Hacker News Reader

Comment by maerF0x0 | Hacker News Reader

I do not understand why we accept such low standards from our governments.

A warrant should be required. A warrant should be a cryptosecure signed file from the judge(s). The search tool should validate the signatures. The parameters in question should also be signed across and be the only allowed inputs.

Also there should be accountability for the reasonable expectation aspect of warrants. A realistic threshold should be enforced... If an officer or judge starts to dip below the threshold they should be seen as incompetent.

View on HN

> A warrant should be required. A warrant should be a cryptosecure signed file from the judge(s). The search tool should validate the signatures. The parameters in question should also be signed across and be the only allowed inputs.

The issues run deeper. Court orders are widely rubberstamped. Circumventing legal processes like this creates a verneer of judicial review that's meaningless, because "judicial review" should not mean "a judge's eyes have scanned the warrant for the signature line he needs to sign on".

As a cherry on top, things like the fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine are pretty unique to the US - most countries don't have something like it, or only forbid using evidence if the manner in which it was gathered was too egregiously illegal, but otherwise it doesn't matter if prosecutors obtained evidence legally or not. It doesn't take a genius to see how that's not exactly conducive for the LE system to stay in their legal lane.

> should not mean "a judge's eyes have scanned the warrant for the signature line he needs to sign on".

We need CAPCHA for warrants!

I wonder what would change in the criminal legal system if all warrant applications must be counter-argued by a public-defender-like-role. I suspect the "defender" would just end being an always-ignored voice in the room, at least based on my understanding of post-patriot-act America.

>The issues run deeper. Court orders are widely rubberstamped.

I wrote the following to try and address that. I agree it's a big problem. > Also there should be accountability for the reasonable expectation aspect of warrants. A realistic threshold should be enforced... If an officer or judge starts to dip below the threshold they should be seen as incompetent.

> I do not understand why we accept such low standards from our governments.

The short answer to that is "the police have effectively executed a soft coup, and no politician or political process can meaningfully oppose them"

That implies that the police overthrew the government. The police are the government, and the government has not been on the side of the people for many years.

Warrants are still required to compel data from companies like cell phone companies. This is different. This is a company expressly setup to sell data they gather to the police. No compulsion is required, they're voluntarily doing it, and the users are "voluntarily" giving that data away, via sketchy apps that only disclose the location data giveaway buried in a ToS.

But they should require a warrant to get data on me... We need to normalize that entering my data is like entering my home. You require a warrant to inspect things that are default private.

> I do not understand why we accept such low standards from our government

All paths to the dark side start with Fear.

> I do not understand why we accept such low standards from our governments.

Do you even? Who would you vote for for that not to happen? As far as I can tell, virtually 100% of both parties everywhere in the country support all of this.

People aren't protesting in the streets.

Well they certainly tried. After a few months of politicians giving lip service to their cause, followed by about 6-12 months of the cops mercilessly beating the shit out of them without consequence, protesting in the streets about policing started to look a lot less interesting and effective.

Those were riots and riddled with with racial issues that have nothing to do with this.

1. The line between "protest" and "riot" is fuzzy and arbitrary at best, and that's without considering that police violence against a protest will almost universally turn it into a riot because humans are humans.

2. Are you seriously trying to say that racial issues have nothing to do with excessive police surveillance?

Those riots had absolutely nothing to do with police surveillance.

Call it "police malfeasance" then, and put both their warrantless dragnets and their racist violence under that umbrella.

> put both their warrantless dragnets and their racist violence under that umbrella

Which is a politically worthless coalition if you want to actually get something done.

> "riot" is fuzzy

I think theft, property damage, violence upon innocent bystanders all clearly count as rioting.

The fuzzy part is more like what proportion of the people are rioting and how many are protesting and how to separate the former from the latter for the sake of justice.

"Defund the police" had nothing to do with police overreach. Interesting. Perhaps the problem is that so many are convinced that it's "just" a racial issue, not a general police issue.

The riots were only two or three bad apples, most protesters were decent.

The real issue is enforcement turning a blind eye to the bad apples. It's literally their job to root out and bring them to the justice system ...

And part of their job is to reasonably accurately not affect innocent people in the process.

To be a bit more quantitative, I think the sheer volume of property damage coincident to these protests should disabuse anyone of the notion that they were mostly peaceful.

Guess the amount of attributable property damage, and then click [1].

[1] - https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/02/2020-protests-changed...

and voter turnouts are something like 20-30ish percent last I checked...

66.8% in the last USA presidential election. But even so, that still isn't enough. People would be amazed how much a difference it would make if everyone voted.

Found the guy who thinks technical solutions can solve human problems!

Let's put warrants on the block chain while we're at it!

no surprise he's on HN . /jk

I'm more talking about accountability and auditing (like an audit log of actions)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com