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Comment by jhayward | Hacker News Reader

This could only be said by someone who is completely disregarding the coercive power of a police "interview".

There is always, always, a subtext of "if you don't wish to cooperate, I may need to exercise my discretion to ...", with the ellipsis being anything from literally tearing your car apart in a "reasonable suspicion" drug search, to some made-up traffic infraction, to anything else that police are trained to use as coercion.

Just because you have some theoretical rights that a judge may at some point months later grant you, doesn't mean the officer can't violate the hell out of you right now and probably get away with it - and end up getting a baseless conviction, or a paper trail in police records, or just make you late for your job interview.

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Yeah, I feel that people who dismiss these concerns by saying "well you can always tell the cop no" haven't had many/any adversarial encounters with the police.

I haven't had many, but I had a few when I was in college. When you lawfully refuse a request from the police, they don't just say "ok" and move on. They apply all kinds of pressure. They make veiled threats, they detain you longer, they get angry, they scare you. It is a lot easier to say what you would do while you are safe at home behind your keyboard.

The comment you're responding to was not at all naive: it only says there's no _legal_ way for police to force you to provide this information. You are correct that they can in many ways force you to comply, but none of those ways are legal.

Those ways of applying illegal coercion also break down as more and more people realize their rights and refuse to comply. The more people who force police to act illegally, the more risk there is of trouble for the cop. They can get away with it better if they don't have to do it too often.

They can legally lie to you about what is legal. They can also lie, without any reprocussions, to justify any physical force they feel like using.

I have been interviewed by the police, actually, many years ago. I was 20-something and had long hair and a shitty attitude. I stuck to my guns and told them nothing. It cost me some time, but nothing else. Now, I was privileged in some ways that others are not (ethnicity, location), so some of my good outcome was luck.

So no, I'm not at all disregarding police coercion. However it has not, does not, and will not convince me to surrender my rights.

If you'll forgive me for saying so, your response also is a symptom of living in a police state: regardless of what is right or legal, you expect the police to act with disregard for it and to suffer no consequence for their actions. It's a common-enough belief, but is not universal in civilized societies. This is wrong, nearly as wrong as anything can be in a democracy.

Sounds like something a cop would say: "oh, if you don't cooperate, they'll make life difficult, so you best just keep those civil rights thoughts to yourself!" Thanks, officer, but I'm going to keep refusing those unreasonable searches even if it makes things more difficult. And experience says, those difficulties aren't a given, or even to be expected.

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