Hacker News Reader

Comment by sweden | Hacker News Reader

I see a lot of people in this thread pulling the trigger of this "being an invasion of privacy".

While this is true, I can't help but to feel that the Hacker News crowd tends of see only one side of this issue.

They are not asking smartphone companies to introduce backdoors in their products. They are just trying to make sure that police has the right resources to be able to solve investigations.

To be honest, this sounds reasonable to some extent. When someone gets questioned by the police, you expect the person to tell the truth. If the police gets a hint that your smartphone might have significant evidence of some sort of crime, isn't it reasonable to comply with the request?

It's not like they are asking to access it remotely from anywhere at anytime.

View on HN

> They are just trying to make sure that police has the right resources to be able to solve investigations.

Which the police can and have been able to do with a search warrant. Courts in various parts of the world have spoken here: the smartphone is unlike other personal effects, in that it may provide access to a historically unprecedented vault of personal information about its owner. The space for police abuse here is vast, and using courts as a check against police power is a common solution.

I think it is acceptable to wait for a search warrant to search someone's house, whatever that person was doing there, chances are that there will be traces of it even if the person tried to destroy evidence (blood residues, fingerprints, smells, etc).

But for a smartphone, I think it works a little bit differently. Any evidence that you might have on your smartphone can be quickly destroyed without leaving any traces. Even if a search warrant takes 5 minutes to be issued, by the time it arrives to the police it will be completely pointless, since you were able to press delete on all your photos during those 5 minutes.

If you're worried about someone destroying evidence, you need to detain them and confiscate their phone. Until then, you have no idea where the evidence is, and it could be destroyed at anytime no matter where it is.

So, what, if you find out you have a warrant, you'll immediately destroy any evidence you have ? Why not, y'know, destroy it in the first place, before any warrant is issued ?

I don't understand the point you're trying to make.

>When someone gets questioned by the police, you expect the person to tell the truth.

Police should not expect anything. Even if you tell the truth, police could still build a story so that it will make you guilty of something. Not because police are evil, but because investigation is not easy, so any interaction with the police is a great danger for any person, especially the honest ones since they are often more naive and less equipped to deal with the police.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE

> To be honest, this sounds reasonable to some extent.

Some - many, most? - of the people they will be questioning are completely innocent of a crime.

Imagine you are an innocent bystander in some political event and a group of policemen are holding you down while one of them tears your eyelids open with his fingers and forces your phone against your eye.

Does that sound reasonable to you?

And who gets to make this decision, some policeman, on the spot, in a busy crowd, on a bad day when he's been dealing with rioters? For any reason he likes?

This is just opening up a new avenue for police brutality and physical intimidation of minorities.

Look at stop and search in the US and how it is used (specifically, who it is used against), and it is far less invasive than this.

I think policemen should be standing up to oppose this and require the use of a court warrant, as is the current standard. I wonder how many will.

Meanwhile to search my house you need a search warrant. I'd feel more violated in my privacy by someone snooping through my phone or computer than by someone searching my house. With a search warrant this would be a different discussion.

> When someone gets questioned by the police, you expect the person to tell the truth. If the police gets a hint that your smartphone might have significant evidence of some sort of crime, isn't it reasonable to comply with the request?

A person does not have to testify against oneself. This principle stands in the USA and Finland for sure (that I know of), I'd expect it to stand in Norway as well.

Well, if you saw something happening and you tell the police that you didn't see anything happening, isn't that obstruction of justice?

We could apply the same thing to your smartphone: if you were taking pictures of some view and you happened to catch something on camera which you didn't reveal to the police, wouldn't that be obstruction of justice as well?

Those are quite different, as it is very easy to take a picture without seeing it, or take a picture and not notice something in it. You'd have to intentionally fail to reveal information.

And for that to carry any weight, the police should have to show that you had that information in the first place. If they knew you were filming a crime and you said you saw nothing, that should not be obstruction. It's just suspicious. It should be grounds for a warrant, which could be used to establish that you had captured the evidence and lied. Then it's obstruction.

I looked it up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_silence#Norway

As a third party witness it is different, at least in Norway.

> In general, anyone is required to appear before the courts and give testimony, except dictated otherwise by the law

Nonetheless:

> §123: A witness may refuse to answer questions leading to self-incrimination either for the witness itself, or for anyone related to the witness as described by §122

> If the police gets a hint that your smartphone might have significant evidence of some sort of crime, isn't it reasonable to comply with the request?

Sure, with a warrant.

In the US you don't have to talk to the police, and you never should talk to the police. Remember, they aren't necessarily trying to find the perpetrator, they are trying to convict someone, and that's not necessarily the same thing.

If they can establish you had the means, motive and opportunity, why look for anyone else. Your device can put you close enough to a crime scene that you become the convenient person to convict.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE&feature=share

The problem is that as this stands, they can force almost anyone. They need probable cause to search my home, but not to unlock my phone. And I'd rather have them look through my clothes and possessions than all my mail and private conversations...

If you consider your smartphone external memory, only accessible through your brain via encryption keys stored therein, then this is compelled speech and potentially self-incrimination. Without a warrant, without a lawyer.

> When someone gets questioned by the police, you expect the person to tell the truth.

What? No, I expect them to invoke the 5th and shut up.

In practice that extremely hard to do though...

Even in a America, despite what we see in the news, many Americans are quite nice and decent people that want to help.

If the police is investigating a crime in your neighborhood and asks you if you heard anything, or saw anyone suspicious. Was the neighbors door open when you came home last night? what time was that? Would you refuse to answer?

Do you not want the burglar or murderer to be caught?

I know the police in the US is too confrontational, you need to fix that so that people can talk to the police.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com