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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

#401

Post by rootusrootus »

stackbutterflow wrote: post #314
Ansil849 wrote: post #263

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…

This is a very USian take. There are many countries in the world where people aren't scared to death when police come knock on their door. There are many countries where police officers are actually scared of using their weapon. In these countries it helps to know the law and how to deal with these situations.

I'm not frightened at all when the police come knock on my door. Why do you think that's normal in the US?

> There are many countries where police officers are actually scared of using their weapon.

I'm curious 1) the countries, and 2) why the officers are afraid.

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

#402

Post by rootusrootus »

foxfluff wrote: post #353
stackbutterflow wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very USian take. There are many countries in the world where people aren't scared to death when police come knock on their door. There are many countries where police officers are actually scared of using their weapon. In these countries it helps to know the law and how to deal with these situations.

Yep. Where I live it's very rare for cops to use their guns, and when it happens, you hear about it in the news. And if it wasn't just a warning shot to the air, you're going to hear about it again when they try to find out whether the gun use was justified.

I'm guessing that where you live, guns have been effectively outlawed. Imagine arming your citizens to the teeth, what affect do you think that would have on your police?

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

#403

Post by kingcharles »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #29
LinuxBender wrote: post #20

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…

If the police are aware of this “feature”, that’s an easy contempt and destruction of evidence charge among others. I’d recommend just not doing it.

Unlikely, in my courtroom experience. I would highly recommend making sure the police can't get to your data. It is unlikely you will be charged with anything. And what you get charged with if they get to your data might be 1000X worse than any minor obstruction of justice charge, depending on what sort of crime you are committing.

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

#404

Post by giantg2 »

rootusrootus wrote: post #398
giantg2 wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should be surprising that they defer to the cop. That's basically assuming that one is guilty without proving it. At a minimum, it should objectively provide reasonable doubt. I have an experience where a trooper lied to the court twice and I have evidence to back it up. Nobody cares . I tried a the ACLU (bigger fish to fry), a complaint with the department (they counseled him and made the excuse that they have a…

Are you talking about a judge, or a jury? An officer of the court is compelled to tell the truth, under oath or not. A jury is not required to give an officer of the court any more weight than they give to anyone else.

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.

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

#405

Post by kingcharles »

nerdponx wrote: post #174
LinuxBender wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. That's why I believe it might be super handy if every or at least many phones had this in place so that you don't really stand out. At least every phone using an alternate OS. If all the mainstream operating systems had this I would expect an arms race between the OS devs and the forensics device devs. As a side note, this would not necessarily be only used for law enforcement authorities. It could be that an…

> It could be that an armed phone thief requires you to unlock your phone. This exact scenario happened to me. They made me do a factory reset right in front of them, before handing the phone over. I didn't have any opportunity to do anything other than what they asked, and I probably would have been killed if I tried. I don't see how I would have been able to make use of such a feature in that scenario or any simila…

This. People on this thread seem to think you'll have time to do something clever with your phone. If someone puts a loaded gun to you, like they did to us, then you're inclined to do as they say.

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

#406

Post by kingcharles »

ceejayoz wrote: post #366
gwbas1c wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Look, we live in a society where drywall dust can get you jailed for 90 days because the cops think it's drugs. https://www.wftv.com/news/local/powdered-drywall-mistaken-fo...

And powdered milk: https://www.channel3000.com/homeless-man-told-court-powdered...

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

#407

Post by ChrisKnott »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #389
ChrisKnott wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From reading the actual concurrence [0] I would say that, yes, it does appear from the way he quotes "lawyer dog" near the end, that the judge thought the suspect was making a flippant remark referring to a theoretical dog that is a lawyer, however, (as the quotes from the lawyers later in the WP article point out) it would seem the actual key point was that he prefaced his request for a lawyer with an 'if' clause, a…

In the WaPo article, it's the DA who is saying that the request could be interpreted as subjective, not the Supreme Court justice. The relevant line in the concurrence: > In my view, the defendant’s ambiguous and equivocal reference to a “lawyer dog” does not constitute an invocation of counsel that warrants termination of the interview and does not violate Edwards v. Arizona, 451 U.S. 477, 101 S.Ct. 1880, 68 L.Ed.2d…

Yeah, I wasn't trying to suggest that the quotes were from the judge, just that they imply the issue that was actually being argued over in the case.

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

#408

Post by kingcharles »

II2II wrote: post #332
Ansil849 wrote: post #233

Here's the thing: you can have all sorts of detached, academic discussions on a forum like HN or on a blogpost about what the best thing to do is, or the most pragmatic thing, or the worst thing when dealing with a police encounter. But if you ever find yourself in a situation where a police officer is pointing a gun at you, none of this discussion matters. I've had that happen to me (when an AirBNB owner failed to m…

A police officer compels you to turn over a password at gunpoint. You do so in an act of self preservation. Will any evidence acquired as a result be admissable in court?

It depends. The password would be suppressed because it was coerced from you, but the police can now say they would have obtained your data anyway through another method, and then the court will let them use the data.

For instance, in my case the police said they could break 2048-bit AES encryption and so they were allowed to keep the data after the password was suppressed.

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

#409

Post by vlod »

toast0 wrote: post #252
mschuster91 wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Technically airport security can't make you unlock your phone in many countries as well but I've known two former colleagues who were "convinced" to do so in the airport's back room; the one where problematic passengers are held for 8-24h. Which is why I refuse to travel outside of the Schengen area. Even if I'd really like to visit the US one day once corona passes, there is absolutely no way I'll consent to essen…

> Even if I'd really like to visit the US one day once corona passes, there is absolutely no way I'll consent to essentially a digital striptease search with orifice controls. Don't take your phone and laptop with you on the plane. Maybe take an older phone (check lte bands and what not) that has been wiped and don't sign into things until you clear customs. If you need a laptop, options are ship it seperately or wip…

Chromebooks are good for this.

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

#410

Post by that_guy_iain »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #391
wahern wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a certain irony in people thinking this was a bad decision. Let me explain: The right against self-incrimination originally arose because of a quirk in English law relative to continental European law, and middle-age French law in particular. See, in France judicial execution was only permissible if the accused confessed . You couldn't use evidence as justification to execute someone; the defendant had to con…

> but surely nobody would confess to a crime they didn't commit. And then we consider the concept of reduced sentences for a plea. A plea bargain can allow one to consider pleading guilty for a crime which was not committed, but is too costly or improbable to defend. So we do get people confessing things they didn't do. Also we get the even further stage in that officers are allowed to lie about a reduced sentence be…

Making a murder showed a kid admitting to murder so he could go home and watch wrestlemania.
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