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Comment by drjesusphd | Hacker News Reader

It short-circuits the fourth ammendment, which protects against unreasonable searches. The way this is enforced in the real world is that evidence is thrown out of court if it was obtained in an unlawful search. With parallel construction, you render useless the only enforcement mechanism for the fourth ammendment.

Not to mention the deception. In order to use parallel construction, the police need to make up a story about why they began investigating. By definition, parallel construction means that they will lie in court about this.

The courts really need to wake up, or they will continue to be impotent lackeys of the executive branch.

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Right but the "made up story" has to be legally sound. Like they have to put a police officer at the right place at the right time. How is that a bad thing?

Like you can still have information so private that you can't build a parallel construction - right?

They only put the cop at the right place and at the right time, because they chose the place and time ahead of time.

You will never have information that's so secret that you can't build a parallel construction, because you always create a parallel construction that gives the appearance of random chance. "Well, your honor, we decided to setup a traffic safety roadblock stopping every blue car, and when the defendants stopped they started acting suspicious, and then it just happened that a k9 unit that was returning from delivering coffee alerted on the car. At which I point I searched the car and found the evidence. Somedays, we just get lucky."

what...? Your example is a convoluted extension of the police-officer example except you added the dog element which I think most people agree is messed up... but that's a separate unrelated issue to address.

I'm saying if you have a private/secret meeting in your basement about how to overthrow the government there is no parallel construction you can make to intercept that. If you have secret files on your computer you can't have cops "accidentally" bump into them.

I'm really doubting "you will never have information that's so secret that you can't build a parallel construction"

> have a private/secret meeting in your basement

> have secret files on your computer

Do any of the participants have any mobile phones on them? Are there any windows in the basement? What do you mean by "secret files"? Do you mean encrypted? How do you know it's not a compromised service/protocol?

I think you underestimate what present-day technology is capable of.

Sorry if I wasn't clear enough. What I'm illustrating is that parallel construction doesn't allow the government to use it's full force to make an investigation. They can't "accidentally" search your computer or "accidentally" track you phone or "accidentally" monitor you traffic. That's fundamentally different from a police van "happening" to be at the bank that's about to be robbed or something b/c that could have happened anyway. Do you see the distinction?

> Like they have to put a police officer at the right place at the right time.

"Right place at the right time" implies it was an accident, and that is a lie. They're lying in court and that should be illegal.

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