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Comment by Uehreka | Hacker News Reader

Generally speaking, if you non-cooperate with the police that’s one class of offense, but if you lie to the police (that’s what this would be seen as) and they catch you it’s a whole ‘nother level of offense.

In general, if you’re thinking about interactions with the police and you have an idea that feels “clever”, it is a bad idea.

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It's legal to lie to the police under questioning in most circumstances, i.e. "I didn't rob that guy" if you robbed that guy. The big exceptions are falsely identifying yourself and lying while reporting a crime.

You might be thinking of 18 USC 1001 which makes it a felony to lie to a federal agent, and is extremely broad (both in terms of of what constitutes a lie and who counts as a federal agent).

> lying while reporting a crime

Seems to me like there ought to be some kind of 14th Amendment “equal protection” cases presented to the court about the failure of police forces to dismiss false police reports.

If I filed a police report saying “X threatened me on my property” and it wasn’t true, I’d be prosecuted for a false report. Yet there are hundreds of instances of state and federal employees filing the same kind of false reports, yet nothing is done about it.

How are you lying to the police by unlocking a different profile of your phone? So long as the police doesn't say "oh, unlock this $specific profile of your phone please", you could have different profiles for different purposes (e.g. different set of apps installed, like one profile for work and another for personal settings).

You have the right to remain silent. Non-cooperation is not an offence.

Resisting arrest is both non-cooperation and an offense so idk where you're getting that from.

you can be non-cooperative without meeting the bar for resisting arrest though, for instance if you refuse to incriminate yourself

People are consistently arrested and/or charged for resisting arrest for not identifying themselves in states that do not have “stop and ID” laws.

Even if you know to the letter what your state law requires, the police often don’t. If you take the arrest and sit in jail for 2-12 hours, you can fight it later in court. Somehow, this is a luxury for most people in the US.

"You were rude to me earlier, so I don't want to talk to you" may get you beaten up but won't get you in further legal trouble.

If it comes up at trial, you simply explain that the officer was rude to you, so you didn't want to talk to them, which caused them to be even more rude to you, which confirmed your decision to not talk to them.

For sure. I thought the parent commenter wasn't considering cases like resisting arrest in their statement though

I think you're right, but generally speaking the 5th amendment gives wide rights, so in any interaction with the police in America one should always keep their mouth shut, and if pressed say that you won't speak without a lawyer. They literally say: "Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law." That is not an exaggeration.

It is very difficult to prosecute someone for a crime if they stay silent during the legal process, it's why the police are hyper-aggressive, they are trying to catch any idiot who will say anything that will get them arrested and charged, so they can report to the municipality, county (or state or whatever) that they have achieved x, y, z rates of charges, solved crimes etc., in order to secure better funding (meaning better salaries, benefits, pensions, and toys to terrorize you with).

Here's a recording of a law school lecture - a compelling argument for why you should never talk to the police https://youtu.be/d-7o9xYp7eE

For sure, I agree with everything you're saying, but the parent commenter was saying all non-cooperation is allowed which isn't true. I don't think they considered the case of resisting arrest or other similar cases.

Remaining silent and deceiving law enforcement officers are very different things.

I have two kitchens in my house. If a police officer asks me to take them to the kitchen, and I take them to the annex kitchen the am I a liar?

You unlock a phone or a computer and sign into one profile and not another. Are you lying?

What if Kitchen 1 has a PIR sensor that when tripped flushes all the coke down the toilet?

That's an act of commission. You should simply do nothing, unlock nothing, and say nothing. Wait for an attorney.

It may not be difficult for the prosecutor to point out that you "unlocked" your phone into a mode you never use and in fact specifically use to deceive law enforcement.

Much simpler and safer to do absolutely nothing. Plus, you don't know for sure if that secondary mode being unlocked can enable third-party tools to break into the primary profile.

but if they say "unlock your phone" rather than "unlock the main profile of your phone", its not like you're uncooperative. you've technically unlocked it.

I had this argument with my then-13 year old daughter. I had forbidden her from using "the phone". She accepted the punishment.

She then proceeded on another device to show me that in no place on the official Samsung website is the device referred to as "a phone". The device is always referred to as "a smartphone" and in one place the telephone communication application is referred to as "the phone". I conceded that she made a good case and that the punishment therefore applied to the telephone communication application only.

Does the alternative password enable your phone book and phone history? If so, then yes you have unlocked the phone. If not, then you have unlocked "a phone" but not "the phone".

I think unfortunately in almost all cases the spirit of the law is more important than the word of the law, and most courts frown upon this kind of chicanery. I think this encourages her to "well, actually" people more, which nobody likes being on the receiving end of :-)

  > I think unfortunately in almost all cases the spirit of the law is more important than the word of the law, and most courts frown upon this kind of chicanery.

I was under the impression that the word of the law is preferred. If anybody here has experience, in any jurisdiction, I would love to know more.

  > I think this encourages her to "well, actually" people more, which nobody likes being on the receiving end of :-)

Well, actually, I do want to encourage her to defend herself by all possible means, especially to be able to challenge the law :-)

in the original context though, you're not dealing with the law but an "order". you were "ordered" by some police officer to do something that you can't refuse.

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