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Comment by dgellow | Hacker News Reader

> Mr. Ephgrave, the assistant commissioner, acknowledged such concerns in his statement.

> “We understand that how personal data is used can be a source of anxiety,” he said. “We would never want victims to feel that they can’t report crimes because of ‘intrusion’ in their data.”

> “That’s why a new national form has been introduced,” replacing policies that varied from place to place, “to help police seek informed consent proportionately and consistently.”

I’m sorry for not having something smarter to say, but what the actual fuck? That sounds like what a tech company would say to try to justify their new data policy. That’s terrible coming from an institution that is supposed to protect people under its jurisdiction.

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Not sure about the UK, but in the US the police have no formal duty to protect you. No matter how much warning/info/evidence they have that someone will be victimized, and no matter how easy/reasonable it is for the police to prevent it, citizens are generically not entitled to compensation for failure to be protected. Rather, the police's mission (both formally and as a functional matter) is overwhelmingly about catching and punishing criminals after-the-fact, and they have wide discretion to choose which crimes to enforce on. So the only protection is in the form of criminal disincentives (which are extremely important, of course).

That’s correct. The extreme percentage of police duties are only to document crime.

We can always vote and legislate for something better. From my experience in the US, police vary from decent people just trying to serve society, to up-armored mall cops on power trips. If you give them assault rifles, tanks, and unlimited surveillance, you encourage the worst among them. A guy wearing a uniform and trained in de-escalation instead of "verbal control" could do some good.

> We can always vote and legislate for something better.

How? Which political party or independents promote a policy to reduce police powers?

And even if there were, or are, any politicians with such a policy we ought to be more suspicious of them!

Yeah, it is not going to happen through such ways. No way. Whoever would want to do it would be getting pressure from influential people on multiple fronts. Let us play with the thought though. Who would go through such risks? What would they gain from it?

The trick is to spin it better.

It's not "reducing police power", it's "even better training, tools and techniques for our hard-working police officers".

> How? Which political party or independents promote a policy to reduce police powers?

Policing is mostly local, so I think this is an area where there's a real chance to make things better. National politics are hopelessly tribal in the US, but city/county level politics are much less so. Go to city council meetings. Pay attention, and complain if they try to buy leftover military hardware like a BearCat[1]. Vote for and talk to your councillors. Organize a petition to de-militarize your local police force.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenco_BearCat

We can always vote and legislate for something better

Aren't you assuming that people want something better? I don't know if that is true. Many people refuse to believe cops can be bad (due to ignorance or whatever other reasons)

> in the US the police have no formal duty to protect you

This is one reason why, at least in the US, you should never talk to the police if you're suspected of a crime -- even if you're innocent and it seems that your innocence will be blindingly obvious to them[0]. Anything you say can and will be used against you, and by the rules of evidence, nothing you say to the police can be used for you in court. (Tell them you have a lawyer friend who will never let you live it down if you say anything without speaking to your attorney first.)

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

(IANAL)

> (Tell them you have a lawyer friend who will never let you live it down if you say anything without speaking to your attorney first.)

Don't do this unless you really have a lawyer friend. Lying to the police, even when you haven't committed a crime otherwise, can be prosecuted as obstruction.

It's better to simply say that you will not answer questions without an attorney present, then just stop talking.

I'm not a lawyer either, but I worked alongside law enforcement for most of my adult life.

On the bright side, you can carry a firearm in the US.

I'm not sure I understand your point.

In England we don't have a national police force; we have lots of local forces. There's wide variation in how they respond to crime. We noticed this variation was causing injustice: women (and men) who were raped were not having their crimes robustly investigated; men who were accused of rape were not having their defence robustly investigated.

The new guidance is telling police precisely what they can (and thus can't) ask for, and when (and thus when not) they can ask for it.

Fishing expeditions are not allowed.

The point being made by GP is that the rules are already too broad; simply writing them down does very little (if anything) to address the worry about data intrusion. If I were to do something horrible to another person, they wouldn't have much reassurance if I said "here's a list of what I can (and thus can't) do to you, and when (and thus when not) I can do it to you".

I'm a very data security conscious person. If something bad happened to me the last thing I'd want is for the police to say that they can't continue to work on my case unless I grant them access to my device(s) and then trust them to not be (deliberately or not) "incompetent" with what they're doing. If anything this should be part of a policy in which victims elect to volunteer information when asked if there's anything that could help the case. I can actually easily imagine a case in which I've been sexually assaulted (and this has happened to me) and I would not go to the police if they had a policy like this.

If the police are searching on my phone, what if I have something illegal I don't want them to see? Something they might think is 'concerning' that they can write down and decide to pursue later? What if I'm a sex worker and they can find out through looking at my phone, and even gather proof that fact? And before we say that we can trust them to be competent, what about the other story here?[0] What about the myriad of horrible laws that are passed in England and Wales which restrain even private possession of comics?

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19785416

> the last thing I'd want is for the police to say that they can't continue to work on my case unless I grant them access to my device(s) ... If anything this should be part of a policy in which victims elect to volunteer information when asked if there's anything that could help the case

My understanding is that the police in the UK have always been required to pursue reasonable lines of enquiry, including those that might contradict the complainant's evidence. That means when investigating a crime they must consider the possibility that the victim is not telling the whole story (where it is reasonable to do so, eg. there is no way to corroborate the victim's account).

The new guidelines (which, unfortunately, I can't find the full text of) apparently tell the police when they should exercise the power they have always had: to tell victims "we don't have enough evidence to justify putting further effort into this investigation, unless you agree to hand over your phone to us, because that would increase our confidence that you are telling us the truth."

