Google tracking a bike ride past a burglarized home made the rider a suspect
nbcnews.com
nbcnews.com
I think one aspect of this is the surprise that an engineer would get swept up in this, but this isn't really something that can be solved by tech.
At the end of the day, the hope is that the evidence is taken in the right context and proper investigation will catch the right person. Unfortunately, especially in this era of True Crime documentaries, we've seen it go awry one too many time, and people are rightly scared that they may be next.
Tech is IMPROVING our lives. Software is an enabler, it solves our problems. If the software is making our problems worse, then there is something wrong with the software, we fix the software. But the issue here isn't the software, the issue here is privacy invasion. Terms of Use and Privacy Policy aren't comprehensive enough to inform users what they are doing or how and when they are collecting their personal data.
From the story “I didn’t realize that by having location services on that Google was also keeping a log of where I was going, I’m sure it’s in their terms of service but I never read through those walls of text, and I don’t think most people do either.” McCoy said.
Steve Jobs had a solution for this:
"Privacy means that people know what they’re signing up for. In plain English, and repeatedly. I believe that people are smart. Some people want to share more than others. Ask them...Make them tell you to stop asking them. Let them know what you’re going to do with their data"
It has its faults, but I really loved Adam Curtis’s documentary ‘ All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace’. Full of anecdotes, but it is a fun watch!
Sometimes, that's what we were doing before. Sometimes it isn't.
I occasionally miss the quality of landline phone calls, for one example.
Openness is the key, as the Steve Jobs quote in a parent comment is saying. Users need to know what's going on, and our clickwrap culture hasn't been cutting it these past two decades.
I have a problem with general cynicism toward technology. I believe the core problem we have with tech is all about privacy.
We are on the fringe of a golden era, and we should resolve these issues about privacy and dark UX that deceive users.
We don't need to "argue" whether tech improved our lives. It already did!! When did we ever in the history of mankind had the chance to communicate, and access information in real-time?!
Even in systems with less human intervention (e.g automated loan approval systems) bias is still being built in.
If anything this could provide people with the excuse of "see! it was the algorithm!".
Just because there is bias in the system does not mean it is OK to open the floodgates and introduce more
>> If anything this could provide people with the excuse of "see! it was the algorithm!".
It doesn't work that way. First the person has to come up with tens of thousands of dollars to defend themselves and hire lawyers and expert witnesses. What you are stating is just a luxury of the rich. If the new system is that rich people get extra avenues of defense, you are right.
How does the geofence-based system to determine whether you were in the area of a crime when it was committed know what race you are? I'm suggesting that in the absence of a tool like this, cops will use their eyeballs and knock on doors, and we already know that process is racially biased.
Oh good. Glad to see we have that sorted out.
Yes. But not without also creating significant dangers, frictions, and negatives.
Either way, it is safe to say Tech is a magnifier. It all depends on whose hands it's in and how they're using it.
I'm sure plenty would disagree, myself included. Tech is not blanket good. It can be good, it can be bad. It depends on the tech, and even then it's not always one or the other.
“But the issue here isn't the software, the issue here is privacy invasion. Terms of Use and Privacy Policy aren't comprehensive enough to inform users what they are doing or how and when they are collecting their personal data.”
The main issue is the nature and cost of the legal system if you are accused, which is less privacy and more protection.
Sadly, it’s also improving the police state
So not, it's not normal by any measure. It's just America.
Off topic, but remember when Bob Dylan was picked up by cops, mistaken for a homeless man in Long Beach, NJ when he walked up to a house for sale?
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2009/08/bob_dylan_st...
Not to trivialize the subject, this is literally the only funny story I've heard about this kind of thing
You do not see the difference between being actively observed, vs having your movements recorded 24/7 to then be gone over in retrospect weeks, months, or years later?
Really, there is no difference in your mind here?
Over time, as more tools become available to find people with precise overlaps with a crime, the stronger the narrative is for innocent people (as well as the guilty). IMO a more inquisitorial approach which tests the counterfactual of each evidentiary point rather than relying solely on defense ought to hold up better in the future.
Police and prosecutors in the US are notorious for leaving out evidence that exonerates the accused, even though they are supposedly required to provide the defense with all evidence relevant to the case.
Also, well-connected victims’ cases are investigated much more carefully than normal victims.
For instance, some SFO luggage handlers were stealing stuff from bags. People repeatedly reported them to the police, but nothing happened until they stole from a retired cop. An investigation was launched and they were arrested the next week.
Similarly (based on personal experience with multiple incidents in multiple cities with multiple victims), they normally won’t bother to pull location database records for successful burglaries, even if they have exact timestamps of the incident (up to and including video), even in remote areas in the middle of the night involving literal truckloads of loot (where the location records would be a slam dunk, and the evidence would take a while to dispose of).
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ex-georgia-deputy-acqui...
Policing in the US is entirely out of control.
That shapes the culture. It's kind of anti-Spiderman. With great powers comes no responsibility at all.
It really isn't. Look towards Scandinavian countries for that.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2006/11/09/sweden-violated-torture-...
which has nothing to do with democracy.
It apparently holds in every western democracy except for the United States of America.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_rule_(attorney%27s_fee...
The loser must pay up to the amount they themselves spent on prosecuting the case, but no more.
So General Motors would have to pay the full cost of the plaintiff's litigation if they lost, while the plaintiff would have to pay their costs, plus an equivalent amount to GM.
This is of course independent of compensation and damages awarded.
And if that is a million dollars, in that case: Should someone be able to cause a million dollars' worth of damage with a frivolous lawsuit without being liable for it?
Patent trolls are one of the things that would work significantly less well in a loser-pays scenario.
Or to turn your example around: If the car hasn't killed me and I just want my money back, should I be forced to just eat the loss because even if I win, the legal costs will be higher?
Your first question ("Should someone be able to...") is a false dichotomy. The real question is whether we show a preference for being able to sue easily, versus adding more downside.
In America, consumer protection is done through lawsuits, especially since the current leadership is underfunding these groups. In general, companies have less approvals before launching a product under the assumption that negligence will cost them a ton of money in class action. That is why class action amounts can be so high - it's the dis-incentive for cutting corners.
Yes, patent trolls are an issue. I think there are better ways to reduce that impact (such as a sensible patent system) without harming consumers.
I'm not sure how that would matter. The patent troll sues 100 companies. Has to pay the legal fees for the 100 processes because all of them have been initiated by the patent troll. The patent troll wins 30 cases.
In the American system the patent troll already included the legal fees in his calculations and optimized them for profit but the victims are always stuck with legal fees even if they win. The patent troll basically causes a minimum amount of damage regardless of the outcome. The legal fees are often close to $0 for the patent troll because merely the act of receiving a letter from a lawyer scares startups into paying the settlement fees. Losing a month or two can be devastating for a young company but they can easily recover from losing $20k if it means that they can run their business with no distractions.
