Canadian man stuck in triangle of e-commerce fraud | Hacker News Reader

Canadian man stuck in triangle of e-commerce fraud

krebsonsecurity.com

283 pointstodsacerdoti278 comments

This sounds extraordinarily poorly handled by the RCMP. He could show that he purchased it from his own credit card and on Amazon, so that's pretty good evidence that he's the victim of fraud, not the perpetrator of it. Weird how extremely aggressive the RCMP is.

That this is allowed to exist in legal limbo is ridiculous. He should be able to demand rectification and damages. And the real problem here is of course Amazon for enabling such scams. They should be on the hook for this, not some unsuspecting customer. And the real fraudster should be easy to track down through Amazon if they've done their due diligence.

Yeah what I got from the story is how unprofessional the police were. Unless there's more too it, the whole thing sounds like it should be an administrative investigations where everyone involved is assumed to be a victim unless more evidence comes to light. But somehow they rushed to treat this guy like a criminal.

He's first nation/aboriginal.... It's racism.

I can see incompetence on the police's part sure. What makes it racist?

You think that incompetence is evenly deployed no matter what the race of the accused?

I don't think incompetence is something that can be deployed evenly or not. The article provides no information that I can see that makes it a racist cop targeting a minority. Or is it racist for any first nation/aboriginal person to be subject to a police investigation?

Theoretically, incompetence can be unevenly deployed if you assign incompetent people more predominantly to specific regions or cases.

So theoretically the police chief is racistly deploying non-racist but known incompetent officers in the hopes their incompetence is going to adversely affect those specific regions or cases. That's leaving an awful lot to chance. I can think of more efficient and surefire ways to ensure those areas/cases are racially targeted, you could take Baltimore city as an example. But we're surely getting beyond any reasonable speculation of the information provided in the article?

I think they are saying not that it is some grand plan by racism at the highest level, but that it is people at the higher levels not caring about certain people and the justice they get.

People hear 'racism' and they think of that speech in the 60s 'segregation now, segregation forever' and firehoses, but it can be much more insidious than someone hating a subsection of people. It can be systemic in the sense that some people are not afforded the things most of us take for granted, like the protection of law, or due process of law, or innocence until guilt is proven, because there j isn't a will do it at the levels that matter.

Fictional example: a cop is a problem, he tends to be heavily aggressive in his actions but he is also stupid and unlikeable. People he works with complain and he pissed off some people in the district. District administrator decide it is easier to transfer him to bumfuck, where if there are any complaints they can ignore them because they have no political power or pull, rather than let him mess with people who have the ability to get the media or politicians involved.

This isn't even a conscious decision -- people in bumfuck don't complain because they are used to shitty treatment and no recourse, so they don't bother, whereas people like you or I would treat it as a travesty and get worked up and make a huge stink. The fact that it works like this makes it easy and the admin doesn't have to worry about it any more. Wash hands, done deal.

I can fully appreciate what you are saying. I'm not denying racism, (structural, systemic, or otherwise, conscious, unconscious) exists. Or that you fictional example might play out in reality. What I'm saying is that we can speculate until we are blue in the face, but based on the information in that article you can't simply conclude racism.

I get it, but your response regarding incompetence being weaponized to me demonstrated a reductive and unsophisticated understanding of the causes and effects in 'racism'[1]. I get that you were most likely being hyperbolic to make a point, but unfortunately many people who are not personally familiar with such things tend to think in that way.

I know that this is frustrating and sometimes can look very much like opportunistic virtue signaling, and many times it can be, but I would caution against immediately dismissing such claims when they are made and defended by parties that otherwise would not have reason to do so.

[1] I wish we had a different word that didn't have all the loaded connotations inherent in 'racism' especially with its use in the past as a excuse for slavery, but we don't...

I don't think I advocated anywhere about "weaponizied" incompetence. I believe I was arguing that weaponizied incompetence is far fetched. My whole point engaging here with the many people I have has been to bring it back to what we know from the information we have. I'm more than willing to accept racism is the primary factor if racism was at all obvious from the article or even further information provided. The initial post I was replying to was a blanket statement that the accused person was first nation/aboriginal so the incident was racist. What has followed is ever more far fetched reasons for why it might be racist but no information to say it is so.

I was enjoying reading what you'd previously written but changed, about domain knowledge and how domain experts can guess based on the outcome what was likely going on inside the system (EDIT: paraphrasing from memory, so I hope I got it right). I'd never thought about it like that before, very interesting perspective. But even then you'd have to be careful to make bloody sure your assumption, experience based though it is, was actually factually correct before tarring someone with racism.

I hope my interactions here don't coming off as me dismissing people concerns/claims. I'm simply trying to take an objective view of the situation as presented. I'm aware that some people consider objectivity a problem in and of itself.

Sorry for my edit but I didn't want to get into a conversation about something I am not actually comfortable trying to be an authority about. I realized I was reaching past what would be reasonable for me to represent in a substantive way.

I hope you understand my hesitancy in such a public medium, and I appreciate your feedback.

Definitely no need to apologise at all I can fully understand. I have edited my own responses in this conversation, given the topic, so as to show (I hope) I am being reasonable and open minded. I am myself no expert in these topics and can see that it's divisive enough for the reply button to be delayed in appearing on posts (I'm assuming for moderation purposes, though this might be something that always happens but I've never noticed before).

Either way I've enjoyed this discussion and have learned from it. I wish you all the best.

A good number of people here can read that article and incorporate a decade or more of past knowledge of reported interactions between the RCMP and indigenous communities in Canada.

Call it one part racism, three parts utter indifference, with an occasional dash of one or two exceptions actually giving a damn and attempting to do the right thing.

You're correct that no simple definite conclusion can be reached here on logic alone, however from context many can distinguish a hawk from a heronsaw given a favourable wind.

I think you have a good point. There are definitely historical wrongs that may influence someone's reading of a situation. Unconscious bias is a thing that we should all try and avoid, hard as is may be.

Police incompetence has a way of being disproportionately common depending on your race. Knowing definitively that is what is happening here without a lot more context is difficult, but it's entirely possible this is textbook racism.

But as you say, based in the information provided that conclusion is speculative at best. The sensible conclusion based on the information provided is incompetence. I think hanlons razor is applicable here

Yes, I do not think one can draw conclusions. However, much as one might wish to apply Hanlon's razor, Occam's razor also applies, and from a lot of people's perspective it cuts towards racism.

But surely the fewest assumptions here points to incompetence? Or more kindly a lack of knowledge about the way the fraud was commited? Based on the information provided I'd side with belligerent incompetence.

Based on the information would you conclude it was racist if the accused person was white? Would you conclude it was racist if the cop was also a first nation/aboriginal? I doubt it. What would your conclusion be then?

A little bit of column A, and a little bit of column B. Remote postings don't get star officers. And the RCMP has a famously ugly history with the natives of Western Canada. And some officers at a remote detachment might feel freer to act against some than others. What do you think the RCMP was even for?

Why not both, right?

What parts in those columns (I'm on mobile and only have one column, do you mean paragraphs?) show this was racist? I fully accept historical injustices occurred, and the possibility that remote places might not attract "star" officers and maybe that some remote officers could feel that a remote posting is an opportunity to enact their racist desires. But even if these are true it doesn't make this interaction racist.

> What do you think the RCMP was even for?

To police their communities? Or, based on your preceeding sentences are you suggesting that the RCMP's purpose is racism?

To protect the 'common man' from indigenous tribes at the borders. I think originally it's a military Corp designed to protect settlers.

TIL. Not being Canadian I didn't know this.

That isn't a very accurate characterization.

At the time, there was no significant population of settlers in the area. Most people were either fully or at least partly Indigenous like the Metis.

The goal was to protect First Nations from American settlers and prevent violence between the two which would trigger US military intervention.

This occurred in the wake of the Cypress Hills Massacre:

> The Cypress Hills Massacre occurred on June 1, 1873 [...]. It involved a group of American [...] hunters, and a camp of Assiniboine people. [...] The Cypress Hills Massacre prompted the Canadian government to accelerate the recruitment and deployment of the newly formed North-West Mounted Police.

> [Canadian Prime Minister John A.] MacDonald's principal fear was that the activities of American traders such as the Cypress Hills Massacre would lead to the First Nations peoples killing the American traders, which would lead to the United States military being deployed into the NWT to protect the lives of American citizens on the grounds that Canada was unable to maintain law and order in the region.

