6 ms·

The question that I have every time I read about something similar to this is not about the law itself, but about the human who's applying the law: how/ why/ wh

by NhanH 12y ago

The question that I have every time I read about something similar to this is not about the law itself, but about the human who's applying the law: how/ why/ what is the line of thought that would lead them to (supposedly) knowingly do something like this? I realize that processes, bureaucracy and generally abstraction can allow people to do less than desirable behaviours, but I can't quite figure out which abstraction that would encourage people to do things like that (note: with the term "abstraction", I meant that by using incentives or measuring the wrong intermediate metrics, we've created a wrong set of objectives, which might be completely misaligned with the actual goal we're trying to achieve). Laws are complex set of statements, which naturally will have more accidentally complexity as they're developed, a phenomenon that hackers are extremely familiar with. That's something to be expected. On the other hand, human, abusing the accidental complexity of law, is not ideal - as anything else, there should be place and time for trickery, but not the SOP. That said, what's the rationale for the behaviour of law enforcement officer in pursuing various type of trap-y actions? - Do LEO routinely believes that everyone they investigate to be committing the crime. Do we have a good priori of P(criminal | under investigation) that would support this? - Did we actually manage to create a powerful enough abstractions that let actors within the system to, well, behave psychopathically (ie. this button should be pushed because I'm supposed to do that, I don't really know what happen behind it)? - Trickery are generally being reported out of proportion, and should not be a general concern for the the majority of us. - Malicious intention -- I will assume this percentage to be not higher than those from a general population.

