Judge says ‘literal but nonsensical’ Google translation isn’t consent for search | Hacker News Reader

Judge says ‘literal but nonsensical’ Google translation isn’t consent for search

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161 pointsjonas21100 comments

I am bilingual and spend a lot of time interacting with people who are not.

‘Buscar el auto’ Means, literally ‘To look for the car’. The question ‘Puedo buscar el auto’ means ‘can I look for the car.’

As an English speaker you might see that it’s possible to understand this as ‘search the car’. Wrong. In Spanish, if you ask this question… … (and this is key) … … the car cannot be present.

If you are to ‘buscar el auto’, it means

a) There is a car that is familiar to you b) It is somewhere, but you don’t know where it is.

The article’s use of ‘find’ was close but it missed the mark. ‘Look for’ is the most accurate translation.

A Spanish speaker at this point would have NO idea what the policeman is trying to say. (‘What is this car you’re talking about? Why are you asking me if you can look for the car?')

Moreso, a Spanish speaker with no understanding of how English works would simply not make the link from ‘buscar’ to ‘registrar’ (which is the word the policeman SHOULD have used) even despite the policeman being present and car searches being a normal thing.

The two words are just too far off.

The reason he's saying 'Si' is because this is what one does in Spanish to jog along a conversation where one

a) Is not following b) Doesn't think there is any hope of asking for clarification without making the conversation even more difficult.

I regularly interact with people who speak no English in healthcare. It’s amazing how confused a situation can get and how far a conversation can apparently progress with someone saying ‘yes’ in answer to a question that isn’t understood. It’s a trap for the unwary. Getting in the habit of phrasing questions such that ‘yes’ or ‘no’ are not the answer is a good habit in this setting, but it’s a slow way of having a conversation.

Whenever I feel like I'm not being understood I always ask the same question twice, but phrased so that yes to the second question means no to the first. This way if they're just 'yes'ing their way through the conversation I can catch it and slow down to ensure they're actually understanding me.

This is one of the reasons the concept of informed consent is necessary in medical an other important situations. Life is complicated, and a lot of harm can be done if important questions understood incompletely, hastily, or even not understood at all. If it's important, there is a duty to take the extra effort to verify there has been a true "meeting of the minds".

My maid does not speak any English, only Spanish, using Google translate is not perfect, but whenever I want her to understand something properly, I ask her to repeat what she understood, and that works out fine.

When my children were little, my standard was "repeat it in your own words" to make sure they weren't parroting it back at me without comprehension.

Yup, spot on. The meaning of "buscar" is really narrow, "discover the location of a thing", so even if the officer pointed at the car while saying "puedo buscar el auto", the only reasonable response would have been, "Huh? It's right here!"

Basically, "can I look for the car?". "What do you mean look for it? It's right here!"

There's another meaning for buscar: to go get something of yours that you left somewhere. So "puedo buscar el auto?" could also be interpreted as "can I go get my car?", to which "si" is a perfectly expectable answer.

I speak Spanish as well. My translation of it would be "try to find" which I assume is related to what the article was trying to say. In either case we agree.

At the very least the cop could have called an interpreter, put them on speakerphone, and conducted the conversation that way. I'm surprised law enforcement doesn't have these services, especially for Spanish.

Does raise the question: if a law enforcement office pulls over someone with whom they are unable to communicate, what is the protocol?

It was perhaps a bit sensationally presented, but the other commenter hits on an unfortunate truth: too often, inability to communicate is treated as noncompliance, and the standard response to perceived noncompliance is violence.

For example, in Oklahoma City last year, police shot and killed a deaf man, despite being told he was deaf, because he wasn't able to hear what they were yelling to him:

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/09/21/552527929...

Or this other case where an old Indian man was slammed on the ground, leaving him partially paralyzed.

https://youtu.be/JsAXgABK5BU

Another example was pepper spraying a man who just had a stroke: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/va-resigns-taser-peppe...

>because he wasn't able to hear what they were yelling to him

He was advancing toward them with a metal pipe, while their weapons were drawn. I don't think there was much that needed to be communicated in such a scenario. Most likely suicide by cop.

Are the police so poorly trained and terrified that they are unable to subdue a deaf man carrying a pipe without lethal force? Why is walking towards a cop with a melee weapon grounds for a death sentence?

Deaf doesn't mean weak.

Removing the word "deaf" from GP's comment, it's still a good question

True, that.

It's not a matter of being poorly trained. A "melee weapon" at 15 feet is a credible lethal threat, full stop. You don't mess around with that.