> The creation of the police force also had a political motive. The investigation into the massacre was to ensure that First Nations in the area were able to trust the Canadian government. The investigation would require international cooperation of two federal governments, and the North-West Mounted Police would take measures to make examples out of international criminals. Although ultimately no prosecution took place, the willingness to seek justice for any Canadian contributed to the establishment of peace between the NWMP and First Nations.[9]

Establishing trust and security with the First Nations was a key motivation:

The North-West Mounted Police was established in 1873 by the government of John A. MacDonald. The Cypress Hills massacre as well as the increasing number of conflicts on the U.S border due to alcohol smuggling are often cited as the main reasons the MacDonald government passed the bill creating the new military-style police force. However, most historians agree that the primary reason for establishing the force was to control First Nations and Métis populations, as the government sought to populate the West with settlers. Under the central authority of Ottawa, the NWMP marched West in 1874. The NWMP served as an arm of colonial control for politicians and lawmakers in Ottawa. For Indigenous communities in the Northwest, it represented an additional source of repression. The newly formed para-military style force was entrusted with wide-ranging powers and duties. Officers acted as Justices of the Peace, able to apprehend and sentence offenders, as well as impose Indian Act polices such as the Pass System. Since western courthouses did not exist at the time on the Prairies, NWMP barracks were often used for court proceedings and as temporary prisons. The NWMP assisted Indian Agents with the ration system, as well as enforcing laws obliging Indigenous students to attend residential schools. Government policies such as the Residential School system, the Sixties Scoop and gender discrimination in the Indian Act subjected Indigenous families to violence, cultural dislocation and land dispossession. The NWMP was successful in instituting a system of surveillance and curtailment, restricting Indigenous people to their reserves, regulating their land use and criminalizing livestock theft to benefit settler farmers and ranchers.

https://gladue.usask.ca/index.php/node/2853

> But surely the fewest assumptions here points to incompetence?

Don't call me Shirley. ;-)

As I said, that's very much a matter of perspective about which is more prevalent or more likely to be prevalent in the RCMP: incompetence or racism. If you include the context of the RCMP's history, racism does indeed seem more prevalent.

> Based on the information would you conclude it was racist if the accused person was white? Would you conclude it was racist if the cop was also a first nation/aboriginal? I doubt it. What would your conclusion be then?

I said I don't think one can draw a conclusion from the information provided, so I'm not sure why you are asking these questions. No, nothing you said would lead me to draw a conclusion.

The razor doesn't apply to the police.

Interesting. Why not?

Hanlon's razor is "never attribute to malice that which could be attributed to stupidity". However racism itself might be stupidity and not malice - much of everyday racism isn't the malicious KKK kind, it's much more similar to stupidity.

So if this interaction was either down to malice or stupidity it's racist? Seems like a neat tautology...

It's less a "neat tautology" and more a demonstration that Hanlon's razor isn't as useful in this situation one might think.

It doesn't. It's an attempt to make both sides of hanlons razor equal racism with no proof that either side is such.

Stupidity = racism Malice = racism

Sigh. No, it doesn't mean that both sides of Hanlon's razor equal racism. It does mean that Hanlon's razor doesn't rule out racism. Hanlon's razor isn't about proof. It's about recognizing that one often projects intent onto circumstances where none exists. While racism can fuel malice, it is entirely possible for racism to exist without any malice.

We'll have to agree to disagree on your first point. Though...

> Hanlon's razor isn't about proof. It's about recognizing that one often projects intent onto circumstances where none exists.

Exactly. That is my point. I'm not denying that racism can exist with or without malice, though I'd argue intent has to play a part. My point is based on the information from the article you cannot determine the interaction was racist and calling it so is projecting an intention on it that you cannot say exists.

You might argue that intent has to play a part, but it doesn't. Maybe just accept that you're interpreting meaning that is not there.

Halon's razor applies to the totality of the evidence, not just instance by instance. If you have a pattern of "incompetence" when dealing with First Nations issues that doesn't arise when not, that's really no longer adequately explained by incompetence.

Have we established a pattern of behaviour for this particular officer in this regard?

No, we haven't. Could be both a fair minded and competent officer for all we know.

The police in Canada have a long history of poor interactions with aboriginal peoples.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saskatoon_freezing_deaths#:~:t....

Now called "Starlight Tours"

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/25/darrell-night-...

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/rcmp-investigate-two-freezing...

2017 death in custody

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/02/canada-rcmp-of...

I'm not denying any of that. But those examples don't make this particular interaction racist.

That's part of how systemic racism works. It leads to stochastic events where systemic "incompetence" punishes members of a minority group.

But surely punishment requires intent behind the action? I think this is important because intention has to play a part here.

Plausible deniability?

Baffling

The RCMP in Canada has a long and well documented history of racism against indigenous people.

Im possibly as far removed a personality type as you could find from your typical woke crowd of fanatics who see racism behind every shadow, but truly, you'd have to be blind to miss the RCMP's seemingly endemic indifference to seriously investigating crimes in the native canadian community. Even right up until the present day, the RCMP has shown a glaring, almost shocking level of seemingly willfull ineptitude when their investigative resources are applied to any major sequence of crimes involving ntive canadians (what in canada are often called aboriginals). The list of persistent RCMP fuckups is long and storied, but just for one crucial example, I suggest your read about the "highway of tears".

This argument sounds ridiculous/unhinged to the average person.

The average person isn't aware of how endemic racism and abuse of indigenous people by the police and government is in the US and Canada.

It's obviously not certain that racism was a factor in this case, but the assumption is anything but ridiculous or unhinged. If you aren't white, malice always has to be a factor to consider in any interaction with the American or Canadian government.

Stated that bluntly, yeah. But not outlandish one you add some Canadian context.

The RCMP is a national service, and the kinds of officers posted to a remote reserve like Duncan's First Nation might not be the best of the best. They are paying their dues in a para-military organization, with no union (unlike most cops). They are over-scheduled, and likely far from their homes. An adversarial relationship between the members of an RCMP detachment and local band is sadly common.

They want an arrest, rarely do police care who it is

> Unless there's more too it,

There is definitely more to it. We're hearing the story from one side, and there are many good reasons why the parties on the other side wouldn't share all of their context. Honestly, as I was reading it, I was thinking that it was both conceivable this was a gross miscarriage of justice and an outright failing of the police forces, it's also entirely possible that the guy is as guilty as sin and they're just having trouble putting a case together (which is common when dealing with online fraud).

Keep in mind the police forces might arrest someone, but it's the prosecutors that make the decision about whether to bring charges. The prosecutors could have vacated the charge entirely, but chose not to. There's a lot of possible explanations for why they didn't, but that part of it isn't the RCMP's responsibility.

It's possible in the same way it's possible to win the lottery.

If he is guilty, why did the order fulfillment from Amazon register the delivery from Walmart?

Walmart was the recipient of the fraudulent transactions. Amazon was used to obfuscate. The difference between triangular fraud and straight fraud is mostly whether the recipient is in on it.

The RCMP, particularly in small towns are very bad at these types of investigations. The truly shocking thing is that they followed up on it at all.

I never really thought about it, but, looking them up it looks like they're basically the equivalent of the FBI(+ATF), but also sometimes are contracted for local policing by towns too small to maintain their own department? Is that accurate?

Yes, and more. They are federal police like FBI. They used to do intelligence work (like the CIA?) until the 80s where after some scandals, a new security agency was created to take over for that responsibility. Then there's some provinces that use them like the equivalent of state troopers and local small town police. It's a mess and a ball of conflicts of interest.

The FBI also does intelligence work. What's different is that in Canada the RCMP take in local policing responsibilities where there's no local resources to do so themselves.

How would you classify CSIS which is the successor to what the RCMP was doing?

CSIS is more analogous to the CIA. It's an intelligence service, not a police service.

But the US have a lot of specialized police agencies -- the RCMP is also the DEA, the Secret Service, the US Marshals... probably many more I'm forgetting or don't even know about.

ATF

Particularly given that the RCMP still exists, I don't accept your assertion that CSIS is its successor.

Wow this is like an "evolution isn't real because there's still monkeys" level of response. Try opening a book or Wikipedia or anything and having a gander.

Evolution doesn't say that humans are the "successors" to monkeys.

I grew up in Canada and read the McDonald Commission's report (well some of it), and was there when CSIS was created. Saying it's the "successor" to the RCMP is like saying Canada is the "successor" to Britain.

I decided I'll answer the question even though I don't accept the premise.

* CSIS is a civilian national intelligence service

* RCMP is a national police service

They're related because CSIS was born out of recommendations from the McDonald Commission. After the FLQ crisis, Canada understandably had a bit of a 9/11-style overreaction, and the RCMP Security Services got involved in a number of scandals stemming from overzealous and illegal activities. The RCMP Security Services were consequently abolished and their responsibilities were given to the newly formed CSIS, which was overseen by the newly formed SIRC. One could consequently reasonably say that CSIS was the successor to the RCMP Security Services.

However, it's really impractical for policing to be completely divorced from intelligence work, so much as the FBI does intelligence work despite the US having numerous civilian & military intelligence organizations, the RCMP continue to do intelligence work.

Largely, and in this case they'd likely be involved because of the latter type of jurisdiction.

They technically have jurisdiction across the country (for federal offences) and might take on big cases (e.g. terrorism) anywhere.

Think of them as the “default” service.

In many provinces, they’re the primary police service for all towns/cities except the largest ones.

Other provinces have a provincial police service to be the default in towns/cities that don’t have their own municipal police service.

Straight out of training, RCMP officers almost always get posted to remote locations. Locations that nobody with any seniority will touch.

These postings often require the new recruit to move - not just towns - but whole provinces away from their extended families. Throw in the cold, boring nature of these postings and what you get is a very bitter officer. One who is looking to pad their resume and move up the ranks and get out.

It's also common for officers to be internally disciplined in this way; The best cops get the most prestigious postings, and the worst get the opposite (just like Catholic priests).

