[sgdesign]

I've been "stopped and frisked" in France before, and it didn't seem out of the ordinary at the time. I just assumed random identity checks was part of the police's job. So I wonder how other countries' laws compare to the U.S. when it comes to random checks like this.

And of course, it happened maybe twice in my life, not a couple times a week.

[Jacqued]

Those random identity checks are only legal if they are performed under particular circumstances establishing the risk of breach of the public order (for example around a protest or in such situations). Theoretically they cannot be based on the appearance of the person being controlled.

This means it is not legal for a police officer to control your identity unless they have established this risk of public disorder.

Of course, as a white person living in mostly affluent neighborhoods, I have not even been controlled once in my life. The experience of my friends of "north african descent" on the other hand, has been quite different.

[maze-le]

I don't think that is entireley true. While the Schengen-Zone (EU border agreements) has established that there are no physical borders, where you have to show an id, there is a 50km (maybe more maybe less I don't know exactly) zone around those borders, where Identity checks are permitted. Police is allowed to control your identity in those zones if they have a "reasonable cause" to think yo may be an illegal immigrant...

Of course "reasonable cause" can (and usually will) mean, that if you happen to have the "wrong" skin-tone, hair-color etc. you will be controlled. The Police justifies this racial profiling with "experience" and "statistics" (at least in Germany)

[minot]

In theory, they can't do that here in the US either.

> Border Patrol, nevertheless, cannot pull anyone over without "reasonable suspicion" of an immigration violation or crime (reasonable suspicion is more than just a "hunch"). Similarly, Border Patrol cannot search vehicles in the 100-mile zone without a warrant or "probable cause" (a reasonable belief, based on the circumstances, that an immigration violation or crime has likely occurred).

> In practice, Border Patrol agents routinely ignore or misunderstand the limits of their legal authority in the course of individual stops, resulting in violations of the constitutional rights of innocent people. These problems are compounded by inadequate training for Border Patrol agents, a lack of oversight by CBP and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and the consistent failure of CBP to hold agents accountable for abuse. Thus, although the 100-mile border zone is not literally "Constitution free," the U.S. government frequently acts like it is.

https://www.aclu.org/constitution-100-mile-border-zone

[Hermel]

The justification is not "experience" and "statistics". The justification is that it works well. Just like the language of an email can help identifying spam, skin color can help identifying illegal immigrants. I would say that 99% of all spam I receive is written in English, whereas about 80% of my personal emails are in German. Thus, even though there is nothing wrong with that language in general, English words can be used as one factor of many to help identifying spam.

[DaFranker]

> I would say that 99% of all spam I receive is written in English, whereas about 80% of my personal emails are in German.

You're missing some important numbers here for this to be meaningful: Base rates.

If you're getting 10 spam emails per month, and 99% of them are in English, but you're receiving 1000 legitimate personal emails per month, and 20% of them are in English, that's a total of 210 English emails on average per month. In this case, while technically true that an email written in English is more likely to be spam than an email written in German, it's also such a very poor indicator that you'd be better off using another indicator entirely.

On top of that, you've only pinpointed two categories out of many more possible categories of emails. What if someone is getting 50 spam emails per month, 5 job offer emails per month, 10 updates relevant to their profession per month, 100 professional emails per month, and 50 personal emails per month, and the English:German ratios for those are all 99:1, 9:1, 4:1, 1:1 and 4:1 respectively? Suddenly just "this email is written in English" isn't all that important anymore.

Base rates are very, very, very, super important when discussing stats like these.

[Hermel]

That's why I said "one factor of many". If you have ten factors like that and combine them, you'll get an excellent spam filter. That's how Bayesian spam filters work. They combine a number of factors that are not very significant on their own, but using all of them adds up.

[struppi]

IIRC, in Austria, police CAN ask you about your name and home address at any time, and they can even bring you to the police office if they don't believe you and you don't have an ID to prove it. Even though we don't have an "Ausweispflicht" like Germany, having an ID with you can be a good thing in this situation.

They are not allowed to search you without a reason (In theory. I heared that they might just say "I think I smelled cannabis" and then they have a reason.)

Disclaimer: IANAL, and maybe I got some details wrong.

[chefkoch]

"Ausweispflicht" in Germany only means you have to own an id card or passport, not that you must carry it all the time.

[maze-le]

Yes, that is true. Interestingly most Germans I know don't even know that, and think everyone has to carry an ID with them. This is really a common misconception.

[Cthulhu_]

IIRC in the Netherlands they introduced an ID carrying requirement for anyone over the age of 17 or thereabouts. Makes things less complicated in case of having to check your age when buying alcohol, or when you get pulled over for whatever reason, or even when you get into an accident and need to be identified.

[malka]

> And of course, it happened maybe twice in my life, not a couple times a week.

In France, that depends mostly of your shade of skin.

[timq]

> In France, that depends mostly of your shade of skin.

Well, it mostly depend if you live in a sensible district or not. It happens that mostly Arab and black people live in sensible district because they are poorer than the normal average french people. And (relative) poverty is the source of a lot of social problems.

I don't say there is no racism in France too, there is. But it is more indirect, like people trying to avoid looking at black people, or people who prefer helping the white guy instead the black one at school is another example.

[JonnieCache]

I think you mean "sensitive." "Sensible" is a value judgement about a person or course of action and how much "sense" they possess.

[dghf]

'Sensible' is a false friend in English for French speakers, and vice versa.

[timq]

Thank you, this is indeed what I wanted to say! (I'm still learning english ;) )

[mlrtime]

Same thing happened to me in Bangkok. Police stopped our taxi, ordered us all out on the street, searched our pockets (presumably for drugs) and then let us go.

The taxi driver made no indication that it was anything abnormal.