It is a crime to lie to federal agents in the course of a criminal investigation I understand that that's how the system works today. I object to it. 1) It do

It is a crime to lie to federal agents in the course of a criminal investigation I understand that that's how the system works today. I object to it. 1) It doesn't account for fallibility of human memory, and our propensity to make mistakes. I believe that it's easy to badger a person to the point where they're intellectually disoriented, and "lies" become likely even without the suspect have bad intentions. 2) The asymmetry is a problem. Law enforcement routinely lies to suspects. Why is it okay for them morally? 3) We're told that these laws are necessary to prevent obstruction of justice, but it appears that these charges are frequently (maybe usually) when there was no obstruction at all: the police knew exactly what the truth was. They were setting a trap for the suspect, trying to get them to incriminate themselves in a different way. Caveat: I didn't RTFA, since it's paywalled.