mikeash 12y ago
I would say "all of the above." LEO do routinely believe that people they investigate must be guilty. They don't investigate at random, but rather are prompted by some evidence of criminal behavior. That certainly doesn't mean that you must be guilty if they investigate you, but it sets them up to believe you are. The system is set up with compartments so nobody sees the full consequences of anything and this sort of misbehavior is encouraged. If you send somebody to jail, they disappear from your life the moment the verdict is reached and you have no reason to dwell on the harm you've caused them. (And if you do, you probably think it's a good thing, because you think they're a criminal!) And you probably get a commendation for putting a bad guy away. Bad behavior does get reported disproportionately. Most cops are good cops. For everyone like this, there are ten cops who find a lost cellphone and personally deliver it back to the owner, as happened to a neighbor of mine a few months ago. That doesn't make the news. Although that doesn't mean it shouldn't be a concern for the majority of us. Even a small risk of being falsely imprisoned is important, and there's no harm in taking the "SHUT UP" route with a good cop. Finally, I would be wary of assuming that malicious intent is no higher than among the general population. Bad people tend to seek power over others, and what better way to wield such power than to do so legally as a member of the police? No doubt, the legitimate "protect and serve" folks still greatly outnumber the bad guys, but I would bet they're more concentrated.
- gkop 12y ago
  It's dangerous to bandy around statements like "most cops are good cops" for which you don't have evidence. Instead, you might say "Some cops are good cops".
  - mikeash 12y ago
    How is it "dangerous"? I'm expressing my personal opinion on a relatively obscure site on the internet. It is one of the least dangerous activities I can imagine.
    - gkop 12y ago
      Your argument does not rest on most cops being good cops, it stands if some cops are good cops. So why throw in an assertion you can't back up?
      - timv 12y ago
        You asserted that it was "dangerous" for him to bandy around such statements. Care to back up that assertion? "Unnecessary" and "dangerous" are quite different.
        sooheon 12y ago
        The very blog post which prompted this discussion explains the danger of assuming even impartial investigative intentions of cops, let alone "good" ones.
        baddox 12y ago
        The word "dangerous" is not exclusively used to indicate the likelihood of physical injury. It is also widely used to describe the likelihood of any undesirable consequences. The undesirable consequence in this case is a weakening of the argument being presented.
        stonemetal 12y ago
snowwrestler 12y ago
Put yourself in the shoes of a federal agent investigating a crime. Crimes happen all the time; they're commmitted by people who then try very hard to hide what they did. So a criminal investigator is going to treat everyone they interview with suspicion from the start. That suspicion is not a personal failing any more than a software QA tester who doesn't trust the latest build. It's inherent in that type of job. And investigators only have certain tools that they can use in order to find the criminals who are lying to them. If they get information the wrong way, even if it is accurate information about a real crime, it will be ruled inadmissable and the criminal will get away. A big tool they have is relationships. If they can get one person in a criminal network to cooperate, then they can try to traverse the network and find the other criminals. Since criminals rarely want to cooperate with law enforcement, they use "gotcha" type tools to compel cooperation--like the false statement trap. They just need a little leverage on the person to get going.
- NhanH 12y ago
  All that you said is true, but I think it's orthogonal to what I was wondering about -- actually, it just raised more questions for me. The common legal advice is "do not talk to cop", which presumably because on average, you will actually get into trouble with it. So in a sense, the question was "Why would LEO cause you trouble for those technicality if you're innocent?". I mean, let's say the first innocent guy who got into the false statement trap actually just cooperate, got himself proven innocent, and the investigator let him go from the technicality, and then that's ... it, right? But I don't think that's what the story normally is (is it?). There seems to be too many stories of people getting into trouble for technicality/ trap, while committing no crime originally. There are several explanations I can think of for the behaviour (in which LEO follow up on trap when investigating innocence), most of them are quite unsettling. Notably, if criminal are getting good to the point that investigation can't truly tell without unreasonable doubt that a criminal has committed a crime, and so has to resort to trap to convict them (which leads using trap in any case they can), then well, isn't that just mean investigation are not effective as well? I know what we should do to (try to) protect ourselves from the current situation, I was just wondering how we get here. TL;DR: Law trap by itself is not good, however it's a necessity. But shouldn't it be used as last resort against criminal? Why does the population has to worry about trap as SOP of criminal investigator?
rayiner 12y ago
There is an additional wrinkle here. The overwhelming majority of people prosecuted by the Feds are guilty of something (and not just of some "made up" crime). I worked for a federal appellate judge. Saw dozens of criminal cases come up on appeal. Didn't see a single one from the Feds where the evidence of guilt wasn't overwhelming (even if some convictions were defective for technical reasons, and even if some were for debatably immoral conduct like drug trafficking). They don't go around baiting random people they think are innocent to lie in an interview. They do it to make sure they have concrete points of leverage to get information about the rest of the crimes. Of course, this really sucks if you're innocent (though even then, often your associates aren't and you were in the wrong place at the wrong time). When these guys see guilty people lie to their face day in and day out, it's hard to give the rare actually innocent person the benefit of the doubt. They have the moral obligation to do that, mind you. It's just understandably hard.
- mellavora 12y ago
  Aaron Swartz
  - harryh 12y ago
    Aaron was clearly guilty of the crime he was charged with. You can debate the morality of that crime being on the books, but it's clear that he did what he was charged with.
    - jwolgamott 12y ago
      It's not what he was charged with, it's the evil and horrid behavior of Carmen M. Ortiz, the U.S. attorney for Massachusetts, after being charged that disgusts most people.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- happyscrappy 12y ago
  > The overwhelming majority of people prosecuted by the Feds are guilt. That is not the right narrative for HN. The cop is the perp and the perp is the victim is taken as gospel here.

by NhanH 12y ago

mikeash 12y ago

I would say "all of the above." LEO do routinely believe that people they investigate must be guilty. They don't investigate at random, but rather are prompted by some evidence of criminal behavior. That certainly doesn't mean that you must be guilty if they investigate you, but it sets them up to believe you are. The system is set up with compartments so nobody sees the full consequences of anything and this sort of misbehavior is encouraged. If you send somebody to jail, they disappear from your life the moment the verdict is reached and you have no reason to dwell on the harm you've caused them. (And if you do, you probably think it's a good thing, because you think they're a criminal!) And you probably get a commendation for putting a bad guy away. Bad behavior does get reported disproportionately. Most cops are good cops. For everyone like this, there are ten cops who find a lost cellphone and personally deliver it back to the owner, as happened to a neighbor of mine a few months ago. That doesn't make the news. Although that doesn't mean it shouldn't be a concern for the majority of us. Even a small risk of being falsely imprisoned is important, and there's no harm in taking the "SHUT UP" route with a good cop. Finally, I would be wary of assuming that malicious intent is no higher than among the general population. Bad people tend to seek power over others, and what better way to wield such power than to do so legally as a member of the police? No doubt, the legitimate "protect and serve" folks still greatly outnumber the bad guys, but I would bet they're more concentrated.

