[HN Gopher] Woman catches state police attaching tracker to her ...
___________________________________________________________________
Woman catches state police attaching tracker to her car, now they
want it back
Author : HiroProtagonist
Score : 200 points
Date : 2021-05-31 15:33 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (jalopnik.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (jalopnik.com)
| spockz wrote:
| This might be a bit meta. But why is the article interspersed
| with segments/links to other articles longer than one screen on
| my phone so that every time I think the article is finished?
| neves wrote:
| The problem is that the police can't track the tracker!
| aussieguy1234 wrote:
| I'm curious as to what would happen if, after discovering a
| tracker on her car, she put the tracker in a box then FedEx'ed it
| to an overseas country?
| pyrophane wrote:
| Odd that they aren't more specific than saying she was arrested
| on "serious" drug charges. Depending on who you ask, that could
| be anything from possession to trafficking. Sure, that's not what
| the article is about, but leaving it so vague just make the
| absence of that information stand out.
|
| Also, the story here really just seems to be this: police poorly
| but lawfully install tracking device on car, owner of car removes
| it, and police demand it back. Then they discuss a previous case
| where they court said it wasn't theft to remove the device.
|
| I'm not sure there is much of a story here.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| The police shouldn't be enforcing drug laws.
|
| They should be advocating for legalisation and regulation.
|
| Massive waste of life, time, and money.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| Cops choosing which laws to enforce leads down a very bad
| path.
|
| I understand where you're coming from, but a society where
| the police have total control over who is arrested and who
| goes free -- who the laws apply to -- is a much darker world
| that I don't want a part of.
|
| (And let me head you off -- no, it's not the one we live in
| right now. You don't actually know what it's like to live in
| a society without civilian control of the police.)
| seoaeu wrote:
| Police _do_ have enormous discretion over who is arrested
| and who goes free. It could certainly be a whole lot worse,
| but it could also be much better.
| Ar-Curunir wrote:
| Police already do that. They don't police rich white
| neighborhoods as deeply, and often don't enforce laws to
| the same severity eg drug possession laws.
| the_why_of_y wrote:
| The US has "a well-established tradition of police
| discretion", as Justice Scalia put it.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/justices-rule-
| po...
| wearywanderer wrote:
| If cops want to be political lobbyists, they should do it on
| their own time. That's not what they're paid for.
|
| (I am aware of the lobbying of police unions, and I don't
| like it. Police unions are actually a great example of why
| _you shouldn 't_ want cops to be lobbyists, because the shit
| they inevitably lobby for is in their interests, not the
| interest of the general public.)
| gexla wrote:
| She didn't have to click "I agree" on a giant pop-up model
| explaining tracking policy? I bet they even have trackers on
| their website too.
|
| And how is it that they can justify trying up multiple people to
| attach the device, but not to track the thing and pick it up?
|
| Interesting the comments mentioning they would keep it. If the
| police are showing up at my door looking angry and asking for
| their stuff back, I'm not going to argue.
| klondike_ wrote:
| In case you're wondering what one of these trackers look like,
| here's a teardown by iFixit:
|
| https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Tracking+Device+Teardown/525...
| nexuist wrote:
| I am laughing so hard at:
|
| > This teardown is _not_ a repair guide. To repair your FBI
| Tracking Device, use our service manual.
| cycop wrote:
| So it looks like a pipe bomb with a detonator
| rolph wrote:
| either give it back to them, stuck under one of thier cars, or
| leave it in place and start hanging around near the local
| precinct
| Havoc wrote:
| Throw it in trash and police can play easter egg hunt in the
| landfill
| jmclnx wrote:
| Finders keepers. Or better yet, if small enough and you have
| thick gloves, attach it to a feral cat :)
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| So many options! On a police cruiser. Up a tree. Under a
| dumpster behind the impound lot. In the discount bin at
| Victoria's Secret.
|
| The mind boggles!
| jacquesm wrote:
| That last one was really funny :)
| smitty1e wrote:
| Waste. The Chief of Police's personal vehicle would be more
| poetic.
