6 ms·

I recently served on a jury for a violent crime, and as a juror being able to see evidence like cell phone records and closed circuit video was incredibly valua

I recently served on a jury for a violent crime, and as a juror being able to see evidence like cell phone records and closed circuit video was incredibly valuable. Cases that would have otherwise been a matter of "he said, she said" can have corroborating evidence that makes it much easier to be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt. I wondered how prosecutors managed to convict at all before these kinds of electronic records were available. I'm not downplaying privacy concerns, but when you can see thing from the other side too it's easier to see it as a set of trade-offs that need weighing. It's not a black and white issue. EDIT: Also remember that evidence can help the falsely accused just as easily as it can help victims of crime. Phone records can give a person an alibi that would otherwise have been very difficult to prove.

loverobots 15y ago
I see your point but it's hard to explain a "human body decompose" Google search, when years later a [family member] disappears and the cops suspect family (as is normal.) But I was watching a CSI episode and ....might not fly. Especially if you searched for large bags a few months later. Search engines are much worst given that you search for information and ask questions about everything.
- haberman 15y ago
  You have to remember that jurors are normal people who have no vested interest in the case either way. As a juror you feel a heavy weight of responsibility, because you know that people's futures are in your hands. If a person is convicted, it is because 12 random people unanimously agreed beyond a reasonable doubt that the alleged crimes happened. Your lawyer would have a chance to stand in front of the jury and say "of course my client was trying to learn about what happens when a human body decomposes; his family member was dead and he wanted to learn the truth." Jurors are normal people who understand normal arguments.
  - loverobots 15y ago
    True but: - You have to have money for lawyerS, and lots of it. Most people are already deep in debt and if they don't work for a few months they are out of their apartments. Now imagine having to come up with, say $50K cash, within a week, while in jail. And $50k is nothing. If the court appoints you one, he'll probably push to make a deal so you serve 12 instead of the gazillion years all the charges end up to. The deal of the century. He has another 11 defendants to defend this month. - You are in the defendant's chair, and for every juror that takes the oath and presumption of innocence seriously there is another one that assumes you did something ("Why else would they pick on him?") - Prosecutors, police, detectives and jurors are people, full of human faults. To go home in time for Easter one might be persuaded to vote guilty instead of holding up. It's not unheard for the cops and prosecutors to want 'someone' in jail for X crime, keeps the public reassured and helps their career. - Unless you're mega-wealthy you're outmatched. The state uses virtually unlimited amount of your tax dollars to hire the best DNA experts and pathologists and you, John Q, can't match them. On the stand detectives have perfected how to testify and use anything to fit their agenda: "he cried /he didn't cry /he cried too little /he cried hysterically (sounded fake) or his cries were too perfect, as if calculated to deceive..." That huge fight with your wife will be told as a possible motive but no one is there to tell about the hugs and kisses 15 minutes after. Oh, you've been "poking" your high school sweetheart of FB and been talking about the "good old times"? So yes, our justice system is relatively fair but if you get screwed the stats mean nothing, you're toast.
    - jarrett 15y ago
      The government doesn't have the "virtually unlimited" prosecution budget you're claiming. Many prosecutors are overworked and given almost zero time to prep a case. High-profile cases get more time and money, of course, but these are statistically very rare. Also, a person probably won't be convicted on a Google search alone. The burden of proof falls on the prosecution, meaning that they have to present more than just a few shreds of suggestive evidence. Simply exercising one's right to remain silent, demanding a lawyer (even a public defender), and pleading not guilty vastly improves one's chances. The vast majority of convicts in the US sealed their fates by talking to the police, pleading guilty, or both. We'd have a much lower conviction rate across the board if everyone shut up, lawyered up, and pled not guilty--which could be seen as good or bad, depending on your perspective. As an aside, public defenders are better than most people believe. They often do just as well statistically as private defense attorneys.
