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Comment by rollo_tommasi | Hacker News Reader

That anyone would celebrate what is essentially a case of vigilante mob justice is extremely disturbing.

What rules of evidence do Anonymous have to follow? Who holds them accountable?

Law enforcement's hands are often tied for extremely good reasons. Occasionally that means cases can't be investigated as thoroughly as they ought to be, but the alternative is worse.

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It's not 'mob justice' to collect evidence. The article does not speak about Anonymous punishing the actors, only on the amount of witness testimony and other evidence that they found.

According to Canadian laws, and the laws of many other societies, even accusing a juvenile of a criminal offense is essentially considered punishment since it will color their future regardless of whether or not they are acquitted. That is one of many reasons why we have separate legal frameworks for juvenile offenders.

So, assuming the police have one set of suspects, and they are all juveniles under the law and a lack of sufficient evidence, this is nothing more than a mob's attempt to railroad the accused.

As another commenter posted above: see how you feel about "Anonymous justice" when you are in their cross-hairs.

And if they publicly accused someone of it, it would be wrong. But the article explicitly states that they didn't announce anything publicly, and only claim to have gathered evidence and requested the investigation to be reopened.

What rules do they have to follow? It sounds like they were contacted by the witnesses.

If I were to hazard a guess, it probably had to do with the fact that the 'suspects' in this case were all minors, and perhaps the RCMP has access to fewer avenues of investigation without any hard evidence, and the judge/magistrate would most likely not as easily grant any sort of search warrant as easily due to the suspects being minors.

I'm from Canada, and the police are generally very much cuffed at the hands when it comes to dealing with minors. Just look at the Vancouver 2011 riot. It took the RCMP over a year even with all the picture/video evidences before they could legally bring any sort of charges against a lot of the younger perpetrators.

How does a witness contact anonymous? And how do "anonymous" even verify that these witnesses are legitimate?

Just reads like a bunch of people wanting to do "something" about this and a bunch of other people trolling them (i.e. giving them false leads etc).

Where's the mob justice part?

Law enforcement is given strong shackles because of the power they (the government) has. These same controls are not applied to the general populous.

The police can not break into your house if they believe you have evidence of a crime. If he does, evidence found can not be used against you. Your neighbor on the other hand, can. He can also take that evidence to the police and they can use it in that case. Now, he may also be charged with a crime, but that evidence can be used against you.

However, your neighbor breaking in is trespassing. You can press charges against him or even (in many countries) defend your property by force. You can't really do that against cops.

Right. But you still go to jail for the murder.

"If he does, evidence found can not be used against you. Your neighbor on the other hand, can. He can also take that evidence to the police and they can use it in that case. Now, he may also be charged with a crime, but that evidence can be used against you."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclusionary_rule#Limitations_o...

Hrm, interesting.

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