(To be clear, I have no idea if this is true in this case - it's more of a generalization)

Not just towns -- entire provinces (BC, Alberta, and others).

Consider that the officers posted to a remote reserve like Duncan's First Nation might not be the best and brightest of the service. More Keystone Kops than Dudley Do-right.

As a foreigner, the only I have ever heard or seen of the RCMP is how courteous they are, with their red jackets, on fictional TV shows and movies, and how agressive they seem on the news.

> As a foreigner, the only I have ever heard or seen of the RCMP is how courteous they are, with their red jackets, on fictional TV shows and movies, and how agressive they seem on the news.

Canada has cultivated this image [of niceness] when in reality, their jack-booted state enforcers are just like every other country's.

Starlight tours represent Canadian police, this article isn’t about RCMP but the lack of accountability doesn’t make a difference

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saskatoon_freezing_deaths

In terms of the RCMP and their aggressive behaviour. It makes perfect sense. First Nations people have not been treated well by the RCMP or LE for a very long time in Canada... This still persists to this day, systematic discrimination and all that stuff.

Well, it doesn't make sense that this still happens. You'd think there would be policies and training to prevent this sort of thing nowadays...

That would require the Canadian government to admit they have a racism problem, which they steadfastly refuse to do.

RCMP's main purpose is to serve as the enforcement arm of big corporate interests and politicians. Their secondary purpose is to serve themselves. Serving Canadians and upholding the law is like 30th on the list.

I will have to write a case study on this at some point, but triangle fraudsters have attempted to use our company's delivery service [0] to fulfill curbside pickups from Best Buy etc presumably to unsuspecting e-commerce buyers. I noticed certain a subset of users frequently changing their card, and the name on their delivery, and figured out what they were doing.

We stopped a few dozen attempts, filing police reports and contacting the people with names matching the cards. We now use Stripe Verify to ensure identity matches, which I really would have preferred not to do as a privacy-oriented person.

Interestingly, the police usually didn't want to deal with these things, even if the merchandise was in their jurisdiction

We provide ID verification specifically for eCommerce to help prevent chargeback fraud: https://getverdict.com

This is the first where I've heard of using IDv for preventing triangle fraud on the fulfillment side.

Just curious - how does this fraud harm you the delivery service? The chargeback hits the merchant only no? Or are you the merchant in this transaction as well?

Similar to you, chargeback is a concern (triangle fraudsters using stolen credit cards and all). We're not the merchant, normally that's a brick and mortar retailer. In addition to chargeback Generally, I really hate the idea of seedy users exploiting the service and feel obligated to root that out.

Sounds about right, the RCMP has a long history of First Nations neglect. This seems like it would be a straightforward case to prove his innocence. Also a good reminder of why it's important to never speak with police without a lawyer.

Except we don't have the same rights to a lawyer as in the US. We have a right to speak to a lawyer, but that could be over the phone and they are not present during questioning:

https://blogs.ubc.ca/ijhr/2021/11/29/the-right-to-counsel-it...

It also sounds like the RCMP will never take the case to trial (based on the article, they may know that this is actually triangulation fraud) and as such, he'll never have a chance to either defend himself or expunge his record.

If charges are withdrawn or dismissed, as long as you don't have any convictions on record and there isn't a public safety concern you can request the destruction of non-conviction information from your record.

It's silly that you need to request it, but there is a process to expunge your record.

I think part of the issue here is the subtle distinction between stayed and withdrawn.

It seems the charges expire after a year.

As per https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-46/page-98.html#d...:

(4) However, if the Attorney General or counsel does not give notice under subsection (3) on or before the first anniversary of the day on which the stay of proceedings was entered, the proceedings are deemed never to have been commenced.

> We have a right to speak to a lawyer, but that could be over the phone and they are not present during questioning

You can refuse to answer most questions during questioning, but even if you yell “lawyer!!!” A million times and spill the beans after the millionth repeat question, you’re screwed.

Then there’s the constitution “protections” about illegally gained evidence where the judge can say “yeah, it was unconstitutional but I’ll allow it anyway”

I don’t know why Canada gets so many weird AF legal claims on HN and Reddit (in particular that we supposedly don’t have the right to self defence), but we do, in fact, have the right to remain silent and to not be compelled to testify against oneself.

There are circumstances where you can be interviewed without a lawyer present, but you cannot be compelled to answer those questions, and you can still consult a lawyer for all interview questions.

There's a huge cottage industry of YouTube rage farmers who spread that kind of misinformation for clicks. It's particularly popular in the prairies right now.

That's funny because no, they are wrong. We can be compelled to answer questions that incriminate ourselves and our right to speak to a lawyer isn't as strong as it is in the US. You can be interrogated even after asking for a lawyer.

No, you are wrong:

https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/csj-sjc/rfc-dlc/ccrf-ccdl/chec...

I don’t even know how you could force someone to testify against themselves. Seems like an unreliable witness…

What? How does that prove me wrong? You can still be forced to be a witness and answer questions even if they do incriminate yourself.

>In Canada a person has the right not to have any incriminating evidence that the person was compelled to give in one proceeding used against him or her in another proceeding except in a prosecution for perjury or for the giving of contradictory evidence. Thus, in Canada, a witness cannot refuse to answer a question on the grounds of self-incrimination, but receives full evidentiary immunity in return. https://www.mpllp.com/no-right-to-remain-silent

No, you are wrong, though you provide a humorous example of how effective that form of brainwashing is.

https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/csj-sjc/rfc-dlc/ccrf-ccdl/chec...

They can keep interrogating you after you ask for a lawyer even if your lawyer isn't present. It amounts to the exact same considering how vulnerable a person is during interrogation. Your link agrees with me. How is this not "not as strong as the US", which is what I said in my comment?

>There is no constitutional right to have a lawyer present throughout a police interview (Sinclair, supra at paragraphs 34-38). Rather, in most cases an initial warning, coupled with a reasonable opportunity to consult counsel when the detainee invokes the right to counsel, satisfies section 10(b) (Sinclair, supra at paragraph 2).

Edit: This is what I mean

>Unlike the U.S. Constitution’s right to counsel under the fifth amendment, neither section 10(b) of the Charter nor the right to counsel allowed by Supreme Court cases allows for your lawyer to be present with you during an interrogation. That means that after you’ve spoken to your lawyer it could be hours or days before you speak to them again and the police will take every opportunity they can to get a statement from you that seals your conviction.

>https://www.jeffreismanlaw.ca/understanding-your-right-to-co...

I'm not sure if you're claiming that what I wrote is "weird", but nothing I said was incorrect and the link I provided provides extensive information on case law here. Suffice it to say, most people have a very hard time refusing to answer while being grilled for hours, and the article cites numerous such examples.

> and you can still consult a lawyer for all interview questions.

This is simply not as straightforward as you're implying. Per the article, R v Sinclair established that in most cases, a detainee may be permitted to consult a lawyer only once.

R v Sinclair (2010 SCC 35) is a leading case from the Supreme Court of Canada on a detainee's right to counsel under section 10(b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Specifically, the case addresses two issues regarding the police's implementation duty under the right to counsel: 1) does a detainee have the right to have a lawyer present during police questioning, and 2) does a detainee have the right to make multiple phone calls to their lawyer. A majority of the Court answered the first question in the negative, and answered the second question in the negative, subject to a change of circumstances.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_v_Sinclair

You seem to be in agreement. Perhaps you responded to the wrong person? That's the same case law the parent cited (albeit indirectly - see their link up thread).

You can reply to someone and agree with them, even provide additional bolstering evidence — like a direct quote. It turns out not everything on the internet is a fight you have to win.

It wasn’t “additional boistering evidence”. It was the exact same case law that very same person had already cited.

Hence… I politely asked if they meant to reply to someone else.

I don’t know why you’re talking about fighting.

I responded to naasking with supplementary details supporting their answer. Like itsnotafight says, we don't always have to disagree with a poster.

Got it. Maybe your post should be more substantial then? Then people don’t have to guess what you’re trying to say.

You literally just echoed back something to someone that they already said. That’s more than a little confusing to a reader.

I didn't "just echo back the same case law". They only provided an (incomplete) citation, and no link.

I provided the full link to Wikipedia, the summary of what R v Sinclair actually established (from which readers can immediately see that Canadian right to a lawyer during questioning differs sharply from the US right), and then the Wikipedia link which discusses the history and background of the case, the ruling, and further links to the text of the decision on CanLII, etc.

That's genuinely useful missing information, which many HN readers will not bother to search for, but if you provide the links some of them may actually click through, then we collectively get a less-misinformed discussion. If instead of suggesting I intended to respond to the wrong person, you had directly asked me why I thought it useful to post this, I'd have told you that it was so other posters would inform their discussion better; it's very tiring constantly seeing discussions where posters assume any legal question is asked about US law and only US law, or worse still, simply assume that US legal principles or rule of law apply all over the world (such as anything on Canadian law, or all the discussions on privacy law).

And one extra thing: you might be assuming that merely saying "R v Sinclair" is unambiguous without including the "(2010 SCC 35)" part of the citation, but when I personally google "R v Sinclair", most hits are relevant, but #7 hit is "People v. Sinclair, 131 A.D.3d 492" and #10 hit is "Sinclair v. Sinclair :: 1969 :: Kansas Supreme Court Decisions". As we've commented ongoing in HN, google search relevance is degrading these days, so don't assume incomplete citations lead users to the right article.