- drostie 15y ago
  I would be surprised if that passed federal rule of evidence 404(a), which is a part of U.S. law which says "Evidence of a person’s character or character trait is not admissible to prove that on a particular occasion the person acted in accordance with the character or trait." I mean, this is assuming that we're talking about "years later" -- in other words you really are trying to say "this person was of a very morbid character and was interested in researching facts about human body decomposition." Heck, I made searches like that when I was writing the first draft of a NaNoWriMo novel.
- oskarth 15y ago
  If you write, read, bookmark, share or search for something like this [0], does your conditional probability of killing someone go up? Probably not - chances are you just happen to be morbidly curious. The real killer, being smart enough, would never let his or her identity be coupled with such an obvious clue. That's the rational answer. What's the more probably answer? A lawyer with an excerpt of your most mischievous writes, reads, shares and bookmarks could paint quite a despicable portrait of you, the villain. Remember that time when a friend showed you a link which you stupidly clicked on? Yeah, that too. And that "no real criminal would leave a trail like that" line won't work either - because we all know how criminals are stupid. -- My point is that I agree with you. Psychological profiles will probably become more commonplace as data mining et al. goes mainstream. These can be manipulated. Badly. If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him. (Cardinal Richelieu) How about six million lines? All written with the naive understanding that they would stay private. -- For us, all of this privacy issue thing is far from news. We know about it. But as a society, we are still very far from developing the new values that are necessary given this overflow of intimate knowledge. 0: http://ask.metafilter.com/7921/If-you-killed-somebody-how-would-you-dispose-of-the-body-without-getting-caught#155715 http://ask.metafilter.com/7921/If-you-killed-somebody-how-wo... EDIT: Maybe I am being overly cynical about how the justice system can be manipulated. As the above two comments suggests, it is indeed designed to be a robust system. However, looking at cases in the US of people wrongfully executed, it doesn't seem like an unreasonable stance to be a bit distrusting of the manipulation possibilities.
  - ktizo 15y ago
    You are possibly not being cynical enough. Learn how to wave at judges.
  - twoodfin 15y ago
    Sorry, are you aware of someone who can be proved to have been executed in the US within the past few decades for a crime they did not commit? I'm aware of instances where "key witnesses" recant decades later (under what kind of pressure from defense attorneys or their own conscience I have no idea...) But I'm unaware of any instances where innocence was clearly established after an execution was carried out.
revelation 15y ago
Yes, think of all the things we can do with street CCTV surveillance. Or with cameras matching license plate numbers on the street. Or with a secret service allowed to act within our borders and against american citizen. The point of laws is not to make things harder for the police, it is to protect all of us from the government.
- nextparadigms 15y ago
  Think about how much fewer wives would be beaten if the Government had a camera in everyone's bedroom, or how much money we'd save on taxes if law enforcement could do anything they wanted without a warrant. Yes it's sarcasm, but I don't think the law enforcement agencies see it like that. They actually want that, and they've said before that having to get a warrant makes it "hard" for them - even though 90% of the warrants they ask for are approved. Lately all of them are pushing for more invasion of privacy, because they don't see it like that. They see it as "making our job easier" - without any regard for the abuses that could lead to or for history of Government oppression, or if the people actually want that. After all, surely they know "best" what needs to be done to protect the population.
  - haberman 15y ago
