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Comment by chimeracoder | Hacker News Reader

> It is proposed that this arrangement be modified to include a warrant requirement.

That defeats the entire point of this arrangement, which allows them to investigate in situations where the legal requirements for obtaining a warrant are not met. (Which is the elephant in the room: the entire premise of this system is to bypass established legal thresholds).

> Although I am comfortable accepting that your agency demonstrates the integrity you indicate

I'm not sure that's a safe assumption. As you mention, system abuse by law enforcement is incredibly common at agencies across the country. If you talk to any person at one of those agencies, they will almost invariably tell you that their coworkers take their job seriously, that they never abuse their own power, and that they can't imagine their coworkers doing the same.

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>> Although I am comfortable accepting that your agency demonstrates the integrity you indicate

> I'm not sure that's a safe assumption. As you mention, system abuse by law enforcement is incredibly common at agencies across the country.

I feel a benefit of the doubt costs us little in this instance and I feel we need a familiarity with what responsible policing looks like. To me, the OPs recounting provides that.

Past that, I believe that the widespread bad behavior of other agencies is insufficient reason for mistrust here. And casually using others' bad behavior to justify mistrust - this is something we reasonably criticize police for.

> I feel we need a familiarity with what responsible policing looks like. To me, the OPs recounting provides that.

The point is that nearly every cop you talk to will sound like OP. That doesn't mean anything about the integrity of them or their coworkers; it just means that they're capable of articulating their own behavior in a way that makes them sound reasonable with no context. That's an incredibly low bar, one that nearly every abusive cop will clear.

To repeat what I said in a separate comment: Having worked extensively in this area, I'll be blunt and say that anytime someone who works in law enforcement says that there are no abuses of power in their workplace, that means either they were so oblivious that they never saw abuses that are occurring around them, or they were so mired in the system that they are incapable of recognizing the abuses of power that they themselves are participating in.

> Past that, I believe that the widespread bad behavior of other agencies is insufficient reason for mistrust here.

On the contrary, that's exactly what "systemic abuse of power" means. It means that the bad behavior is so ingrained in the operations of the system that individuals' actions contribute to its operations, whether or not they recognize or even understand it.

And you may well have the right of it.

I'd agree that federal and state LEO serve their govs, unilaterally and universally. They exist to advance the interests of the party in power and campaign contributors.

As a public-of-individuals, our best interests may get occasionally get served by accident but our actual welfare is never, ever, not-ever the primary focus.

All that said, I still avoid Cops Suck as the default. Broadly speaking: The more local the force, the less certain is the system-serving corruption. You can get to a place with an ethical+competent commissioner/chief/sheriff. Under them, officers can be allowed to focus on being ethical+competent. I have personally witnessed this.

Where those officers might exist, I want to be fair.

> Past that, I believe that the widespread bad behavior of other agencies is insufficient reason for mistrust here. And casually using others' bad behavior to justify mistrust - this is something we reasonably criticize police for.

The government, and any authority, should be mistrusted. Period.

That doesn't mean they aren't sometimes necessary, or that the lack of trust should turn into fear, but any person or organization on the winning end of a power imbalance should not be trusted. The lack of trust there is what leads to checks and balances, we need systems in place to make sure those with the power can't abuse it even if they wanted to.

The best scenario is that (a) the powerful aren't trusted (2) proper guardrails are in place and (d) the powerful actually do act honestly and the guardrails may slow them down a bit but don't prevent them from doing the job they were given power to do.

> The government, and any authority, should be mistrusted. Period.

I mostly agree with that but we're talking about a response (mine) to a post, by someone who's communicating from the interior of an LEA.

His narrative could be propaganda or false or curated by agenda or unhelpfully incomplete or meaningfully representative. We don't know which of those it is. We do know that communication outside of PR channels is useful, even if we have to heavily qualify it.

And valuable info sometimes comes out of informal channels. We're not gaining anything by crapping on it here.

Past that, we risk nothing by assuming good faith of the OP's post - even if our good faith turns out to be misapplied. No judicial precedence is in play. No hearts are swayed to dark sides. No mass readership is being fed a pregurgitated conclusion. No agenda needles get budged.

In this place and at this time: We are safe letting one LEO-adjacent individual feel - well maybe not welcome but at least a lower level of mob noise. We don't have to put their haunches up by pushing back with everything we have.

> In this place and at this time: We are safe letting one LEO-adjacent individual feel - well maybe not welcome but at least a lower level of mob noise. We don't have to put their haunches up by pushing back with everything we have.

Totally agree. This thread did go off the rails quite a bit. My main point wasn't actually even whether any one LEO can or should be trusted, I assume a vast majority of them are in the job with good intentions. My aim was more so at the power structure of any LEA or government in general, they should never be trusted IMO even when we're willing to take the risks of centralizing power for some greater good.

> That defeats the entire point of this arrangement, which allows them to investigate in situations where the legal requirements for obtaining a warrant are not met. (Which is the elephant in the room: the entire premise of this system is to bypass established legal thresholds).

This is just 100% false. If im pulling a prescription from a pharmacy its because Doctor Adams told me "I never wrote a prescription for Bill Barnes for percocet, but this state maintained record says that he filled a prescription for percocet at CVS #12345 on main street". That statement alone is enough to get a warrant for said pharmacy records.

> That statement alone is enough to get a warrant for said pharmacy records.

Great, then get a warrant.

The entire reason this story exists is because people are surprised and - rightfully - upset that law enforcement is able to access this information without one.

>> That statement alone is enough to get a warrant for said pharmacy records.

> Great, then get a warrant.

I agree with my whole heart. This is the meat and bone of the discussion.

And an important side note: The assertions "can't access without a warrant" and "can't access at all" need to be clearly distinct at all times. Once the 1st gets translated as the 2nd, the good faith portion of this discussion is lost.

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