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| Nah, too easy to retrieve. Better an international shipping
| vessel.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| International is good; run up those SIM card charges.
| OminousWeapons wrote:
| Reminds me of the surveillance van shipped abroad by the
| union in the Wire XD
| [deleted]
| generalizations wrote:
| Or, shove it on a cross-country 18-wheeler. Let them chase it
| down.
| aaron-santos wrote:
| While it would be incredibly fun to see the police be led on
| a goose chase, it's just as wrong to put the unsuspecting
| truck driver under the same non-consensual tracking situation
| that original person found themselves in.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Two wrongs don't make a right but it may lead to different
| methods being used.
| OminousWeapons wrote:
| I can't believe no one has mentioned using the car for ride
| sharing. Let them try to figure out why you are taking such
| random, meandering paths and make them do more work to get
| warrants for data from each ride sharing company for
| elimination purposes. Bonus points if you sometimes remove
| the tracker and leave it at your house while you are engaging
| in ride sharing to make the data overlap imperfect and also
| if you mix in some random driving while the tracker is on to
| confuse the observers.
| upofadown wrote:
| Those things are what, $40 now? Why are the police such
| cheapskates about them? If they are hoping to get some
| incriminating information from an offline tracker then wouldn't
| they be asking the suspect to help incriminate themselves by
| returning it?
| jowsie wrote:
| $40 if you were to buy one from Alibaba, I'm sure the ones that
| get sold to police departments cost hundreds, if not thousands,
| along with expensive subscription fees and mandatory training
| programmes.
| nocturnial wrote:
| I'm wondering if it's legal to deny the return of the tracker
| unless they can provide a receipt of them purchasing it?
|
| For all we know it could be an FBI tracker, or installed by some
| other PD. So whoever can provide a purchase receipt can have the
| tracker.
| BikiniPrince wrote:
| Well they get it back. This is far less ambiguous then a case I
| read about years ago when someone found one on their car. In that
| case, they started tracking him because of a sketchy friend. Kid
| took it off and sold it on eBay. Turns out you can't tamper with
| a wiretap. I think the wiretap is the least of her problems if
| she is up in federal drug charges.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Wouldn't you need intent?
|
| At least in the Indiana case that was why the charges did not
| stick for the man who took it off. He plausibly didn't intend
| to ruin a wiretap or steal the device because he thought it was
| some random thing and he took it off his car.
|
| > "To find a fair probability of unauthorized control here, we
| would need to conclude the Hoosiers don't have the authority to
| remove unknown, unmarked objects from their personal vehicles,"
| Chief Justice Loretta Rush wrote for a unanimous court.
| permo-w wrote:
| > "It's bush league," Collins told WBRZ. "The fact that a young
| woman can see you doing something like this means you're not very
| good at it."
|
| It's interesting that in today's witch-huntocracy, the NAACP
| chapter president would be so careless with his words
| ttt0 wrote:
| Reminds me of this:
|
| Cops put GPS tracker on man's car, charge him with theft for
| removing it
|
| https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/11/man-charged-with...
| exprez135 wrote:
| After the article was written, the Supreme Court of Indiana did
| end up ruling in favor of the car owner. From the ruling [1]:
|
| > To find a fair probability of unauthorized control here, we
| would need to conclude that Hoosiers don't have the authority
| to remove unknown, unmarked objects from their personal
| vehicles.
|
| In this case, however, there was no obvious indication that the
| device was put there by the police.
|
| [1]: https://law.justia.com/cases/indiana/supreme-
| court/2020/19s-...
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| A man in my country, found police trackers on his vehicle,
| listed them for sale on the local version of eBay.
|
| http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/48059/Man-finds-police-track...
| DangitBobby wrote:
| If you have attached a device to my vehicle without my consent,
| you've forfeited ownership. I have no idea how any rational
| person (or court, especially) could conclude it would be theft to
| remove the tracker. It's good to see some sanity.
| COGlory wrote:
| Courts have ruled chalking tires by meter maids to be
| trespassing. I'm not sure the final verdict on that, though.
| gnicholas wrote:
| Yeah, I think this case [1] unfortunately just encouraged
| cities to adopt electronic license plate readers, or manual
| entry of plates by the police. From a civil liberties
| perspective, that's probably a step in the wrong direction.
|
| 1: https://www.npr.org/2019/04/23/716248823/court-says-using-
| ch...
| xwdv wrote:
| Fuck the state. It's your tax money.
| squarefoot wrote:
| > If you have attached a device to my vehicle without my
| consent, you've forfeited ownership.
|
| I doubt so, at least with the special powers (and immunity)
| they have. That would be like saying that if they fly a drone
| into my property I could shoot it down and salvage its parts.
| I'd probably be jailed for destroying police property although
| it's their device that was actually trespassing. It's a complex
| matter, but with police involved in one side one should expect
| to lose anyway.
