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Comment by victorbjorklund | Hacker News Reader

Not how the law works. If I put a bomb in a box. It will explode if a certain pin is put in. And you ask ”can I open the box? What is the pin?” And I say ”here is the pin to open it” and the bomb explodes. Do you think I can claim they blew up themselves ?

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It's already a crime to build a bomb, so it's a moot point.

Moot to anyone who died, but you'd still be charged with the crime of building a bomb and the crime of murder.

My point is even if it hadn't blown up you would've committed a crime anyway, whereas if you rig a phone to erase its own data upon entering a PIN and the PIN is not entered, you haven't committed a crime. The two situations are different enough not to be analogous.

I think the entire point here is wether erasing a phone can be a crime

I'm saying the opposite, that not erasing a phone is not a crime. Meanwhile, building and not exploding a bomb is a crime.

I'd guess the smiley indicates that op meant it as a joke.

Let’s try for a less hyperbolic analogy

It's a pretty good analogy. Of course the phone isn't a bomb, but the parent comment's point holds: whose hands inputted the pin is just a technical trivia.

Yes. Because law enforcement assumes there's bombs in boxes by default and defers to the bomb squad to understand the box before they touch it.

Why would the bomb squad trust the box owner to help them defuse it? To understand the issue, you have to construct a proper analog.

Sure, you're right that this analogy is bad, because that would never happen.

But if it did, you'd still be on the hook for the bomb, even though technically the LEO set it off through incompetence.

An analogy should not be judged on whether or not it can realistically happen, nor whether it can be manipulated in some way that capitalizes on the differences.

Because the point of an analogy is not to provide an realistic or identical situation. On the contrary, the point of an analogy is to use a different situation in order to illustrate a very narrow similarity and make a point.

If the analogy illustrates and makes that point well, then it succeeds.

I never told you it is a box with a bomb. You just asked if you can have the pin. You can do another example where you give false information with the intent of making another person take an action that they don’t wanna take and would not take unless you had provided false information. You are causing the action to happen. Just like if you yell fire in a theater. You didn’t stamped anyone to death. But your words caused it.

You don't have to tell me a bomb is in the box because it doesn't change the fact that bomb squad is called before officers know what's in the box.

Why would the bomb squad be called after the box is unlocked and the contents revealed?

Why would a bomb squad be called just because I hand over a box to you at home and ask, do you wanna open it? It is a normal box

How is that relevant? We're talking about officers searching you at the border.

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