    > Yes it's sarcasm, but I don't think the law enforcement agencies see it like that. Maybe some do, but some privacy advocates think it would be best if individuals could always prevent law enforcement from obtaining any evidence. Don't make arguments that are just as absurd as the extremists on the other side.
  - tptacek 15y ago
    There is no law enforcement agency in the country that wants cameras in everyone's bedroom.
    - andybak 15y ago
      And the Missing the Point award goes to...
- 15y ago
a3_nm 15y ago
The problem is not that more evidence is being produced. The problem is that the new evidence tends to be concentrated in the hands of a very small number of companies.
- tptacek 15y ago
  Wait, if it's valid evidence, as likely to be invaluable to the accused as the accuser, how does the concentration of evidence harm society? What part of justice is served by having investigators wasting time mining evidence out of obscure hiding spots?
  - haberman 15y ago
    Two possible harms: - If a database is hacked/stolen, the impact is much worse. - If the people who control the database become malevolent, the impact is much worse. Think about a totalitarian government weeding out its political enemies by seizing a big centralized database.
JeanPierre 15y ago
I find evidence from mobile phones to be potentially problematic. If they track your position, you could just leave your mobile phone home when doing crimes, and say that you are home (You can tape it to your dog to make more realistic movement). If they track activity (but not content), you can make a program which sends empty messages to another mobile phone, or calls another mobile phone at some specific time. Finally, if you track content as well, create the content of the messages while you define when to send them, or make a predefined sound record which you transmit when the phone call is coming up. You could be in a one hour phone call while the robbery you performed happened, and that phone call had your voice in it, and you were home while you called. Isn't that quite the alibi? Hard? Sure thing. Impossible? Nope.
- MichaelApproved 15y ago
  Cameras. They just need one camera that caught you outside your house to shatter all that work. There are so many cameras that it's very difficult to hide from them all. If the crime you commit is serious enough to go through strapping your phone to your dog, the police will scour lots of cameras in te area.
  - bigiain 15y ago
    Have you seen the typical quality of cctv footage? A lot of the time, if I had strong circumstantial evidence that I was at home, I'd quite likely get away with a fair bit of "heavy set person in a black hoodie seen leaving the crime scene" cctv video.
- haberman 15y ago
  A couple things. First of all, the elaborate fabrication you're talking about is possible with all kinds of evidence, not just cell phone records. You could go around leaving misleading physical clues. You could take photographs that have an intentionally mis-set clock in the background. You could bribe or intimidate people into lying on the stand. etc. etc. Second of all, the kind of fabrication you're describing is much more difficult to pull off than you realize. There are lots of different kinds of evidence and you would have to have some serious foresight to fabricate it all in a way that is consistent. For example, here's a case of someone who took a lot of effort to fabricate evidence of a rape against an ex-boyfriend. She did such a convincing job that he was jailed for a while, but eventually the truth came out. http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jun/26/local/la-me-accused-20110626 http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jun/26/local/la-me-accused-... Most criminals (or false accusers) don't have nearly this level of planning. The defendant in my case was actually a really smart guy, and had spun a story that cleverly was corroborated by the cell phone records of his accuser. But he was caught in a trap when his own cell phone records showed calls that the other phone didn't show. And he had had weeks to create this false story. Framing someone (or hiding your crimes) is harder than it sounds. In most cases, the simplest explanation is the right one.
ams6110 15y ago
Before electronic records, the standard of "reasonable doubt" was different, and much more dependent on physical evidence and eyewitness accounts. The rise of these newer types of evidence is part of what has shown that eyewitness accounts are not nearly as reliable as once thought.