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| I think the issue is taking the tracker inside your
| garage/house where the police can track it (it is a tracker
| after all) while in your possession. A better approach would
| be to pull over into the shoulder on the highway, remove it
| there, leave it on the side of the road, and drive off. Then
| if they want it they can drive out to go get it. "Sorry
| officer, it must've just fallen off my car while I was
| driving."
| danaris wrote:
| Unfortunately, while that's certainly _common sense_ , I very
| much doubt that there's any actual law or jurisprudence that
| supports it, whether the perpetrator is a police officer or a
| private citizen.
|
| This is almost certainly yet another place where the law simply
| hasn't caught up to the technology available.
| munk-a wrote:
| It'd be interesting to see how this might shake out related
| to lost-and-found precedent - I bet there's some insight
| there. If you find a sweater abandoned in the woods and take
| it home I'd assume that isn't stealing unless there was a
| reasonable case to be made that the article of clothing was
| recently discarded - but if someone comes looking for it or
| puts up fliers that may change the math on that.
|
| This is essentially the same idea - something was left on
| your car, potentially maliciously even.
| danaris wrote:
| It's an interesting point, though I wonder how the
| intentionality would play into it. Malicious or not, it's
| hard to argue that someone who places a tracker (or a
| bomb!) on your car has "lost" it, as opposed to knowing
| exactly where it is and wanting it there for specific
| purposes.
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| In this case the law is just fine. The State Supreme Court
| ruled, essentially, that you can't put an object in someone's
| car and accuse them of theft if they remove it. The court
| invalidated search warrants issued based on that faulty
| assertion.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| The argument was more that it was a constitutional
| violation - search of property without probable cause. The
| police conveniently assumed the device was stolen, and
| _used that as a pretext_ to search someone 's home and
| advance an investigation that was the reason for the
| tracker being fitted in the first place.
|
| They didn't consider that the device might have been lost,
| and the suggestion that it was stolen was never a good one.
| ("One used tracking device for sale. Contact owner...")
| munk-a wrote:
| I disagree that it'd be safe to assume that the police
| forfeited ownership so if they claim the device is theirs it
| makes sense to return the device.
|
| However the article pointed out (and it's pretty reasonable
| honestly) that when the woman first found the device she didn't
| know what it was and was concerned it might be a bomb. Given
| that someone has attached a device to your car without
| informing you of the intent of that device I think it's
| perfectly fair to destroy the device - if someone asks for the
| device returned you can explain the situation and, as long as
| you didn't clearly know what the device was (i.e. have search
| history for that exact tracker device or have testimony from a
| mechanic or technician who advised you on what the device is)
| then I think it'd be extremely difficult for you to be found at
| any fault.
|
| Car bombs are a thing that happens, they happen thankfully
| quite rarely but destroying a suspicious device is probably the
| best general course of action.
|
| Edit to add: I think there's also no reason to believe that
| someone planting a tracking device on your vehicle is working
| with law enforcement - it could easily be a stalker or someone
| acting maliciously. This actually seems like really risky
| behavior for the cops if they ever want the device back - I'd
| assume the devices they actually get returned are by pure luck
| alone.
| teknopaul wrote:
| Of course they forfeit ownership, if this were not the case,
| you could stick and a sticker on cop cars and expect them to
| return the sticker to you without damaging it. Its not
| grafitti officer I'm just leaving my paint here, please give
| it back soon. The bin man's life would be complicated if
| everyone still owns what they put in the bin or throw in a
| river.
|
| If cops put a tracker on someone's car they can expect the
| same response to a bird shit on the windscreen.
| rdtsc wrote:
| Why a sticker and not a tracking device? That's even better
| and you can then track their positions across town.
|
| I knew someone who had done that in a small town. The
| batteries didn't last long but it was a "fun" hacking
| experiment. Tracking was just a basic transmitter which
| transmitted a ping. The idea was to get a reasonable idea a
| cop car was "nearby".
| bb88 wrote:
| Playing devil's advocate here. Let's say people start making
| car bombs that look like tracking devices. Or they modify the
| tracking device to become a bomb. Many police tracking
| devices already look similar to a pipe bomb:
|
| https://www.npr.org/2011/11/08/142032419/do-police-need-
| warr...