In the loser pays scenario the patent troll's legal fees would be completely unpredictable in the 70 cases. Losing 70 times might result in bankruptcy of the patent troll and the majority of victims would not be burdened by legal fees.
This sub thread is making the assumption that the innocent legal entities (= person or company) are on the losing end but if patent trolls had to be 100% sure that their patents are valid then there would be significantly fewer of them. For the few patent trolls that remain you can't argue that they shouldn't have the right to protect their patents. The patent system might be broken but if you can't enforce patents in valid situations then why even bother with the system?
American Rule protects the rich (and those in power, such as police, public prosecutor, etc), as it allows them to bully the poor who can't afford a lawyer, or lose so much money that their interests are harmed. A clear example of that is patent trolls.
The rich can afford in either system, but the poor can only afford in English Rule. It should not be about poor vs rich but about truth (ie. guilty vs innocent).
In the US system, a poor person can bring suit, using a lawyer working on contingency, and not fear for being stuck should they lose.
Your argument seems to hinge on the "correct" party always winning, but that's far from the case.
> Your argument seems to hinge on the "correct" party always winning, but that's far from the case.
Of course it does.
If the correct party does not usually win (with a few exceptions, being rounding errors) then your legal system, and democracy, is indeed very much broken.
If the police bust someone for murder, and this person gets sued, gets a fair trial, and gets incarcerated in jail for murder we, civilians/voters, must be able to assume that the system worked correctly. If this is not the case, if it is "normal" (too high percentage) innocent people get behind bars, that is a high priority problem. There's always going to be false positives, sure, but in general we must be able to assume one is a true positive.
Now, in English law the poor could sue, and win, if they're in the right. In American law, they can't afford a lawsuit. If they get sued for whatever, they'll be more likely to settle, without being on the good end of the stick. I can only define that as class justice.
There are limits to the claims, btw [1] [2]. Also, the amounts have to be reasonable.
Also, I believe @xyzal is correct in describing the difference between civil and common law. The problem you described is much less of a problem in civil law.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Costs_in_English_law#Exception...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Costs_in_English_law#Who_can_c...?
In the US, that only applies to indigent defendants in criminal cases. It does not apply to anybody with any semblance of financial stability and does not apply to anybody in civil cases.
Is it different abroad?
In continental law, judges role is more like an investigator; his/hers role is to establish the facts of the case and to apply the provisions of the code. They are the ones questioning witnesses.
See also: https://onlinelaw.wustl.edu/blog/common-law-vs-civil-law/
With the US system, there is no way to get justice in many cases, even when you're obviously right, because the (non-recoverable) legal costs exceed the amount by which you have been wronged (and the opponent knows that).
This focus on small people suing big corporations is absolutely insane.
I always think of that when someone is sneering at the American legal system or blaming Americans for everything they interact with globally.
Citation needed.
You'd think the people who came up with it had never played Scrabble, where you lose a turn for a false dictionary challenge.
In practice it doesn't always hold up very well.
Do you have an alternative suggestion? Would the government always pay for the entire defense? Or reimburse if the accused is acquitted?
This is also why gun violence restraining orders are bad. Large costs to the defendent with no standards or hearing or even an accusation of a crime.
"Reasonable fees". If You sue me, I win and my lawyer sends me a bill for a billion euros that I pass on to you, no judge will consider that valid.
As for damages and reimbursements: hardly. If you arrest a highly paid consultant and keep him in jail during his trial, he's not getting paid his hourly fee * 24 * days in jail.
It's worse than that.
Litigation is literally what puts bread on their tables.
They are rewarded financially for inconveniencing the layperson and making them jump through the hoops they have built.
They will do that from time to time, if you are wealthy and well-connected enough. We had a case like that at my institution, an attempted rape. Don't rely on the government for protection, arm up.
In civil cases this is used as leverage by wealthy people. The wealthy can sustain a legal battle for as long as they want. They know that if their opponent isn't as wealthy, they'll be forced to settle, even for an unreasonable amount, just because they won't be able to afford defending themselves properly.
For reference, a decent civil attorney in a major city in California will charge $250-500/hour, which ends up being around $5k/month to defend pretty much any civil lawsuit. A lawsuit that goes to trial will take 18-24 months, so you'll end up paying $90-120k just in legal fees. There will also be $10-20k in additional court fees and other expenses, not to mention your time.
At the end of the day, if you defend a civil lawsuit and you flawlessly "win" the case, after about 2 years of manufactured stress, you'll be down $100-150k.
That's what it costs to prove you are innocent and walk away "free" (free to be sued again).
Btw, in civil cases, if you cannot afford a lawyer, the system won't appoint one for you, you will have to defend yourself (which judges and lawyers hate, and will very much play against you in court).
Also, even if you can represent yourself, the court fees won't necessarily be waived ($2-3k), and you'll have to fund your own discovery (which can be insanely expensive, depending on the case).
Then if you are defending as a corporation (llc, c corp, etc), you must have a lawyer. So basically if someone knows that your company cannot afford to hire a lawyer, they can sue you and force you to pay up or go bankrupt - then during bankruptcy they can keep going after you personally, and even after bankruptcy they can sue you again.
Hmm. Every civil case I've been involved with was decided not by relative wealth, but by the strength of the case. In every case, the less wealthy party won, and the wealthy party got stuck with legal fees. In many cases, the less wealthy person was represented by a lawyer who was paid mostly on contingency.
But if one of the parties cannot afford to litigate, they are screwed.
Considering that 40% of Americans can't even afford a $400 unexpected expense[0], it means most people are extremely vulnerable to legal liability, as they would barely be able to afford maybe 1 hour of consulting with a lawyer.
My guess is that you've mostly dealt with people and companies that had the money to go through the legal system. Most people don't.
Also, in my experience, it is very (extremely?) rare to find a lawyer that will work on a contingency basis, especially on short notice. So unless you know it's coming, and you've already spent the time to interview a bunch of lawyers (most of which are not even going to give you the time of day without having an open case) ahead of time, then you'll most likely be out of luck when you get served and have 30 days to respond (and if you don't respond they get a default judgement against you).
You just can't deny that the (American) legal system is, in practice, based on money and resources, rather than on justice and fairness.
0: https://abcnews.go.com/US/10-americans-struggle-cover-400-em...
I've been dealing with a vindictive plaintiff for a few years now.
No lawyer will take a case on a contingency basis, especially against a plaintiff with "deep pockets", if there's no money to be made (which is usually the case when you are on the defending side).
Let me illustrate, let's say a company gets a loan from a creditor, then the company fails to pay, the creditor sues, the company doesn't have the money to pay.
At this point lawyers see that there's no money to be made and will rarely touch the case. The defendant is out of luck and will most likely have to file for bankruptcy (which at the minimum will cost $10-15k in legal fees, so it might not even be an option).