Posting a link (or archive reference) is a substantial contribution to a discussion, esp. when many of the posters haven't read the topic they're discussing.

Sure, but without context is difficult for the reader to understand if you are posting (a) because it contradicts, or (b) supports the argument being made. Both of those would be interesting to me, and it wasn't clear, so I asked.

I mean, you just wrote 4+ paragraphs on the topic(!) so writing "Here's the relevant bit for anyone interested..." is not a big ask.

I've been here for well over a decade and online for three decades - I was confused by the comment (and following the topic closely) so I asked. Take my feedback or don't. I don't care. But understand that it's slightly ambiguous and confusing for the reader. There are lots of trolls here and lots of genuinely well intentioned people (you included) but it's not always obvious which is which.

There's no reason to be so upset.

There was context, it was the post that I replied to with supporting detail. I intentionally responded specifically to that, and my post was the citation (the actual full citation with URL, not a partial name of the case).

I'm not "upset", I'm merely ongoing perplexed that you believe that HN posts in general will necessarily disagree with the post they respond to. (This ain't Twitter, it's a fairly civilized fact-based discussion board). You can trivially infer whether I agree/disagree/partially agree simply by seeing my post interacts with the parent, GP and ancestor posts it's responding to).

> It wasn't clear to me ... [whether my post]... (a) contradicts, or (b) supports the argument being made.

?!? You had already actually said about my post "You seem to be in agreement. Perhaps you responded to the wrong person?".

So you, me and user @itsnotafight all figured my post was in support of naasking. And itsnotafight told you "[can...] even provide additional bolstering evidence — like a direct quote." Then you tried to disagree that my post provided additional bolstering evidence, although it did (for the reasons I've explained above).

You can instantly tell I'm a bona-fide commentator and not a troll from looking at my post history (just like I could tell from yours). In my fact my post history shows I often post explanatory/clarifying/supporting/disagreeing links.

My feedback to your feedback is you could have simply said "I'm confused by this post, can't tell if it's agreeing or disagreeing with the post it's responding to." That would have made it clearer, that it was only your confusion, the rest of us weren't confused by my intent. There was no wider confusion and you weren't speaking on behalf of anyone else.

> writing "Here's the relevant bit for anyone interested..." is not a big ask.

It totally is a big ask when requiring me to post a good-faith preamble of my bona fides, and moreover a context that notes that this is the umpteenth discussion where posters assumed US constitutional/legal principles apply in Canada (or elsewhere), or at minimum threw around undefined phrases and assumed they were universal. If we ever need to post a good-faith preamble plus a context to even a fairly self-evident short post, this discussion board has already been irredeemably overrun by trolls, and the good-faith posters will all simply leave.

> here are lots of trolls here and lots of genuinely well intentioned people...

I'm not going to armor-proof my posts purely to minimize some tiny Type-II error probability of users who misunderstand the context on my post and wrongly flag it. (I see tons of other posts daily on HN where I personally can't discern whether a response or a discussion is in good-faith, I usually refrain from judging and flagging if I can't determine that; most of those go way beyond being arguably slightly ambiguous and confusing for the reader).

I don't think it's constructive for us to prolong discussing this anymore. Other people are disagreeing that you had any reason to be confused about my intent. At absolute minimum I expect you would have posted "I'm confused by this post, can't tell if it's agreeing or disagreeing with the post it's responding to." Or, don't take my word for it, show this to ten people you know and trust and see how many of them say my comment was not a troll.

Look at all this energy that's been wasted when could have more productively been spent on Canadian vs US vs non-US principles on the right to silence. Oh well.

It’s weird because you chose wording that isn’t entirely correct, and also chose to ignore that whether a lawyer is present or not, you cannot be compelled to testify against yourself, which is what a lawyer is going to tell you during your phone call.

> It’s weird because you chose wording that isn’t entirely correct

My wording was entirely correct.

> and also chose to ignore that whether a lawyer is present or not, you cannot be compelled to testify against yourself

Irrelevant to the point I was making, which was specifically about how our right to counsel differs from the US.

No, we don't. This is a misconception. There's no equivalent to the pleading the fifth. The supreme Court has been pretty clear about that.

>In the United States, the Fifth Amendment permits a witness to refuse to answer any question that may incriminate them (a.k.a. “taking the fifth” or “pleading the fifth”). This is not how the law works in Canada. In Canada, a witness can be forced to answer incriminating questions.

https://www.aclrc.com/section-13#:~:text=In%20the%20United%2....

Not sure why you didn't include the remainder of that section:

> As part of the bargain, however, the Crown cannot use that evidence to incriminate the witness in another proceeding.

It seems important since it still prevents one from self-incrimination in the context of the courts. Maybe there are other legal ramifications caused by this distinction but it sounds functionally equivalent.

Well, it leads to situations like these:

>The Supreme Court discussed the relationship between the section 7 pre-trial right to silence and the confessions rule in Singh.90 That case involved a detained murder suspect who was interrogated by individuals he knew were police. In the course of the interrogation, Singh asserted his right to remain silent 18 times before ultimately responding to police questions with some self-incriminating statements. The defence objected to the admissibility of Singh’s statements on the basis that they were obtained in violation of his section 7 right to silence, but a slim majority of the Supreme Court rejected this argument. The majority held that, where a detainee is interrogated by known police, the section 7 right to silence is subsumed into the voluntariness inquiry.91 Since the trial judge had considered all the circumstances and determined that the statements were made voluntarily, the question whether the accused’s free will was overborne had already been answered and the section 7 right to silence could provide no further protection.92

Source(pdf): The Patchwork Principle against Self-Incrimination under the Charter https://digitalcommons.osgoode.yorku.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?...

Unfortunately, Canada does not have the same legal protections (both in written law [i.e., the Bill of Rights] and in jurisprudence) as in the United States.

What rights in the US would have helped here the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms doesn't already do. Section 9 and 10 seem to cover this well

Well going off the article he’d at least not have a criminal record

He doesn't have a criminal record though. He has an arrest record.

Granted the way the article explained it is pretty poor. I'm not totally clear what it was trying to say in that regard.

As an aside, Canada has a robust pardon system[0] that the US doesn't have. At least aside from the truly bizarre (at least to me) system of presidential pardons.

A pardon wipes your record of the specific crime completely FWIW.

[0] https://www.pardons.org/pardons/faqs/

> What rights in the US would have helped here the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms doesn't already do. Section 9 and 10 seem to cover this well

A fair question. First, as I was not making a top level comment, but responding to another comment, I was not specifically addressing this case, but instead making a broader statement about the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (and the attendant judicial interpretations of same) versus the US Bill of Rights (and likewise legal interpretations). (Side note, a sibling comment thread makes the same argument).

In particular, Canadian courts have pretty consistently allowed more exceptions to the charters compared to US courts and Bill of Rights. Additionally, the charter makes much weaker protections in several specific circumstances, for example in section 24(2), whereby evidence collected illegally may still be used in criminal proceedings (see R v Grant 1990). But section 1 is the real kicker.

As a specific example, you referenced Section 9 of CRF. In R v Ladouceur [1], the Canadian Supreme Court found that although random traffic stops (fishing expeditions) violated Section 9 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, they were permitted under Section 1 of the Charter.

Section 1 contains the prefatory text:

"The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject *only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society*" (emphasis mine)

The fact that such weasel words / escape hatch would be enshrined into something that is purported to be as fundamental as the Bill of Rights essentially nullifies the entire thing, in my opinion. Indeed, section 1 is often quoted in Canadian jurisprudence as justification for all sorts of -- again, in my opinion -- government overreach.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_v_Ladouceur

By the way, quick aside, if you go to the police yourself (someone wronged you), you should also go with a lawyer. It'll be taken more seriously, be harder to dismiss, and be both council and support while you go through the steps.

Great, all it takes in Canada to ruin someone’s life is to know their name and address, and a stolen card!

I’m still missing one part, if that woman has her account hacked (plus the credit card, isn’t it supposed to be encrypted in walmart site?), and that scammer sent the goods to the guy, how did the scammer know that the guy ordered the stuff in the first place?! The coordinated attack is a little too sophisticated for a stolen credit card, because that would assume the scammer is also hacking that guy amazon account? Unless the seller is the scammer or part of a scammer ring and whenever he placed that order, they used the woman card to make the purchases, but why bother, they could’ve just used that card somewhere else, harder to track and a higher outcome? something isn’t adding up.

That being said, I always use virtual cards for anything online, and those are a “prepaid credit cards”.

> how did the scammer know that the guy ordered the stuff in the first place?!

The idea is the scammer is the seller on Amazon. So the guy orders from Amazon Marketplace, the Marketplace seller uses a hacked Wal-Mart account to fulfill the order and pockets the cash from Amazon.

What’s the point or the advantage of doing so? The card will be cancelled right after and instead of using the max amount of that card, now you are only limited with what left after purchasing that goods, from the scammer perspective, I don’t see how’s this any better than maxing the card somewhere online instead, unless I’m missing something.