|
| This gets kinda scary if the person you're tracking is a
| dealer working with a violent crime syndicate.
| salawat wrote:
| >i.e. have search history for that exact tracker device or
| have testimony from a mechanic or technician who advised you
| on what the device is
|
| I disagree this should even factor in. If they have not
| presented you with a warrant making clear they installed it,
| you don't know who installed the device. Knowing what the
| device is != knowing who installed it, their intent, or where
| the installer got it from. Nor do I think that a savvy
| criminal removing a tracker should become grounds for
| searching browsing history for parallel construction purposes
| since I somehow doubt third party records are answered in
| yes/no format, and the phrasing of query strings could be
| rather broad, leading to a reasonable request of search
| activity between the dates of installation and when they felt
| they "smelled a rat". In which could be bundled other
| incriminating evidence to spawn off new ledes.
|
| If actually telling the person you as a government agency
| installed it invalidates it as an investigative technique,
| maybe it shouldn't be being used in the first place. Police
| shouldn't have to resort to breaking basic decorum routinely
| in doing their job. It's just converged on that because the
| population under observation aren't necessarily well equipped
| or educated sufficiently to be savvy on this sort of thing,
| or to make enough of a stink. Law enforcement also relies on
| law abiding people to remain silent on these matters because
| "it'll never happen to me" when there is no guarantee you
| won't become persona non grata one day.
| wearywanderer wrote:
| > _she didn 't know what it was and was concerned it might be
| a bomb. Given that someone has attached a device to your car
| without informing you of the intent of that device I think
| it's perfectly fair to destroy the device_
|
| Fair? Yes. It's 100% fair as far as I'm concerned.
|
| But rational? If I thought I found a bomb, I'd be running as
| fast as I could from it, then once I was a hundred meters
| away at least, I'd call the bomb squad. Trying to destroy the
| bomb myself sounds like a momentously stupid idea for a
| number of reasons. Foremost being, what if this homemade bomb
| with potentially unstable explosives goes off in my face? Or
| what if it's remote controlled and the bombman pulls the
| trigger once I start messing with it? Or what if I
| successfully destroy the bomb myself.... what do I tell the
| cops and my neighbors? That I blew up a bomb but it wasn't
| _my_ bomb? How many weeks would I spend in jail before my
| lawyer manages to convince everybody that I didn 't make the
| bomb I blew up and for some reason I never thought to call
| the bomb squad? I think an unlucky man might end up in prison
| for many years if he did that.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| I just became slightly enraged and irrational at the idea
| that I could potentially be stalked by hostile police, and
| any defensive behavior could result in them misrepresenting
| my behavior in a legal setting and successfully convicting
| me.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| That is a rational feeling.
| munk-a wrote:
| If you're walking down an alley one night and someone grabs
| you and you punch them any reasonable court will find
| assault charges levied against you completely bogus.
|
| Unless... that person is a police officer, then you could
| be charged with and likely be convicted of assaulting an
| officer. Police officers in America, and most other
| countries, need to adhere to a completely different and
| much more lax set of rules than most people - that's
| partially for a good reason due to the line of work they're
| in - but some people do abuse it and leverage law
| enforcement privileges and equipment to abuse random folks.
| Like, for instance, planting a tracking device on your
| partner to see if they're cheating on you - probably
| illegal and IA will probably come down on that officer -
| but they're much more likely to get away with it scott
| free.
| nickff wrote:
| > "Unless... that person is a police officer, then you
| could be charged with and likely be convicted of
| assaulting an officer."
|
| Well, you can be charged for anything, and criminal
| charges themselves do a lot of damage, but whether you
| get convicted is a completely different matter. That
| depends on the court; there have been cases of people
| shooting police who burst in unannounced, and having the
| charges dropped, or being acquitted.
| skytreader wrote:
| > Unless... that person (who grabbed you while you are
| walking down an alley one night) is a police officer
|
| You see, this is the wonder of _due process_. In a
| mostly-reasonable jurisdiction, police officers are
| required to, first and foremost and at the very least,
| identify themselves clearly as law-enforcement, and with
| that carries the implicit suggestion that "you need to
| cooperate and not fight back". No identification and they
| might as well have arrested you without reading you your
| Miranda rights.