As long as the creditor wants to keep spending money, they can keep going after the company, its founders and directors. Most lawyers will say that it doesn't make sense because the creditor is very unlikely to recover anything. But if the creditor still wants to spend the money, the defendants will be forced to keep paying to defend themselves for as long as the creditor attacks them, even if they didn't do anything wrong or ilegal and they prevail in the end.
So most lawyers will recommend to settle and pay the creditor, because you'll have to spend about $100k defending yourself anyway, hence you might as well pay that in a settlement and not go through trial. Lawyers will also note that 90%+ of cases settle. In the end the company officials/founders might unfairly pay a bunch of money to someone, just so they can get rid of them.
Then, even after the defendants pay, everyone might have lost a bunch of money and not found any justice whatsoever.
Now, regardless of the example above. It costs about $5k to file a lawsuit and about $50-150k to go through with it. How many people have the means to pay for that? I'd say very few.
However, from 40,000 feet, one might listen to your story and think, ok, you took money from someone and didn't give it back, and now you're being inconvenienced and harassed, and this is supposed to be a major societal problem? What about people that get sent to prison for stealing the same or less money? Or a candy bar?
To be sure, I can imagine being in the same place, and I can imagine dealing with a crazy/obsessive litigant and being very unhappy about it. But if it were me, I wouldn't expect people to sympathize or agree that it's a problem with society.
The problem with the legal system is that if you get sued, for pretty much anything, you'll need to spend several thousands of dollars, regardless if you are actually liable or not.
And if you want to sue someone, it will cost you several thousand too.
40% of people in the US cannot afford a $400 unexpected expense. That means that a huge portion of the population, is extremely susceptible to any legal issues, as they won't be able to properly use the legal system to fairly represent them and seek proper justice/relief. Ie. If those people get sued, they'll most likely not be able to afford defending the lawsuit - or if someone did something to them, they won't have the money to sue them.
A proper legal system should not discriminate by level of wealth and should represent everyone equally.
It's my understanding that is a bullshit statistic as I said in another comment. I can't afford an unexpected expense of $400 right now, in the sense that if I really have to pay that bill immediately, I'm going to put it on a credit card. That doesn't make me financially strained.
That's based on the idea that people who put a random $400 expense on a credit card that they pay off next month "can't afford" it.
The strength of the parties cases matters 10000x more than the amount of money they had. In fact, excessive spending was usually associated with worsened outcomes for the spending party.
But what happens when the defendant just simply doesn't have the money to defend themselves in court?
Have you represented a client in court for free for 2 years and paid for their court fees and discovery?
You've also probably dealt mostly with relatively rational people in good faith. But when you have someone who's very vindictive or irrational, acting in bad faith and with a lot of money, it can be terrifying to be on the receiving end, and you can feel absolutely hopeless if you don't have the knowledge or money to defend.
There are studies out there confirming my experience but as I don't currently have access to a law library you'll have to look them up on your own.
They'll hire private council and think that because they're paying for it, it's better. But it's often not. For a typical defendant with an aggravated assault charge, a public defender has handled dozens of similar cases before. Moreover, they'll have done it with your judge and your prosecutor. A private lawyer probably won't have that. Granted, this probably holds a lot less for the HN comments section.
I'll add that there is no right to defense council for civil cases. These can have consequences just as dire as a criminal case, as in immigration or eviction proceedings. An indigent defendant with no lawyer has a very poor chance. There's a movement to create this right [1]. The current Supreme Court, however, seems more likely to weaken Gideon v. Wainwright than expand it.
I'm not related to the company, but this is exactly what avvo.com is solving. I have known others to use it for traffic infractions all the way to criminal defence. In general they speak positively about the experience.
I don't know any particular lawyer's connections, but I can see the reviews/self-reported-track records.
But, this creates a new problem - gamification of reviews. But now that it's in the "reviews" space, I know how to at least manage that problem as opposed to something I know zero about such as judging a lawyer's relationships and effectiveness.
A public defender might not be _bad_, but in many jurisdictions they are egregiously overworked. Their case load is so over burdened they don’t have the time to do a thorough job. I’d much rather take my chances with a paid lawyer.
>You have the right to have a lawyer with you during questioning. If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be appointed for you before any questioning if you wish.
Although I suppose the court could hold you in contempt if it found you had the means and said you didn't. But I've never seen or heard of anyone being means checked.
All the search results (Findlaw, Avvo lawyer answers, etc) seem to be saying that you have to qualify financially, you have to submit your income and assets of your household under penalty of perjury (signed statement, not oath) and you may also be asked to get quotes from lawyers to compare against your means. I think the most you could say is that courts are so overloaded you might get away with perjury.
A few sample links:
https://www.expertlaw.com/forums/showthread.php?t=61781
https://www.newsherald.com/news/20180304/in-court-majority-s...
https://www.avvo.com/legal-answers/can-i-be-denied-a-public-...
So I think you're right, it is perjury that doesn't really get anything done about it - I think based on the idea that if you had the money to get an attorney you would do it so anyone saying they can't get an attorney doesn't have the money.
Background research done I created a list of lawyers I wanted to talk to and called them one by one and discussed the case over the phone. The crime I was accused of was somewhat rare and none of the five lawyers I called were familiar with it. I could tell fairly quickly that several of the lawyers were, for lack of a better term, bullshitting me about their familiarity with crime because I had first done the basic research so I had some understanding of what was reasonable to say about it. One lawyer was obviously reading passages from wikipedia verbatim to me, which I recognized having recently read the same wikipedia article myself. Another lawyer didn't seem to listen to me - after hearing my story he confidently assured me he could get the charge reduced... to what I was already charged with. Others just didn't seem that competent.
The lawyer I ultimately went with was a former prosecutor, which I liked because I figured it meant he would know the other prosecutors, and he was the only one who, when I called him, said "I don't know much about this. Let me do some reading and call you back." I immensely respected that more than the people who tried to pretend like they knew what they were talking about.
Ultimately, we had an extremely successful result and now if anyone I know ever needs a lawyer, I have one to recommend. It may be a bit harder if you don't have connections, but there is no reason why the average person retaining a lawyer can't go through the effort of finding one they are comfortable with.
You are vastly overestimating the ability of an "average" person to be able to understand and analyze legal complications for themselves. The average person, for example, does not have a college degree [1], let alone a degree in a technical subject that has trained them in analytic reasoning.
[1] Only 37% of people age 25-30 in the US have a bachelors: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_...
I'm sorry, but this is laughably out of touch with reality for the "average person".
- Felony defendants were represented by publicly-financed attorneys over 80%(!) of the time.
- Defendants with public and private attorneys had similar conviction rates. They pled out at similar rates, too.
- Defendants with public attorneys were more likely to get prison sentences, but got shorter sentences on average.
