[HN Gopher] People Staring at Computers (2021)
___________________________________________________________________
People Staring at Computers (2021)
Author : throwaway743
Score : 149 points
Date : 2022-10-21 12:58 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (kylemcdonald.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (kylemcdonald.net)
| jacknews wrote:
| The police forces were created to protect property and 'the
| system', not people, and that's what they continue to do.
|
| https://worxintheory.wordpress.com/2014/12/07/origins-of-the...
| mjburgess wrote:
| The whole "let's turn this into a libertarian political-
| philosophical discussion" angle is a misdirection.
|
| (And an increasingly common one, eg., cf. crypto).
|
| The guy installed spyware on laptops in a commercial store and
| then publicly displayed the data collected. It's an open-and-
| shut case.
|
| Almost any person who went to that store, and any store owner,
| would be furious. It is _these_ people the law here protects(,
| and damn right too) -- the interests of the artist aren 't "the
| little guy's" and more than a burglar is the underdog.
|
| A burglar claiming the police are corrupt for protecting
| property owners is as meglomanical as this guy. This isn't some
| middle-aged academic wishing he were in a mythical past, he's a
| guy breaking into computers, stealing data, and using it to
| boost his own career.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| > It's an open-and-shut case.
|
| Why was it dropped then?
| mjburgess wrote:
| Little public interest in the secret service pursing a 25yo
| megalomaniac moron, who thinks installing spyware makes him
| the hero against the forces of institutional evil.
|
| I imagine apple contacted the secret service in the first
| place because they weren't sure what else he'd done, other
| than, installing spyware across NY's apple stores.
|
| Once they realised it was just an art project, I imagine
| they backed off to be kind, not because he couldnt be
| prosecuted. He _clearly_ violated the CFAA
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| So you have it all figured out, including motivations not
| expressed in the piece.
| mjburgess wrote:
| Of course they're not expressed. I did however go and
| read articles from 2011, which give a clear account
| consistent with my interpretation.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Your descriptions of a mustache-twirling villain are
| overstated to say the least.
| antihero wrote:
| It is literal truth that the first police in the US were
| slave hunters and the first police station in the world was
| to protect from theft at the Wapping docks
| Vt71fcAqt7 wrote:
| What will you do if I rob you? Who will you report this to?
| What stops me from burglary?
|
| Also, city guards have existed in Europe and China since
| before tge US existed. They didn't use the word "police"
| obviously.
|
| I wish "cops = nazis" people would explain what they would
| have instead.
| antihero wrote:
| The idea that you can't criticise the failings and nature
| of something you also use are so tiring. Crime happens
| for so many reasons, some of which force maybe required
| to stop or hold people accountable, and many of the
| reasons are endemic to the system we live in. Other
| things could be prevented by provisioning elsewhere.
| Vt71fcAqt7 wrote:
| When did I say you can't criticise the failings and
| nature of something? I stated that your assertion was
| wrong, and asked questions that need answering by "defund
| the police" people. You never explicitly stated you want
| to dedund the police, but this is the argument those
| people make for it's removal. I read an article in the
| magazine of a major newspaper that said to remove prison
| and the police entirely, and this was before Floyd. I
| never said you support this position, and I never gave
| you any instruction. I asked you relevant questions and
| examined your statement.
|
| You didn't respond to any of it
| williamcotton wrote:
| There were constables in England in the Middle Ages. There
| have been local volunteer watchman and paid constables in
| the United States since the early colonial days. There was
| also "hue and cry", whereby someone witnessed a crime and
| then shouted out and all men were supposed to help catch
| the criminal. This, as can be imagined, was sometimes quite
| the shit-show.
| js8 wrote:
| The illegality of it might be clear cut, but the immorality
| of it is not.
|
| And why should the store owner be furious, and not amused, or
| embarrassed? It's just things, nobody got hurt. It is a very
| libertarian idea that violence against property is morally
| the same as violence against a person.
| mjburgess wrote:
| Right... but who's interest should the law here represent?
| There is no single common interest: this guy wants to
| install spyware and hijack pictures of customers for his
| own ends; apple doenst want that; customers dont want that
| (or even, of course, know about it!).
|
| So "immorality"-wise, who here are you empathising with?
|
| I, as a customer entering a store, do NOT want any burden
| to go and google whether that store has been hijacked by
| spyware and my data shared, etc.
|
| I want ZERO such burden. And i would expect the police to
| seriously deter any such "stunts".
