Don't Talk to the Police

> I've been part of the group who got asked to give a DNA sample in the Nicky Verstappen [1] case. This was voluntarily, and I reluctantly did this Great story and thanks for sharing this. I want to answer why I think this is a bad idea however. First, I would talk to a legal defense attorney before doing this. A famous video about this topic is here [this video] . 1) The police might have told you it was for one case but it was for another, as the police can lie. 2) The DNA test itself might give a false positive on you or your family members, putting your family to a harsher scrutiny by the police that would have otherwise, and with more judicial justification. In the investigatory zeal they might find other lesser crimes they might want to prosecute just to not be empty handed. In the U.S., they might have charged a family member on a false positive with a ridiculously overblown crime. People have killed themselves over that prosecutorial technique ( [link] ) 3) The police could fiddle with the samples and plant evidence if they thought you or someone else did it. (Steven Avery case) 4) The lab might fake results if they are in tandem with the DA ( [link] ) You are gambling with your life and the life of your family members when you make that choice. And if you were so sure a family member of yours did not do it, then the police could have come to the same conclusion on their alibis and physical state of your family members. Even if you believe non of that is "likely to happen"

You should look at this from a legal perspective. Now I understand the "real" situation, and that everybody should just magically know it, and the world should be just and true and ... Fact is ... it isn't. You don't know if people are playing fair or not, and that means 1) at some point you make a guess if they are ... or not. There are going to be false positives and false negatives. 2) there will be disputes about this So we need a justice system. Ok, now let's see how people react once they get into the situation where there's an actual dispute about whether they stole or not. That dispute can happen regardless of whether you stole or not, and either side may be fraudulent, uncooperative, overworked or absent, just to name some basic problems. a) they never have any real legal knowledge, so they are not capable of playing by the rules of the justice system, even if they want to. Nobody does even an introductory course (even though, you're actually sort of legally required to know all laws) b) they don't have a lawyer, and they refuse to pay for this. So they don't know the law, nor are they willing to pay for having someone explain the law to them and give them advice about their options. c) they also don't want to pay taxes to have an extensive police force. So elected officials (presumably with your approval) have instituted "pay per conviction" rules, to measure police force effectiveness. So what situation is a cop and, later, the assistant prosecutor in ? They have s

To be frank, this is bad advice [EDIT: parent wasn't giving advice, so instead this should read as something like "Talking to police without your attorney present is a very risky idea..."] that probably literally every criminal defense attorney in the United States will disagree with (I am not a lawyer, however, to be clear). A better framing perhaps is that there are two scenarios if you are being interrogated by the police: (1) The police have enough evidence to charge you with a crime (2) The police do not have enough evidence to charge you with a crime They do not have to tell you (and can actively lie!) which scenario you are in, and these scenarios are only loosely correlated with whether or not you actually recently committed a crime. In scenario (1), they're going to charge you with a crime no matter what you say - they already have enough evidence. And anything you say to the police in this scenario can only be used as evidence against you to further strengthen the police's case, it cannot be used in your own defense in court. So it's better to remain silent. In scenario (2), if you remain silent, they cannot charge you with a crime - they don't have enough evidence and you're not giving them any (asserting your right to remain silent is not evidence). If you answer their questions, you might accidentally give them enough evidence to charge you with a crime, like contradicting your own story because your memory is fallible. The police are allowed to lie to you, ask y

> You can have a conversation about politics You are lucky, you must live in a nice country with normal laws and normal cops. I can't imagine any other reason why you'd just offer this up... Even an American with a thin blue line flag on their house would warn against talking politics with a cop. Check out the videos of the statsi troops going door to door in DC, fawning to locals about how they're there on trump's orders to "keep them safe." Armed to the teeth. You think it's a good idea to try to have a polite political conversation with men like that? You are blessed! For your own safety, never come to America, stay in peace and comfort elsewhere, I genuinely fear how your kind hearted openness will land you into awful trouble in the USA. If you do come, enjoy a day sitting in a courtroom. Watch how the simplest, most meaningless conversation with a cop is read out by the court in a toneless transcript without any context and how a judge will grant probable cause on it, or consider it in sentencing to their detriment. Bon homanie about the slow construction of a local freeway? In court that's lack of attachment and local loyalty, disaffected personality, antisocial tendencies. Complaints about the EU? General disrespect of authority, likelihood to stir up trouble, lack of respect for law and order. I guess it's time to trudge out the classic: [this video] Anything you say will be used against you . > I'm sure you can show me hundreds of cases, when there are millions of policem

I cannot understate how afraid I am of the use of AI Surveillance. The worst thing is there is nothing you can do about it. It does not matter how private I am online, if the person I am sending things to is not privacy conscious and, say, uses AI to summarize emails, then I am in the AI database. And then there is just the day to day data being scraped, like bank records, etc. I mean a PARKING LOT in my town is using AI cameras to track and bill people in a parking lot! The people of my town are putting pressure on the parking lot owner to get rid of it but apparently the company is paying him too much money for having it in his lot. Like the old video says "Don't talk to the Police" [1], but now we have to expand it to say "Don't Do Anything", because everything you do is being fed into a database that can possibly be searched. [1] [this video]