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What scares me about these scenarios is how it fabricates durable probable cause on the basis of being in the vicinity of the wrong place at the wrong time. Ima

by crmd 5y ago

What scares me about these scenarios is how it fabricates durable probable cause on the basis of being in the vicinity of the wrong place at the wrong time. Imagine becoming a felon because the police searched your phone and found a discussion between you and your friend about buying LSD, and discovering that the legal basis for that search was that your phone was in the vicinity of a crime scene a couple of years ago. This is bad news.

Fnoord 5y ago
There's a simple way around that: any evidence found for crimes, can only be used to prosecute the original crime involving the law why the warrant was issued. Everyone else is offtopic, and therefore discarded. I know, there's parallel evidence, but the fact its possible doesn't mean such should be used.
- krisoft 5y ago
  It becomes very hard to discuss these things when we are mixing up what we think the law should be with what the law is. What you are saying is a reasonable proposal, but it is not how it works now. And it is very unlikely to change in the close future.
  - Fnoord 5y ago
    I don't know how US law is, but in The Netherlands this would've been unlawful evidence [1]. [1] https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onrechtmatig_verkregen_bewijs https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onrechtmatig_verkregen_bewijs
    - vel0city 5y ago
      The US has a similar idea of illegally obtained evidence, its a very common concept. This is different from the above suggestion, which is essentially any unrelated evidence of crimes found while executing an unrelated search warrant is void. For example, a warrant is issued to find documents related to criminal fraud, while searching someone's office for materials related to the fraud they find a pile of illegal drugs. In the above suggestion, they wouldn't be able to prosecute drug violations as they discovered the drugs during an otherwise lawful search but its unrelated to the crime the warrant was issued for. The original search wasn't illegal, just that the second crime wasn't related to the issued warrant.
isomel 5y ago
> Imagine becoming a felon because the police searched your phone and found a discussion between you and your friend about buying LSD, and discovering that the legal basis for that search was that your phone was in the vicinity of a crime scene a couple of years ago. I fail to understand what's wrong with that. If you did commit a felony, should you not be prosecuted for it regardless on how it came to light? (Now there is the question whether buying LSD should really be a felony, but that's a different problem entirely)
- syshum 5y ago
  No it is the same problem Overcriminlization of society leads to people using this defense for more and more drag net style surveillance in order to "catch the criminals" It has been studied and there is a good case to be made that the average person commits 3 felonies a day, there is no single person in the nation that know every single law, regulation, or ordinance one must follow, and some are written in such away criminal defense lawyers call them "catchall" felonies that are specifically designed for plea agreements, to get people to plead out to a "lesser" offense just so the felony would go away Since the 90's we have expanded the number of "crimes" that classify as felony as well, when most people think about "felony" they think about violence, this is far from the case today when there are TONS and TONS of non-violence offenses that are classified as felonies. Beyond drug laws, there are all manner of federal and state regulations that can be a felony
x86_64Ubuntu 5y ago
"Vicinity of a crime" has already gotten people arrested. And of course, since in the US, the process IS the punishment, the guy lost everything. https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/google-geofence-location-data-avondale-wrongful-arrest-molina-gaeta-11426374 https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/google-geofence-locatio... Even fitness app data has been used to finger the wrong person. https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/7/21169533/florida-google-runkeeper-geofence-police-privacy https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/7/21169533/florida-google-ru...

by crmd 5y ago

Fnoord 5y ago

There's a simple way around that: any evidence found for crimes, can only be used to prosecute the original crime involving the law why the warrant was issued. Everyone else is offtopic, and therefore discarded. I know, there's parallel evidence, but the fact its possible doesn't mean such should be used.

krisoft 5y ago
It becomes very hard to discuss these things when we are mixing up what we think the law should be with what the law is. What you are saying is a reasonable proposal, but it is not how it works now. And it is very unlikely to change in the close future.
- Fnoord 5y ago
  I don't know how US law is, but in The Netherlands this would've been unlawful evidence [1]. [1] https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onrechtmatig_verkregen_bewijs https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onrechtmatig_verkregen_bewijs
  - vel0city 5y ago
    The US has a similar idea of illegally obtained evidence, its a very common concept. This is different from the above suggestion, which is essentially any unrelated evidence of crimes found while executing an unrelated search warrant is void. For example, a warrant is issued to find documents related to criminal fraud, while searching someone's office for materials related to the fraud they find a pile of illegal drugs. In the above suggestion, they wouldn't be able to prosecute drug violations as they discovered the drugs during an otherwise lawful search but its unrelated to the crime the warrant was issued for. The original search wasn't illegal, just that the second crime wasn't related to the issued warrant.

isomel 5y ago

> Imagine becoming a felon because the police searched your phone and found a discussion between you and your friend about buying LSD, and discovering that the legal basis for that search was that your phone was in the vicinity of a crime scene a couple of years ago. I fail to understand what's wrong with that. If you did commit a felony, should you not be prosecuted for it regardless on how it came to light? (Now there is the question whether buying LSD should really be a felony, but that's a different problem entirely)

syshum 5y ago
No it is the same problem Overcriminlization of society leads to people using this defense for more and more drag net style surveillance in order to "catch the criminals" It has been studied and there is a good case to be made that the average person commits 3 felonies a day, there is no single person in the nation that know every single law, regulation, or ordinance one must follow, and some are written in such away criminal defense lawyers call them "catchall" felonies that are specifically designed for plea agreements, to get people to plead out to a "lesser" offense just so the felony would go away Since the 90's we have expanded the number of "crimes" that classify as felony as well, when most people think about "felony" they think about violence, this is far from the case today when there are TONS and TONS of non-violence offenses that are classified as felonies. Beyond drug laws, there are all manner of federal and state regulations that can be a felony

x86_64Ubuntu 5y ago

"Vicinity of a crime" has already gotten people arrested. And of course, since in the US, the process IS the punishment, the guy lost everything. https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/google-geofence-location-data-avondale-wrongful-arrest-molina-gaeta-11426374 https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/google-geofence-locatio... Even fitness app data has been used to finger the wrong person. https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/7/21169533/florida-google-runkeeper-geofence-police-privacy https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/7/21169533/florida-google-ru...