I thought this post was going to be about the "Restart or Details" update dialogue on Macs
Reminder: Oh, Won't You Please Shut Up? (2011)
51–60 of 216 posts
Re: Reminder: Oh, Won't You Please Shut Up? (2011)
#52The only time I ever did this, it was a routine traffic stop and I was with my wife and my parents. The cop was asking me a bunch of questions about why I was driving so fast, and I just played it off like I didn't understand, just trying to say as little as possible. It was a bad tactic - it raised suspicion and I later learned that my mother thought I was actually holding drugs or something because I was being evas…
I've written that before on HN and got massively downmodded, hopefully that doesn't happen to you. If you are actually guilty then keep your mouth closed. But if you are not guilty then staying quiet is not necessarily to your benefit.
They do not care if you are guilty or not. They manufacture criminals. That's their job. To create "product". They need raw materials. Don't provide anything at all. Zero raw materials is always going to be better than potentially unsuitable materials that can't quite be hammered into prosecutable shape.
Re: Reminder: Oh, Won't You Please Shut Up? (2011)
#53The general case here is: don't lie to federal agents. The easiest way to do that is to stay silent and demand a lawyer. But understand: if you're on the periphery of an investigation, you're running a chance of raising a red flag. It's well within your rights, and ultimately you can't incriminate yourself by being silent. But you could substantially add delay, frustration, and lawyer costs to the whole experience. A…
Someone else commented that the LEO might use your false statement as leverage to get you to turn on your friends. Even if you are completely innocent you could be useful to them in investigating someone you're close to.
Re: Reminder: Oh, Won't You Please Shut Up? (2011)
#54The 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 abstracti…
I would say "all of the above." LEO do routinely believe that people they investigate must be guilty. They don't investigate at random, but rather are prompted by some evidence of criminal behavior. That certainly doesn't mean that you must be guilty if they investigate you, but it sets them up to believe you are. The system is set up with compartments so nobody sees the full consequences of anything and this sort of…
"Bad behavior does get reported disproportionately. Most cops are good cops. For everyone like this, there are ten cops who find a lost cellphone and personally deliver it back to the owner, as happened to a neighbor of mine a few months ago. That doesn't make the news."
1. Name the town? (Make the news?)
2. I'm not going compare good/bad cops. (It's impossible to argue, unless the Federal government just finished an investigation. A investigation that didn't get much attention?)
3. I live in a low crime county, but I am seeing cops doing things they didn't do 15 years ago. My town is Marin County.
4. I'll start with Revenue collection. Yes--it's not about safety in my county anymore--it's about Tickets. The amount of tickets written is staggering. Many people honestly don't know what law they broke. It's gotten ridiculous.
5. "The broken window theory"! Yes--every town in my county is putting that theory to the test. They are stopping people, frisking them, and digitally taking their picture. They are harassing people. It's beyond disturbing to watch a group of officers swoop down on a female for sitting on a curb. Watch them frisk her.(they used a enthusiastic female cop for the frisk) Empty her purse. Take her picture. And then let her go?? (I won't bring up the metaphors.)
6. As to good/bad cops, I don't care; I don't trust any of them anymore. Yes, I can say that because I live in a low crime community, but I don't think it needs to be this way?
7. As to self preservation, just a name and address, but I'm polite. I do have front and rear cameras that turn on when I put the key in the ignition. When walking, riding, or running I always have a smart phone with video app queued up.
8. I am a middle aged white guy, and I feel like this?
9. I feel sick just writing about this. I might understand the mentality if crime was going up, but every decade it has decreased in proportion to population. It's about Revenue, and Gentrification, and yes--I recall a cop retrieving a lost cell phone. It made the paper. The kid said he found the phone. The cop accused the kid of lying. I don't know the outcome, but it did happen once--it's in the marinij.com somewhere. What's ironic is it only seemed to happen once? I wonder why? It's like getting a cop to come to the swap meet to retrieve your stolen bike--good luck! No revenue in the end? As to gentrification, it's even more ironic because local cops can't even afford to live in this county?
Re: Reminder: Oh, Won't You Please Shut Up? (2011)
#55Re: Reminder: Oh, Won't You Please Shut Up? (2011)
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your guilt doesn't matter. You can still incriminate yourself even if you have committed no crime. It sounds like grandparent didn't go to jail, so even though he calls it a "bad tactic" it seems to have worked out fine. The people who actually know this stuff, i.e. lawyers and cops, all universally advise people not to talk to the police without counsel. Never have I seen one add the qualifier "but it's fine if you'…
You witness a mugging. You get a good look at the person who did it. A cop comes up to you and says "did you see what happened?" What's the right thing to do here? Shut up and demand a lawyer before you'll answer any questions? You hear about a shooting in your neighborhood on the radio. Walking to the subway, you see a person with a gun run down an alley. At the subway station a cop asks you if you've seen anything…
Cops are an active deterrent towards good citizenship because good citizenship is punished. The citizenry is under no obligation, moral or ethical or it-would-be-nice-if, to help them when they have proven unwilling to help the citizenry in aggregate or, especially as regards minorities and those weaker than they are, in particular.
It's economics. People respond to incentives. I am not incentivized to help the cops because it's never going to be better for me to do so. I'll act differently when they are different, get me?
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(You make a good point about traffic stops, though it speaks remarkably of the shitty nature of police interactions that somehow it's on you to make an officer feel safe. Never mind that an officer will regularly attempt to make you feel threatened or unsafe to get you to say something stupid...)
Re: Reminder: Oh, Won't You Please Shut Up? (2011)
#57"My name is (name), what is yours? Nice to meet you. Am I free to go?"
"Please, I do not wish to talk to you."
"Please, if you want to talk to me further, I will want my lawyer present."
"Please, I do not wish to participate in a fight with you."
"Please, let us leave each other alone, or I will destroy you and your organization via technology beyond your understanding." (Be sure you can back this one up before using it).
Be polite, be professional, speak little unless there's profit in speaking much. Works with most everyone that is outside your monkeysphere, this includes cops.
Re: Reminder: Oh, Won't You Please Shut Up? (2011)
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
But only if you lie during that conversation. Edit: this is literally what happens in Ken's hypothetical story. If the subject didn't lie about the phone call, they couldn't be charged with a false statement.
See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc#t=1279 If the prosecutor wants to push it, almost any interaction with the police can be made to seem incriminating.
And so it's been for half a millennium:'
"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him." – Cardinal Richelieu, 1641
It seems law enforcement never really changes.
Re: Reminder: Oh, Won't You Please Shut Up? (2011)
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your argument does not rest on most cops being good cops, it stands if some cops are good cops. So why throw in an assertion you can't back up?
You asserted that it was "dangerous" for him to bandy around such statements. Care to back up that assertion? "Unnecessary" and "dangerous" are quite different.
The very blog post which prompted this discussion explains the danger of assuming even impartial investigative intentions of cops, let alone "good" ones.
Re: Reminder: Oh, Won't You Please Shut Up? (2011)
#60I thought everyone knew this. Never talk to representatives or agents of the US federal government without your lawyer present. Never, ever, ever.
When they make contact, ask them for a phone number your lawyer can call. Ask them what matter the questions will be regarding. Get a card if it's in person. They're going to tell you there's no reason to hire a lawyer and you can clear the whole thing up in five minutes if you talk to them. They're lying, which is something they can do legally, but if you do it you're off to the gray bar hotel.
http://corporate.findlaw.com/litigation-disputes/how-to-avoi...