|
| This guy has a sob story in which he's the hero... are you
| just going to take his framing?
|
| Empathise with the random guy in the store.
| uoaei wrote:
| A better question to start with is "where does the law
| fit into this?"
|
| What is the material consequence of this action? How does
| this affect people's lives? Why is that something that
| needs legislation?
|
| I'm not implying that there are no consequences, I'm
| curious how you interpret the issue.
| themanmaran wrote:
| > What is the material consequence of this action
|
| Almost none. Which is why there was no further
| prosecution.
|
| > Why is that something that needs legislation
|
| Because this is very similar to other acts that could
| have worse consequences. Consider instead of "installed
| funny spyware on apple laptops" was replaced with
| "installed funny spyware on ATMs".
| uoaei wrote:
| Lots of things "could" happen...
| jason-phillips wrote:
| > The police forces were created to protect property and 'the
| system', not people, and that's what they continue to do.
|
| I think it's rather naive to consider otherwise. Somewhere
| along the way we were fed this childish mythology about the
| importance of the individual, which is definitely captivating,
| stirring one's imagination with sparks of creativity, but the
| truth is that institutions and 'the system' are the bedrock of
| civilization and thus society. Fanciful thoughts of some
| anarcho-libertarian ideal state are cute, but much farther down
| the list of priorities than the continued function of the
| machinery of civilization, on which everything depends. And the
| enforcement required so that state continues is liberally
| allotted to almost every government agency.
| yucky wrote:
| Except government can't stop growing, so that eventually
| doesn't end well.
| ewzimm wrote:
| In these discussions, there's always an implicit assumption
| of certain intentions being the "real" ones. Statements like
| "police were created to..." first imply that there was a
| creator whose intentions define the police through
| incarnations, a kind of "god of police," and, more likely, if
| it was not a single individual, it is a "pantheon of police"
| composed of its creators and sustainers. And then we have the
| image of the state as a composite entity which exerts control
| over the pantheon without being corporeal itself, maybe as
| the composite will of a class of people.
|
| To me, this idea of the personification of state power into
| an all-powerful driving force seems more mythological than
| the importance of individual decisions being made by those
| who carry out the work of the state. An individual officer
| may have a similar belief in the intentions of the state, but
| their actions are ultimately their own.
|
| It seems ironic that the more we tend to be critical of state
| power, the more we tend to mythologize it into a kind of
| personification. You might not fall into this trap, but many
| do. But why should the intentions of the composite pseudo-
| entity matter more than the intentions of the real
| individuals who carry out the work? Isn't each police officer
| a person who has different goals and ideas about who they are
| and who they serve? Is this really so insignificant, or is it
| so overwhelmed by institutional goals that it becomes
| irellevant? Or could the real people and not their
| abstractions be the real bedrock of civilization?
| P5fRxh5kUvp2th wrote:
| Do you get upset when people say "evolution does X"?
|
| It's the same thing, it doesn't really matter if the
| process is clean or tumultuous, it's a reasonable heuristic
| to understand the status quo.
| ewzimm wrote:
| I'm not upset in either case, but that's another good
| example of the problems in attributing personified
| intelligence to an abstraction. Especially in the early
| days, people tended to substitute "God" with "evolution"
| and shoehorn evolutionary processes into areas where they
| didn't apply because they used to attribute them to God.
| This still happens! Sometimes, it's just "the universe."
|
| This was usually based on the further misunderstanding
| that evolution represents a progression from lower to
| higher life forms. For example, Engels was especially
| influenced by the idea that political processes followed
| Darwinian principles and that societies inevitably move
| from lower to higher forms, leading toward perfection in
| communism. In the U.S.S.R., science fiction assumed that
| aliens would all be Marxists because it was a fundamental
| law of the universe.
|
| Even in the case of evolution, there are minds with
| intentions. Our ancestors wanted certain things, and the
| ones who were able to get them passed on their
| programming to the next generations.
| nescioquid wrote:
| Put another way, society and culture are things that are
| essentially imaginary. They take place in the mind, and I
| doubt society or culture could organize itself without
| some shared imaginary space strewn with personifications
| and myths. Take that away and society and culture become
| impossible.
|
| Your unease is more warranted for things like evolution,
| which does not depend on a shared imaginary space.
| Vt71fcAqt7 wrote:
| >Put another way, society and culture are things that are
| essentially imaginary.