Probably the guy had no intention of using it as a weapon, but cops do deal with people prepared to attack them, and had only subtle clues that this case might be different. Given that they already had guns drawn, a clear signal, the deafness is almost irrelevant. Either the guy was coming after them, or just not tracking the situation. Only in hindsight is it clear that it was the latter.

There's dozens of videos of UK police detaining people carrying machetes and other weapons without lethal force. A police officer shooting at someone coming at them with a melee weapon is a combination of laziness and cowardice IMO.

I've been on raids with British police where the suspect has a violent criminal history. They just put on helmets and had shields ready in the van. No guns, no tasers, just batons and pepper spray. On one occasion the suspect had previously gotten arrested for brandishing nunchucks in public, and in the pre-raid briefing the sergeant said "if he comes at you with them, just retreat and wait for him to either knock himself out or tire himself out, then hit him a bit". He was only semi-joking.

It absolutely comes down to better training. Even failing that, I see no reason why a taser could not have been used in this situation. And ultimately if a police officer gets injured, tough shit: it's what they get paid for and they're well aware of the risks when they sign up. Maybe ditching the "shoot anyone who poses a marginal threat" mentality would be good for the police too, I reckon there'd be a lot less power hungry cops in the states.

> You don't mess around with that.

Riot gear? Use those man catchers the japanese have? Retreat if he doesn't pose an immediate threat to anyone else? Pepperspray?

Other countries manage to detain physically violent people without shooting them. Unless the US is governed by different physics that make steel pipes more lethal I think there's no solid argument why police officers can't just handle the situation the same as everyone else.

Couldn't the police shoot the legs or the hand holding the weapon in less-threatening situations. Or is that more cruel than death?

Even a warning shot in the air is enough to calm certain situations. Or is there risk of shooting a plane, helicopter, falling bullet killing someone else?

Warning shots and attempts at non-lethal injuries escalate the encounter and are practically impossible under stress. That only works in Western movies.

Shooting anywhere can kill. They aim for center of mass because they are less likely to miss.

How much risk do you expect police to take on? This man threatened them with lethal force, in the face of drawn weapons. Even if they were to attempt to subdue, they would be risking severe bodily harm.

At some point I believe a human being momentarily forfeits their right to life when they show reckless, deliberate disdain for the life of others. Deadly force was met with deadly force. The power imbalance is irrelevant, considering how much damage a man can do with a pipe, and the fact that he was fully aware of the situation.

> How much risk do you expect police to take on?

All of it. I will trade a hundred dead police officers for one citizen who would have been unjustly harmed and sleep soundly for it.

Police receive power from the state and significant social plaudits. In exchange, they place the well-being of every citizen over their own. That's the deal. It is being abrogated regularly. That needs to change.

> In exchange, they place the well-being of every citizen over their own. That's the deal.

Sadly, this hasn't been the deal in my lifetime and, to hear my parents--both of whom were police officers--tell it, for longer than that.

Every person I've ever interacted with who is or has been a police officer has said that the message is that your first duty is to "go home to your family." The "bad guys" aren't worthy of self-sacrifice and heroics. Now if you, as an officer, happen to die because you selflessly saved "a civilian" (notice how that's different from "a bad guy"), then you are seen as deserving of all of the heroic writings ever to be written about a human.

But if you die as a result of a supposedly-preventable outcome of a confrontation with "a bad guy", meaning that you didn't fire soon enough or you tried non-lethal methods in a situation such as described here, then you're just an idiot. So you've not so much sacrificed as a hero but simply failed.

I genuinely don't think that any police officer, or at least any significant number of them, sees themselves as having placed the well-being of every citizen-including-"perps" over their own. I kind of get it; when it comes to me versus the other guy, of course I want to be the one still alive at the end. I guess that means there's something fundamentally broken with how we parcel out state-backed forced.

> I genuinely don't think that any police officer, or at least any significant number of them, sees themselves as having placed the well-being of every citizen-including-"perps" over their own.

I agree with this depiction of the current state of affairs.

I am saying that it is bonkers and wrong, because it is bonkers and wrong.

You can't have a free society that fears its police.

I can simultaneously be okay with the police shooting a man coming at them aggressively with a pipe and not fear the police, because I have no intention of going after the police with a pipe.

Or aggressively pulling his trousers up whilst lying in a hallway begging for his life.

Warning, this is terrible: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBUUx0jUKxc&has_verified=1

Didn't even have to click the link. I still generally don't fear the police because I do think that video was an exception, but yeah... that man was murdered.

> All of it. I will trade a hundred dead police officers for one citizen who would have been unjustly harmed and sleep soundly for it.

And where are you going to find people self-sacrificing enough to take that job?

I would rather have trouble finding police officers than find places to bury the citizens who bad police victimize.