|
| > Police officers in America, and most other countries,
| need to adhere to a completely different and much more
| lax set of rules than most people
|
| I wouldn't call it lax but I'd settle for _slightly
| different_. Of course, a lot can be said about abuses of
| this "privilege to be different", which is maybe why
| observers would say law-enforcement is held to a relaxed
| standard.
|
| It is different but not lax because:
|
| - ordinary citizens can't break down doors into private
| property but law-enforcement can _if they have probable
| cause_ (Have you watched _Breaking Bad_?) or a search
| warrant. Good luck obtaining a search warrant as an
| ordinary citizen, if that 's even possible.
|
| - ordinary citizens are not ever expected to result to
| fisticuffs and if they do so, they would face fees or
| even jail. But law-enforcement can do so except there's
| gonna be a fuck ton of paper work afterwards and, should
| their reason for resorting to force be successfully
| challenged, face suspension or dismissal but hardly ever
| fees or jail time.
|
| Of course the _MOST IMPORTANT_ caveats here are (a) law
| varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, even for
| reasonably-democratic territories and (b) this is HN
| playing r /legaladvice, which is fun but not as
| productive IMO.
| MegaButts wrote:
| The most important caveat is if the cop lies about you
| doing something and you don't have video evidence that
| he's wrong, you're fucked. That's more than lax, it's
| willfully regulating for a system that attracts and
| defends oppressive corruption.
|
| I am speaking for the United States.
| glitchc wrote:
| And in Canada. This is correct.
|
| A police officer is treated as an expert witness in a
| courtroom. If it's just you and the police officer in
| that alley, the officer's word will be taken over yours.
| Officers have a strong incentive to lie about the
| incident since they will always be believed.
| skinkestek wrote:
| I recently learned that - at least in theory - in Norway
| a police officer can not expect to be believed in court
| just because he is a police officer.
|
| This was new to me and I'm not sure but I think I might
| have heard that it was because of some case in the 70ies
| or something.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| I think in one of the Scandinavian countries, people
| cannot be charged or punished for attempted or actual
| escapes from prison, jail, or custody, as the desire for
| freedom is assumed to be a natural human motivation.
| Ar-Curunir wrote:
| There really don't need to be special exemptions for
| police. Cops as an institution abuse whatever privileges
| they get, and then lobby for more privileges. They are
| barely accountable.
| amelius wrote:
| In some places, police officers are required to document
| all such events, using on-body cameras.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| We keep learning cops turn cams off when inconvenient,
| generally without meaningful consequences.
| smegger001 wrote:
| honestly we should treat any cop without his camera on as
| a regular civilian. Arrest and handcuff someone with the
| badge cam turned off charge them with unlawful
| imprisonment. shoot someone with it off murder or
| manslaughter.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > we should treat any cop without his camera on as a
| regular civilian.
|
| I endorse this.
| g00gler wrote:
| > Car bombs are a thing that happens, they happen thankfully
| quite rarely but destroying a suspicious device is probably
| the best general course of action.
|
| Why would you destroy something you think is possibly a car
| bomb or a detonator?
|
| Wouldn't the best general course of action be to call the
| police? Possibly unless you're a meth dealer as pointed out
| in a sibling comment, of course.
| rolph wrote:
| i wonder how much it costs, to deploy a bomb squad, and how
| many times that will happen when compliant about the device
| come in.
|
| scenarios such as : 1] i see this thing on my car
|
| 2] a saw a sketchy dude messing around under my neighbours
| car
|
| 3] please pull over for secondary inspection before crossing
| the border
| munk-a wrote:
| I think this is a completely reasonable way to respond to
| finding a tracking device and simultaneously discourage
| them from continuing the practice but please do drive out
| of county first so that the police officers that respond
| don't just say "Oh hey, Joe put that on this morning, we
| don't need the bomb squad for that."
| rorykoehler wrote:
| Even if you do have a search history or whatever you can
| still claim ignorance of who put it there. Better yet
| reattach it to a long haul truck and let them have a great
| time trying to figure it out.
| catblast01 wrote:
| Not exactly how this works though. If the tracker was attached
| with a legitimate warrant your "consent" is irrelevant. It
| sounds like the Indiana ruling was more about intent to steal
| and not some issue of ownership, which is a distinct
| difference.
| ineptech wrote:
| > I have no idea how any rational person...
|
| There's no reason to expect the law to be rational or
| objective. Why is it a felony when I steal from my employer,
| but a civil suit when they steal from me?