loverobots 15y ago

I see your point but it's hard to explain a "human body decompose" Google search, when years later a [family member] disappears and the cops suspect family (as is normal.) But I was watching a CSI episode and ....might not fly. Especially if you searched for large bags a few months later. Search engines are much worst given that you search for information and ask questions about everything.

haberman 15y ago
You have to remember that jurors are normal people who have no vested interest in the case either way. As a juror you feel a heavy weight of responsibility, because you know that people's futures are in your hands. If a person is convicted, it is because 12 random people unanimously agreed beyond a reasonable doubt that the alleged crimes happened. Your lawyer would have a chance to stand in front of the jury and say "of course my client was trying to learn about what happens when a human body decomposes; his family member was dead and he wanted to learn the truth." Jurors are normal people who understand normal arguments.
- loverobots 15y ago
  True but: - You have to have money for lawyerS, and lots of it. Most people are already deep in debt and if they don't work for a few months they are out of their apartments. Now imagine having to come up with, say $50K cash, within a week, while in jail. And $50k is nothing. If the court appoints you one, he'll probably push to make a deal so you serve 12 instead of the gazillion years all the charges end up to. The deal of the century. He has another 11 defendants to defend this month. - You are in the defendant's chair, and for every juror that takes the oath and presumption of innocence seriously there is another one that assumes you did something ("Why else would they pick on him?") - Prosecutors, police, detectives and jurors are people, full of human faults. To go home in time for Easter one might be persuaded to vote guilty instead of holding up. It's not unheard for the cops and prosecutors to want 'someone' in jail for X crime, keeps the public reassured and helps their career. - Unless you're mega-wealthy you're outmatched. The state uses virtually unlimited amount of your tax dollars to hire the best DNA experts and pathologists and you, John Q, can't match them. On the stand detectives have perfected how to testify and use anything to fit their agenda: "he cried /he didn't cry /he cried too little /he cried hysterically (sounded fake) or his cries were too perfect, as if calculated to deceive..." That huge fight with your wife will be told as a possible motive but no one is there to tell about the hugs and kisses 15 minutes after. Oh, you've been "poking" your high school sweetheart of FB and been talking about the "good old times"? So yes, our justice system is relatively fair but if you get screwed the stats mean nothing, you're toast.
  - jarrett 15y ago
    The government doesn't have the "virtually unlimited" prosecution budget you're claiming. Many prosecutors are overworked and given almost zero time to prep a case. High-profile cases get more time and money, of course, but these are statistically very rare. Also, a person probably won't be convicted on a Google search alone. The burden of proof falls on the prosecution, meaning that they have to present more than just a few shreds of suggestive evidence. Simply exercising one's right to remain silent, demanding a lawyer (even a public defender), and pleading not guilty vastly improves one's chances. The vast majority of convicts in the US sealed their fates by talking to the police, pleading guilty, or both. We'd have a much lower conviction rate across the board if everyone shut up, lawyered up, and pled not guilty--which could be seen as good or bad, depending on your perspective. As an aside, public defenders are better than most people believe. They often do just as well statistically as private defense attorneys.
drostie 15y ago
I would be surprised if that passed federal rule of evidence 404(a), which is a part of U.S. law which says "Evidence of a person’s character or character trait is not admissible to prove that on a particular occasion the person acted in accordance with the character or trait." I mean, this is assuming that we're talking about "years later" -- in other words you really are trying to say "this person was of a very morbid character and was interested in researching facts about human body decomposition." Heck, I made searches like that when I was writing the first draft of a NaNoWriMo novel.
oskarth 15y ago
If you write, read, bookmark, share or search for something like this [0], does your conditional probability of killing someone go up? Probably not - chances are you just happen to be morbidly curious. The real killer, being smart enough, would never let his or her identity be coupled with such an obvious clue. That's the rational answer. What's the more probably answer? A lawyer with an excerpt of your most mischievous writes, reads, shares and bookmarks could paint quite a despicable portrait of you, the villain. Remember that time when a friend showed you a link which you stupidly clicked on? Yeah, that too. And that "no real criminal would leave a trail like that" line won't work either - because we all know how criminals are stupid. -- My point is that I agree with you. Psychological profiles will probably become more commonplace as data mining et al. goes mainstream. These can be manipulated. Badly. If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him. (Cardinal Richelieu) How about six million lines? All written with the naive understanding that they would stay private. -- For us, all of this privacy issue thing is far from news. We know about it. But as a society, we are still very far from developing the new values that are necessary given this overflow of intimate knowledge. 0: http://ask.metafilter.com/7921/If-you-killed-somebody-how-would-you-dispose-of-the-body-without-getting-caught#155715 http://ask.metafilter.com/7921/If-you-killed-somebody-how-wo... EDIT: Maybe I am being overly cynical about how the justice system can be manipulated. As the above two comments suggests, it is indeed designed to be a robust system. However, looking at cases in the US of people wrongfully executed, it doesn't seem like an unreasonable stance to be a bit distrusting of the manipulation possibilities.
- ktizo 15y ago
  You are possibly not being cynical enough. Learn how to wave at judges.
- twoodfin 15y ago
  Sorry, are you aware of someone who can be proved to have been executed in the US within the past few decades for a crime they did not commit? I'm aware of instances where "key witnesses" recant decades later (under what kind of pressure from defense attorneys or their own conscience I have no idea...) But I'm unaware of any instances where innocence was clearly established after an execution was carried out.

revelation 15y ago

Yes, think of all the things we can do with street CCTV surveillance. Or with cameras matching license plate numbers on the street. Or with a secret service allowed to act within our borders and against american citizen. The point of laws is not to make things harder for the police, it is to protect all of us from the government.