- Defendants with private attorneys who were already in prison (i.e., convicted) talked to their lawyers earlier and more often. The part about prison just seems to be because that's where they collected the data.
- Defendants with public attorneys got pretrial release a lot less often (50% vs 80%) than those with private attorneys. This looks to me like it's mostly about not being able to afford bail.
- Workloads for Federal appointed attorneys rose faster than spending on them. I would guess the same to be true of state courts and for the trend to have continued to today.
[1] http://civilrighttocounsel.org/, the civil right to counsel I forgot in my post.
[2] https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/dccc.pdf 2000 appears to be the most recent report on this subject. It's possible they've collected more recent data elsewhere and I didn't turn it up.
Is that not the case for public defenders too?
Tax agencies target people and companies that don't have the means to defend themselves, because then they can collect on them. Whereas they usually stay away from wealthy/legally savvy individuals/companies, because the cost/benefit of going after them is not worth it.
A few years ago there was a big push in California to go after food trucks. They were the perfect target, small businesses run by individuals or families with few resources or legal sophistication. At some point the media got involved, as well as some advocacy groups. The issue ended with the BOE (California's tax agency), changing the way food trucks had to calculate, report and collect their sales tax. However, many non-wealthy food truck owners ended up with very unfair personal tax liabilities in the thousands of dollars, which they might still be paying today.
I was involved in defending one of these food trucks and putting together their case. They were being assed $60k in taxes and being proposed a payment plan that would have meant them paying a total of around $100k over the course of 10 years. In the end the liability was reassessed to $0. At the beginning of the dispute, every accountant and tax lawyer consulted said the tax liability was unavoidable. Tax agencies are scary.
No, they spend taxpayers funds!
it will not eliminate the inequality, for sure, but it would be a step in the right direction and in some area's the public defenders get less than a dime for ever dollar the Prosecutors office receives in public funding
I understand he doesn’t have the resources to fight the constitutionality of the whole process. This quote is why ACLU, EFF, and others need to work together to take it up further. Stop the police from continuing the habit of just sweeping people’s data and worry about the details later.
Here in Canada several of our wireless providers banded together to fight an incredibly broad request for information about everyone hitting particular cell towers during a robbery. The crown tried to simply drop the request when challenged, but thankfully the judge didn't let them off so easily. The court issued some rather strict requirements for similar requests.
https://blog.privacylawyer.ca/2016/01/ontario-court-provides...
This isn't covert mass surveillance. We already allow law enforcement to search more private spaces with a warrant, so this doesn't seem like a stretch.
How does this exonerate him if he has no lawyer to go thru the procedural efforts? You are right that hiring a lawyer is a choice, in as much as going to prison is a choice.
Because police would likely not even contact him in the first place once they see that there's nothing extraordinary about his movements.
This is plainly a type of General Warrant, something that was banned under the US Constitution
Why it's not the case that Google has too much power in this, by collecting data from their users without asking their permission?
It is my understanding that Google Location services asks before storing this data. My fear is that by writing blanket untrue statements like this, people that don't know better just read it as fact, and spread it.
Disclaimer: Work at Google (in a different space), but everything I write here is my own opinions/views.
“Normals” in no way understand they are consenting to this, and further, your employer continues to tighten the noose on users who did understand and turned it off, that products will no longer work without this data.
To be clear, Google has the right to demand location data as payment for services rendered.
Sure, just let them be clear about it. By clear, I don't mean they mention it in the last line of the 29th page.
I like the GDPR approach where you cannot force someone to pay with their privacy. If you want to demand payment, you can demand money.
You are right! "people that don't know better" should do their own research on whether Google Location services ask for their permission.
Here are few links:
"Google records your location even when you tell it not to" https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/aug/13/google-lo...
"Google Collected Data on Schoolchildren Without Permission" https://www.wired.com/2015/12/google-collected-data-on-schoo...
"More than 1,000 Android apps harvest data even after you deny permissions" https://www.cnet.com/news/more-than-1000-android-apps-harves...
"Thousands of Android apps can track your phone — even if you deny permissions" https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/8/20686514/android-covert-ch...
"The study also singles out photo app Shutterfly for sending actual GPS coordinates back to its servers without getting permission to track locations — by harvesting that data from your photos’ EXIF metadata — though the company denied that it gathers that data without permission in a statement to CNET."
Which is much more nuanced. Some would even consider it as a bug since it is coming from a side-channel. Also the article mentions that a lot of these things are being fixed with newer versions of Android (Q in this case).
However, by just quoting click-baity headlines, it gives the false impression that these products are purposely built to intrude on privacy.
It certainly does not. In fact, the general prompts are just along the lines of "Maps won't work unless Location Services is on. Turn it on? [Y/N]"
They do, but they do it in a way that seem innocuous.
Google is heavily vertically integrated, if you want to take advantage of many features in Android, you need to "allow" location tracking and collection. Most people want to use Waze, or Maps, or Reviews of Place, etc etc etc. If you do you agree to have your location tracked
>...Gainesville police, looking for leads, went to an Alachua County judge with the warrant for Google.
He's lucky an overzealous prosecutor didn't go after him anyway.
> So he went to his parents’ home in St. Augustine, where, over dinner, he told them what was happening. They agreed to dip into their savings to pay for a lawyer.
As far as I know, sensorvault is originally sourced from "improve location accuracy" events sent by the phone (hence the original name: sensorvault and not userlocation-vault), and kept "anonymized" until request for de-anonymization by law enforcement.
You can restrict data to three months which would have been helpful here.
Would we be ok if the police just randomly fined people $2000 bucks for no reason? That is basically what happened here.
Where it went wrong is a completely orthogonal matter. He was kept in jail for days after it was crystal clear he's not the murderer, and his name was dragged through the mud also after that point. He's completely legitimately suing for that, and hopefully wins. But what does that have to do with a legitimate and effective use of his geolocation data? Again, a murderer is caught because of it. And then the same police department fucked up and ruined a legitimate and justified but innocent suspect's life.
There is something fundamentally wrong with believing that the ends justify the means in these cases. As has been said, "[i]t is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer." [1]
But the overall rate of shoplifting and murder isn't going to change substantially even if the police ruin a residence and refuse to pay for damages or arrest and jail the wrong person for a substantial period of time.
So it appears that there a negligible increase in overall risk to society and property if criminals sometimes get away, but there doesn't appear to be any substantial decrease in overall risk to them if they're caught at great cost to certain innocent individuals.
In other words, there's really no difference on a societal level whether or not these individual cases result in the arrest and conviction of these criminals, but there's a substantial difference in personal cost for the innocent individuals who were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The further we broaden police powers to dragnets the more innocent people will be within their crosshairs and have to be “filtered” out, often at the accused expense.
Next watch some “first day in jail” videos on Netflix and see the ridiculous stuff that gets people in scary overfilled jails, even for small even legitimate reasons and it’s enough to make it obvious there’s a serious problem with justice and law enforcement in the US.
