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Comment by pyuser583 | Hacker News Reader

Is it legal for them to arrest you simply to keep up the appearance? You haven’t done anything illegal.

Not from the US, but here at a bank I worked with: If you trigger the silent alarm they'd have reason to suspect you are threatened and would take you to custody to make sure you are safe and release you once it's sorted out (probably an hour or so).

That makes sense. Sorting things out takes time. But trying to create an illusion that no alarm was triggered to prevent criminals from gaining knowledge: not a reason to imprison an innocent person.

>imprison an innocent person.

Kind a hard word to use for an arrest. In many places police can arrest you for some period if they suspect you have committed a crime. This is no different. No need for sensational language.

In the US they can’t do anything unless they have “probable cause” you committed a crime. That’s broad, but it excludes “this guy pushed the number 6 three times in a row.”

And “imprison” and “arrest” are pretty darn close. In the US, when you are arrested, you are usually searched, fingerprinted, and a mugshot is taken.

The mugshot can become a public record. There are websites that match mugshots to names, and make money by being paid to take mugshots down.

Nobody wants the google result for their name to be a mugshot.

Probable cause isn't "pushed button multiple times" it is "silent alarm was triggered and this guy is on the only guy in the building".

If US is doing stupid shit then US is doing stupid shit. What else can we expect a third world country to do? In civilized world you are processed yes, but since you are just arrested and not accused you will just be held until the pre-investigation has concluded

In the US, what you're talking about is referred to as "detainment" which is very different from an arrest. I think that's where a lot of the confusion is coming from.

This thread is long dead and off the frontpage - and this likely won't be seen by anyone (or even you nextlevelwizard) but here goes.

> What else can we expect a third world country to do?

We can criticise the largest economy in the world as much as we want inside a browser developed mostly in the US on infrastructure (the internet) whose large parts were developed in the US talking on a website created and owned by a US based company investing capital in one of the largest tech markets in the world (the valley).

That said - the fact they have police/healthcare/tuition problems does not in fact make it a third-world county.

A developing country ("third world") is typically one with low human development index (HDI) (the US is "very high"). Low economic output (the US is the largest economy) etc.

In the US, they cannot arrest you without probable cause. They can however detain you while they figure out what's going on.

Imprisoning is a much later step after being arrested. When you're arrested you may end up in a holding cell, or you may not.

People can be taken into protective custody without any suspicion they committed a crime, though typically this is mostly done with children and they're taken to foster care, not county detention. It has been used in the past to protect people from getting lynched after being publicly accused of a crime even if the police don't suspect them, and is used to protect confidential informants by arresting them along with everyone else just to keep up appearances, though in this case they usually agree to it in advance.

There's 'arrested' and 'detained'. In the US police can detain anyone for up to 48 hours (72 hours if it's a weekend or long holiday). If they don't file charges by then they have to release you.

For a silent/duress alarm it's easy to cross reference the person at the door with a list of personnel authorized to be in the facility. Security in a scenario like that would normally ask for an ID, radio it back to their security office to validate the person is on the access list for that office/building/facility/etc and then do a quick walk-around.

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