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This exactly. Bad people have to go free in order to incentivize good behavior by cops. You and I (as innocent people) are more likely to be affected by bad po

This exactly. Bad people have to go free in order to incentivize good behavior by cops. You and I (as innocent people) are more likely to be affected by bad police behavior than the few bad people themselves and so we support the bad people going free.

refulgentis 2y ago
I think its okay that we expect cops to be good _after_ the rule exists, rather than set the bad guys free to (checks notes) incentivize cops to take our new rule super seriously.
- banku_brougham 2y ago
  That rule has been around for quite a while, and looks worse for wear now
  - refulgentis 2y ago
    > That rule has been around for quite a while The rule established in this case is new, hence TFA, and all the time the lawyers and judge wasted on it :) If I may suggest where wires are getting crossed: You are sort of assuming it's like a logic gate: if 4th amendment violation, bad evidence, criminal must go free. So when you say "the rule", you mean "the 4th amendment", not the actual ruling. That's not how it works, because that simple ultimatum also has edge cases. So we built up this whole system around nominating juries and judges, and paying lawyers, over centuries, to argue out complicated things like weighing intentionality.
- everforward 2y ago
  It would seem that the inverse would need to apply in order for the justice system to have any semblance of impartiality. That is that we now have to let both of them off the hook, since neither had been specifically informed they weren’t allowed to do the thing beforehand. That is why many people think this should be tossed out. Ignorance that an action was a crime is almost never an acceptable defense, so it should not be an acceptable offense either.
  - refulgentis 2y ago
    > we now have to let both of them off the hook, since neither had been specifically informed they weren’t allowed to do the thing beforehand. I'm not trying to be funny, or aggressive, or passive aggressive, seriously: there's two entities in the discussion, the cops, and the person with a photograph with a hash matching child porn. I'm phrasing that as passively as possible because I want to avoid the tarpit of looking like I'm appealing to emotion: Do you mean the hash-possessor weren't specifically informed it was illegal to possess said hash? > It would seem that the inverse would need to apply in order for the justice system to have any semblance of impartiality...That is why many people think this should be tossed out. Of course, I could be missing something here because I'm making a hash of parsing the first bit. But, no, if the cops in good faith make a mistake, there's centuries of jurisprudence behind not letting people go free for it, not novel with this case.
    - everforward 2y ago
      > Do you mean the hash-possessor weren't specifically informed it was illegal to possess said hash? This is literally the doctrine behind the good faith argument and qualified immunity. If they have not been informed that this specific act, done in this specific way is not allowed then it is largely permissible. A stupid but equivalent defense from the possessor would be “it’s in Googles possession, not mine, so I had a good faith belief that I did not possess the files”. It’s clearly wrong based on case law, but I wouldn’t expect the average person to have a great grasp of how possession works legally (nor would I claim to be an expert on it). This is effectively what the good faith doctrine establishes for police, even though they really ought to at least have an inkling given that the law is an integral part of their jobs. As long as they can claim to be sufficiently stupid, it is permissible. That is not extended to the defense, for whom stupidity is never a defense. > But, no, if the cops in good faith make a mistake, there's centuries of jurisprudence behind not letting people go free for it, not novel with this case. Acting in good faith would be getting a warrant regardless, because the issue is not that time-sensitive and there are clear ambiguities here. They acted brashly under the assumption that if they were wrong, they could claim stupidity. It encourages the police to push the boundaries of legal behavior, because they still get to keep the evidence even if they are wrong and have committed an illegal search. It is, yet again, rules for thee but not for me. Frankly, with the asymmetry of responsibility and experience with laws, the police should need to clear a MUCH higher bar to come within throwing distance of “good faith”.
- _Algernon_ 2y ago
  The 4th amendment was written in 1791
  - mobb_solo 2y ago
    And one thing we learn as we've been hanging around in Time long enough to recognize larger cycles, is the world changes, people dont. Even as we change the world.
  - GuB-42 2y ago
    The 4th amendment is about unreasonable searches and seizures, it is also about "persons, houses, papers, and effects", that is, not files stored in someone else's computer. The police here considered that a hash match was a reasonable enough condition to conduct a search, and that Google's TOS allowed it. They were wrong, but it is not obvious that they were by just reading the 4th amendment, and the situation is rather new, so it is reasonable to assume that the police acted in good faith.
    - thanksgiving 2y ago
      If I have documents in a locked briefcase in a hotel room, does the police get to read and copy them with the hotel operator's permission while I am in the shower? Assume that the locked briefcase is not particularly tamper proof. Anyone with decent lock picking skills can open one.