Do you actually think there would be fewer dead bodies if there were significantly fewer police?

You could institute some kind of a draft. And I imagine fewer people would break the law if they had to enforce it for two years.

http://www.frfrogspad.com/fantasy.htm

"The question that is frequently asked is Under what circumstances does the state or municipal entities have a constitutional duty to protect citizens from violence at the hands of private actors?

The general answer to this question is that there is no constitutional duty to protect free citizens. The only clear case of a duty to protect is when a citizen is in the custody of a state or municipality."

Respectfully: you are assuming, with this answer, that I do not understand what the currently-held jurisprudence is. And not that I assert that that jurisprudence is horseshit. Because I do understand it, and it is horseshit.

No, I respect you as an HN contributor and wouldn't offend your intelligence with that.

Since comments are public I don't necessarily address the parent poster with them, I also speak to the broader reader/commenter base.

I should have made myself clear on that, sorry.

Are police not able to run away? How much risk are they really in from a blunt melee weapon?

Are the police not able to run away? No, not really. To threaten somebody with deadly force is a felony. You or I would have a duty to run away if possible. A police officer has a duty to apprehend the suspect. What if the officers ran away and their assailant went on to assault and kill others?

As for how much risk a blunt weapon poses, a pipe can easily cave in a person's skull with a single blow. Successfully blocking the strike could result in a compound fracture of the forearm ... and then a caved-in skull. Broken ribs can cause punctured lungs and death from a pneumothorax. And it can all happen in a fraction of a second.

Real life violence is not a dance, like those long drawn-out fight scenes in movies. It's not about throwing punches and inflicting pain until somebody gives up. It's about breaking bodies so thoroughly that it's irrelevant whether the other person wants to give up or not. It's sudden, fast, confusing, brutal, and often horrific. The survivors of real world violence often come away knowing the smell of brains or freshly spilled bowels.

Before second guessing the police, it's important to know just what they really face. Read some books on real life violence. It's sobering. Rory Miller is a good place to start.

You say they can’t run because they have a duty to apprehend the suspect. Why, then, is it ok to kill the suspect?

I believe you are under a mistaken assumption. It's never ok to kill the suspect. Still, one can be justified in using lethal force. It's a very subtle distinction. You never shoot to kill. That's simply murder. You shoot to stop the attack -- even if that's very likely to result in the death of the person you're shooting at. It can be justifiable to shoot somebody running at you with a deadly weapon. Shutting down the circulation is a fairly quick and reliable way to stop somebody from taking actions that threaten your life. But, once they stop running at you and crumple to the ground, you have to stop shooting. If you continue shooting, that's murder. If somebody turns to run, a civilian must stop shooting or it's murder. (In certain circumstances, the police can and should continue shooting.) Again, it's subtle.

So, it's not ok to intentionally kill the suspect, but it can be ok to use deadly force. I'll assume you're really asking why deadly force might be acceptable. A pipe in the hand is a lethal weapon. If a police officer is duty-bound to apprehend a person who is using lethal force against him, it would be insane to use anything less than lethal force in response. If an officer attempts to use less effective non-lethal means, but fails and is killed, then he is not only dead, but also has failed in his duty to protect the public just as if he had run away.

It's important to remember that these situations can happen extremely fast, under enormous stress. A routine encounter can turn deadly serious in a fraction of a second. The whole thing can be over in under three seconds. There is no time to think or reason. To think is to hesitate, and to hesitate is to die. You must have a trained reflex: if they use deadly force, then I shoot at center-of-mass. Seeing a pipe in the hand of an approaching person might be the trigger for that reflex. It's not quite so simple, though. It's best to prime the reflex by thinking it through before-hand. Police officers must constantly maintain situational awareness, thinking through possible scenarios and priming their reflexes based on who is around and how they're acting. It's a very difficult and dangerous job.

> How much risk are they really in from a blunt melee weapon?

while i'm no fan of the police, or their excessive use of force, one shouldn't be dismissive of "blunt melee weapons". they've been killing people on a daily basis for the duration of recorded history, and will likely continue to do so as long as we're all made of meat.

But it is still possible to prepare police officers for such situations. Don't know about US but in my country police officers:

a) are never alone, always a pair of them on patrol

b) are supposed to be trained in combat to reasonable skill level

c ) carry their own meele weapons (batons)

d) (often) carry a taser

That should give them enough advantage over a man with metal pipe to subdue him without using guns. And if that's not enough, then maybe we should give them additional equipment (pads, helmets, shields, etc.) so they don't have to resort to guns.

