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Comment by ythl | Hacker News Reader

> It's a sad world we live in that I speed read your post and wasn't sure if you meant the UAE or USA..........

I hate this type of rhetoric comparing the USA to a police state. The USA does not detain, "disappear," or torture political dissidents or opponents. The USA is not a police state. It's not even close to a police state.

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Not a police state per se - but detaining political protestors at large isn't something to be fond of.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/23/occupy-wall-street-...

Which state would reckon being a police state? To determine whether it is, we need to look at facts. 95% prisoners are there on plea bargain, which means they have never been proven guilty (They might just not be able to afford analysis); 1146 people killed by police in 2015; 1% of the population in prison and up to 6% depending on race; people get raided by SWAT for playing poker, 2 gigantic databases of everyone's online actions with a Real Name Policy (Google+ and Facebook), torture is legal for opponents of the country, a guy who investigated Hillary Clinton was suicided by a gunshot in a park...

...and a guy who exposed illegal action ("under any normal person's understanding" of the Constitution) is currently the #1 top wanted guy on the planet and is seeking refuge in... Russia (oh, the irony). Every single one of those facts could be turned into a movie, but we're now so used to them that we all despair.

I, as a foreigner in Europe, don't go to conferences in USA because of the TSA.

> 95% prisoners are there on plea bargain

It could be because the people who know they are guilty take the bargain and save themselves some years, while the innocent go to court and prove their innocence.

This doesn't prove they are guilty. That's the problem with plea bargain: Scientific analysis costs a lot, even to prove obvious things, and most don't have the money to purchase that. Hence: 95% people in jail aren't proven guilty.

> The USA does not detain, "disappear," or torture political dissidents or opponents.

Then what was that whole Guantanamo thing about?

> The USA is not a police state.

No one claimed that.

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