      - scott_w 2y ago
        Is it your locked briefcase or the hotel's? I believe hotels have the ability to unlock their own safe, so I suspect they're allowed to ask the hotel's permission to look without a warrant. Also, if a hotel cleaner found illegal material lying in your room, the police don't need a warrant to seize it and prosecute you. If it's your briefcase then I think they need a warrant.
    - salawat 2y ago
      The type of person who cannot draw a line of semantic equivalence between papers and files on a computer, is uniquely devoted to entertaining a level of obtuseness it is hard to seriously entertain. On par with people who think that "Arms" in the second amendment must only apply to muskets, cannons and such, and nothing after. Tell me. When you put a bunch of papers in a folder, then put them in a cabinet, arguably under some semblance of organization in order to make later retrieval easier, what are you doing? Filing. The entire desktop metaphor, (the basis around which most computer UI is based), was chosen in part specifically for it's compatibility with non-digital processes at the time of software and the personal computer's fruition. Files on a disk, are in a literal sense, your papers. They are stored in directories(lists of things and where to find them, a.k.a. folders), areanged under the abstractive auspices of a "file system", and at times "archived" for convenient storage or transport. Gee. Same verbage as what you do with papers... In fact, your papers have nothing to do with dead trees except as an accident of it being the first prevalent medium for persistent info storage. Your papers covers the set of information through which you conduct your business with the outside world. Those packets of paper are files. Those collections of 0's and 1s on a disk are files. Files are papers. Papers are protected. The involvement of a computer in the chain suddenly nullifying the essence of what point was being made by the Founders is as worthy of ridicule as thinking they went to war with their colonial parent state only because of a tax spiff. Or the civil war being only about slavery. It's evidence of a worldview most tragically impoverished; either by accident (which while regrettable, is at least amenable to remedy), or intention to push a state of affairs; to which one can only shake one's head and push on with their own life, and hope that maybe there are enough like minded individuals out there to counterbalance the individual's in questions aspirations. Already spent more cycles on this than I should have, good day.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
wizzwizz4 2y ago
> Bad people have to go free in order to incentivize good behavior by cops. And they will, next time, and everyone knows it. We don't need an actual example of a bad person going free if the potential is certain enough. Unless, of course, you're trying to encourage good behaviour in the general case (rather than a codified list of specifics); but that's expecting police officers to be experts in right and wrong. As obvious as such things are to me, I'm aware that a lot of people struggle a lot more with these things. (Or, perhaps, struggle less: I spend a lot of time thinking about morality and ethics, more than is reasonable to expect a salaried worker to spend.)
HideousKojima 2y ago
>You and I (as innocent people) are more likely to be affected by bad police behavior than the few bad people themselves and so we support the bad people going free. I know anecdotes aren't data, but my only negative interactions with cops have basically been for traffic tickets. Meanwhile my negative interactions with criminals have been far more numerous, along with several second-order effects caused by their mere existence (like not going to certain neighborhoods at night because of high crime rates). I don't think there's ever been a neighborhood law abiding citizens had to avoid because of fear of cops. Maybe I'm some kind of crazy outlier, but I'm pretty sure that most innocent people are the same.
- rendall 2y ago
  The threat to innocent people posed by incompetent or tyrannical police is arguably much greater than by ordinary criminality. In small towns across America, corrupt police departments hassle outsiders and issue minor citations as a way to generate revenue. If someone is found to have large amounts of cash for some reason, they often will confiscate it in a process called civil forefeiture. Many US police officers act with impunity because their misconduct will be protected by local prosecutors and judges. There absolutely are towns and neighborhoods good people should avoid because of the police.
- RHSeeger 2y ago
  > I don't think there's ever been a neighborhood law abiding citizens had to avoid because of fear of cops. I think there's a fair number of stories of POC be accosted by police officers because they were in a neighborhood they didn't "belong" in, so your statement is likely inaccurate.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- Workaccount2 2y ago
  There is a reality distortion field in existence now because almost every police interaction is recorded (body cams are everywhere nowadays) and the ones that go bad are put on full blast across social media and the news, despite them being somewhere on the order of 1 in 1,000,000 encounters. Seriously, if car accidents were reported like police accidents, we probably would have been forced by confused ideologues to ban automobiles 2 years ago.