I think the idea is that the scammer gets a legitimate payment from the receiver, and charges a bad payment to the sender. The sender cancels their card, and reverses the charge, so now Walmart is out the money and out the item. But the receiver card is not cancelled because they actually intended to use it, and received the goods that they ordered, so Amazon pays out to them for fulfilling the order.

The problem with maxing out the stolen card is that you can't get cash -- you can get stuff, but even then, you have to give away your address.

Very interesting! I think the next step for that guy is to go after amazon for enabling the scam and being the front-end.

Another interesting twist of this happened to me. Someone created two eBay accounts. One in my name, one as a seller. They used my card to pay the seller with my forged eBay account.

Then they found the tracking number of a package sent to my city around the same time.

Ultimately the charge back failed when I reported fraud. They had a tracking number and invoice in my name, which my bank and eBay said had to be me. When I asked eBay to refund, they said the opposite as what they said to my bank. They said only the creator of the account could refund, not the person named on the account, so I could only refund if I found the fraudster and got their consent.

Slightly tangential question but why is credit card security so weak in the first place? I mean all we need is 16 digits of card number, 4 digits of expiry date and 3 digits of CVV. The 23 digits can leak from so many places.

In this day why don't the credit card payment systems require multi-factor authentication for online payments? Why don't payment machines challenge you for PIN for payments?

Simple: because it adds friction, and the optional amount of fraud is not zero.

https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/optimal-amount-of-fra...

Every time this comes up, people claim that this lack of security doesn't matter because it's easy to reverse these payments. But if that's true, then why is the woman so upset and why is Barker handled so aggressively? It should be easy to revert both payments.

This case is probably not a great example to use, because the woman's card wasn't stolen. Her account at Walmart was hacked, and the purchase was made there with the shipment sent to a different address.

Why would that not make it a good example? It's still a case of fraud, enabled by the lack of security on credit card payments. The payment hadn't been authorised by the woman.

This looks like an easy thing for Walmart to prevent if they bothered. On Amazon if you add a new shipping address, you can't ship to it until you re-verify your credit card CVV. With just that simple check this attack would be blocked (unless they steal the entire CC info of course).

That's a question for Amazon, which makes the whole thing possible by:

1. Lulling naive or hurried customers who like to think they're buying "from Amazon" into buying from fraudsters, and

2. Paying the fraudsters so quickly that the seller's account is closed before action is taken the fraud, and

3. Vetting sellers so promiscuously that the individual fraudster's cycle can continue.

In this light, Krebs diagram is deficient, because it omits Amazon from the loop. It's not "triangulation", the more accurate word would be quadrilateralization -- but spell-check says that's not a word.

The woman was presumably upset because she thought she was scammed and had caught the scammer red-handed, and probably didn’t fully understand how credit disputes happen, or had some extenuating circumstances (poor credit, no credit) that she was actively trying to fix by having a CC only to get defrauded (although I don’t think credit fixes actually affect your credit score). It’s safe to assume the average person doesn’t really understand credit.

Nit: you also need the five digit zip code

Address verification is optional. Depending on your merchant account, you can request address verification for a customer, and you may get a lower discount rate with correct address information. But you can also run charges without it.

That's the idea with the expiry date, and the CVV, and the zip code. The problem is, it doesn't seem possible to convince businesses not to hold on to whatever security info is required to charge the card in plain text, so whatever the relevant details are inevitably get leaked from some hotel or eCommerce giant that really shouldn't have them in the first place, but hasn't set up a way to securely verify credentials with the bank without literally recording them.

You can keep adding on additional pieces of bullshit information customers need to remember all you want, none of it will matter as long as banks and credit card companies don't force businesses to treat them as actually sensitive information.

I think that enforcing what you're suggesting is incredibly hard and I don't think can scale, it's what PCI-DSS and similar are meant to tackle, it really doesn't work in my experience.

This is a protocol/product problem, it's wild that to make a payment all the crown jewels need to be put on the wire. It's about time that payment devices and the whole ecosystem adopts some sensible cryptography that, at minimum allows signing payment requests, and ideally keeps its keys private.

Although this whole problem is kind of already solved by 3DS2, albeit not in a great way.

In the EU it’s not uncommon to have some 2FA. My bank asks me to confirm online CC purchases all the time on their app with 3D secure.

This is also true for me in Canada. I often get an SMS based 2FA prompt…

> He says he has considered suing the investigating officer for defamation, but has been told by his attorney that the bar for success in such cases against the government is extremely high.

Canada is a relatively less litigious country, but it seems he was harmed quite materially by losing his job. I'm not sure why they'd arrest him if he could show he placed the order the way anyone else would through his Amazon account.

It is too bad that the woman who was victimized appears too dumb to understand what triangulation fraud is and seems convinced that Barker is the perpetrator.

Does it have any bearing on the case, though? I agree but it may make no difference

Can't rule out racism here. On the part of the woman and the RCMP.

Certainly on the part of RCMP, you can tell when you are reading a case where the cops are dealing with a community they do not expect to advocate for themselves.

Needn't rule in racism, so I don't.

You can't blame this on the other victim. The problem is that the RCMP has no clue what they're doing, and that Amazon is enabling this fraud.

Was not saying this was the issue at hand, I just am surprised the woman quoted is so dense.

As someone whose been accused before of something I didn’t do, by people who were damn sure I had done it, it can be a very stressful traumatic experience, it doesn’t sound like a big deal until it happens to you. Don’t just hurl nasty messages at someone you don’t know and don’t even have 100% proof they have wronged you.

The RCMP held a gun to my wife's head when she was pulled over and threatened to shoot. I think it was because she was driving a beat up car in a wealthy part of the city. After they realized she was a student, they just let her go and did a complete 180 pretending they were all buddy-buddy with her.

During the interaction they said some really threatening, creepy, and disparaging things.

We launched a complaint, but since we left the country (for work), they said they couldn't do anything as we were non-residents.

The whole thing was completely unacceptable. I'm not anti-police, but the RCMP need serious reform. I feel uncomfortable every time we return to Canada visit family.

> Barker says the stay has left him in legal limbo — denying him the ability to clear his name, while giving the RCMP a free pass for a botched investigation. He says he has considered suing the investigating officer for defamation, but has been told by his attorney that the bar for success in such cases against the government is extremely high.

Here's a Defcon talk about this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IT2oAzTcvU

...I did not realize merely being arrested gave you a criminal record. That would seem to go against "innocent until proven guilty." Is this Canada-specific or does it also apply in the US?

> Barker said he bought seven “Step2 All Around Playtime Patio with Canopy” sets from a seller on Amazon.ca, using his payment card on file to pay nearly $2,000 for the items.

Presumably Baker would have immediately shown the RCMP the Amazon transaction record for his (legitimate) payment to the (fraudulent) seller. And that Baker's payment to the seller would have been timestamped before the seller perpetrated the fraud on the Walmart account and shipped the goods to Baker.

If you saw the timeline above, and you believed the transaction records were accurate (and I assume the RCMP has the means to verify those transaction records with Amazon and Walmart), then what would you conclude was going on?

Would you assume that Baker was a master criminal who was acting as both the buyer and crooked seller, and was covering his tracks with a prepayment from himself (as the buyer) to himself (as the seller), thereby creating a transaction record to give plausible deniability?

Even the most cynical jaded hard-edged RCMP officer should see that doesn't make sense. Either the investigation was very incompetent or there's some more detail to the story that we haven't heard.

No need to presume.

> Eager to clear his name, Barker said he shared with the police copies of his credit card bills and purchase history at Amazon. But on April 21, the investigator called again to say he was coming to arrest Barker for theft.

I don't know Canadian law. Once a prosecution is started, must it be completed within the statute of limitations for that crime?

I think that's how it generally works in the USA. Because the prosecution is stayed you lose the right to a speedy trial, but the statute of limitations still ticks.

There is no statue of limitations in Canadian law.

There is no statute of limitations, generally, but Canada does recognize the right to a speedy trial. The Charter of Rights And Freedoms [1] 11b says "Any person charged with an offence has the right ... to be tried within a reasonable time".

Common law interpretation through R. v. Jordan [2] establishes a presumptive ceiling on the time between charges and trial, "18 months for cases tried in the provincial court, and 30 months for cases in the superior court".

In the US statutes of limitations vary between jurisdictions and offenses; some start the clock ticking at the commission of the criminal act, others at when it comes to light, and others when it is reported to law enforcement. This is in addition to the right to a speedy trial, but the US does not have any uniform guidance on what "speedy" means and generally courts do not entertain speedy trial motions.

[1] https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/const/page-12.html

[2] https://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/16057/inde...

There are generally three types of speedy trial rights in the USA, depending on where you live. Federal constitutional right, State constitutional right, and State/federal statutory right. The federal one is vague and hand-wavy and only defined in case law. Usually the same with State constitutional right. The statutory rights are usually more explicit and often define an exact number of days and how those days are calculated, e.g. Illinois it is 120 days.

Courts definitely do entertain them. I've seen dozens over the years and there are thousands of examples of successful challenges in case law. I can think of several weird examples off the top of my head:

1) Guy from Hawaii transferred to mainland prison, murder case reversed for new trial on appeal, State doesn't do the paperwork to fly him back from prison to Hawaii within 180 days, then tries to blame it on the prisoner for not getting himself to his own trial :D

2) Guy burgles building which is built on a county line. State charges him in the wrong county (he burgled the other side of the building); tries to change venue, judge says they blew out their speedy trial days holding him in the wrong county.

