, yet held it against us anyways. The IAD investigation found that he did tell us the correct thing and then told the court something wrong 10 minutes later. The report said it was a "misunderstanding", without any details or explanation.

Later he claimed that a picture he introduced in court was in the investigative file "since the beginning", yet it was not furnished to us when we subpoenaed the file. Another IAD investigation found that the picture wasn't placed in the file until a later time. The magistrate did not throw out the picture because he thought we had access the whole time and we didn't have access to that IAD finding until after the trial (not sure if I trust this or they were covering). Furthermore, the picture was exculpatory evidence under the incorrect charge and should have been furnished to us regardless of the subpoena. So much for Brady...

He made 2-3 other factually incorrect statements that I did not have hard evidence of (just our word against his). These included things like changing his story in a contradictory way. We did have a recording of his testimony and a phone call with him (both consistent with law).

The complaint process also treated us adversarially, which is a violation of feral policy (hence complaint to DoJ). The state police claim they can knowingly hold incorrect charges against people.

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

#448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a hilariously weird take on how rights work. I don't want to tar all Americans with the same brush, but I think only someone from the US could possibly have come up with this

Ideologically, this is exactly how the US Bill of Rights works. The rights listed in the Bill of Rights are unalienable, natural, and apply regardless of your citizenship status. Of course this is weird from another country’s perspective, but it is the mentality that many Americans take because to us, it is right.

> The rights listed in the Bill of Rights are unalienable, natural, and apply regardless of your citizenship status.

It's quite clear this isn't the actual policy of the US, though, given the existence of Guantanamo Bay.

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

#449
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's crazy to me the amount that people who have never dealt with the cops think "I'll just show them x legal code so they can see they don't have the right to do that." Turns out, they don't care. For minor infractions, they'll use whatever intimidation and coercion they want, then make you feel lucky for letting you out because they didn't feel like prosecuting. In most circumstances, the word of the person with th…

My first interaction with the police was in college. I had locked my bike to a bench near the student union. Might have been obnoxious, probably shouldn't have, but it was also very common for students to lock bikes to those benches. Someone from the University's parking and transportation department had come by and double locked my bike with a notice saying it would be impounded and I'd have to come by the Parking a…

Morality has nothing to do with it. If the law says one thing and you did not violate it, no problems.

Spirit of the law is dumb and generally not applicable here from what I can tell.

Though your observation is correct. The cops don't solve these things nor do they enforce the laws properly. Suing the university or specifically the Transportation admin would have been the proper move.

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

#450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This whole 250 comment thread is basically people discussing what they'd do or what you should do when finding yourself in a police encounter. My counterpoint is that none of that discussion actually applies. As for most people wanting it that way, I think it is because most people have not actually encountered it. They want it in the abstract, likely not so much when it happens to them. Kind of the classic...the peo…

I agree with you, everyone wants the cops to be be all powerful, because everyone assumes they will never be on the business end of that gun. It's basically the same advice Dr. Phil gave, and just about the only advice of his that ever resonated with me. Some people get it, some people don't, and when the cop is putting his boot on your face you aren't going to back talk. People fantasize online about all the things…

The danger is that the policeman in question may not be all that interested in the truth of the situation, only in catching a "bad guy". So even if you are innocent they may assume you are guilty and look for anything at all that would get a conviction.

You might think that the courts would sort this out, since the cop obviously won't have any solid evidence, but it turns out that they don't have solid evidence in a great many cases and still manage to get convictions. The truth matters less than the system, and the system is designed to put people in jail.

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