refulgentis 2y ago

I think its okay that we expect cops to be good _after_ the rule exists, rather than set the bad guys free to (checks notes) incentivize cops to take our new rule super seriously.

banku_brougham 2y ago
That rule has been around for quite a while, and looks worse for wear now
- refulgentis 2y ago
  > That rule has been around for quite a while The rule established in this case is new, hence TFA, and all the time the lawyers and judge wasted on it :) If I may suggest where wires are getting crossed: You are sort of assuming it's like a logic gate: if 4th amendment violation, bad evidence, criminal must go free. So when you say "the rule", you mean "the 4th amendment", not the actual ruling. That's not how it works, because that simple ultimatum also has edge cases. So we built up this whole system around nominating juries and judges, and paying lawyers, over centuries, to argue out complicated things like weighing intentionality.
everforward 2y ago
It would seem that the inverse would need to apply in order for the justice system to have any semblance of impartiality. That is that we now have to let both of them off the hook, since neither had been specifically informed they weren’t allowed to do the thing beforehand. That is why many people think this should be tossed out. Ignorance that an action was a crime is almost never an acceptable defense, so it should not be an acceptable offense either.
- refulgentis 2y ago
  > we now have to let both of them off the hook, since neither had been specifically informed they weren’t allowed to do the thing beforehand. I'm not trying to be funny, or aggressive, or passive aggressive, seriously: there's two entities in the discussion, the cops, and the person with a photograph with a hash matching child porn. I'm phrasing that as passively as possible because I want to avoid the tarpit of looking like I'm appealing to emotion: Do you mean the hash-possessor weren't specifically informed it was illegal to possess said hash? > It would seem that the inverse would need to apply in order for the justice system to have any semblance of impartiality...That is why many people think this should be tossed out. Of course, I could be missing something here because I'm making a hash of parsing the first bit. But, no, if the cops in good faith make a mistake, there's centuries of jurisprudence behind not letting people go free for it, not novel with this case.
  - everforward 2y ago
    > Do you mean the hash-possessor weren't specifically informed it was illegal to possess said hash? This is literally the doctrine behind the good faith argument and qualified immunity. If they have not been informed that this specific act, done in this specific way is not allowed then it is largely permissible. A stupid but equivalent defense from the possessor would be “it’s in Googles possession, not mine, so I had a good faith belief that I did not possess the files”. It’s clearly wrong based on case law, but I wouldn’t expect the average person to have a great grasp of how possession works legally (nor would I claim to be an expert on it). This is effectively what the good faith doctrine establishes for police, even though they really ought to at least have an inkling given that the law is an integral part of their jobs. As long as they can claim to be sufficiently stupid, it is permissible. That is not extended to the defense, for whom stupidity is never a defense. > But, no, if the cops in good faith make a mistake, there's centuries of jurisprudence behind not letting people go free for it, not novel with this case. Acting in good faith would be getting a warrant regardless, because the issue is not that time-sensitive and there are clear ambiguities here. They acted brashly under the assumption that if they were wrong, they could claim stupidity. It encourages the police to push the boundaries of legal behavior, because they still get to keep the evidence even if they are wrong and have committed an illegal search. It is, yet again, rules for thee but not for me. Frankly, with the asymmetry of responsibility and experience with laws, the police should need to clear a MUCH higher bar to come within throwing distance of “good faith”.
_Algernon_ 2y ago
The 4th amendment was written in 1791
- mobb_solo 2y ago
  And one thing we learn as we've been hanging around in Time long enough to recognize larger cycles, is the world changes, people dont. Even as we change the world.
- GuB-42 2y ago
  The 4th amendment is about unreasonable searches and seizures, it is also about "persons, houses, papers, and effects", that is, not files stored in someone else's computer. The police here considered that a hash match was a reasonable enough condition to conduct a search, and that Google's TOS allowed it. They were wrong, but it is not obvious that they were by just reading the 4th amendment, and the situation is rather new, so it is reasonable to assume that the police acted in good faith.
  - thanksgiving 2y ago
    If I have documents in a locked briefcase in a hotel room, does the police get to read and copy them with the hotel operator's permission while I am in the shower? Assume that the locked briefcase is not particularly tamper proof. Anyone with decent lock picking skills can open one.
    - scott_w 2y ago
      Is it your locked briefcase or the hotel's? I believe hotels have the ability to unlock their own safe, so I suspect they're allowed to ask the hotel's permission to look without a warrant. Also, if a hotel cleaner found illegal material lying in your room, the police don't need a warrant to seize it and prosecute you. If it's your briefcase then I think they need a warrant.
  - salawat 2y ago
    The type of person who cannot draw a line of semantic equivalence between papers and files on a computer, is uniquely devoted to entertaining a level of obtuseness it is hard to seriously entertain. On par with people who think that "Arms" in the second amendment must only apply to muskets, cannons and such, and nothing after. Tell me. When you put a bunch of papers in a folder, then put them in a cabinet, arguably under some semblance of organization in order to make later retrieval easier, what are you doing? Filing. The entire desktop metaphor, (the basis around which most computer UI is based), was chosen in part specifically for it's compatibility with non-digital processes at the time of software and the personal computer's fruition. Files on a disk, are in a literal sense, your papers. They are stored in directories(lists of things and where to find them, a.k.a. folders), areanged under the abstractive auspices of a "file system", and at times "archived" for convenient storage or transport. Gee. Same verbage as what you do with papers... In fact, your papers have nothing to do with dead trees except as an accident of it being the first prevalent medium for persistent info storage. Your papers covers the set of information through which you conduct your business with the outside world. Those packets of paper are files. Those collections of 0's and 1s on a disk are files. Files are papers. Papers are protected. The involvement of a computer in the chain suddenly nullifying the essence of what point was being made by the Founders is as worthy of ridicule as thinking they went to war with their colonial parent state only because of a tax spiff. Or the civil war being only about slavery. It's evidence of a worldview most tragically impoverished; either by accident (which while regrettable, is at least amenable to remedy), or intention to push a state of affairs; to which one can only shake one's head and push on with their own life, and hope that maybe there are enough like minded individuals out there to counterbalance the individual's in questions aspirations. Already spent more cycles on this than I should have, good day.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

