4 ms·

I'm a long-time EFF supporter, but I am always concerned when they (or any other organization that defends civil rights) chooses to intervene in a loser of a ca

I'm a long-time EFF supporter, but I am always concerned when they (or any other organization that defends civil rights) chooses to intervene in a loser of a case like this. The defendant will likely be convicted of kidnapping, and hopefully the Supreme Court will not use some form of twisted logic to rationalize what the cops did. The correct ruling here is to force a mistrial and forbid any testimony about refusing to provide passcodes at the retrial.

nerdponx 5y ago
Maybe it would be better if they were more explicit about the "what should have happened" part, instead of just saying "no, the police shouldn't have done that and shouldn't be allowed to do that."
withinboredom 5y ago
It's about Due Process. It doesn't matter if you are guilty, you still have the same rights as someone who is not guilty.
- pbhjpbhj 5y ago
  That's not how it works: you're [supposedly] not guilty until conviction and so, like all not guilty people, have the same rights. But, on conviction your rights are severely curtailed if the sentence is custodial. So I guess you could say "It doesn't matter if you are later found guilty [...]" to be consistent with the presumption of innocence.
  - withinboredom 5y ago
    Yeah, I could have been more clear. Thanks!
RNCTX 5y ago
[flagged]
- nerdponx 5y ago
  Citation needed?
  - RNCTX 5y ago
    https://thebaffler.com/salvos/all-effd-up-levine https://thebaffler.com/salvos/all-effd-up-levine https://www.wired.com/2011/11/eff-palantir/ https://www.wired.com/2011/11/eff-palantir/ If you know something or someone's name, which / who claims to be some sort of advocacy for individuals against the overreach of an industrialized nation's government, and that person / thing is not being COINTELPRO'd, MKULTRA'd, GLADIO'd, PAPERCLIP'd, etc, it's because that person / thing is complicit in some way with the thing they are claiming to be against.
    - nerdponx 5y ago
      I think you're seeing patterns that don't exist. Maybe there is a 3-letter agency that allows the EFF to exist for strategic reasons. That's almost so unavoidable that it's irrelevant. But the EFF happening to side with Apple is more a sign of Apple having smart PR people than the EFF being a fundamentally untrustworthy organization. I'm willing to be paranoid, but I'm not willing to be so with paranoid as to shit on the one organization that actually gets things done.
      - RNCTX 5y ago
        It's less what they get done and more what they willfully ignore (such as the Cambridge Analytica story when Facebook became a donor of theirs). There's also the case of Shahid Buttar pretending to challenge Nancy Pelosi in an election, which is a way of saying "ensured that Nancy didn't have a real challenger."
    - perl4ever 5y ago
      >that person / thing is complicit in some way with the thing they are claiming to be against There's a sense in which it's tautological - when anything bad happens, the universal cause is that nobody prevented it, and everyone in the whole wide world is guilty. Also, even if your dichotomy is sort of correct, surely every non-complicit entity must have a non-negligible amount of time before anyone gets around to "COINTELPRO'ing" it, so it can't be literally true. The most succinct way I can express my disagreement with you is that loyalty is never wholly binary. So arguing over whether an entity is for or against something especially when they are composite and not a single person, is a rabbit hole you don't want to go down. There is a simple way to deal with endless BS and lies - judge by actions, and never make a final judgement.
bb611 5y ago
The downside to being a principled legal defense organization is that effective defense of common rights generally requires intervening on the side of people who are real criminals. A significant amount of 1st Amendment case law comes from the ACLU defending from people whose speech is abhorrent, but nonetheless protected. A failure to establish desired precedent often means allowing the court to establish the opposite precedent. As the saying goes, "bad cases make bad law". In this case the EFF is weighing in at the appellate level to make sure that this otherwise abhorrent case doesn't lead to precedent that's damaging to all Utahns.
phrz 5y ago
You would be appalled to know that the defendant in Miranda v. Arizona very likely did, in fact, kidnap and rape his victim, and yet that case established one of the most important substantive rights in criminal investigations.

nerdponx 5y ago

Maybe it would be better if they were more explicit about the "what should have happened" part, instead of just saying "no, the police shouldn't have done that and shouldn't be allowed to do that."

withinboredom 5y ago

It's about Due Process. It doesn't matter if you are guilty, you still have the same rights as someone who is not guilty.

pbhjpbhj 5y ago
That's not how it works: you're [supposedly] not guilty until conviction and so, like all not guilty people, have the same rights. But, on conviction your rights are severely curtailed if the sentence is custodial. So I guess you could say "It doesn't matter if you are later found guilty [...]" to be consistent with the presumption of innocence.
- withinboredom 5y ago
  Yeah, I could have been more clear. Thanks!

RNCTX 5y ago

[flagged]

nerdponx 5y ago
Citation needed?
- RNCTX 5y ago
  https://thebaffler.com/salvos/all-effd-up-levine https://thebaffler.com/salvos/all-effd-up-levine https://www.wired.com/2011/11/eff-palantir/ https://www.wired.com/2011/11/eff-palantir/ If you know something or someone's name, which / who claims to be some sort of advocacy for individuals against the overreach of an industrialized nation's government, and that person / thing is not being COINTELPRO'd, MKULTRA'd, GLADIO'd, PAPERCLIP'd, etc, it's because that person / thing is complicit in some way with the thing they are claiming to be against.
  - nerdponx 5y ago
    I think you're seeing patterns that don't exist. Maybe there is a 3-letter agency that allows the EFF to exist for strategic reasons. That's almost so unavoidable that it's irrelevant. But the EFF happening to side with Apple is more a sign of Apple having smart PR people than the EFF being a fundamentally untrustworthy organization. I'm willing to be paranoid, but I'm not willing to be so with paranoid as to shit on the one organization that actually gets things done.
    - RNCTX 5y ago
      It's less what they get done and more what they willfully ignore (such as the Cambridge Analytica story when Facebook became a donor of theirs). There's also the case of Shahid Buttar pretending to challenge Nancy Pelosi in an election, which is a way of saying "ensured that Nancy didn't have a real challenger."
  - perl4ever 5y ago
    >that person / thing is complicit in some way with the thing they are claiming to be against There's a sense in which it's tautological - when anything bad happens, the universal cause is that nobody prevented it, and everyone in the whole wide world is guilty. Also, even if your dichotomy is sort of correct, surely every non-complicit entity must have a non-negligible amount of time before anyone gets around to "COINTELPRO'ing" it, so it can't be literally true. The most succinct way I can express my disagreement with you is that loyalty is never wholly binary. So arguing over whether an entity is for or against something especially when they are composite and not a single person, is a rabbit hole you don't want to go down. There is a simple way to deal with endless BS and lies - judge by actions, and never make a final judgement.

bb611 5y ago

The downside to being a principled legal defense organization is that effective defense of common rights generally requires intervening on the side of people who are real criminals. A significant amount of 1st Amendment case law comes from the ACLU defending from people whose speech is abhorrent, but nonetheless protected. A failure to establish desired precedent often means allowing the court to establish the opposite precedent. As the saying goes, "bad cases make bad law". In this case the EFF is weighing in at the appellate level to make sure that this otherwise abhorrent case doesn't lead to precedent that's damaging to all Utahns.

phrz 5y ago

You would be appalled to know that the defendant in Miranda v. Arizona very likely did, in fact, kidnap and rape his victim, and yet that case established one of the most important substantive rights in criminal investigations.