|
| Where did you get that from GP's post? They're simplying
| saying not to anthropomorphise societal systems.
| nescioquid wrote:
| I meant that the qualms he was enumerating could simply
| be restated this way, and my only addition here is that
| these societal/cultural things all are essentially
| imaginary (and depend on anthropomorphism and metaphor),
| unlike something like evolution. Apologies for my
| phrasing.
| P5fRxh5kUvp2th wrote:
| Who said anything about personified intelligence?
|
| "X does Y" implies nothing of the sort.
|
| If I say "The River Flows" am I arguing that the river is
| intelligent?
|
| No, absolutely not, you've setup a strawman from the very
| beginning.
|
| "The police are only there for ... " does not imply
| there's some overlord with a power point document with a
| bullet point outlining what the police are there for.
| the-printer wrote:
| What is to make of the overlap between institutional goals
| and those of individuals?
|
| We live in a time where people are developing institutional
| abstractions as their civil bedrock. How can we reasonably
| differentiate institutions that are fundamentally man-made
| from the men who are the means of the institution's goals?
| ewzimm wrote:
| My answer would be that individual intentions are
| ultimately the only thing that matters, but they are
| shaped by cultures which use abstractions to communicate
| and connect. Social control means learning which
| abstractions will stick, like finding a catchy tune, but
| the most memorable ideas aren't always the best. When an
| internalized abstraction leads to negative consequences,
| people tend to rebel against it and find another one.
|
| The goals of abstract institutions are abstractions of
| intentions. They exist in both the minds of those who
| write them down and those who carry them out, and a
| perfect translation between those two groups will never
| happen. If we want to get down reality, we have to talk
| about the intentions of the actual people involved.
| the-printer wrote:
| Who decides when the "tune" of an abstraction becomes
| stale? The people, but _which_ people? And how is it
| determined that an institution is yielding negative or
| positive results?
| ewzimm wrote:
| Every individual makes this judgment all the time. When
| people notice a problem with their ideologies, sometimes
| they will just ignore the issues, and other times they
| will decide to rebel. When enough people make that choice
| not to follow the tune, there's a revolution. That's why
| power is so precarious. It's hard to get people to dance
| to the same tune forever.
| williamcotton wrote:
| The term is "reification".
| hackton wrote:
| Pretty much like HR in companies
| yucky wrote:
| If HR isn't there to protect a company, who would? Or is the
| argument that it isn't needed?
| indymike wrote:
| > The police forces were created to protect property and 'the
| system'
|
| If that is the case, why is civil asset forfeiture a thing? It
| seems to undermine property rights and is a glaring failure in
| the system.
| yetihehe wrote:
| No policing system is perfect, in any complicated enough
| system there will always be rules that undermine that system
| slightly. It's like asking "why is cancer a thing, it
| undermines living organisms".
| Finnucane wrote:
| Not your property, the aristocracy's property. Cops don't
| work for peasants.
| muaytimbo wrote:
| replace "Aristocracy" with "political class"
| fortuna86 wrote:
| The "aristocracy" has their property seized all the time,
| for unpaid taxes and a litany of other crimes.
| HyperSane wrote:
| Those aren't the true aristocracy.
| cortesoft wrote:
| Nor true Scotsman, apparently.
| CPLX wrote:
| I mean the definition of aristocracy is basically the
| people who get to make the rules. It's the core point.
| iamdamian wrote:
| Without making a falsifiable claim about who this
| "aristocracy" is whose assets are the only assets
| protected by the police, it's hard to test your statement
| or see how it provides value.
| CPLX wrote:
| They're the ones the police don't fuck with.
|
| Do you live in the US? It's pretty trivial to figure out
| who is and isn't allowed to drive around with large sums
| of money, or carry a loaded weapon, as an actual
| practical matter.
|
| A good way of thinking about this is to understand that
| there's an in-group that the law protects but does not
| bind. And an out-group that the law binds but does not
| protect.
|
| It's a dark vision of the world but there are many in the
| in-group who seek to preserve it.
| uoaei wrote:
| "No true Scotsman is not Scottish" seems true,
| definitionally. Same applies for aristocracy: they are
| the ones who are served by special interests, _by
| definition_.
| objectivetruth wrote:
| vt85 wrote:
| rideontime wrote:
| > How fruitful can a conversation be about consent and privacy,
| when an artist does not seek their subject's consent?
|
| Agreed.
| throwayyy479087 wrote:
| Curious seeing him on here. I knew this guy in college - he's one
| of the biggest assholes I've ever met. Super pretentious, thought
| that everyone was far below him, and that the rules didn't apply.
|
| There's some poetry there; putting others in the public eye when
| you see yourself as above criticism.