gkop 12y ago
It's dangerous to bandy around statements like "most cops are good cops" for which you don't have evidence. Instead, you might say "Some cops are good cops".
- mikeash 12y ago
  How is it "dangerous"? I'm expressing my personal opinion on a relatively obscure site on the internet. It is one of the least dangerous activities I can imagine.
  - gkop 12y ago
    Your argument does not rest on most cops being good cops, it stands if some cops are good cops. So why throw in an assertion you can't back up?
    - timv 12y ago
      You asserted that it was "dangerous" for him to bandy around such statements. Care to back up that assertion? "Unnecessary" and "dangerous" are quite different.
      - sooheon 12y ago
        The very blog post which prompted this discussion explains the danger of assuming even impartial investigative intentions of cops, let alone "good" ones.
      - baddox 12y ago
        The word "dangerous" is not exclusively used to indicate the likelihood of physical injury. It is also widely used to describe the likelihood of any undesirable consequences. The undesirable consequence in this case is a weakening of the argument being presented.
        stonemetal 12y ago

snowwrestler 12y ago

Put yourself in the shoes of a federal agent investigating a crime. Crimes happen all the time; they're commmitted by people who then try very hard to hide what they did. So a criminal investigator is going to treat everyone they interview with suspicion from the start. That suspicion is not a personal failing any more than a software QA tester who doesn't trust the latest build. It's inherent in that type of job. And investigators only have certain tools that they can use in order to find the criminals who are lying to them. If they get information the wrong way, even if it is accurate information about a real crime, it will be ruled inadmissable and the criminal will get away. A big tool they have is relationships. If they can get one person in a criminal network to cooperate, then they can try to traverse the network and find the other criminals. Since criminals rarely want to cooperate with law enforcement, they use "gotcha" type tools to compel cooperation--like the false statement trap. They just need a little leverage on the person to get going.

NhanH 12y ago
All that you said is true, but I think it's orthogonal to what I was wondering about -- actually, it just raised more questions for me. The common legal advice is "do not talk to cop", which presumably because on average, you will actually get into trouble with it. So in a sense, the question was "Why would LEO cause you trouble for those technicality if you're innocent?". I mean, let's say the first innocent guy who got into the false statement trap actually just cooperate, got himself proven innocent, and the investigator let him go from the technicality, and then that's ... it, right? But I don't think that's what the story normally is (is it?). There seems to be too many stories of people getting into trouble for technicality/ trap, while committing no crime originally. There are several explanations I can think of for the behaviour (in which LEO follow up on trap when investigating innocence), most of them are quite unsettling. Notably, if criminal are getting good to the point that investigation can't truly tell without unreasonable doubt that a criminal has committed a crime, and so has to resort to trap to convict them (which leads using trap in any case they can), then well, isn't that just mean investigation are not effective as well? I know what we should do to (try to) protect ourselves from the current situation, I was just wondering how we get here. TL;DR: Law trap by itself is not good, however it's a necessity. But shouldn't it be used as last resort against criminal? Why does the population has to worry about trap as SOP of criminal investigator?

rayiner 12y ago

There is an additional wrinkle here. The overwhelming majority of people prosecuted by the Feds are guilty of something (and not just of some "made up" crime). I worked for a federal appellate judge. Saw dozens of criminal cases come up on appeal. Didn't see a single one from the Feds where the evidence of guilt wasn't overwhelming (even if some convictions were defective for technical reasons, and even if some were for debatably immoral conduct like drug trafficking). They don't go around baiting random people they think are innocent to lie in an interview. They do it to make sure they have concrete points of leverage to get information about the rest of the crimes. Of course, this really sucks if you're innocent (though even then, often your associates aren't and you were in the wrong place at the wrong time). When these guys see guilty people lie to their face day in and day out, it's hard to give the rare actually innocent person the benefit of the doubt. They have the moral obligation to do that, mind you. It's just understandably hard.

mellavora 12y ago
Aaron Swartz
- harryh 12y ago
  Aaron was clearly guilty of the crime he was charged with. You can debate the morality of that crime being on the books, but it's clear that he did what he was charged with.
  - jwolgamott 12y ago
    It's not what he was charged with, it's the evil and horrid behavior of Carmen M. Ortiz, the U.S. attorney for Massachusetts, after being charged that disgusts most people.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
happyscrappy 12y ago
> The overwhelming majority of people prosecuted by the Feds are guilt. That is not the right narrative for HN. The cop is the perp and the perp is the victim is taken as gospel here.