I called that out because, unlike a gun, you can outrun a pipe. Sure, it’s deadly if it hits you, but don’t let it get to that point.

meanwhile, in europe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mzPj_IaMzY

Typically they will attempt to communicate with body language; i.e. administer a beating until their interlocutor gets the point.

Can confirm. It has happened to deaf people at times.

"Typically"?

I'm a physician and use these services often. They are inconvenient. Using Google translate is much quicker. But obviously if the translation needs to be correct, you have to rely on a real person. (not that via phone people get 100% accurate translations, but you can be more confident that the intended time comes across more closely at least)

How do the police not have an official Spanish translation of the Miranda rights not laminated onto a card and stored as a MP3 file on all of their phones?

Why would a cop use a recording of Miranda rights when they want to search? It's not like they are already arresting him.

They had to ask to search the car because they had no probable cause, not read him his miranda rights.

You might as well ask why didn't they train them to speak Spanish.

Can anyone more familiar with the law explain why the good-faith exception[1] wouldn't apply here?

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/good_faith_exception_to_excl...

The ruling addresses that on pages 9-11. The court noted that in a pretty similar case (the same google translate error), a different did apply the good-faith exception.

But the court distinguished this case from the other based on several factors. This cop didn't ask in english or point to the trunk. And the cop admitted he had other options other than google translate.

It's a close call. I think it probably should apply, but I see the other side.

I find it pretty horrifying that attempting to use Google Translate for routine police actions could ever be considered "good faith".

Other curious thing: given the location wouldn't it be prudent to have some basic Spanish classes for public officials? It's not that hard to get the basics and it would really help communicating…

It does not seem that understanding is the goal here, misunderstanding is the goal. Education and compassion are not helpful towards the end of harrassment.

Harassment? The guy was a drug dealer with a lot of drugs in his car, and they tried to ask him if they could search his car. I’d say that’s about as far from harassment as it gets.

> a lot of drugs in his car

Isn't that something you'd only discover after searching the car? Car searches need to be valid before executing them, not after.

> they tried to ask him if they could search his car.

They tried, failed, and then searched his car regardless.

I would be very curious to know exactly what the English sentence was. I've found that, unless you use perfect English (assuming the source language is English) and no slang, Google translate will fail miserably.

Is this a case of really bad translation, or really bad English? The article doesn't give enough info to know!

"Can I search the car?" in Google Translate yields "¿Puedo buscar el auto?", which is the phrase specified in the article.

It's a case of bad translation, although as a bilingual speaker of English and Spanish, I think it's clear what the officer meant. (Better verbs would've been "registrar" or even "examinar".)

I agree that "¿Puedo buscar el auto?" sounds like "Can I find the car?"

It's a case of weird input language, alright. When I'm searching my phone, I'm looking for it. When I find my phone, then that's the moment I found it. When I am finding my phone, then that's a very optimistic way of phrasing that I will find it. Whereas, when I browse my phone, I am looking, or searching for something else through the use of my phone. Hence German "durchsuchen" -- search through. English can be an analytic language, so there's a difference, but you might as well say the situation could be analyzed to find the intent of the policemen at the latest when they actually started rifling through the car. At which point I wonder whether there was any protest against the examination.

As an aside, ironically, google with search being their main claim to fame could not translate this any differently.

Also, I got a punny answer when asking someone to look at my stuff, as I wanted to leave it at the bus stop while going into a shop: "Yes, it looks nice".

The article implies the original phrase: Can I search the car?

Google translates: puedo buscar el auto

This translates back to English: I can get the car?

Using google translate well is a skill in itself, you have to be explicit, use simpler words / grammar and avoid implicit, figurative or ambigous meanings.

"Can I search the inside of your car?" translates quite well back and forth because the implicit meanings have been made explicit.

Right, this is what I was getting at, but you explained it better :)

One simple trick is to be more verbose when using an automatic translator. "Do you allow me to search for things your car?" gives you "¿Me permites buscar cosas para tu auto?" which might be better? (I had Latin in school, none of that modern stuff).

That phrase means "can I look for things for your car?" which a Spanish speaker would only use to say "Can I shop around for decorations for your car?".

I would laugh at an officer if he said that to me.

As a bilingual speaker who grew up speaking Spanish, I would perfectly well understand “puedo buscar el auto” in that context, and myself would be extremely unlikely to interpret it as anything else. Im not sure I would myself translate t any differently.

But you are bilingual; the person in the article was not.

My point is that even a bilingual police officer (if I was in their place) could have said the same thing thing.

No, a bilingual police officer (or other bilingual listener) would likely understand the intended meaning if someone else made this error (because they would know English and Spanish both well enough to see the likely translation-from-English error), but they would not be likely to make the error.

