Reminder: Oh, Won't You Please Shut Up? (2011)
1–10 of 216 posts
Re: Reminder: Oh, Won't You Please Shut Up? (2011)
#2Also very enlightening, and many probably already have watched this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc
> Dont Talk to Cops
> Mr. James Duane, a professor at Regent Law School and a former defense attorney, tells you why you should never agree to be interviewed by the police.
Re: Reminder: Oh, Won't You Please Shut Up? (2011)
#3> Hence, the government's chickenshit false statement trap works — even though the government agents set it up from the start.
If you don't read Popehat, this might be the moment you realize it's a good idea to start. Very rarely do you see legal discussion detailed enough to be meaningful, while informal enough to hold your attention.
Other discussions of note is the bizarre sentencing of Petraeus: https://www.popehat.com/2015/03/03/a-few-comments-on-the-dav... and the way Darren Wilson's potential prosecution was evaluated: https://www.popehat.com/2015/03/04/darren-wilson-and-the-ben...
Double standards are a recurring theme, you could rightly deduce. As a largely technical crowd it might bother us as much as it bothers lawyers.
Re: Reminder: Oh, Won't You Please Shut Up? (2011)
#4 But in the last 12 years, I've seen it in a dozen cases...
Re: Reminder: Oh, Won't You Please Shut Up? (2011)
#5But in the last 12 years, I've seen it in a dozen cases... Once a year, throughout the country? How many thousands of investigations are performed per year? Doesn't seem very likely to happen.
The sample was not "every federal investigation of the past 12 years".
Re: Reminder: Oh, Won't You Please Shut Up? (2011)
#6But in the last 12 years, I've seen it in a dozen cases... Once a year, throughout the country? How many thousands of investigations are performed per year? Doesn't seem very likely to happen.
How many thousands of investigations is he personally involved in per year? I'd guess something on the order of 0.05.
Re: Reminder: Oh, Won't You Please Shut Up? (2011)
#7> The lesson — other than that criminal justice often has little to do with actual justice — is this: for God's sake shut up. Law enforcement agents seeking to interview you are not your friends. You cannot count on "just clearing this one thing up." Demand to talk to a lawyer before talking to the cops. Every time.
This is a very good reminder, and everything he says is both important and true. Unfortunately, it's sadly much easier said than done.
I know my rights. Both nationally, as well as the specific nuances of New York[0] (both city and state). I have even conducted multiple "Know Your Rights" training events educating people (generally students) about the rights that they do and don't have when speaking with LEOs, and how to exercise them. But even then, when push came to shove and I was in this position, I found myself hesitating and second guessing my knowledge, despite all the practice I had and the trainings I'd helped conduct myself.[1]
LEOs - especially Feds - will do everything they can to intimidate you, make you uncomfortable, lower your confidence, etc. It's literally their job to make people like you make mistakes. It sucks, but that's what you're up against.
[0] PSA: Did you know that possession of not a full ounce) of marijuana is only a criminal offence in NY if "burning or open to public view"? Did you also know that this means that you should never, ever turn out your pockets if a cop asks you, because then you've exposed said contraband to "public view"? Wait for him/her to frisk you, and at least then your lawyer will have a slight chance at getting the charge dismissed.
[1] It didn't help that most of my knowledge (as is often the case) centred around local police, whereas the situation regarding border crossings and the TSA is more thorny.
Re: Reminder: Oh, Won't You Please Shut Up? (2011)
#8But in the last 12 years, I've seen it in a dozen cases... Once a year, throughout the country? How many thousands of investigations are performed per year? Doesn't seem very likely to happen.
How many thousands of investigations is he personally involved in per year? I'd guess something on the order of 0.05.
Not to mention, I imagine they only play that card when it seems like they need to for one reason or another.
Re: Reminder: Oh, Won't You Please Shut Up? (2011)
#9But in the last 12 years, I've seen it in a dozen cases... Once a year, throughout the country? How many thousands of investigations are performed per year? Doesn't seem very likely to happen.
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Re: Reminder: Oh, Won't You Please Shut Up? (2011)
#10The question that I have every time I read about something similar to this is not about the law itself, but about the human who's applying the law: how/ why/ what is the line of thought that would lead them to (supposedly) knowingly do something like this? I realize that processes, bureaucracy and generally abstraction can allow people to do less than desirable behaviours, but I can't quite figure out which abstraction that would encourage people to do things like that (note: with the term "abstraction", I meant that by using incentives or measuring the wrong intermediate metrics, we've created a wrong set of objectives, which might be completely misaligned with the actual goal we're trying to achieve).
Laws are complex set of statements, which naturally will have more accidentally complexity as they're developed, a phenomenon that hackers are extremely familiar with. That's something to be expected. On the other hand, human, abusing the accidental complexity of law, is not ideal - as anything else, there should be place and time for trickery, but not the SOP.
That said, what's the rationale for the behaviour of law enforcement officer in pursuing various type of trap-y actions?
- Do LEO routinely believes that everyone they investigate to be committing the crime. Do we have a good priori of P(criminal | under investigation) that would support this?
- Did we actually manage to create a powerful enough abstractions that let actors within the system to, well, behave psychopathically (ie. this button should be pushed because I'm supposed to do that, I don't really know what happen behind it)?
- Trickery are generally being reported out of proportion, and should not be a general concern for the the majority of us.
- Malicious intention -- I will assume this percentage to be not higher than those from a general population.