3) I personally lost a year. I was in jail before COVID broke out. I filed for my 120 day speedy. There's no exception in the Illinois statute for emergencies (unlike the federal statute). Illinois Supreme Court unilaterally modifies the statute without involving the legislature. I didn't go to court for over a year, just stuck in a flooded cell. Filed a motion to dismiss for speedy trial violation and violation of the Illinois constitution for having the court create a new law. Illinois Supreme Court rules that it can do whatever the fuck it wants because they are the ones who have the final say on a motion and they are not going to find against themselves lol

"Where, as here, a statute and a supreme court rule governing court procedure cannot be reconciled, the statute must give way to the rule." (a rule created without consultation over-rides a law created by lawmakers!)

https://law.justia.com/cases/illinois/supreme-court/2023/128...

Specifically, there is no statute of limitations for indictable criminal offences, the equivalent of a felony. Minor offences have a limit of one year. Civil matters have a limit in many provinces, too.

In Canada we have the right to be tried in a reasonable amount of time. The Supreme Court of Canada put strict time limits in place in R. V. Jordan.

For cases without a preliminary inquiry (which this would be) the Crown has 18 months from the arrest to bring the case to trial. For cases with a preliminary inquiry it's 30 months.

Since he was arrested April 2022 that means he must be tried before the end of 2024, or the charges withdrawn.

>>Barker shared with this author all of the documentation he gave to the RCMP, including screenshots of his Amazon.ca account showing that the items in dispute were sold by a seller named “Adavio,” and that the merchant behind this name was based in Turkey. That Adavio account belongs to a young computer engineering student and “SEO expert” based in Adana, Turkey who did not respond to requests for comment.

Seems like this would be a great time to track this guy down, Adavio, and get his side of the story whether he wants to tell it or not. The fact that he disappeared makes him sound more like he has connections to scammers and thieves who use stolen card info.

Something's rotten here and it has nothing to do with Denmark.

Krebs is great but there is one thing that's killing me:

> "hacked"

Where is any of the evidence of hacking? I see inadequate protections against fraud from the sellers. I see an account that has been compromised. I don't see any evidence of hacking.

Two bad things:

* There is clear fraud going on and the authorities are doing nothing about it.

* The authorities mistakenly attacked the victim and not owning up to it.

Sounds like the Ontario woman was likely reusing a password and had her account taken over. Walmart should help this guy out by running password dumps against her account to see if that's the case.

Walmart... helping?

where I'm from, it's insanely common to buy a smartphone, only to find out when you put your sim card in, that it was stolen.

The authorities will just take it back (with no refund ofc) if you can prove that you bought it.

However, most purchases are from online sellers, or stores that say (this phone came from abroad by an immigrant).

Now this is indeed how most electronics enter the country, so the risk is unavoidable sadly.

Couldn't the seller put in a sim card to determine if the phone was stolen?

Why would they? The seller wants to move product and illegal product comes with discount.

Doesn't that make them guilty of fencing?

Do they at least refund the illegal purchase?

You are reasoning from high rule of law when OP is clearly describing a low rule of law country, prolly middle-income.

unfortunately it's much more insidious, they are both priced exactly the same. no one's the wiser until the police hit you up, or you try to fly abroad.

It’s discount to the seller/middleman. Ie I can sell a legally or illegally sourced phone. The illegally sourced phone is cheaper to me so more profit.

Stolen product is less valuable to the buyer (see complaints in thread) and seller reputation at the very least.

If the seller has mostly stolen goods, seller reputation isn't a big concern. Startup a new shop when the old one dries up.

Until we make our fucking "servants" including police accountable for abuse of power and what they do to people it'll keep happening.

Sounds like a man in the middle attack, made possible since buyer and seller do not mutually authenticate one another?

Frankly, this is yet another article justifying why you must never speak to the police.

(the canonical talk on that topic: https://youtu.be/d-7o9xYp7eE?feature=shared)

Happy STFU Friday! https://www.youtube.com/shorts/kEeId0EG-XE

Does that even work in Canada? The article is about a Canadian issue.

If you invoked the fifth, you'd be made fun of, since that's a US thing.

But section 7 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms:

> Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.

has been found to provide similar protections. You can be required to identify yourself, and, in drunk driving cases, you can be required to do roadside sobriety tests, but in general, you aren't obliged to answer questions from the police.

STFU

What part of him talking to the police worsened his situation?

My interpretation is that he provided enough evidence to the RCMP that convinced them to stay the case, since they likely thought the evidence they had to convict Barker was weak. This lead to him not having a chance in court to clear his name.

Had he not spoken to the police at all, and instead waited to present his evidence in court, he likely would have been found not guilty and therefore would have cleared his name.

Him talking to police worsened the situation because they are not the ones who evaluate the evidence and make a conviction decision (judges/juries do that). The job of the police is to collect evidence, and Barker did that for them (to his detriment).

Being out of town in Halifax for the following 3 days probably made the officer a lot less convinced of innocence right off the bat. That's why he showed up at the house the next day.

So much just-world-fallacy-inspired victim blaming in this thread. The problem here is actually better described as a breakdown in communication with the police, on the part of the RCMP. (I wonder if they have their own videos like "Don't listen to your victims" and "Shut your eyes Mondays" ?)

Modulo the third party scammer that created the situation, the bad actor here is the RCMP itself for bringing the weight of the government down on this guy without doing the real work of actually investigating. The true reform would be to destroy this regressive idea whereby government agents/systems can attack people and then just walk away from the matter after realizing they are wrong. If there were statutory reimbursements for hiring legal representation, time spent/detained, emotional distress etc, then the victim here would have the resources to continue the matter in the eventually consistent justice system. Instead the official policy would seem to be something like "Thank you for your involuntary contribution to this rookie agent's training. Better luck next time"

RCMP in general is pretty broken - sorry - needs reform. Systemic issues.

This resembles the man-in-the-middle attack, which is also a triangulation attack in structure. I wonder if it could be defeated with a dual path defence, where traffic went one way out and another way back?

Feel for this man

> In Canada, a criminal record is not a record of conviction, it’s a record of charges and that’s why I can’t work now,” Barker said. “Potential employers never find out what the nature of it is, they just find out that I have a criminal arrest record.”

Funny, I usually associate Canada with good policymaking but this is substantially worse than the US.

What they’re referring to is the court records that show whether someone was ever put through any kind of criminal justice process. If someone is arrested and charged, that record is publicly accessible to anyone for a few dollars. If the charges go nowhere, the record of the arrest and charge remains on the public record forever.

It is indeed an unfair system.

It really is so unfair! Is it like this in other countries too? Like US, UK, Germany, etc.? I'd really like to know how this system works in other developed countries of the world.

It is very much the same in the US. Some states and cities have implemented a so called "ban the box" law, but most of the country has not. I've filled out many background check, employment applications, rental application etc that will ask "have you ever been arrested or charged with a crime", and regardless of circumstance will deny you if you say yes. If you are found innocent, or charges dropped because they messed up the evidence etc, doesn't matter.

In the US, as I understand it, you can go through a process (not free) to get your arrest record expunged and then you can legally answer no to that question. Still messed up but there is a path at least.

Well, not a developed country, but in Brazil the government can only disclose convictions (outside of the government, internally there are a few exceptions), only to the person or a security-related organization, and it's illegal to even ask for a record in a work related process unless it's about one of those security-related organizations (the Federal Police maintains a list of them). Also, the data stays there starting at the conviction and only up to the point the person is found innocent in another ruling or the penalty ends.

But the one things that keeps surprising me about the other countries isn't any of that discrimination against minor misbehaving. It is that justice promoters so often see their roles on society as harassing suspects until they break down. This seems to be the norm, and it's completely ridiculous.

> If the charges go nowhere, the record of the arrest and charge remains on the public record forever.

This isn't necessarily true. It's dumb that it's not automatic, but you can request in the destruction of non-conviction information.

And they can deny the destruction of that non-conviction information without having to explain why. https://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/en/managing-criminal-record

> Canada

> good policymaking

As a Canadian, seems like we just have good PR.

Canada has INCREDIBLE international PR. Perhaps better than any other OECD country, compared to its reality.

You look almost European in design and you're in close proximity to a country everyone loves to hate. You absolutely glow by comparison.

I gotta say, though, that every time I go up to Canada I'm struck by how much everything seems just like the US. If the US ever gets universal healthcare it'll be especially hard to tell the difference. Hell, we're even well on our way to having our own king!

It absolutely works that way in the US. Lots of jobs, financial applications, housing rental applications etc ask if you have ever been charged with a crime - not convicted, only charged - and even if you are found innocent, or the charges dropped because it turns out their initial investigation was wrong etc - it closes most doors for you.

Probably state dependent, do not think they can do that where I live.

It is state and municipality dependent. https://www.paycor.com/resource-center/articles/ban-the-box-...

fwiw that map covers a significant majority of Americans in states with some box restriction

The map itself is wildly misleading. New York is colored in the map, for example, because four cities in the state have some sort of restriction on it (some only for government employees, too, so private companies can ask whatever they want)

I think that Canada is absolutely undeserving of this record and there have been a few recent stories that illustrate governmental ineptitude or even malice.