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| I had my pitchfork ready because I thought he just took photos
| in the store with a camera, then I see he hacked the store
| laptop cameras...yeah that's creepy.
| marstall wrote:
| magic_hamster wrote:
| When someone shows up at your door claiming to be the secret
| service and taking all of your valuable electronics, don't you
| verify them in any way? Can anyone just show up at this guy's
| apartment with a suit and a "warrant" and start grabbing anything
| they like? It would be perfect karma if this happened to the
| author by someone else doing their own "art" project. I bet the
| author will understand there's no need for his consent.
| hklgny wrote:
| This article was a bit of a whirlwind for me, I had many of the
| reactions he later mentioned hearing in comments. I think where I
| settled is that this was an annoying invasion of privacy and
| ruined a good thing. I loved hearing about people recording music
| videos and doing real things in the stores, sucks to see that
| abused and put at risk.
|
| Stand out for me, however, was this line from the EFF: "if you're
| ever thinking of doing something like this in the future, give us
| a call first."
|
| I think taking that action would have altered my opinion on it.
| Does anyone know if such a reach out would actually get a useful
| response?
| logifail wrote:
| > Stand out for me, however, was this line from the EFF: "if
| you're ever thinking of doing something like this in the
| future, give us a call first." I think taking that action would
| have altered my opinion on it. Does anyone know if such a reach
| out would actually get a useful response?
|
| At the very least the EFF would have warned of the potential
| consequences, which the author appeared to be blissfully
| unaware of.
| whycombinetor wrote:
| Dunno how the hell one would not expect this to be be highly
| illegal. The guy literally wrote a software tool that covertly
| sends images from an unsuspecting device's camera to his personal
| servers, and installed+activated it on target machines belonging
| to the US's 3rd largest company by market cap in 2010 (now 1st
| largest). I get that in the pre-Snowden world, it felt like you
| were building a cutesy proof-of-concept to showcase to the world
| the possibilities of invasive mass surveillance, but that doesn't
| change the duck test that you actually built the mechanism and
| deployed it.
| paulpauper wrote:
| Agree. it's not art. he made literal spyware
| newZWhoDis wrote:
| Sure, and I don't support this guy.
|
| I do find it funny though that the same government that does
| this exact thing at scale works so hard to go after people
| who do this.
|
| It's not that they think it's wrong, it's that they don't
| want competition.
| CPLX wrote:
| The point of government is to have a monopoly on various
| kinds of power and control.
|
| It's the core concept of the thing, with the first premise
| being a monopoly on violence.
|
| It's not hypocritical for a government to say it's not
| wrong when they do violence and it is wrong when others do
| it.
|
| A government may commit moral or immoral violence, or
| express moral or immoral values in its actions.
|
| But it's not hypocrisy to not want competition. It's the
| point of the thing.
| mindslight wrote:
| The stores where this was done are chock full of purpose-built
| cameras performing more in-depth and persistent surveillance.
| The main difference is the proceeds from that surveillance
| system are generally kept hidden, so they don't provoke a base
| response.
|
| This is yet another occurrence of the draconian CFAA being used
| to persecute individuals, often with severe life-destroying
| penalties, for what should be considered, at most, misdemeanor
| trespass - a modern day witch hunt. And since the CFAA hinges
| on this nebulous concept of "authorization", it's
| straightforwardly nullified by a contract of adhesion, so it
| does nothing to protect individuals from transgressions by
| companies.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| since he had legal access to the computer, I don't think what
| he did is legally want different than running OBS on your own
| computer.
| mjburgess wrote:
| He did not have legal "access" to the computer; this isnt how
| the law, or even basic common sense, works.
|
| Apple made store computers available for demo, installing
| spyware on them _clearly_ violates the _level_ and kind of
| authorisation apple was providing. THe law makes these
| distinctions.
|
| But likewise, so does anyone with half a brain. You cannot
| come into my house an d install a keylogger on my PC, even if
| I make it available to you to play around with for other
| reasons.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| Apple made store computers available for demo and he didn't
| bypass any protection to run the software, and there isn't
| any agreement you have to sign to use one of the demo
| computers that lists what you are and aren't allowed to do
| with them. I agree this is on the edge, but looking through
| the CFAA, it isn't obvious to me which if any section
| applies here.