Police have competing priorities and it is inevitable that some crimes go unpunished because the witnesses are not believed by police, or refuse to voluntarily provide information which could affect their credibility. I am sure I would agree with the police doing this in some extreme cases, but as another data security conscious person, it's unlikely I would fully agree with the police interpretation of "necessary and appropriate." [1]

[1]: https://twitter.com/PoliceChiefs/status/1122757012859904002

> Fishing expeditions are not allowed.

That's exactly what a criminal investigation is. They keep fishing until they find probative evidence. The creative ways police investigate certain unsolved crimes puts most fishing expeditions to shame.

Unless of course you aren't interested in the truth but want to railroad people accused of very specific crimes for political reasons...

Parent's point, I suspect, is about this:

> “If information is identified from your device that suggests the commission of a separate criminal offense, other than the offense(s) under investigation, the relevant data may be retained and investigated by the police,” according to written statement to victims and witnesses that will accompany the consent form.

> Anything the police find, it says, will be handed over to prosecutors. And in some cases, devices might not be given back to their owners for weeks or even months.

That sounds a lot like "fishing expeditions".

Upon reflection, I recall that I've been ripped off in drug deals. Fortunately, I was never robbed outright, but that was always a possibility. And I knew that if I had been robbed, I couldn't file a police report. Even if I'd been injured.

But if my car had been stolen, or my house burglarized, there would have been no such constraint. Unless it was that someone had stolen my drugs, anyway.

Now, though, with so much personal data on devices, any interaction with police entails some risk of disclosure. But I guess that's part of what "outlaw" means. In breaking some laws, you give up protection by others. It's just that we used to have enough privacy to finesse it more.

I think this national vs local police force thing needs a bit of explaining.

Years ago you could be speeding in one county, cross the county line (e.g. from Devon to Cornwall) and they wouldn't be able to catch you. The cop would have to back off at the 'border'. Or you could get a first offence caution, e.g. for drugs or shop-lifting in one county, then do the same offence in a different county and get another caution rather than be prosecuted properly.

Those days were over a long time ago, when computers arrived those gaps in the system went.

More recently the local stations have been closed with these local districts getting merged. The nearest cells might be in the big town twenty miles away rather than the local police station down the road. That might only have admin staff.

Then the police are now expected to follow everything up themselves using some tablet computer things they have been given. In the olden days someone back at the station would do all the follow up work contacting the victims of crime etc. Nowadays the constable who happens to be on the scene has to follow the incident up through to the end with a tablet computer instead of a team effort.

The government have chosen to make many cuts to the police force which is a little bit silly. The police are important for staying in power and any government needs them on their side. Cutting their pensions, making them work a not so local 'local' area with 'them and us' merger problems and undermining their effectiveness is just plain silly. If there was some type of Brexit related rebellion in the country then the police are no longer 'bought' enough to be guaranteed to always be on the side of government. It has got to that stage of pissing them off.

Anyway, the police are sadly quite underfunded and, as a consequence, there is nothing to fear from this new 'let's read your phone' ruling. The police have enough problems of their own.

There’s also been high profile cases where rape trials have collapsed because of evidence from phones which hasn’t been disclosed to the defence, for example the case of Liam Allan [1].

1: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/rape-trial-colla...

As a victim you may be prosecuted if police discover something irrelevant to the case, yet still incriminating.

This seems to have the potential of severe abuse, if a rapist is aware of such matters they would feel protected to carry out their travesties.

What the actual f* indeed.

The rapist isn't guaranteed not to be prosecuted if the victim doesn't hand over data. But you're right that a rapist careful not to leave behind too much other evidence is likely protected.

Not only that, but a rapist could use the threat of police investigation for something like recreational drug use to scare a victim into never going to the police in the first place.

It's a non-sequiter.

> We don't want you to be concerned

> Now here's this new TOS which is what you're concerned about, but it is new, and shiny.

> an institution that is supposed to protect people under its jurisdiction

Sadly, that was a long time ago. Now they're a massively-under-resourced, under-manned "service" (they used to be the Police Force). From many UK citizens' experience, all we can hope for as victims of crime is to record the crime, get a crime number and wait for something to happen. Very sad, and increasingly dangerous...

I don't know why this has been downvoted, anyone who's had any contact with the UK police knows it's absolutely true.

I was attacked and injured a few years ago, in an area with really good CCTV. The police spent six weeks claiming to be "picking up the evidence soon", all the while I have the CCTV operator calling me every fortnight asking when the police are going to pick up the tape. They never did.

A few weeks later, the guy who attacked me turned up in the press. Arrested for robbing an old lady and leaving her in hospital.

Called the police back, "Oh. There's nothing we can do. It's your word against his, there's no evidence, and we've closed the case."

Called the CCTV operator. They still had the tape. "I can keep it for another week before I have to destroy it."

Called the police back, told them to go pick up the tape. "No. The case is closed."

All they had to do was tell a passing car to drop in with an evidence bag and even that was too much work for them.

And this was long before the police cuts. It's only got worse since.

You are absolutely correct, cuts is just their goto excuse this time around.

>That’s terrible coming from an institution that is supposed to protect people under its jurisdiction.

Nah, they are there to protect those in power. Been that way for a while in case you didn't notice.

Don't disagree with you at all but have noticed people using the phrase 'what the actual fuck' a lot lately. I can obviously infer that it's adding emphasis but it just doesn't make sense to me.

The fact that you can understand what it means indicates that it is a phrase that is entering our language.

So, you understand what it means, but you don't understand what it means?

It sounds kludgy and incorrect.

Most slang does until you hear it enough.

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