This is the one that springs to mind:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65107912.amp

Eh, I dont find these in-hindsight "reports" that compelling. The implication that if someone beats their wife we should be abke to stop them from committing a mass shooting seems incorrect.

I think clearly a major failing to not immediately announce to the public that a mass shooter is driving a replica police car. That’s beyond even the other details that didn’t clue the government off that he was up to no good (like withdrawing half a million in cash from a bank account).

I used to work in heavy industry and did a lot of work in Canada (I am an American).

Canada always had the worst security to go through because the same thing this guy is experiencing everyone crossing the boarder for work got the same thing from boarder security.

Anyone who had been arrested would get held at customs for a few hours, and occasionally over night. Basically you would get interrogated by a boarder guard, and the boarder guards would complain that they don't convict people of crimes in the US while asking about 20 year old arrest records.

I kind of assumed they were just terrible to foreigners coming in, but to do it to their own citizens is pretty awful.

If you think Canadian border guards are bad, its because you've never seen how American border guards treat non-citizens.

If you tried to enter the US with a criminal record, there is a VERY good chance that you would not be allowed in, and would be handed a 5-10 year ban.

Most countries do not allow visa-less entry to convicted criminals. The fact that Canada let your co-workers in at all is at the discretion of the border guard.

Canada is very clear about the steps that those with a criminal record need to go through prior to applying for entry at the border. It sounds like your coworkers showed up to the border without the necessary preparation and were allowed to enter at the officer's kindness/discretion in spite of their criminal pasts and lack of documentation.

https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/se...

I had to shepard many South Americans and Europeans through American boarder security for this same job.

I found Canadas process to be much more restrictive. They similarly handed out decade+ bans.

We had a legal team prepping the paperwork for these trips, they had the correct paperwork.

Did the people entering the US from Europe/South America have criminal records?

Part of the reason that it is harder for an American with a criminal record entering Canada is the fact that it is visa free. A convicted American at the Canadian border has likely not gone back and forth with immigration authorities, or had an interview at the embassy like a South American at the US border would.

By the time a European or South American arrives at the border they have already submitted the paperwork to an embassy (or received an ESTA/visa waiver), and have been given permission. Without convincing proof that they are eligible to enter the USA, the airline won't even let them on the plane.

The reality is that it is perfectly reasonable for a country to deny entry or investigate a convicted criminal before granting the privilege of entering the country. Doubly so when the purpose of entry is for work.

As a non convict, I had to prove to Canada that I could support myself and would not be a burden on the medical or other social systems in addition to an FBI background check, and a variety of other paperwork before I was granted residency. It took upwards of a year for all that.

By what reasoning should Canada prioritize or not investigate people that have, in the past, been a burden or danger to their society. Entry by non permanent residents or citizens is a privilege, and I think it is perfectly reasonable for a country to ensure that a convicted criminal won't pose a danger or burden.

Everyone had to pass a security clearance that prevented them from accepting people with criminal convictions, but prior arrests with no-convictions were fine.

Our work required Canadian work visas for us to operate in Canada, and everyone had the correct passport stamps before ever leaving (this again was handled by the legal team).

We were getting hassled over the arrests without convictions (this was only air travel, we never drove).

I am fine with countries doing whatever the need to. I think citizens getting subjected to similar treatment (tfa) pretty unreasonable.

Gotcha. I imagined you were driving a busload of roughnecks with convictions to the oil fields.

It is absolutely BS that an arrest with no conviction would lead to delays at the border.

The reality is that if you expect immigration trouble, you should always enter through an airport and never a border crossing.

I was on some kind of watchlist for awhile ( fought in foreign militia ) and you get the extremes at the land border. Most times things are much better. But when they're worse, it's WAY worse.

(Although to be fair at airport was only place CBP told me they'd deny entry to the country to me US passport holder)

Outside of five eyes most countries don't know dick about your record, and usually don't even ask. Our neighbor Mexico often doesn't even look at your ID.

US and Canada share immigration info, so they have unusual overlap.

This is true for the minority of people with passports that allow visa-less travel.

Try traveling somewhere on a Peruvian/Ghanian/lao passport. You will be asked about your criminal history, and you will need to produce documentation to back it up.

Those countries don't have nearly as many 'criminals' so it's nowhere near as burdensome. Something like 25+% of Americans have some sort of criminal history, with a vast volume of laws that are easy to unwittingly break.

I don't have the data for someplace like Ghana but I wager the odds of having a record there is easily 1/10th.

Canada has terrible policy making.

This information seems to be incorrect based on this https://stepstojustice.ca/questions/employment-and-work/can-...

and this

https://certn.co/blog/criminal-record-check-alberta-your-faq...

It seems like employers can only factor convictions, and they must justify why that conviction would be a factor in doing the job.

What I can believe is that the RCMP would botch a case involving a native person.

Just yesterday a bunch of video transcriptions were released of RCMP officers busting up a peaceful protest by native tribes. https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/rcmp-audio-wetsuweten-coa...

The officers referred to tribal members with face-paint honoring missing and murdered women as "orcs".

In regards to arresting a mentally disabled man: "That big f--king ogre looking dude that is in those videos he is actually like autistic, then the f--king guys just beat the shit out of him and then he started crying. I felt bad for him, apparently the sergeant grabbed his balls and twisted, I guess. He was on the ground and everyone was just grabbing limbs. He didn't have a limb to grab so he just like grabs his balls like 'You done now? You done resisting?"

Canada has decent policy, but we have, for some reason, imported policing culture from the states.

Just based on reading the first link you posted, what you've said is incorrect, as it says they can ask for a "Criminal record and judicial matters check" which includes charges.

If that's the case, "they can't" reject you just based on charges really means "they can as long as they don't say they did".

In my experience in working in Canada the records check is done after an offer is extended since it is not free, requires the consent of the person being checked, and takes several days at best, so it would be very obvious why the offer was retracted.

I haven't said anything incorrect. I said that employers can only factor convictions, not that they can't get access to other records.

He is likely referring to a "vulnerable sector check". This is a special type of background check for people that interact with children, the disabled or seniors etc. This type of background check includes stuff like expunged convictions, or charges where prosecutions were not pursued.

It can be a useful tool, but it obviously needs to account for instances such as this.

I'm not sure (EDIT: replaced 'it is' with 'it should be') a useful tool when taking non-convictions into account. If person A was arrested and then charges were dropped, does that make them less innocent than person B who was never arrested in the first place?

You could argue that from a probabilistic view, any person who is arrested for a crime is more likely to be a criminal than one who is never arrested ever - and it's up to us as a society whether we want to expose that information so that people can avoid hiring those who have ever been arrested.

> You could argue that from a probabilistic view, any person who is arrested for a crime is more likely to be a criminal than one who is never arrested ever - and it's up to us as a society whether we want to expose that information so that people can avoid hiring those who have ever been arrested.

Radical feminism really fucked society with this logic since it resonates with hysterics and fools. Previously, it was how everyone blames all crime in town on the Bad Kid because he was caught stealing that one time.

"He clearly has it in him to do it!" they say. We all do, I say. Criminals aren't Morlocks from the fucking moon, they're people just like you who were unlucky/incompetent enough to get caught.

Arrests/accusations are cheap. Convictions require vetting and evidence. Weighing both the same is a social travesty that defeats the purpose of the justice system and opens everybody up to being framed for anything.

If you dare to know how dangerously you live, read up on domestic violence laws and see how many you break when arguing with your spouse. It takes very little to get yourself arrested.

You could also argue that someone who was arrested, but never convicted, is even less likely to be a criminal.

After all, the not inconsiderable resources of the state were focused specifically on that person and their behavior, and the state determined that there wasn't enough evidence to even proceed with charges.

A person who has never been arrested has likely never had someone who is deeply incentivized to find wrongdoing look into their actions. It would seem that, logically, we should look most suspiciously at those who have never been arrested!

This is of course a naive view of the justice system. We should perhaps treat an arrest as nothing at all since we know that plenty of innocent people get arrested, and the noble thing to do is presume innocence absence a conviction instead of presuming guilt on a weak signal.

Imagine a situation where a elementary school hires a teacher. They find out that the individual has been investigated several times for sexual assault etc. but the police were never able to bring charges, (which is extremely common). This sort of policy comes from decades of experience with the church, Scouts etc. having to deal with thousands of these types of scandals.

I found that Canada has three types of background checks: the Vulnerable Sector Check (VSC) as you mentioned, the Police Information Check (PIC), and the Criminal Record Check (CIC).

The VSC always includes non-conviction records. The CIC omits these types of records, as this only reports convictions. However, the middle-level PIC can include these records on a case-by-case basis. The Alberta Civil Liberties Research Centre reports [1]: "The police will often disclose your non-conviction records in a PIC if they believe the information will help the potential employer or other agency in their decision-making process. This assumes that these agencies are qualified to make a determination that the information disclosed will determine the candidate’s suitability or pose a safety risk."