|
| Because that's what the people who wrote the laws wanted.
| Applying the same reasoning to this case, I'd be shocked if the
| courts don't decide that the police have the legal right to
| reclaim their tracking device.
| dheera wrote:
| They should make more vehicles that spew fart spray in all
| directions if the vehicle is touched in any way without the
| owner's key being within some range.
|
| Would stop tracker attempts, unauthorized tow trucks that don't
| make attempts to contact the owner first, and thieves alike.
| newsbinator wrote:
| It's bad enough I have to wake up to people's cars breaking
| noise ordinances at 3am when a cat jumps on the hood or a
| heavy truck happens to drive by.
|
| Now I have to get sprayed with fart spray when a random guy
| touches a random car as I'm walking by?
| dheera wrote:
| That only makes the security system even stronger, because
| now the random guy not only gets sprayed by fart spray but
| also gets beaten up by you, and my car is even better
| protected. And knowing that, the random guy will be even
| more afraid to mess with random cars.
| newsbinator wrote:
| What's in it for me? I intentionally don't have a car and
| I don't feel any obligation to protect yours for you.
|
| All I get is the negative consequences of the decisions
| of strangers who do want cars.
| dheera wrote:
| Oh I mean, my bike can spray fart spray too. I've had 2
| bikes stolen before, and wished they doused their thieves
| in fart spray. What's in it for you? Thieves fear fart
| spray and stop stealing stuff, and they'll also stop
| stealing whatever other assets you have or plan to have.
| dkdk8283 wrote:
| Throw it in the garbage. Let them dig it out on garbage day.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Mail it to another police department as far away as possible.
| tyingq wrote:
| I'd put it in the dog dropping bin at my local park.
| mikro2nd wrote:
| The law is not necessarily rational. A court must follow the
| law, not justice nor rationality. Sorry.
| mbg721 wrote:
| If we have constructed a law that everyone agrees is total
| garbage, we should fix the law. If we cannot fix the law, as
| I dread is true in this case, we have huge problems.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| > If you have attached a device to my vehicle without my
| consent, you've forfeited ownership.
|
| Are you stating your personal take on the issue, or what the
| laws and courts have decided?
| [deleted]
| DangitBobby wrote:
| My personal take.
| munk-a wrote:
| I mentioned more details in a different comment but I think
| your personal take is quite wrong legally speaking - I do
| sympathize with where you're coming from but, if you ever
| find a strange device affixed to you can probably safely
| destroy it unless there are any clear markings indicating
| ownership (i.e. a giant blue badge) - and if there are feel
| free to forcefully return it to the police because you're
| uncertain if it may have been tampered with.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Like the "Made in USA" stamped on the giant underwater
| phone line tapping machine on Russian phone lines?
| munk-a wrote:
| If I found a box in my backyard that said "Property of
| <local> police department" - my first step would be to
| phone them up and ask them to remove it. If they denied
| that it was theirs then I'd suspect foul play.
|
| It may be a touch naive of me but I'll tend to give the
| benefit of the doubt to identifying tags.
| dylan604 wrote:
| From The Wire, Prop Joe suggests to Marlow to "steal that
| shit." If it's local police, they'll come looking for it.
| If it's the feds, they'll just write it off. "steal that
| shit and see who comes a callin"
| a1369209993 wrote:
| They're stating objective fact; the laws and courts can't
| 'decide' differently any more than they can decide that pi
| equals three or that swatting flies is murder.
|
| Of course, that doesn't guarantee that calling them on it
| will end well for you, but being in the right never really
| does.
| [deleted]
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| There's a category difference here. Ownership is a social
| construct in a way that pi isn't.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Possession in 9/10 ownership law, right?
| jdswain wrote:
| Indiana Pi Bill -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill
| glitchc wrote:
| I don't think the Supreme Court ruling draws this conclusion.
| All it contends is that an individual cannot be charged of
| theft if the individual did not know that they were stealing in
| the first place. The ruling leaves the door open to charge the
| individual with a different crime (failure to comply with a
| warrant) or even civil proceedings.
|
| You are making a "if I own the wallet, I also own its contents"
| argument. It doesn't fly unfortunately, and for that matter has
| never flown. Possession isn't the same as ownership. This is
| even more so true if you have knowledge of the source of the
| contents. How else would we catch thieves if it were?
