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Comment by Gatsky | Hacker News Reader

That quote where the self-avowed pedophile says ‘No fucking way’ is going to appear in every bill to increase law enforcement’s powers from now on. It’s an irresistible soundbite. The scumbag would have done better to just shut the hell up.

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Which is always true, at least in the US. The police are allowed to lie to you during questioning. They are allowed to claim they have evidence that they do not have. No amount of lying on their part will invalidate any "confession" they obtain from you. But if you even inadvertently tell the police something that is untrue, you can end up in prison for that, even if you committed no other crime. NEVER talk to the police, if there is any chance they suspect you are involved with a crime.

I’ve never understood why the police needs to lie. In Sweden, the police is not allowed to lie but may however withold information or ”speculate” how the circumstances and evidence will be interpreted at trial. The prosecutors still win 90% of cases.

They should need to fix it then, so that the police are not allowed to lie to you (but are allowed to withhold information, or be deceptive, or lie when they are not on duty and don't have a police uniform), but you are allowed to tell the police untrue stuff as long as it does not constitute filing a false police report or accusing someone else of a crime that they have not committed, or a few other exceptions (e.g. abusing the emergency service).

Actually I missed a few things. Both sides should be allowed to do the following: Refuse to answer a question (except asking the police to see a copy of a warrant or their police identification (they can refuse you to touch their police identification though)), or claim to not know something or forget something (even if that is untrue). And if someone nevertheless says something untrue even in a way which is not permitted, if there is a reasonable chance to believe it would be inadvertent, then they are forgiven (and if they are the police, may be allowed to try again later (if the person they are interrogating is still a suspect), even though the first attempt at arresting them didn't count).

> Which is always true, at least in the US. The police are allowed to lie to you during questioning. They are allowed to claim they have evidence that they do not have. No amount of lying on their part will invalidate any "confession" they obtain from you. But if you even inadvertently tell the police something that is untrue, you can end up in prison for that, even if you committed no other crime. NEVER talk to the police, if there is any chance they suspect you are involved with a crime.

While police are allowed to lie, are they allowed to lie to you with regards to what rights you may or may not have? Naively, it would seem so but I'm not aware of any language explicitly allowing deceit on the part of police.

You're looking for the wrong thing. There's no language explicitly DISallowing deceit on the part of the police.

Why wouldn't he, when the penalty for pedophilia is worse than murder? You can kill someone, do your time, and be out in as little as 5-10 years having paid your debt to society. Sex offenders are branded for life, and are reduced to living in the modern-day equivalent of leper colonies.

https://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/opinion/sunday/sex-offend...

This seems like a case where the prosecutors are making things hard on themselves. Or, my tinfoil hat wants me to think, deliberately testing the waters with an interpretation they’d like to turn into precedent.

If the contents of the disk are a foregone conclusion (and assuming the article’s framing of the “foregone conclusion” idea is correct, and I’m not even close to being a lawyer so I have no idea) then it seems like a slam dunk that they would be able to compel him to produce the incriminating contents of the disk - but not the password that unlocks the entire disk, presumably including things that don’t have that “foregone conclusion” status. Or they could likely just use his statement as evidence of the content of the disk. Either of those would almost certainly get the conviction they want with far less drama.

Of course he would have. This is a fantastic example of how everything you say, can and will be used against you.

But I think criminals being interrogated aren’t really of sound mind.

They're not proven to be criminals at that stage. They're suspects, maybe, but no court has convicted them.

Fair enough. But that doesn’t really change my argument?

> Fair enough. But that doesn’t really change my argument?

I think the point (which bears repeating) is that suspects are not criminals until proven so in a court, and it's important to be careful in our language, especially in our modern times where the court of public opinion operates swiftly and without due process.

It’s one thing if they deny the accusations, but if they agree with them...

> The scumbag would have done better to just shut the hell up.

It also would've been better had he not been a pedophile and yet... we are here.

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