wizzwizz4 2y ago

> Bad people have to go free in order to incentivize good behavior by cops. And they will, next time, and everyone knows it. We don't need an actual example of a bad person going free if the potential is certain enough. Unless, of course, you're trying to encourage good behaviour in the general case (rather than a codified list of specifics); but that's expecting police officers to be experts in right and wrong. As obvious as such things are to me, I'm aware that a lot of people struggle a lot more with these things. (Or, perhaps, struggle less: I spend a lot of time thinking about morality and ethics, more than is reasonable to expect a salaried worker to spend.)

HideousKojima 2y ago

>You and I (as innocent people) are more likely to be affected by bad police behavior than the few bad people themselves and so we support the bad people going free. I know anecdotes aren't data, but my only negative interactions with cops have basically been for traffic tickets. Meanwhile my negative interactions with criminals have been far more numerous, along with several second-order effects caused by their mere existence (like not going to certain neighborhoods at night because of high crime rates). I don't think there's ever been a neighborhood law abiding citizens had to avoid because of fear of cops. Maybe I'm some kind of crazy outlier, but I'm pretty sure that most innocent people are the same.

rendall 2y ago
The threat to innocent people posed by incompetent or tyrannical police is arguably much greater than by ordinary criminality. In small towns across America, corrupt police departments hassle outsiders and issue minor citations as a way to generate revenue. If someone is found to have large amounts of cash for some reason, they often will confiscate it in a process called civil forefeiture. Many US police officers act with impunity because their misconduct will be protected by local prosecutors and judges. There absolutely are towns and neighborhoods good people should avoid because of the police.
RHSeeger 2y ago
> I don't think there's ever been a neighborhood law abiding citizens had to avoid because of fear of cops. I think there's a fair number of stories of POC be accosted by police officers because they were in a neighborhood they didn't "belong" in, so your statement is likely inaccurate.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
Workaccount2 2y ago
There is a reality distortion field in existence now because almost every police interaction is recorded (body cams are everywhere nowadays) and the ones that go bad are put on full blast across social media and the news, despite them being somewhere on the order of 1 in 1,000,000 encounters. Seriously, if car accidents were reported like police accidents, we probably would have been forced by confused ideologues to ban automobiles 2 years ago.