| toss1 wrote:
| >>"To find a fair probability of unauthorized control here, we
| would need to conclude the Hoosiers don't have the authority to
| remove unknown, unmarked objects from their personal vehicles,"
| Chief Justice Loretta Rush wrote for a unanimous court.
|
| Yup. Finders' keepers.
|
| The only question is what is the most fun thing to do with it.
| Maybe a full teardown? Or, use a drone to deposit it up on the
| top of a tel/power utility pole a block from the police offices
| (or just attach it to a strong string and another weight and
| throw it waaaay up in a tree nearby?
|
| There's surely more clever & fun ideas out there...
| mikro2nd wrote:
| Microwave oven. 30 seconds. Full power.
| 05 wrote:
| Your microwave will smell _really_ bad for a while, don 't do
| that unless you have a dedicated non-food microwave.
| dehrmann wrote:
| > A woman in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, watched State Police place a
| tracking device on her vehicle last weekend and contacted her
| local NAACP president
|
| Why would you contact the NAACP over the ACLU?
| draw_down wrote:
| Seems almost like their main complaint is the lack of stealth or
| professionalism this surveillance in the police's execution, an
| odd complaint. With enemies like these...
|
| It's also weird to describe the state police as an "agency".
| egberts1 wrote:
| Best to reattach to police chief's vehicle. Enough said.
| pvaldes wrote:
| I bet that tracking a police car or spying police private
| conversations would be a typified crime, and with our name
| clearly written in the device serial number.
|
| If police is trying to prove that you are a criminal, basically
| you would be doing they life much easier.
| sschueller wrote:
| They should be required to attach a warrant ID to the device
| allowing someone to lookup the warrant however I am assuming in
| this case there was no warrant making the whole thing illegal.
|
| Edit: they did have a warrant, which I missed reading the
| article.
| munk-a wrote:
| According to the article it looks like they did secure a
| warrant first.
| ChrisKnott wrote:
| What a ridiculous thing to assume. Especially since TFA
| features a statement literally saying "a warrant was obtained
| for the surveillance equipment."
| Miner49er wrote:
| There's no reason to assume that the statement is true, it's
| coming from the police, they could easily be lying.
| munk-a wrote:
| There is, honestly, less of a reason to believe it's false.
| They may be lying but our legal system relies on us
| trusting the police to be honest and, ideally, strongly
| punishes those who abuse that trust.
|
| I'm happy to concede that policing in America has long
| eroded that trust but it's still a requirement that you
| obey and openly communicate with anyone identifying
| themselves as law enforcement.
| greyface- wrote:
| > it's still a requirement that you obey and openly
| communicate with anyone identifying themselves as law
| enforcement.
|
| There is no requirement that you communicate openly with
| police. See: the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution.
| munk-a wrote:
| Actually yea - I was wrongish on this one. It's a state
| level decision[1] with different requirements and
| generally a requirement of suspicion of guilt. I was
| mostly thinking of surface level information
| (identification and the like) rather than any sort of
| detailed information that might contribute to guilt - but
| even that surface level information is still protected
| information.
|
| 1.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_and_identify_statutes
| creato wrote:
| Even if you don't trust police at all, it makes no sense
| for them to lie about this. The truth of the matter _will_
| come out in court, lying has no upside and significant
| downside.
| greycol wrote:
| What is the downside of the police lying? Assuming they
| didn't have a warrant then they either lie and it doesn't
| make the situation worse as police are allowed to lie or
| they don't lie and guarantee a lawsuit.
|
| I'd understand the argument for why they're incentivized
| to get a warrant in the first place (even assuming
| parallel construction is a viable alternative to getting
| a warrant as they may be caught) but that doesn't mean
| they wouldn't lie after they got caught screwing up.
| rdiddly wrote:
| The source of that statement is the police, who have an
| incentive to lie at this point. And the statement is
| uncorroborated, and remains so by their own doing, since
| they're also apparently claiming the right to keep the warrant
| secret until after the investigation is over. Which doesn't
| sound too kosher. So you might've been right.
| gruez wrote:
| >since they're also apparently claiming the right to keep the
| warrant secret until after the investigation is over
|
| Don't you have to present the warrant to the subject at the
| time of the "search"? In other words, you can't go knock on
| someone's door, claim that you have a warrant to search the
| house, and refuse to show it to him.