| cmeacham98 wrote:
| This is like claiming "You downloaded and ran my
| executable from the internet, so the fact it starting
| keylogging you is ok! I had totally legitimate access
| provided by you!!"
|
| Apple makes the computers available for the purposes of
| demonstration. No rational person would ever think this
| includes installing spyware on them, so you are exceeding
| the level of authorization Apple gave you. I strongly
| believe a court would see it the same way.
| kergonath wrote:
| > Apple made store computers available for demo and he
| didn't bypass any protection to run the software, and
| there isn't any agreement you have to sign to use one of
| the demo computers that lists what you are and aren't
| allowed to do with them.
|
| Unauthorised entry is unauthorised regardless of whether
| you have to open a door or break a lock. Not having to
| circumvent protection measures does not make something
| legal.
| SoftAnnaLee wrote:
| The thing with authorization is... well... you can have
| authorization to go to a public park. But carving up a
| park bench is very much not authorized. You can be "able"
| to do something when the public has access to it. However
| the ethics of altering property that belongs to somebody
| else tends to lean from anywhere from "okay if you have
| permission" to "heavily illegal".
|
| Anybody can install spyware on a public computer, anybody
| can install spyware when given permission by the property
| owner. Installing spyware on a public computer (that you
| do not own) without permission of the owner is very much
| illegal.
| uoaei wrote:
| Do I have authorization to sketch highly-accurate
| versions of people's faces in that public park?
| whycombinetor wrote:
| Public park yes, but in an Apple store is a different
| question entirely. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_
| of_panorama#Laws_aroun...
| mjburgess wrote:
| > law prohibits accessing a computer without
| authorization, or in excess of authorization
|
| _Excess_ is a very broad condition, and deliberately so.
| The law doesnt say what counts as auth one way or
| another, that 's up to the courts to interpret.
|
| It seems beyond doubt that any reasonable court would
| find this guy did not have auth to install anything, let
| alone spyware.
| P5fRxh5kUvp2th wrote:
| odd how merely the existence of a mechanism to try and
| attempt to prevent access falls under DRM, the the non-
| existence of such a mechanism apparently doesn't imply
| permission.
| yCombLinks wrote:
| I always wonder how skeezebags justify their actions, and
| there it is. They're deluded
| [deleted]
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > Especially the parts where I chastise, "look, we've gotten so
| wrapped up in all these computers we have forgotten about the
| real people around us". Like one of those cafe signs that says
| "we don't have wifi, talk to each other, pretend it's 1995". I
| think this cynical, dismissive attitude towards networked
| technology was popular in the late 2000s and early 2010s. Now I
| can see I was just parroting it.
|
| You aren't "parroting" a thing if you're feeling it. Sometimes a
| thing is part of our collective Zeitgeist because we all feel it,
| feel it's wrong.
| santoshalper wrote:
| Also, I don't think that this sentiment has gone out of fashion
| at all.
| j33zusjuice wrote:
| It absolutely hasn't. If anything, the feeling has
| strengthened in people who once lived without these devices.
| peterkelly wrote:
| Seems like it might have been a good idea to discuss this "art
| project" with the Apple store in question before proceeding.
| prego_xo wrote:
| This story isn't a very new one, and overall repeats the same
| dated philosophical standpoints about both art and privacy, but
| man is the author's storytelling gripping. It was interesting to
| read about the secret service and how they didn't quite know what
| to do throughout the entire investigation. Or Apple, who opted to
| strong-arm blogs from allowing the photos rather than talk with
| EFF lawyers privately. It's funny to think how such an unsolvable
| question of "What Is Art?" was the deciding factor in how each
| party handled a case that could have easily been fought for and
| against the project fundamentally.
| Skypwn wrote:
| Wow!
| rrwo wrote:
| And for anyone who insists that Apple is one of the good guys:
|
| > In response, Apple contacted the Secret Service and they raided
| my apartment. After censoring the work online, Apple did not
| pursue a civil case against me.
| newZWhoDis wrote:
| Why would the SS investigate this? Seems like a task for state
| police.
| CharlesW wrote:
| I was curious about this too:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Secret_Service#I.
| ..
