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Comment by danpalmer | Hacker News Reader

I assume the sheriff would be totally fine with putting up signs in that area saying "audio and video recording in progress" then right? That would somewhat address the issue, and should be entirely uncontroversial to both sides.

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That doesn't sound like a good compromise at all. First practically speaking, you can't just leave the court building to discuss with your client if they're in chains, and it's super inconvenient based on the layout of many courts. Second, this becomes the excuse for adding audio and video surveillance everywhere, with the excuse that you know about it, so it's okay. Third, considering audio can pick up things like jokes, irrational things said in anger, or just one's mumblings to oneself, it very quickly becomes the excuse to haul in anyone you don't like by misconstruing their words. The fact that it was brought by law enforcement tells you they are looking to use it against people.

> If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.

-- Structured to Cardinal Richelieu

* s/Structured/Attributed/ , not sure how that swipe-typo happened.

It's so fundamentally terrifying that someone would consider that "totally fine".

Prosecutors will take breaks in their offices within the same building while the defense has to leave the building in order to have a private conversation, that sounds totally fair and reasonable.

Well there are times when attorneys are part of a criminal organisation and are used as a communication link to the outside world.

Nobody considered that when the laws were written but we live in a world of billion dollar drug cartels.

The whole point of contention is that one of the spaces is, effectively, the only convenient places to have a quick, heretofore private, conversation. No one is confused over where the things are.

There should be rooms assigned for these private conversations.

But I imagine even these rooms are cammed, and lip reading is a thing

It seems likely that if there were spaces that could (both physically and politically) be assigned for this, they already would have been.

Sure, it would be great if we could have nice things like that, but all too often we need to work with the infrastructure we have.

There is an asymmetric impact to the defense. In our adversarial legal system, we must not disadvantage one of the sides unilaterally.

There are times when I want to argue that the solution is to make the question one of truth rather than guilt or innocence, but any solution runs up against human nature, my first experience of which was when playing sports and being told by my team mates that I should state that the ball fell on the side of the line which was advantageous to the team, rather than where it actually fell.

Never willingly played a team sport again.

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