| detaro wrote:
| Don't know how it works for this specific case, but for
| surveillance warrants it's obviously not a requirement
| (e.g. tapping someone's phone doesn't really work if you
| tell them at the same time that you are doing that), with
| different places having different rules if and when exactly
| the target has to be informed.
| marcusverus wrote:
| So this woman was written up on charges for
| Distribution/Manufacture of Schedule 1 drugs (among other
| things)[0], and was subsequently the subject of a minor
| inconvenience when she discovered that she was being (legally)
| monitored by the cops. The cops then asked for their property
| back.
|
| And the result of this was a sympathetic write-up of the poor,
| mildly inconvenienced drug dealer?
|
| We are _really_ scraping the bottom of the barrel in our search
| for victimization porn...
|
| [0] https://www.publicpolicerecord.com/louisiana/batonrouge-
| jail...
| ipaddr wrote:
| Shame on you for victimizing someone because you label them
| with a status that somehow makes them lower than you in
| society?
|
| Should we only care if it happens to someone of your status or
| do we want to apply laws equally?
| generalizations wrote:
| I don't think _status_ has anything to do with their comment.
| What made you bring it up?
| ipaddr wrote:
| The quote: "scraping the bottom of the barrel"
|
| To label a group of people lower than the lowest implies
| these people belong to a lower class.
|
| class = status
| generalizations wrote:
| Doesn't look to me like the 'bottom of the barrel'
| comment was applied to the social status of the woman.
| Looked more like parent was making the point that it's a
| stretch to call the drug dealer the victim...that the
| reporter must be scraping the 'bottom of the barrel' of
| their story ideas.
|
| You're going to have to be a lot more specific. What
| makes you think 'bottom of the barrel' was referring to
| the social status of the woman?
| ipsin wrote:
| "drug dealer" ... "bottom of the barrel"...
|
| The obvious implication is that drug dealers are low-status
| individuals who deserve this kind of treatment.
| xd wrote:
| What's your experience of drug dealers? I'm really
| curious where this new age anti police pro drug peddler
| mentality is coming from because I've had multiple
| friends over my 40 years lost to drugs so what the fuck
| is the defence of these people about? Many people that
| can be sold drugs are victims.. so yeah these drug dealer
| cretins are low status.
| bigth wrote:
| It's the result of the influx of young western kids
| smoking weed. They think they will go to prison for 800
| years if they are caught, so they become anti police to
| feel better about their bad habits.
| IshKebab wrote:
| They never said that _she_ was bottom of the barrel.
| fortran77 wrote:
| The most important rights to protect, in my opinion, are the
| rights of people accused of a crime. Everything needs to be
| done transparently, legally, and fairly, no matter how bad the
| alleged crime is.
|
| It's the process we need to respect.
| dogma1138 wrote:
| She could be a serial killer that's not the point.
|
| It doesn't matter if she's guilty or not, what matters is can
| you be charged with a crime if you remove a piece of
| surveillance equipment from your own property if so it sets a
| very bad precedent what's next if the police sets a wiretap on
| your phone and you switch numbers you gonna be charged with
| interfering with a police investigation or some other nonsense
| too?
|
| She might as well be very much guilty in regards to the drugs
| offenses but it doesn't mean she can or should be guilty of
| theft or any other offense due to removing a device from her
| car.
| xd wrote:
| Welcome to HN.. made up of kids for the best part with none to
| little actual world experience spouting of their world views
| whilst on the righteous passage.. I wish them all the best.. it
| ain't gonna get any easier than it is now.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| If you find something that is not yours, whatever it is, you
| don't get to keep it. And if the owner wants it back and you
| don't want to give it back, it is theft. I am sure there are
| plenty of special cases and a variety of laws but that's the
| general idea.
|
| And if the tracker was legally installed, you know it is owned by
| the police and don't want to give it back, then it is reasonable
| to call it theft. We can't blame her if she destroyed it, torn it
| apart or whatever but now that she knows, there is no excuse.
|
| Now, I don't know what the laws are but I think that could be
| perfectly reasonable to say: I will put it on my front porch
| tomorrow, it will be in an expensive looking box, feel free to
| pick it up. I mean, with you around, there is no way someone
| would want to steal an expensive looking box sitting unattended
| on the street, right ;)
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| > ongoing investigation involving Ms. Beverly and a suspect
|
| It should be illegal to directly spy on people who themselves are
| not suspects.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-05-31 23:01 UTC)