The circumstances are especially unfair to Barker as he has been working for Duncan First Nation in a role that requires involvement in finance. So, Barker may be especially affected by the non-conviction record even for jobs related to managing finances that don't require a VSC, but also a PIC, as a police department would likely find the record relevant for any position related to finances.

[1] https://www.aclrc.com/disclosure-of-non-conviction-records

>> Funny, I usually associate Canada with good policymaking but this is substantially worse than the US.

Generally yes, but this is a specific law enforcement problem tied to Canada's unique police culture. Specifically, the way the RCMP hire and promote police officers has direct negative implications on "white collar" investigations in Canada.

Without explaining all the details, the RCMP is effectively Canada's national police force but is also the local police force for most communities. Imagine it as if the FBI also did speeding tickets. All new cops start out doing something like traffic enforcement, often in small/northern communities well away from their homes. Only after years of "general duty" (aka traffic) can they move up to things like "electronic crime". Many good people are lost through this process. The average compsci or finance grad isn't going to want to spend years handing out speeding tickets before doing what they are actually trained to do. And the people who rise to the top of general street policing are often not the best people for long-term white collar investigations.

https://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/en/police-officer-careers

"The RCMP is a national organization with diverse career opportunities like no other police service. Applicants may be asked to relocate anywhere within Canada where there is need of your services."

"You may choose to continue in general duty policing, or you may have the desire and opportunity to train for and transfer to more specialized areas of policing."

Want to investigate online fraud? Have a forensics or criminology degree? Ready to chase down people doing horrible things online? Well, here is your radar gun and ticket to the Yukon territory. Remember to bring a coat. Call us back in a few years and we may have something for you.

Wow that sounds almost as bad as how we select our cops in the US. Almost.

in the US as long as its not too bad [misdemenor] and you behave yourself, it goes away [depending on state].

in canada you are the sum total of every mistake you have made in your life, for your entire life.

The RCMP is an extremely troubled police force (like many). There was a mass shooting event in 2020 in rural Nova Scotia, and it is not an exaggeration to say that the RCMP response made Uvalde look good in comparison. RCMP officers attacked civilians at a designated safe shelter, failed to warn the public of the danger for 12 hours leading to more deaths, and there is circumstantial evidence that the shooter himself may have been a RCMP confidential informant. There has been no credible investigation or accountability. The podcast Canadaland Commons has an episode on the Portapique incident I highly recommend.

Accountability for police forces and other elements of the criminal justice system seems to be a critical unsolved problem in western societies.

100%, RCMP is extremely corrupt and incompetent.

The RCMP knew for years in advance that the shooter was building a near perfect replica of a police vehicle and did nothing about it.

This is not me blaming the victim. He totally shouldn't have to worry about what I am about to say. If he was ordering for himself, my advice wouldn't apply.

If you are ordering something for your work, use a work credit card and have it delivered to your work address. I never put myself (or my finances) out there for my work. I've had people ask me to pick up snacks for meetings and say I can just expense it later. Sorry...not happening. Someone decides they don't want to approve the expense and I'm holding the bill. Either give me a work credit card or figure out another way to order your stuff.

I can vouch for that advice and equally double check.

My story - I worked for a Canadian company Blackberry in the UK and they wanted me to go to the Seattle office for few weeks. I said I couldn't afford to be covering expenses and my manager said would sort that out, came along with a bit of paper saying was expense advance - sign that. Well, turns out he lied, was pay advance as I found out when I got paid say 12 hours TZ difference from my bank etc when my rent, council tax and everything bounced. So I'm on the other side of the World and chaos is starting to rain on my home back home. Now was a Canadian also there for a few weeks and not only had he got a proper expense advance, was 3x what I got (yes I was underpaid and that's another story) and was shocked how my boss messed up.

Long story short, they never fixed the mess and caused me to have a breakdown, never did get my expenses back, lost my home and ended up with a massive council tax bill that took me years paying off and life went very downhill from there afterwards from one surreal predicament to another.

So do remind your companies that you are not a bank, you are already working in areas for the company and never ever pay for expense stuff from your own money unless you can charge interest and penalty clauses for late paying.

Never agree to travel without them sending a plane ticket prepaid first.

Oh I had that, just stitched up with salary advance instead of expense advance.

Even with a corporate credit card you are usually personally responsible until the expense is approved.

That depends on the card and how you acquired it. A corporate Amex is typically backed by the employee, but they are falling out of favor in part because of that.

If you have a corporate card through a bank other than Amex, there’s a very good chance you do not carry the liability for paying it.

Your employer could come after you if they feel it was used improperly, but that’s a very different can of worms than carrying credit liability.

I don't know how it works for First Nations bands, but from my perspective as a long-time church volunteer, we're often expected to make use of our personal resources for our volunteer roles. We pay out of pocket for supplies and stuff, we're driving personal cars, there's not a lot of guidance about how to structure our email or other online accounts. The church is certainly never going to give us a church-owned computer to do stuff on, or a church credit card to rack up expenses. We may get reimbursed, or we may be out of pocket as a "donation" to support these ministries.

It's one of the most difficult things about being a church volunteer, for me. I finally got wise on the account front, and I've created accounts which are totally separate and dedicated to doing only church volunteer activities, so that it's not mixed in with my personal activity or data. And in terms of USB thumb drives or something, I can purchase separate ones. But when it comes down to capital expenses and such, we seldom have a choice but to mingle our personal lives with those volunteer roles.

This is an important lesson in data and operational security. Don't use your credit card on websites you don't trust, and use virtual cards whenever possible. And 2FA all your online accounts. A few easy steps could have avoided a massive headache.

If the man is taken at his word, his only error was buying from a seller on Amazon.ca. What credit card he used there didn't matter at all.

Unfortunately in this case, the guy getting punished didn't do anything wrong. It's the woman who's Walmart account was hacked who messed up.

Even then, I'd put at least some blame on Walmart. Adding a new shipping address to an existing e-commerce account is an obvious situation where a little extra scrutiny is warranted. At least a 2FA check.

I agree. In my country, many e-commerce platforms require to add of a phone number. Therefore, if you add an address, you must input the code sent to your phone. Another point to note is that, for additional security, some e-commerce platforms even put your account on hold for a few days if you change the aforementioned phone number.

Even Amazon in the past has at least asked me to reenter the card’s CVV when attempting to add a new address.

How would this prevent what happened to Timothy Barker?

The two websites in question were Amazon and Walmart. If you can’t trust either of those then who can you trust?

Technically it was a 3rd party seller right? Like eBay or a flea market or the back of a truck?

Technically, yes. But Amazon's site doesn't make this clear.

Yes, but you still pay Amazon, and Amazon pays the seller. Using a virtual card wouldn't have helped him here. The other victim wouldn't have been helped by using a virtual card at Walmart.ca either.

A virtual card that expires or is limited would have protected somewhat.

No, because the order would still have gone on Walmart.com with his real name and address

There are no virtual card options

How about we simply make credit card companies liable for all of these kinds of frauds? Not the merchant, not the consumer, not the marketplace--the credit card company.

If we did that, suddenly all the banks, marketplaces, etc. would have all the nice security things we've been bitching about for years.

They are, that's part of the point of having a credit card - you're spending the bank's money, not yours, and they have better lawyers.

Well, that is why I totally prefer debit card. Credit card basically you just borrowing money from bank for your (usually daily and small) purchases.

Not in my experience. It appears that way to the CC user, but usually comes back to the merchant as a chargeback.

Every time credit cards come up, everybody always tells me that this is their big advantage: that it's trivial to revert these two payments.

So this fraud shouldn't work, and yet it does. How is that possible?

Reversing the payment to Walmart doesn't reverse the shipment, and assuming they don't get arrested or harassed, and the triangle purchaser is none the wiser, so the fraudster gets apparently clean money from the triangle purchase.

Unless he's alerted, which is the case here. He could agree with the woman that they both reverse their payment.

> Don't use your credit card on websites you don't trust

The person in this article bought stuff from Amazon with their credit card and did not have their account compromised. Unless you are arguing against buying stuff on the Internet in general I don't see how you comment has anything to do with the case at hand.

This is mostly typical RCMP overreach and the person should seek legal advice on counter-suing for damages.

>> Don't use your credit card on websites you don't trust

> The person in this article bought stuff from Amazon

Yeah, you shouldn't trust Amazon. They don't do nearly enough to ensure their 3rd party marketplace is safe.

Amazon is one of the largest companies in world. They have a responsibility to be more trustworthy than this, and should be held accountable.

I agree, and I didn't mean to blame the victim here (in case it sounded like that to anyone).

But it is a lesson to the rest of us, about the risk of shopping on Amazon.

I totally agree, and I don't buy from Amazon as a matter of principle, but considering their size, clearly most people don't. And I suspect that's not because they're fine with the risk, but because they're not aware of it. And that's a problem. Amazon is profiting from trust that they're not worthy of.

I completely agree about using Virtual Credit Cards generally. However, the majority of Canadian Banks (Especially the Big 6) don't offer virtual credit cards. Even US banks that offer credit cards in Canada don't offer it in here, but they do it the US (Ex. Capital One).

And don't buy anything from Amazon (at the very least only from sellers that use Amazon's fulfillment services, which is easy to gloss over).

They claim he used the woman's card, so no that wouldn't have helped

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