One of the worst that affected me was an older middle class guy who ended up spending months in jail because he lost his job and at some point in the last 5yrs had a kid with some woman he met on a christian dating site who refused to have an abortion. The courts eventually ruled and said he owed $4k+ in child support in a short time span (a month?) otherwise you’re going to jail, when he was already struggling to live having lost his job. He was one of the few white guys, the stories of the black kids (most looked straight out of highschool) were often even smaller and even dumber reasons which immediately exposes them to living with other real criminals for extended periods of times which they then become friends with... etc.
The US is extremely punitive and the use of jails/prisons and stupid bail schemes is beyond excessive. That makes wrongful convictions all that much worse. Which all happens well before the trials even start.
I'm not going to debate whether American jails need serious improvement. They obviously do. That's orthogonal to investigative techniques IMO.
Geofence warrants seem too broad to me, providing them with access to people (and therefore probable cause for heavier warrants) merely for passing through an area of a crime.
The former seems possibly okay to me, but the latter is definitely not.
Calling that "wanting privacy on your daily bikeride" is a little silly, and I don't think the 2000$ is really giving you said privacy. Similarly, police overreach is a real issue, but the 2000$ is hardly going to solve that, and as mentioned above, you could've gotten entangled dozens of other way.
- hiring this lawyer to fight the warrant, or
- the risk of being arrested and dealing with criminal charges
That's no choice at all.
> Important: If you have other settings like Web & App Activity turned on and you pause Location History or delete location data from Location History, you may still have location data saved in your Google Account as part of your use of other Google sites, apps, and services.
Based on TFA, this statement is untrue.
Here is a posting from a month ago that didn't get any traction. It links to a Washington Post article that says that the US government is buying location data from apps. It conveniently means they don't need a warrant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22285638
Here is a posting from 2018 that got 253 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17938548
This is masterful re-framing of Google's deplorable attitude towards user privacy. Apparently the real incursion on privacy is not when Google collects and tracks this information, but when government officials subpoena the information from Google. Amazing.
When it became obvious to me that the scenario described in the article was going to be increasingly common, I started to carry my phone in airplane mode, in an electromagnetically shielded pouch (most of which only work marginally), when in transit from place to place. I only turn GPS on when I need it. This also has a nice side-effect of prolonging battery life.
As far as bike fitness tracking, I have and highly recommend the Sigma BC 14.16 bike computer - it runs for over a year on a single coin cell battery, comes with a barometric altimeter, and even does altitude plotting. And it does not and cannot report you to the police!
https://www.sigmasport.com/en/produkte/fahrrad-computer/wire...
If law makers/enforcement continue down this dystopian path, having your phone off or not with you at all may become enough to make you a suspect.
That looks extremely suspicious. If they don't have a match, looking for "who turned their phone off somewhere in the vicinity and turned it back on 30 minutes later somewhere else" makes sense.
If you don't want to get tracked, leave your phone at home, and carry a switched-off burner for emergencies.
Don't do anything out of the ordinary. Do exactly what everyone does, and you won't get hurt. If you enjoy exploring and experimenting, discovering and inventing, creating and wondering, you'll need to train yourself out of that, because thoughts lead to actions.
Think Same.
Innocent people who happened to be in the vicinity should not have to explain their every moment on some day months in the past because the police don't want to spend time doing more detailed investigations and interviewing potential eyewitnesses.
This is once your case makes it to court. Police/Prosecutors are looking to find/prosecute the culprit, and will assume guilt where they think it makes sense - the court then confirms/denies if this assumed guilt was correct in a trial.
Passing the house momentarily (three times within an hour, according to the article) could mean he was checking out the house as a potential target. That's probably more than enough to mark him as a suspect. Were he the culprit, he could have then turned off the phone, or hid it within some distant bushes making it look like he stopped to rest, while actually doing the burglary.
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-duane-dont-talk-...
EDIT: maybe not. This one had a warrant rather than a subpoena. I'd still be interested in the interaction though.
And it's why I think a lot of the ire here is misdirected. I mean, sure, the police were wrong for asking for this data, but it's easy to see why they wanted it -- it makes their job easier in an obvious way. The real problem here is the judge that granted the warrant.
oh oh... time to switch to Firefox.
To be noted: real bad actors will start shutting their phones off before their actions.
Which would be a signal as well. They'd rather just leave their phones at home.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.blogspot.n...
The best thing you can do is cut off Google completely. Install AOSP, LineageOS or a similar ROM and don't install Play Services. Get apps from FDroid or where necessary something like Aurora Store (an open-source Play Store implementation). Don't use apps that depend on Google. There are alternative apps for maps that are pretty great, mostly OSM based (e.g. OSMAnd and the Maps.me-based "Maps" app in FDroid).
However that's not always something you can do. Some apps just won't work without some kind of connection to Google. For those, there's MicroG, an open-source implementation of Play Services that gives you a whole lot more control and even allows you to use different location backends like those provided by Mozilla or Apple.
Is there a term for a word that's the result of inefficient application of modifiers?
I would guess that "burglarized" is formed by this evolutionary chain:
A1) burgle
A2) buglar : someone who burgles
A3) burglarized : an object which has been acted upon by a burglar
But I would think a more canonical chain is:
B1) burgle
B2) burgled : an object of burgling
A3 and B2 seem to mean the same thing, so I would think B2 is preferable because both the word itself, and the chain of applied modifications, are shorter.
It’s similar to “orientate“ instead of “orient”. An object or person has an “orientation” produced by someone or something that “orientates”. This in contrast to someone or something that “orients”.
It’s ugly English, for sure, but I believe it’s perfectly cromulent in grammatical terms.
No money, no justice.
What about legitimate uses of geofence warrants? Does that not exist?
What if your mobile device gets stolen? Why should you not have the right to get its location easily? Happened to me in Northern California, and both AT&T and the police were useless. Part of the reason why I'm not very interested in returning to Cali.
But, no, I'm not allowed to do that, because privacy; and, no, the police in California won't do that, either, because courts are overcrowded, and they don't feel like asking the judge for a warrant that AT&T requires.
I don't think the criminals who steal my device are supposed to have any privacy rights. Just sayin'.
It is not directly Google's fault, they are required by laws to provide the data. Laws are democratically voted, yet are people okay with police able to open their private lives with just a button?
It's Google's fault for collecting the data in the first place.
They could have collected it anonymously rather than tie it to a user but they chose not to do so.
“I would think the majority of citizens in the world would love the fact that we are putting violent offenders in jail,” Armbruster said.
Remind me to bust that one out the next time anyone disagrees with me. "I would think the majority of citizens in the world would want us to watch another UFC fight, honey, instead of Stranger Things."
I didn't know police had such free access to Google data btw. This is super concerning to me.
