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Comment by abvdasker | Hacker News Reader

This seems like it will inevitably discourage victims from reporting crime. Imagine a scenario where someone is mugged but doesn't want to report it to the police because they have some texts from their weed dealer on their phone: as a result the mugger never gets reported and may mug somebody else. Not to mention the huge opportunities it creates for a kind of blackmail (criminal A commits a crime against criminal B knowing in advance that criminal B could not report criminal A without being implicated in a different crime when they hand over their digital info).

So it's easy to see how this kind of policy can counterintuitively end up increasing crime by making it easier for someone who has committed a crime to get away with it.

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This is a very realistic example. I know several people that have been victimized but have not reported it because they were otherwise breaking some law themselves.

I unfortunately know a woman who was raped, but did not report it because she was underage drinking at the time. She has spent decades now regretting that decision. The fear of reporting is real.

> This seems like it will inevitably discourage victims from reporting crime

Indeed. And this new policy will help the police/government to bring down criminality figures. I would be surprised if that is not the actual intent. In a few years they will triumphantly announce that the UK police is doing so well, that it has become a much safer place to live. Welcome to politics.

I really don't think the people in charge are that clever. What is happening here is a reaction to recent cases like this:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/liam-allan-met-p...

where a rape trial collapsed after text messages between the alleged victim and alleged attacker were "discovered" late in the process.

So this is an instance of "we have to do something" where the suggestion swings too far the other way. I assume after some debate we will settle on a sensible compromise position.

What's really terrifying is that this guy's life was being ruined just because some woman later said that a sex encounter was "non-consensual", without any proof of that.

Instead of forcing people to give their mobiles, why not use the "innocent until proven guilty" age-old adage?

Instead of forcing people to give their mobiles, why not use the "innocent until proven guilty" age-old adage?

They aren't forcing people to give up their mobiles, merely saying that if a victim chooses not to, they are denying the police useful evidence. In the absence of other evidence, there's a risk that prosecutions won't go ahead.

The reason this is an issue at all is the presumption of innocence. The accused is presumed innocent and without evidence (which may or may not be on the phone) there is nothing the police or the courts can do.

Better yet, you can remotely plant discouragement on someone's phone. Catfish someone, send some nudes, reveal as slightly underage. You can then even explicitly mention the blackmail, since even if they could eventually prove it was just a catfish, it would be a huge hassle to do so.

This thread made me realize that while requiring victims to give up privacy is bad, we must thank them because it exposes fundamental issues with the law.

For example, should it be against the law to drink alcohol if you're underage? I'd say no. There should be no punishment for drinking alcohol underage.

Similarly, possession itself should never be against the law. It is a different matter if we are taking about toxins or biochemical weapons because we still need some kind of safe storage requirements but possession of photos and videos should never be against the law. Who came up with this?

The first season of black mirror had this as well (spoiler).

It's a very unpopular opinion, but I have argued that mere possession of bona fide child pornography should not be illegal. My primary reasoning is based on the ultimate futility of trying to police bits. And I think the argument that not punishing the consumers of it would encourage the production of more is specious - in fact I'd imagine enough has already been produced to satiate demands, and allowing the easy distribution of pictures would actually get evidence of new production into the hands of law enforcement quicker. But I obviously don't have a direct stake in that argument, besides knowing that all of the easy-to-persecute malinterpretations are ongoing injustices (eg having any pornography without explicit documentation that all participants are >=18, having your computer hacked and used as a proxy, inadvertently coming across it on a general website are all harshly illegal)

But I don't agree that we should somehow appreciate this practice because it can highlight other bad laws. Fishing expeditions function whether the laws are sensible or not. You can modify my above catfishing scenario for whatever happens to be illegal. Even if the images are fine, keep going with texts that show an intent to meet up. Even if no meet up occurred, it's still a big hassle. The setup is basically DIY entrapment for whatever crime you want to design.

The problem is not merely being caught up by other bad laws, but Cardinal Richelieu's old "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him." The unfounded search is the problem, as it focuses police attention on the victim as a new potential criminal to investigate.

When criminal A reports criminal B this is known as "Snitchin". On the streets, snitchin' is widely regarded to be bad for your health. Therefore anything that discourages snitchin should regared be a net positive for society and longevity!

Snitches get...their phone confiscated, apparently.

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