2nd are you bilingual native Spanish speaker

But if you were transporting quite a stash of meth and cocaine I'm sure you'd want to find a lawyer who could convincingly argue confusion.

If you were transporting quite a stash of meth and weren't confused about what the police were asking or about your right to refuse, wouldn't you just say no?

I fear that Machine Learning/AI is falling into the uncanny valley, where you can depend on it most of the time, but it will let you down at very critical times and you have no way of knowing when that is. Here is a case with machine translation. The Tesla autopilot death is another example.

Machine learning has been hyped so much recently, that I fear that with more cases like this, the public will become disillusioned and we will have another AI winter.

That implies there has been a summer. I’d be happy with an ok spring at this point.

Even if the translation were perfect, the cops absolutely should not have used it without being able to verify it.

I didn't understand the bit about being fortunate to live in a multilingual society

Here in India we have so many languages, I don't consider myself to be more fortunate than people in other societies because of this fact. If anything, I see it as a potentially massive inconvenience. It has been the root of so much conflict between communities. Entire states have been split into two because of language issues.

Feels like diversity has an exaggerated sense of value in the west. Probably not a politically correct thing to say given the obsession with race.

I don’t think that most people would take issue with the idea that diversity with no basis for common experience/understanding is a bad thing. The point of diversity as a social value in the West is the belief that by explicitly incentivizing more interaction between people of different backgrounds, barriers to communication erode and eventually disappear, or at least are minimal enough that everyone can participate in a society as equals.

Edit: more succinctly, the emphasis on diversity in the West is intended to eventually solve the very real problem that you identify.

Wasn't there also some counter-terrorism case involving Google translation of something posted on Facebook?

“Facebook Apologizes After Translation of 'Good Morning' Post Sees Palestinian Arrested by Israeli Police”

http://www.newsweek.com/palestinian-arrested-israel-police-a...

Wow, how terrifying. Is this English-speaking privilege rearing its ugly head again? Re the Terry Gilliam film Brazil: yes indeed, we have arrived.

But somehow it's much more than that - we are becoming a mashup of Brazil + Brave New World. We've created colossal world bureaucracies (both government and corporate) writing and enforcing countless rules. But simultaneously, because of of perceived individual benefits offered by these bureaucracies, we have eagerly embraced a misplaced complacent acceptance of all these new rules. Boggles the mind.

In our brave new world, maybe ignorance truly is bliss.

I hope it's the last Terry Gilliam movie that's ever becoming true! (Brazil, 1985)

Though I suppose Facebook uses Bing rather than Google translate.

When they searched his car, with his consent, they found quite a stash of meth and cocaine.

I get that they might have to let him go due to the 4th amendment violation, but I also think that he should be given probation or rehab or something. Just because the criminal portion has ended doesn't mean the public health/safety angle needs to be ignored.

> When they searched his car, with his consent

Without his consent.

> but I also think that he should be given probation or rehab or something.

“Given” how? Except with due process—including findings based on legally obtained evidence—the government can't “give” him any mandate depriving him of liberty.

Or they can apologise to him and give him back his meth and cocaine... and immediately arrest him back for undoubtedly possessing it.

Setting such a precedent would make an utter mockery of the 4th amendment.

Ignoring solid evidence just because it was acquired illegally is mockery of justice, logic and common sense. If it was collected illegally then punish the person that did the illegal thing but do not discard the evidence.

> mockery of justice

The “Fruit of the Poisonous Tree” doctrine [0] would disagree with you.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_of_the_poisonous_tree

I know it's how things are in US. Some stupid thing someone came up with in 1920 stuck there. Not sure if any other country on the planet has such a silly rule.

If evidence is false or tampered with then by all means ignore it, but if it's solid it doesn't matter if it came out just because someone committed some additional crime.

Allowing illegal evidence would encourage illegal searches.

If searches are illegal you can just punish those who commit them. Banning those people from working as policemen would be far better deterrent.

Google translates about as well as self-driving cars drive.

Except maybe the Google self-driving cars.

I've never seen one involved in an accident in the news. Must be better coffee for the drivers?!

Well, any time I need something from a gov and it isn't in the language it wants to see, it just closes shop on me. Even if the language is english and everybody understands it, except the official, who is "just following the law". So we have to go to an official translator, pay through the nose to get something trivial done. Or forget it.

Is the court suggesting, with this verdict, the cops do the same? Seems like a reversal of the usual gov policy to me.

Furthermore, in this situation non-verbal communications take over and should be considered. If the defendant knew the law he would have signalled "no" (while saying "no"), or positioned himself as to block access (if possible).

Relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6D1YI-41ao (My hovercraft is full of eels)

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