nextparadigms 15y ago
Think about how much fewer wives would be beaten if the Government had a camera in everyone's bedroom, or how much money we'd save on taxes if law enforcement could do anything they wanted without a warrant. Yes it's sarcasm, but I don't think the law enforcement agencies see it like that. They actually want that, and they've said before that having to get a warrant makes it "hard" for them - even though 90% of the warrants they ask for are approved. Lately all of them are pushing for more invasion of privacy, because they don't see it like that. They see it as "making our job easier" - without any regard for the abuses that could lead to or for history of Government oppression, or if the people actually want that. After all, surely they know "best" what needs to be done to protect the population.
- haberman 15y ago
  > Yes it's sarcasm, but I don't think the law enforcement agencies see it like that. Maybe some do, but some privacy advocates think it would be best if individuals could always prevent law enforcement from obtaining any evidence. Don't make arguments that are just as absurd as the extremists on the other side.
- tptacek 15y ago
  There is no law enforcement agency in the country that wants cameras in everyone's bedroom.
  - andybak 15y ago
    And the Missing the Point award goes to...
15y ago

a3_nm 15y ago

The problem is not that more evidence is being produced. The problem is that the new evidence tends to be concentrated in the hands of a very small number of companies.

tptacek 15y ago
Wait, if it's valid evidence, as likely to be invaluable to the accused as the accuser, how does the concentration of evidence harm society? What part of justice is served by having investigators wasting time mining evidence out of obscure hiding spots?
- haberman 15y ago
  Two possible harms: - If a database is hacked/stolen, the impact is much worse. - If the people who control the database become malevolent, the impact is much worse. Think about a totalitarian government weeding out its political enemies by seizing a big centralized database.

JeanPierre 15y ago

I find evidence from mobile phones to be potentially problematic. If they track your position, you could just leave your mobile phone home when doing crimes, and say that you are home (You can tape it to your dog to make more realistic movement). If they track activity (but not content), you can make a program which sends empty messages to another mobile phone, or calls another mobile phone at some specific time. Finally, if you track content as well, create the content of the messages while you define when to send them, or make a predefined sound record which you transmit when the phone call is coming up. You could be in a one hour phone call while the robbery you performed happened, and that phone call had your voice in it, and you were home while you called. Isn't that quite the alibi? Hard? Sure thing. Impossible? Nope.

MichaelApproved 15y ago
Cameras. They just need one camera that caught you outside your house to shatter all that work. There are so many cameras that it's very difficult to hide from them all. If the crime you commit is serious enough to go through strapping your phone to your dog, the police will scour lots of cameras in te area.
- bigiain 15y ago
  Have you seen the typical quality of cctv footage? A lot of the time, if I had strong circumstantial evidence that I was at home, I'd quite likely get away with a fair bit of "heavy set person in a black hoodie seen leaving the crime scene" cctv video.
haberman 15y ago
A couple things. First of all, the elaborate fabrication you're talking about is possible with all kinds of evidence, not just cell phone records. You could go around leaving misleading physical clues. You could take photographs that have an intentionally mis-set clock in the background. You could bribe or intimidate people into lying on the stand. etc. etc. Second of all, the kind of fabrication you're describing is much more difficult to pull off than you realize. There are lots of different kinds of evidence and you would have to have some serious foresight to fabricate it all in a way that is consistent. For example, here's a case of someone who took a lot of effort to fabricate evidence of a rape against an ex-boyfriend. She did such a convincing job that he was jailed for a while, but eventually the truth came out. http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jun/26/local/la-me-accused-20110626 http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jun/26/local/la-me-accused-... Most criminals (or false accusers) don't have nearly this level of planning. The defendant in my case was actually a really smart guy, and had spun a story that cleverly was corroborated by the cell phone records of his accuser. But he was caught in a trap when his own cell phone records showed calls that the other phone didn't show. And he had had weeks to create this false story. Framing someone (or hiding your crimes) is harder than it sounds. In most cases, the simplest explanation is the right one.

ams6110 15y ago

Before electronic records, the standard of "reasonable doubt" was different, and much more dependent on physical evidence and eyewitness accounts. The rise of these newer types of evidence is part of what has shown that eyewitness accounts are not nearly as reliable as once thought.