Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by caylus 1581 days ago
My claim is that when evaluating when an authority's actions were reasonable, we should lend little to no credence to statements by that same authority claiming the actions were reasonable, especially when it is impossible to verify even who exactly was targeted, let alone why.

As a contrasting case, if a police department arrested some people during a protest and released a statement about why, a journalist could verify that against the public records and even follow along the criminal proceedings. How can we verify claims made by the RCMP about their extrajudicial actions?
3 comments
noitpmeder 1581 days ago
But that's not what happened? The authority did not come out and say "we did this and we were right to do so!", they came out and said "this did not happen".
link
ladallada 1581 days ago
Do we know there's no public records in this case?

I think there might be, the banks aren't in individually being contacted, I'm pretty sure they would have been added to one of the public sanction lists here: https://www.international.gc.ca/world-monde/international_re...

link
hluska 1581 days ago
In this case, the statement was backed up by an ADM in front of a parliamentary committee. If she lied, someone will be able to show proof of that. At minimum, it would end her career.

Why assume she lied until there is proof?

link