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French publisher arrested in London for refusal to tell police his passcodes

theguardian.com

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Re: French publisher arrested in London for refusal to tell police his passcodes

#101

Post by stametseater »

barnabee wrote: post #79
ornel wrote: post #67

According to this tweet[0] citing a (locked) article, the arrested publisher was asked by police "Do you support president Macron? Have you participated in the recent demonstrations in France? What books will soon be published by La Fabrique?". Scary stuff [0] https://twitter.com/Mathieu2jean/status/1648394577449984014

Shameful. I cannot fathom how anyone in government or the police believes this (whatever they asked him, whatever they were told) is anywhere close to ok.

> I cannot fathom how anyone in government or the police believes this (whatever they asked him, whatever they were told) is anywhere close to ok.

Something along the lines of: It's okay when I do it, because my motives are pure, my cause is just. The ends justify the means.

With this sort of mentality, people have committed mass murder and earnestly believed they were the good guys. Millions upon millions have been murdered by people who were utterly convinced they were on the right side of history. Compared to that, police officers convincing themselves that it's okay to violate the civil rights of a publisher is child's play.

Re: French publisher arrested in London for refusal to tell police his passcodes

#102

Post by harry8 »

kergonath wrote: post #4

That is a disgrace. A direct consequence of totalitarian laws. And at the same time, I really want to know the role of the French government. I cannot believe HMG cares whether someone was amongst the hundreds of thousands who demonstrated last week. Why set up such an ambush for a book publisher?

In trying to normalise search with no warrant nor oversight in the UK one would definitely expect its use against someone who is "us" but not really.

One can't imagine this being done on a member of the house of commons, house of lords, famous bbc actor or personality or even a non-famous British subject and you might get rather a lot more pushback than doing it against a Frenchman nobody has heard of.

I think it would be horribly naive of us to not assume these kinds of considerations were discussed extensively prior by the police involved and their superiors. Remember when it was said repeatedly by politicians that just this sort of thing would never happen. When the power exists it will find a way, every time.

There was a time when a publisher being kept in jail for years on a mere accusation in a country he's not visited that he may have breached a law universally regarded as utterly absurd by legal scholars would be something for which the air of the UK was too free to even countenance, whatever one's views of the man but that man is Australian, you know and he was also accused of rape, which seems a very, very weak accusation all this time later and also antisemitism, for which we haven't seen any evidence. Take out the support of the person and personality when doing a power grab. Is it policy or simply repeated coincidence?

The person and personality does not matter - they can be as big a scumbag as possible and that should be of zero consequence. The principle really, really, really does.

Now we watch for leaks and stories about just what a reprehensible human being this previously anonymous French publisher really is so no matter that you're losing your rights against warrantless search because you're not a French publisher accused of something, nor an Australian... Don't you worry about it, just leave it to the police who are never corrupt, never criminal, never abuse power, never rape, never murder, never derail nazi thug murder investigations because they're friends with one of the thugs drug-dealer parents. The British police want no oversight because they clearly need no oversight. Although I'm sure Osama Bin Laden or Saddam Hussein or (insert current object of the hate) would agree with any dissent on the matter.

Re: French publisher arrested in London for refusal to tell police his passcodes

#103

Post by kspacewalk2 »

tristor wrote: post #95
flangola7 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can't remain silent then what are you supposed to do to not accidentally incriminate yourself?

This is one of the reasons why other countries outside the US aren't as free as the US, even though the US is a complete mess too in different ways. Freedom of both speech and silence are not really respected in law anywhere outside the US to the extent that they are in the US.

Many many countries have rules against drawing adverse inferences from silence, including event Scotland, which is part of the UK.

Re: French publisher arrested in London for refusal to tell police his passcodes

#104

Post by robocat »

kmlx wrote: post #86

did the french government put that guy on a terrorist list somewhere or what? also, the refusal to share passcodes and subsequent arrest is more common across the world then one would expect: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law in countries such as France, Australia, UK, Ireland, India, South Africa it’s pretty clear: refuse to give password > fine and/or jail. in other countries such as the US, Nether…

> the few arab countries i’ve visited

I would expect citizens of Arab countries are treated very differently from visitors.

Re: French publisher arrested in London for refusal to tell police his passcodes

#105

Post by itg »

I would really like to see an implementation where entering different passcodes unlocks different profiles on your phone. For example, your real phone profile data is behind one passcode, and then you can unlock a decoy phone profile when entering a different passcode.

Re: French publisher arrested in London for refusal to tell police his passcodes

#108

Post by TulliusCicero »

CaliforniaKarl wrote: post #50
Our_Benefactors wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you can be told not to reveal that you've told them the password Come again? I don’t catch the meaning of this.

abridgett didn't check after posting, and so didn't catch some weird formatting. They are making two separate points: - the onus is on _you_ to "prove" that you don't know it or have forgotten it - you can be told not to reveal that you've told them the password

But...how would you prove you've forgotten something?

Re: French publisher arrested in London for refusal to tell police his passcodes

#110

Post by sjtgraham »

phnofive wrote: post #2

The legal system in the UK recognizes several rights against self-incrimination, but there is a carve-out for the per se crime of failing to disclose a key to encrypted information - punishable by years in prison. How is this different than refusing to tell where you've buried the bodies? Why should the police be permitted to assume you're guilty and in possession of vital information under certain circumstances?

Which rights against self-incrimination? The right to silence has been gone since the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994.
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