|
| _Cyber investigations include cybercrime, network
| intrusions, identity theft, access device fraud, credit card
| fraud, and intellectual property crimes. [...] The Secret
| Service has concurrent jurisdiction with the FBI over certain
| violations of federal computer crime laws. They have created
| 24 Electronic Crimes Task Forces (ECTFs) across the United
| States. These task forces are partnerships between the
| service, federal /state and local law enforcement, the
| private sector and academia aimed at combating technology-
| based crimes._
| imperfect_blue wrote:
| I don't know, seems like a pretty proportionate response to
| someone coming into your store and installing what's
| effectively spyware on your machines.
|
| Sure, no harm was done and it was in the name of art, but how
| would anyone making the decisions at Apple know that?
| Bakary wrote:
| I thoroughly enjoyed reading this. The artist seems pretentious,
| but self-aware. Annoying, but a great storyteller. The art and
| philosophical conclusions involved are dated and cliche but
| thought provoking at the same time. It's irritating, exciting,
| and comforting all at once. I don't know what to make of it but
| I'm glad that people like the author exist.
| throwayyy479087 wrote:
| I know the guy - this is a very accurate take. Recycling
| cliches and thinking that he's brilliant are par for the course
| for him. He _is_ a talented programmer but seemed to see
| engineering as below .him.
|
| Installing spyware to make public the faces of others for
| implied mockery, when you see yourself as above criticism is
| poetic.
| cj1 wrote:
| pkdpic wrote:
| Agreed, I would have really liked the paintings by themselves
| with minimal context. But this kind of pretentious artist
| archetype seems like its designed to alienate most people from
| visual art rather than invite them in. And even though I really
| love the paintings, they don't embody all the fancy ideas he's
| going on (and on) about in this write up. You're cool and
| smart, we get it. The paintings can and should speak for
| themselves.
| santoshalper wrote:
| Nobody made you read an artist's blog. It seems disengenous
| to go voluntarily read someone's writing then criticize them
| for writing and not "letting their work speak for itself"
| Bakary wrote:
| It helps to consider the pretentious artistry as part of the
| piece. The writing about his experience doing the piece, and
| the experiences themselves are more interesting than the
| piece itself and need not be separate criteria.
|
| It's okay for most people to be alienated by it. They are
| neither wrong nor right to be so: I'm just happy that this
| art form exists.
| _spduchamp wrote:
| I met Kyle when he taught a OpenFrameworks workshop here in
| Toronto many years ago. He's not a pretentious guy at all. He
| seemed very chill and down to earth, and just deeply curious
| with a highly competent ability to use programming as a tool to
| investigate questions. I admired his steely patience trying to
| teach that workshop while a couple folks kept interrupting
| while they struggled installing the prerequisite tools.
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _People Staring at Computers_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27799859 - July 2021 (337
| comments)
|
| _When Art, Apple and the Secret Service Collide: 'People Staring
| at Computers'_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4235037 -
| July 2012 (64 comments)
|
| _People Staring at Computers_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2746026 - July 2011 (3
| comments)
|
| _Feds visit artist behind People Staring at Computers,
| confiscate laptop_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2740485
| - July 2011 (50 comments)
|
| _Secret Service confiscates computer of "People Staring at
| Computers" creator_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2740083 - July 2011 (1
| comment)
| bitwize wrote:
| > "Ok. Is there anyone else in the house?"
|
| > "No sir."
|
| > They opened up two doors and found my roommates sleeping. "Who
| is this?"
|
| > "Oh, those are my roommates." I didn't realize it was 8 am. I
| was up late the night before, and I figured it was ten or eleven
| already, and that they had left for work.
|
| That's making false statements, a felony punishable by up to five
| years in federal prison.
| patchtopic wrote:
| not quite.
| trillic wrote:
| ..and that's why you never, ever, speak to a police officer. If
| a police officer wants to talk to you, they are probably
| conducting a criminal investigation. Do yourself a favor and
| exercise your right to remain silent.
| paulpauper wrote:
| not quite so. you may still be required to identify yourself
| and they may run background check
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| It is a felony to knowingly give false statements, meaning to
| lie.
| SaintGhurka wrote:
| "It is a felony to knowingly give false statements"
|
| I think that's only true if you lie to a federal agent. Lying
| to a cop is usually a misdemeanor. Depends on the state and
| the circumstances.
| FoomFries wrote:
| But then you have a case where the officer will try and use
| what you said against you. So, even if it wasn't knowingly in
| truth, in practice it will be up to you to defend that truth.
| Whereas silence saves you the hassle.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| In practice, good-faith and respectful interactions with
| law enforcement have a positive outcome.
