[idle_zealot]

This position is insanely illiberal. This isn't about your individual safety, or how willing you as an individual are to abdicate your right to privacy. It's about the knock-on effect of living under panopticon conditions, the chilling effect, the loss of trust, and the nearly unlimited potential for abuse. This individualistic attitude makes it so easy to divide and conquer each and every one of your rights and protections, and will leave you less free as an individual than if you were willing to look at the bigger picture and stand up for rights you don't personally care about.

[Natsu]

Maybe, but in MN, they just decided as a matter of the state constitution that this basically isn't allowable.

You see, the cops had a murder in a remote place. They got a warrant, and the warrant showed 12 people in and out of a small area near the murder, of which one phone went there many times.

They got another warrant, for that one phone, and traced it back to someone who is obviously the murderer. The courts decided to suppress this, never mind the cops got warrants at both steps, and their investigation was as minimally invasive as one could imagine for this sort of thing.

So it's not unreasonable to wonder just what we're protecting sometimes, as I understand that while the decision here doesn't technically ban all geofence warrants, it makes them nearly impossible as a practical matter.

One can read the decision here:

https://mncourts.gov/_media/migration/appellate/supreme-cour...

[drugstorecowboy]

Exactly, and to make sure that never happens again why not just arrest all 12 of those people until they prove their innocence? With enough constant surveillance we can be positive that no bad person ever gets away with anything.

Honestly, do you look at the justice system in the United States and think "You know the real issue here is that not enough people are being punished"?

[Natsu]

> Honestly, do you look at the justice system in the United States and think "You know the real issue here is that not enough people are being punished"?

I have a family member who was murdered. I have a lot of sympathy for victims of violent crimes like this and a hard time understanding people who want to let the murderers go free, because I know what it's like living under the threat of one who kept a list of who they intended to kill next.

[hn_acc1]

My sympathies for your loss. That sucks badly.

But look at how many people have been unjustly/incorrectly imprisoned for many years in the US, often based on poverty or racism. Would you be willing to jail 5 people for life-without-parole if you're 100% sure ONE of them was the murderer of your family member? What about two people?

[Natsu]

I've never seen someone get sent to prison just because their phone was too close to a crime scene, there's always more to corroborate it because it's not much on its own, even if the MN case comes pretty close with only one person in a remote area with the dead body over and over who also coincidentally had motive, etc. Most of the famous cases of what you mention rely on humans identifying a person and DNA later exonerating them.

So I'm loathe to rule out the use of more accurate ways to pinpoint investigations when the status quo is someone who thinks they saw the person at the scene, when we know how unreliable that is.

That feels like throwing out DNA because there are many explanations of why it might be at a crime scene in favor of good old fashioned witness identification, never mind one is a lot better than the other, even if both of them have been misused terribly at times.

That's why I think we should want the cops to use methods that cause fewer people to get wrongly investigated, because it is a burden. It's true, your phone being too close to a crime scene doesn't make you a criminal, but it's probably a better reason for investigating you than traditional things like "I saw a guy who looked like that at the scene" which has much more frequently caused the harm you cite, and yet it's been a staple of courts longer than any of us have been alive.

[drugstorecowboy]

I think in much the same way that your life has been touched by a murderer and it has influenced your opinion, if you were wrongly accused of a crime it would likewise have influence.

That being said, I'm sympathetic to your point here and I'm not advocating for eye witness testimony becoming the only source of truth. If I could somehow know for sure that this would ONLY be used for the worst of violent crimes it would soften my opinion, but I am very sure that the more normalized this sort of dragnet investigation becomes the standard of what "requires" it's use will get lower and lower.

If policing were entirely focused on violent and property crimes many of my opinions might change, but realistically I think we can agree that whatever investigative technique we are talking about will primarily end up being used to prosecute drug crimes, because that is much safer and more profitable for the police. Do you really want to be on a suspect list everytime someone thinks they saw a drug deal somewhere and you happened to be near?

[xyzzyz]

Sorry, I’m not chilled at all by the prospect that the court can subpoena my data from Goole. It can already issue a warrant to arrest me, and to search my actual home.

[avidiax]

The trouble is that you aren't chilled at all today.

Tomorrow's government may decide that attending certain protests, or having "associated" with certain people was always a crime. It doesn't even need to be "retroactive", since enforcement and interpretation of the law is always adjustable in the present.

This sort of thing is happening today in certain countries. Why are you so sure it won't happen to you in yours?

[amanaplanacanal]

It kind of sounds like you are saying you don't care if other people are hurt, as long as it doesn't impact you. I hope that isn't what you actually mean.

[Planktonne]

That's not a good faith, or even vaguely accurate, reading of the parent comment.

[amanaplanacanal]

I'm not sure how else to read this:

Most people are like me: they don't care about being protected from the courts, because the courts don't pose risk to them, and as a matter of statistical fact, they are correct.