Here's a US-based criminal defense attorney saying that not only is that good advice, it's also practicable (in the US):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE
Do not talk to the police. Under any circumstances at all. (But especially if you're innocent!)
Most cars these days also have GSM modems in them, letting the manufacturer, the cell tower, and by extension the entire military intelligence community and federal investigators know exactly where they are at all times (they receive all GSM HLR data in realtime from the carriers). It really is that bad. We know for a fact that domestic federal law enforcement is using parallel construction to conceal the fact that they are receiving tips from the military's mass surveillance systems:
https://theintercept.com/2018/01/09/dark-side-fbi-dea-illega...
Furthermore, millions of Americans that don't own or drive cars stand in direct evidence contrary to your claim that giving up driving is impractical. Driving is actively harmful to our society, our safety, our cities, and our future well-being. Everyone should be avoiding it as much as possible, including but not limited to moving to places where it's not necessary, or only very rarely necessary.
For the license plate, 3D printing + a 30-second paint job would work just fine. Make it an out-of-state plate. Don’t make up a number; read a plate off of one of those public surveillance-cam live feeds of highway traffic from a different state.
If you’re going to do something really bad, it’d be better to steal a car and put the fake license plate on it; commit your crime; drive this stolen car to, and leave it in, the airport long-term parking lot, and then strip off your disguise in the airport bathroom and take a cab home. (That way, they’ll think “the suspect” fled the city/country.) You could also bring a hand-vacuum with you, use it to detail the car, and then pour bleach all over the car’s interior once it’s clean, to erase both your epithelials, any other epithelials, and to contaminate any blood evidence. Bring the vacuum home with you; empty the filter into a garbage can at least a few streets away; then wash and bleach inside it, too. (It’d be better if you could get a bagged hand-vacuum, but I don’t know of any.)
For the face, skip the silly Halloween masks and go with Hollywood-makeup-dept facial prosthetics, e.g. put on a beard; put on a skin cap to make yourself partially balding, or on top of it, add a short real-hair wig, such that your regular longer hair would have been impossible to grow out in the intervening time; wear fashion glasses if you don’t need glasses, or wear contacts if you always wear glasses; and any other things you can think to do that will change your BOLO description in ways that they don’t expect to be easily changeable (e.g. increase your height by a few inches with subtle platform flats!) Then, use some silicone pads + foundation to add some volume to your cheekbones/forehead/whatever, such that facial metrics computed from imagery of your crime won’t return a match to photos of your normal face. Buy all of these things in different cities than the one you live in, paying cash, using a lesser disguise, at least six months before you intend to commit the crime. (In fact, buy them as an “in case of emergency, new identity” kit for yourself long before you ever decide to commit a specific crime.)
Oh, and of course, whatever you do, wear gloves and shoes. Specifically, new gloves and new shoes of a different make and size to your regular ones, both purchased at least six months in advance. Afterward, burn/melt down your whole disguise kit (gloves+shoes+prosthetics) and throw the remains of it away away in a different city. If you plan to use a gun, use tough gloves, such that slide-bite won’t pull your DNA. (Of course, discard the gun. Disassemble and melt the components first in a DIY sand-box crucible using a blowtorch; then throw the slag in a body of water. The most important thing to melt is the inside of the barrel, to destroy rifling characteristics.)
And never touch any part of your skin to anything during the crime. For example, don’t bite anybody. What are you, crazy?
Finally, maybe consider committing the crime in a different city/state/country than the one you live in, if you can: commute in, do it, commute out. That’s rarely an option for most crimes, given that your “target” is probably someone or something you know, that lives in your city. But, if you’re sufficiently dedicated to doing this, you could move out of your city months in advance as part of the plan, just to return on that one day, commuting in under disguise while you have an alibi back at home. (I’d suggest a remote-work job, and a script to realistically automate the doing of a day’s worth of that remote work, including driving a headless-browser for goofing-off time.)
———
Source: mostly a lot of studying forensic case-files and asking myself what I’d do differently. It’s a fun way to pass the time when you have to read this stuff anyway for work.
I don’t really feel unethical giving any of this “advice”, because real criminals will never follow it, as criminality is strongly linked to a lack of impulse control. Nobody ever really plans [non-white-collar] crimes months in advance; or if they do, they don’t seek out resources to help them plan, thinking their own naive plan is bulletproof. (Or, on the other side of the spectrum, they feel in need of “authoritative” advice, so they buy books about the crimes they’re going to commit and keep them in their house; rather than, say, finding a text on LibGen through Tor and keeping it on an encrypted USB-key that they look at only through TAILS.) People with high-enough IQs, detail-oriented-ness, and problem-solving abilities to get away with crime, have better things to do with their lives than committing crime†.
(Consider, by analogy: nobody would ever catch you running a meth lab, if you actually followed proper chemistry safety and disposal procedures, something any YouTube chemistry-video creator can manage in their own home just fine. But what criminal chemist does this, even with a strong monetary incentive to do so?)
† Or they become mob bosses.
The article says: "drawn from users’ GPS, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and cellular connection"
and cellular connection.
If Google Fit is a bit like Samsung Health, it would probably stop an activity at the spot of the burglary so without that there's proof of no involvement.
In Australia there'd be no point wasting money on a lawyer, just show the data and you'd be in the clear.
The whole story feels stupid, but that's probably mainly because I stem from a more (on overall) enlightened country (Norway).
Not that I am arguing for more pervasive powers for data collection. But rather, appreciating how poweful data is and how dangerous data without context is. People need control over and access to data about them guaranteed.
“burglary of an elderly woman’s home 10 months earlier”, “ He looked up his route on the day of the March 29, 2019”.
It doesn't matter if you're using an application where you didn't read the TOS and opted in or what. The basestations are always going to be collecting years of aggregate multilateration data on your habits of movement and saving it.
But it is enough to justify the person spend thousands and thousands of dollars on their legal defense so they can prove their innocence
I'm not suggesting I'm in favor of it; only that I'm surprised it's not happening. Yet?
Additionally, Apple does not collect your location data like Google does so I am not sure why we should let Google off the hook.
And as far as Apple, I don't think that's true. Apple has a location history feature just like Google does. If that data ever reaches their machines in a non-anonymized way, then it's subject to subpoena just like anyone else's data is. Do you have a cite that explains why this is impossible?
I do know that because cell tower triangulation is on average only precise within about a square mile, which is considered far too broad for these types of searches.
>Apple has a location history feature just like Google does. If that data ever reaches their machines in a non-anonymized way, then it's subject to subpoena just like anyone else's data is. Do you have a cite that explains why this is impossible?
