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Comment by larkeith | Hacker News Reader

The point isn't to go after everyone who fails to completely or accurately answer, but rather to provide a pretext for the deportation of people the government disfavor but lack a criminal case against; for example, an immigrant opposition leader, protestor, or whistleblower.

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Yes exactly. Laws which de jure make everyone a criminal simply give the government an excuse to de facto imprison or expel whomever they want, and should be avoided at all costs

This is the same reason it bothers me that the actual speed limit is an unknown and inconsistent number approximately 15mph above the one they post and can punish you for exceeding.

This is basically how all laws currently work. The prosecutor gets to pick who to charge (or sometimes gets to pick which case to put in front of a grand jury, though generally the process is so one sided that the prosecutor effectively has full control over what evidence the grand jury sees and is thus able to sway their decision either way). We would need to change the system to remove the choice of enforcing criminal charges from all, but this will be a very bad thing to do given current laws (just look at issues with teens sending photos to each other, what would happen if we really cracked down on all cases of illegal photos being shared).

The system appears designed so that once you are targeted, they can easily crush you by bringing forth laws generally ignored for the average person not targeted by the legal system. It needs to be fixed, but there is almost no political will to fix it and any fixes will be a drastic deviation from what we currently know.

Kind of, but the legal system is tilted to prevent people from being unjustly imprisoned, not to ensure that every guilty person is locked up. Prosecutorial discretion and the grand jury process is part of that, but there is always a regular jury as a check to determine if the charges should be dismissed and the "default" if no one does anything is always no charges.

Now, its fair that in practice this can be abused to protect people in power by not charging them, or to get people deported by charging with things no jury would convict on, or scare them into a plea deal. But that is where the political system is supposed to step in (most DAs are elected) and remove prosecutors who are making decisions the voting population doesn't like.

But people don't vote (or don't research or don't care) enough to be an effective check on the legal system like that, which is a whole different set of problems... but my point is that these systems are designed to balance each other, not so that each system is perfect by itself.

>but the legal system is tilted to prevent people from being unjustly imprisoned, not to ensure that every guilty person is locked up.

Not anymore. Now what happens is that once you are targeted all these laws that aren't enforced normally are pulled out, and you end up with an insane maximum potential time spent in prison. At which point a relatively light plea deal is offered. Even if you are innocent, unless you are rich enough to have money to afford a good lawyer, it isn't worth fighting. And even if you are rich, the prosecutor can just fine tune the plea deal until it is better than fighting the charge. This has strongly tilted the system now that most people (something around 90% if memory serves) do not get their day in front of a jury.

Not disagreeing. You are pointing out problems with the legal system and suggesting it be changed.

I am pointing out that the legal system is designed this way on purpose, the problem is that the other systems that are supposed to balance it are not doing so, and the focus should be on why the checks and balances are not working, not designing some perfect legal system to exist in isolation.

You obviously have not dealt with the US government. Take it from someone who was, is and will likely be scarred several years from dealing with the US Government (esp. US Immigration), this scenario is very real.

You forgot brown people. That's who will be targeted the most.

Love the downvotes. The current US administration is racist through and through. This kind of very broad net will be used to target undesirables... which means brown people in the eyes of the human garbage who comprise current US leadership.

The truth hurts, right America?

With all due respect, I've been reading your comments on this thread and you sound completely off your rocker. You'd be surprised by how much more weight your opinions would hold if you'd cut the childish, pseudo-political statements about 'brown people', how the US is on the downslope and any disgusting statements calling an entire country "garbage".

"Show Me The Man, And I'll Show You The Crime" - Lavrentiy Beria

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