| muaytimbo wrote:
| Somehow, I doubt you have much "practicing" this.
| folsom wrote:
| In practice paying a lawyer $250/hour to sit with you
| while you answer questions (or not answer) is cheaper
| than missing out on five years of income and all of the
| other consequences that come with going to prison.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| unfortunately the positive outcome they often have is
| teaching people that is a very bad idea to have goid-
| faith interactions with last enforcement.
| jjulius wrote:
| It's worth highlighting that it doesn't seem as though this
| caused any issue whatsoever for the author.
| bitwize wrote:
| Had the government wanted to give him a harder time than they
| did, it could've been a significant issue.
|
| FBI agents are trained in interrogation techniques designed
| to manipulate you into saying contradictory things, for the
| sole purpose of being able to slap you with a false-
| statements charge in case they can't get enough on you to
| convict you of the crime they were actually investigating.
| mkl95 wrote:
| Any idea why they do this? Is it a PR thing? Some angle
| like _95% of our suspects are convicted within 5 years_.
| michaelt wrote:
| Some people hear "Al Capone was only ever jailed for tax
| evasion" and think to themselves "that murderer deserved
| to be in jail, getting him jailed was just even if it
| wasn't for his biggest crimes"
| j33zusjuice wrote:
| There are historical reasons, like the fact that LE was
| created to protect a special class), which deeply impact
| the way LE is trained, which dictates how LE interacts
| with normal people. There's what you suggested, that they
| want great stats, because political careers are made off
| of stats, and winning high profile cases (there's a long
| list of questionable cases where DAs railroaded a person
| or group just before they ran for governor or congress.
|
| The book "Unfair: The New Science of Criminal Injustice"
| discusses a lot of the failings of the system, and gives
| suggestions on how to fix the system without tearing it
| down. In discussing the failings, he gives a lot of
| thoughts on why things are as they are, etc. It's a
| pretty easy read.
|
| In case you missed the link on the origins of police
| somewhere else in the comments:
| https://worxintheory.wordpress.com/2014/12/07/origins-of-
| the...
| bitwize wrote:
| It can help the FBI nail someone they _know_ is guilty,
| but is somehow made of teflon so the prosecutor can 't
| prove it in court.
|
| It's also handy for dealing with political opponents.
| Like imagine Occupy starts up again and gains real
| traction this time. The sight of its leadership being
| perp-walked into federal court can be real demoralizing.
| If the FBI has the ability to arrest them on procedural
| crimes any time they want, they could break up the entire
| operation before it poses a threat to the status quo. Do
| you think COINTELPRO actually went away?
| googlryas wrote:
| It's not illegal to make false statements in this context. It's
| illegal to _knowingly and willfully_ make false statements.
|
| If later, the author said something like "I was talking to my
| roommate in his room just before you guys knocked on the door",
| then he might be charged with a felony. But the statement by
| itself was fine, even if false. 18 U.S. Code SS 1001
| uglycinema wrote:
| "I remember being a bit nervous on the first visit. Not because I
| thought I was doing anything wrong, or because I was worried
| about getting "caught".It was more like stage fright. "
|
| "Sometimes I would open another tab and load Flickr or Open
| Processing so I had an excuse if someone asked why I was
| comparing every single computer."
| throwawayay1235 wrote:
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| (2021)
|
| A bunch of previous discussion:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27799859
| carbocation wrote:
| > *(2021)
|
| Isn't it 2012, not 2021? (The article footer says "Kyle
| McDonald June 12, 2012")
| stordoff wrote:
| The first section (regarding the FOIA request and looking
| back from "ten years later") is from 2021. There is a signoff
| just before the picture of Steve Jobs that states "Kyle
| McDonald June 7, 2021".
| subradios wrote:
| It is not a product of privilege or the police existing to
| protect specific companies.
|
| The secret service in this case were acting in the interest of
| public order, and if shopkeepers or franchisees couldn't have
| people installing Spyware on their machines prosecuted - it would
| make any kind of public hardware or software demo impossible.
|
| It's true that good public order does have effects that "empower"
| some people and disempower others, and sometimes this is Bad(TM).
| However good public order is also inherently necessary to have a
| society at all.
| cr4nberry wrote:
| Publishing pictures of people taken with literal spyware isn't
| art. I have no idea what kind of fantasy world someone needs to
| be living in in order to think this is art. It's a wonder he
| didn't get prosecuted for it
| [deleted]
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