Location history on ios is stored locally, not logged and stored by Apple. Any data that is passed to Apple is anonymized. Per Apple:
"Where you go says a lot about you. Maps delivers a great experience without Apple knowing which stores, neighborhoods, or clinics you visit. And because Maps doesn’t include a sign-in, where you go isn’t associated with your Apple ID at all. Personalized features, like locating your parked car, are created right on your device. Data used to improve navigation, such as routes and search terms, is not associated with your identity. Instead, that information is based on random identifiers that are constantly changing."
AND
"If Location Services is on, your iPhone will periodically send the geo-tagged locations of nearby Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers (where supported by a device) in an anonymous and encrypted form to Apple, to be used for augmenting this crowd-sourced database of Wi-Fi hotspot and cell tower locations."
https://www.apple.com/privacy/ https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207056
It’s crowd sourced site that shows what’s inside the terms of service.
Here is the problem. Getting entangled he should have press harder and get them to answer precisely what they are referring to.
The police in my area do this too, but they use the "anonymized" data and warrents aren't issued unless they see the same id involved with several burglaries in the area.
https://www.denverpost.com/2019/10/30/swat-team-destroyed-gr...
In this case, police in Colorado destroyed a man's $600,000 home while pursuing a shoplifting suspect.
I'm generally of the opinion that police are too heavy-handed in the US, but in this particular case I don't think there was any other reasonable option. Moreover the ancestor post referring to the suspect as simply a "shoplifter" was inaccurate.
The same logic applies with high speed pursuits. You’ve likely got a helicopter in the air following them - back off a bit until things cool down.
But the role of the police isn’t to deescalate and once you acknowledge that, these decisions make more sense.
What is different?
”Desperate and potentially dangerous people in Europe are, therefore, more likely than their American counterparts to encounter well-educated and restrained police officers.
However, explanations of elevated police lethality in the US should focus on more than police policy and behavior. The charged encounters that give rise to American deadly force also result from weak gun controls, social and economic deprivation and injustice, inadequate mental health care and an intense desire to avoid harsh imprisonment.
Future research should examine not only whether American police behave differently but also whether more generous, supportive and therapeutic policies in Europe ensure that fewer people become desperate enough to summon, provoke or resist their less dangerous police.”
The flip side of this ad absurdist argument is that if a suspect holed up in MoMA, it’s okay to burn it down because he shot three of the maybe fifteen bullets he has in his possession? No, no it is not.
That sounds perfectly fine and reasonable to me.
> and risk being shot
I'm certain they will be able to wait far enough away where getting shot isn't really an option.
When I was growing up, the Sheriff initiated a big chase and SWAT response for some dumbass kid who rode an ATV on the road. The end result was an accident that killed the kid and severely injured a deputy (who IIRC wasn’t even involved in the incident response), who was unable to work again.
All that tragedy, for what?
If you read the articles, yes, it was triggered from a shoplifting incident.
Well, given that they don't have to pay for the house it's a actually a no brainer! (That should probably be fixed).
No, you let the police do what they need to do AND you have them pay the homeowner for damages. The government should have some sort of insurance for this.
It’s called the power to collect taxes. And print money if it’s the federal government.
Also, yeah, being proportional in your response (and that includes putting property damage into your calculation about what’s proportional) is always useful.
I think people are just as mortified over the 1985 case where Philadelphia police firebombed a drug den and burnt down an entire block of lower-income housing. The police should pay for collateral damage, because it forces the public to reevaluate what kind of police action is worth the trouble of violence and destruction (versus earlier social interventions).
Likewise, if you find it offensive that police would be more careful with a wealthy property owner's possessions than with others, maybe that should prompt a reevalution of what kinds of wealth disparities are acceptable.
>The incident started when an Aurora police officer attempted to lead Seacat into an office at a Walmart, where he was suspected of shoplifting. But Seacat ran to a Lexus in the parking lot, jumped in and fled.
So they caused $670,000 of damage to protect Walmart from shoplifting. Not great ROI for the community.
All of that is beside the point, anyway. The point is that the government should be paying for that house.
Arguably the police officer did his job, perhaps even bending over backward to protect the suspect's rights. Though, a more traditional "alright, buddy, put your hands up, you're under arrest!" at gunpoint might have forestalled the ensuing situation.
Absolutely agree that the homeowner should get some kind of redress for what was done to his home.
> resisting arrest and disobeying a police officer
Mercy me, how dare he. He definitely deserves the electric chair for that.
> probably several other charges (home invasion too?).
After being identified as a criminal because of the original shoplifting attempt, it's now okay to concoct a laundry list of potential new crimes just to make sure the cops can really throw the book at this degenerate. They're now entirely justified in ramming a military tank through a house while a hundred other cops watch the show.
I presume that an officer doing their job would have been able to let the shoplifter run off and, because they'd identified him and the stolen car, they could issue a warrant and pick him up later.
The entire saga screams incompetence and "he had a gun" is a terrible excuse. The whole point is to de-escalate, not one-up them.
The police in the US have a deep, institutional problem with how they serve their communities, and it infests (if indeed it isn't fed by) many aspects of the wider country's culture. It's both sad and infuriating to read about when you see that we don't have any of these issues in other western countries.
But we're kind of off the main topic which is Google tracking and geo-fencing :)
there is not a single situation where the police acted in good faith here.
Let him run off? That's not really how policing works, at least not in the U.S. The police see someone commit a crime, they're obligated to pursue him, unless ordered to stand down or they're forced to triage because another's life is in danger etc.
It seems to me that there's one wrongdoer here and that's the shoplifter/home invader/gunman. That said, yeah, perhaps they shouldn't have called SWAT but on the other hand, according to the article they tried to negotiate for 5 hours, then he fired shots. Not sure what else they could do but fire back.
Even if you follow this logic and believe it to be true, the police decided that putting an innocent homeowner out of a house and over half a million bucks, plus the cost of all the officers spectating, and the cost of rolling out a tank, was worth it to recover a few dollars of lost income for Walmart.
If that’s your point of view, why pursue the shoplifter in the first place? Could’ve just used that line against Walmart and saved everyone a lot of hassle.
The police, or let's say, the government, or maybe just the populace in general, do have a duty to catch criminals and not just let them rampage about the neighborhood. Doing something about the guy after cornering him in a house is not an elective procedure.
Now maybe there's an argument to be made that the officers risking their lives to arrest the guy should have risked their lives differently, in consideration of the homeowner's finances. I haven't ever tracked down a suspect, gotten shot at, or planned a home invasion against a prepared defender, so I'm not equipped to have that argument.
You might consider an analogous situation. What if a toddler crawls into somebody's unlocked car during a heat wave, gets locked inside, and the police break into the car to rescue the toddler? Who's responsible for paying for the damage to the car? It's neither the police nor the car owner. The toddler's parents are responsible. It's the same as the situation where a gunman holes up in a house. The only basis for requiring the police to pay for breaking the window is some sort of fuck-the-police mentality, which people are applying to the situation where they tracked down an armed suspect.
I’m shocked at the number of people talking authoritatively about this case and yet forget the basics of home ownership..
Insurance companies pay very quickly when policy holder get lawyers.
And I don't think it is just the police. The pervasive erosion and negligence of privacy in American culture, in general, is the issue. Whether it is neighbourhood militias policing minorities, ring doorbell surveillance, gung-ho cops, government surveillance, celebrity stalking paparazzi or people on subway stations filming sleeping passengers or whatever else, there's a pervasive culture of paranoia and surveillance.
how many people [have] read t&c and privacy policy?
don't use android (or iOS really).
don't carry a smartphone.
I mean, it may seem inconceivable but you're not forced to carry a spy in your pocket =).
Instead, I recommend getting a smartphone known not to have dedicated spying hardware, replacing the OS with Lineage OS, installing F-Droid and microG (and perhaps Yalp, but only install apps from it if you really really need them) and then keeping it usually switched off (unless you need it on).
At some point, criminals will figure out that it's not smart to carry your cell phone when you intend to commit a crime. At which point, the police will only be able to find all the innocent people who were there.
And then of course he was cleared. Because unless they then find additional evidence like him selling the jewelry on eBay or something... there's nothing there.
I don't know about you guys, but I appreciate living in a world where we have reasonable tools to catch criminals, rather than live in fear of burglary and worse.
I'm glad we can use cell phone locations to help catch the actual criminals. Obviously abusing that power is bad (e.g. a police officer using it to stalk an ex.) But as long as there are procedures, safeguards and accountability in place... this seems like a win, no?
Why is this the only choice? Is there any evidence that crime would increase if geofence warrants were disallowed entirely? Crime has been on the decline for decades now even without invasive techniques like geofence warrants. Considering the historically low crime rates, living in fear of burglary is irrational - a "you" problem, not a law enforcement technology problem.
So we should stop trying to lower crime further? Why don't you tell that to the families of murder victims?
> Considering the historically low crime rates, living in fear of burglary is irrational - a "you" problem, not a law enforcement technology problem.
Burglary is by definition a law enforcement problem, and law enforcement uses tools like technology. It always has.
You're writing as though burglary and other crime doesn't exist anymore. Lower crime does NOT equal no crime.
Perhaps if you'd ever had someone close to you be a victim of a crime, you'd be a bit more empathetic. The idea that fear of crime is "irrational" is just... one of the most callous comments I've read in a while.
> Milwaukee police have used Google geofence warrants to solve an array of crimes, including homicides, shootings, a string of robberies and kidnappings and a sexual assault involving an abduction, he said. “I would think the majority of citizens in the world would love the fact that we are putting violent offenders in jail,” Armbruster said.
I would be willing to endure what Zachary McCoy endured to prevent one homicide, kidnapping, or sexual assault. (Robberies too I suppose although that seems less urgent.)
When Snowden revealed that the NSA already has the "dirty laundry" of the vast majority of criminals on file I almost felt sorry for them (the criminals, not the NSA.)
At this point crime is only possible because we let it happen. Privacy is dead so why not have a crime-free world as well?
Crime never disappears completely, it just pivots to operating within the current enforcement model. See: Minority Report. The police destroying a house for fun, discussed upthread, is a good real-world example as well.
Also that first bit is blatantly overstated. Sure it's likely a lost battle with all the surveillance going on in public (although a commercial privacy law would go pretty far). But there is still plenty of privacy left in our personal lives. And make no mistake, declaring "privacy is dead" is a surefire way to move the battle front deeper into our personal lives.
> But there is still plenty of privacy left in our personal lives.
This is unsupportable IMO as nearly everyone is carrying supercomputers with advanced sensors programmed to surveil them, etc. The battle for privacy was over when the microchip was invented.
- - - -
> Crime never disappears completely, it just pivots to operating within the current enforcement model.
That may not be true, I say let's find out, since we're losing our privacy anyway.
> See: Minority Report.
No, that's fiction. It's good, have you read it? But it's really more about the meta-physics of free will than anything to do with actual IRL surveillance and policing.
> The police destroying a house for fun, discussed upthread, is a good real-world example as well.
That's also crime. The sensors and computers are a given, the policy isn't (note the similarity of that word to "police"? That's not a coincidence.)
I also think you're losing perspective: it was just some nobody at the local police station investigating a theft of jewelry from some old woman! I bet it would have been totally fine if he'd popped in and chatted to the detective in question.
Reality is a lot more complex than your world perspective.
The general advise for everyone is: cooperate to the extent required by law, but don't say anything beyond that unless your lawyer is present. The police are not your friends, if they want to talk to you and you're not 100% sure it's because you got robbed or saw what happened and are obviously and exclusively treated as a victim/witness, they can and will use anything you say against you. Their incentives are solving cases, not serving justice. Their KPIs aren't destroyed if it turns out they went after an innocent citizen, and if they succeed in building a case against an innocent citizen, they are still rewarded, because it does not matter whether you are innocent, it only matters what the judge says you are. The police are not your friends.
You shouldn't drive a car into a wall at 60mph, because the risk to your health is too high. Driving it into a wall at 90mph increases that risk. Are you suggesting it's safe to do at 60mph because it's more dangerous at 90mph?
The fundamental problem isn't 60 or 90mph, the fundamental problem is driving a car into a wall. For police interaction, the fundamental problem isn't being white or black, male or female, it's being on the wrong side of the table.
The risk existing and being too high to make it advisable to talk to the police has nothing to do with race, and everything to do with police vs citizen. The relative risk is different for different groups (class, sex/gender, race being the major ones, in that order), but that has nothing to do with the risk itself being there for everyone and therefore the advice being the same for everyone: don't talk to the police, they are not your friends and they are not on your side.
Your words there are clear, and correct.
> it has nothing to do with race.
Your claim there was unclear (what is "it"?) but appeared to be making far too broad a claim.
If "it" is "the degree of worry that you might be falsely convicted", then you're simply wrong: race is a very significant factor in that degree of worry, at least in the USA.
I guess you believe that the baseline degree of worry for white people and black/latino people alike is so unacceptably high that the additional worry attributable to race is irrelevant. To be blunt, I think that is both unsympathetic and neurotic, and I think you might want to consider whether you really have enough knowledge of what life is like for black people in US cities. I am no expert there either, but I err on the side of believing them when they say that there is a non-negligible component of worry attributable to race.
It is the risk being too high. It's higher for a poor black man than for a rich white woman, but it's too high even for the rich white woman to talk to the police when she's a suspect. It's too high for everyone.
Please don't turn this site into a "acknowledge your privilege, heathen"-Twitter-clone. Read what people write, assume good faith, and if you don't understand something, ask. Don't just go "hey, I choose to ignore 90% of what you wrote, make up the gaps in my head and then reply to that". If anyone wanted that, there are Twitter, Facebook and Reddit.
US police and prosecutors have a track record of bad faith prosecution.