I’m a cop and I can tell you that, at least in my country, you’d have no reason to not unlock your phone if you haven’t done anything.
I can understand that in some countries cops can be seen as criminals (and are behaving like criminals), but I don’t think a generality should be made. Just like a generality shouldn’t be made about people from an origin all doing the same bad thing.
Also don’t take advices from what you see on Lemmy as every user comes from a different country with different laws.
In my country, we can take your phone but we aren’t allowed to unlock it without your consent or without a prosecutor saying so.
How exactly is an individual supposed to determine which cops will be good and which will abuse their power?
Just as we can’t make a general statement that all cops are definitely bad, you can’t make a general statement that all cops in any particular country or town will be good.
From a basic risk management viewpoint, it doesn’t make sense for anyone to accept the risk that any given cop won’t abuse their position, even if we were willing to accept that very few would actually do so.
Cops have an extremely privileged status in society and the amount of damage that a bad one can do to an individual - on purpose or even by accident - is incalculable, including setting up an innocent person for capital punishment as we’re seeing unfold in Missouri right now.
I agree with you, you can’t know for sure that you’re with a good or bad cop.
But you also have to comply with laws if you don’t want to get in trouble.
I can only answer for my country and I can tell you that here you’re gonna waste way less time if you show what’s in your phone and we can see that you’re innocent.
The time not wasted there might also be used to catch the person who’s really guilty.
I’ll just give you an example even if it’s not reated to unlocking phones: A black BMW 335i is filmed hitting a pedestrian and the plate number finishes with a 5. We’re gonna need to have a look at every BMW within these parameters. If you prevent the police from checking your car by hiding it, a guilty guy might have more time to hide his car and a crime is gonna go unpunished, leaving a victim with no one to pay for his injuries.
Of course, that reality might be different elsewhere. It’s just that I have noticed that on Lemmy cops are only seen as bad guys when, in my case, I spend a lot of time helping people.
I’ll just give you an example even if it’s not reated to unlocking phones: A black BMW 335i is filmed hitting a pedestrian and the plate number finishes with a 5. We’re gonna need to have a look at every BMW within these parameters. If you prevent the police from checking your car by hiding it, a guilty guy might have more time to hide his car and a crime is gonna go unpunished, leaving a victim with no one to pay for his injuries.
And if my car was in an unrelated accident but just happened to fit those criteria, you could use that as evidence against me (and not only that, but then stop trying to solve the crime because you’ve assumed the perpetrator.) It ALWAYS goes both ways. If the only way you can solve a crime is by violating people’s privacy without a warrant, maybe don’t be a cop.
Cops are seen as bad guys because people like you argue for why rights shouldn’t apply to people, and making you get a warrant (aka doing your job) is seen as interfering with a crime.
The worst part is, it is stupidly easy to get warrants here in the US, but the cops WILL make your life miserable if you make them get one.
Man, fuck that.
It’s none of your business what’s on our phones, period.
You want access? Go through due process.
The very fact that you led off with “you’re fine if you have nothing to hide” makes you the problem, you personally, not anyone else around you, you.
Doesn’t matter what country you’re in at all. Doesn’t even matter what the law says in this case, because crappy laws exist.
That kind of thinking is exactly why people don’t trust cops.
I can understand that in some countries cops can be seen as criminals (and are behaving like criminals), but I don’t think a generality should be made. Just like a generality shouldn’t be made about people from an origin all doing the same bad thing.
ACAB, and you don’t get to compare your chosen profession to where people were born or the colour of their skin, nor try to claim victim points by pretending you are systemically oppressed and discriminated against in the same way we are (though your trying to does go to strengthen my first point).
Fuck you, pig.
Don’t besmirch the good name of Piggly Wiggly. https://www.pigglywigglystores.com/
I’m a cop and I can tell you that, at least in my country, you’d have no reason to not unlock your phone if you haven’t done anything.
I can understand that in some countries cops can be seen as criminals (and are behaving like criminals), but I don’t think a generality should be made.
It sounds like you’re saying that you would assume that someone had done something illegal if they refused to unlock their phone for you. It’s a bit ironic that you then immediately say that people shouldn’t generalize about cops behaving as criminals.
I don’t let my friends go through my phone. Cop or not, why would I let a stranger?
Because your friend would just be doing it out of curiosity, not as part of an investigation.
I’m not saying that anyone not unlocking their phone has done something illegal, but just that some people who are refusing to give something willingly to the police is making them waste precious time which could be used to catch up with the bad guy.
Again I can only talk about my country and maybe in the US cops are awful, I don’t know. But I know that family of victims would love people to just cooperate with the police and not make them waste time…
Because your friend would just be doing it out of curiosity, not as part of an investigation.
It doesn’t matter why my friend wants to use my phone. If a friend wants to use my computer, I log out and sign into a guest account that doesn’t have access to my private documents. That’s not an option on my phone. It doesn’t matter if my friend has a legitimate reason to want to look at something on my phone. Maybe they want to see a picture I took last Friday - if they tell me that, I’ll just pull it up and share it with them.
If my phone has something on it that can help the police and the police tell me what they’re looking for, I can check my phone myself and share specifically that information with them.
If my phone doesn’t have that information, I can tell them that, too.
This is the exact same as with my friends. The difference is that the police are much more likely to be antagonistic and much less likely to tell me what they want.
If the police can’t articulate what they’re looking for or if they don’t trust me to tell me what it is, then I DEFINITELY don’t trust them to look at my phone themselves. And heck, that’s true of my friends, too.
If I hand a police officer my phone unlocked, what’s stopping them from hooking it up to GrayKey or Cellebrite or some other similar tool, and dumping all the data from my phone without my knowledge - whether for legitimate or nefarious purposes? What stops them from doing this “out of curiosity?” This isn’t generally a risk with my friends, but it’s always a risk when dealing with the police.
In the US, when there’s suspicion of police wrongdoing, the police investigate themselves (and either conclude that nobody did anything wrong or that only one person did something wrong but everyone else is fine). It’s so bad that it’s a meme (“We’ve investigated ourselves and found no evidence of any wrongdoing.”) But even if you don’t have the police investigating themselves in your country, it’s still the government doing that investigation. And nothing makes the government inherently trustworthy.
As a private citizen of your country who was legitimately concerned that the police are retaining more data than necessary, could I visit the police station and ask them to give me supervised admin access to their computers (as well as the personal computers of anyone who might have had access to my device or to the data extracted from it), as well as full access to the station itself in case there are any unaccounted for computers, so that I can confirm that the police aren’t overstepping? If not, why not? It’s not like the police have anything to hide, right? And the sooner that the police cooperate and that information is shared with me, the sooner I can rest easy knowing I and my fellow citizens have not been victimized by the police.
Hopefully you see how ridiculous it is for me to expect someone to just give me access to all of that information. That’s actually less ridiculous than a police officer asking me to hand them my unlocked phone.
As a private citizen, I have to trust that police and government officials are doing their jobs properly. If they don’t, I can have my privacy invaded or be framed for a crime, with no method for recourse. And without any real accountability. I have to trust a police officer if I hand him my phone, and I’m the only one risking anything. In the opposite scenario, if I overstep while they’re supervising me reviewing their systems, they can hold me accountable immediately.
I cannot know with 100% certainty that someone hasn’t planted false evidence on my phone, so I absolutely have reason turn my phone off before surrendering it (if I’m forced to surrender it).
If cops are certain I’ve committed a crime, why do they need to rely on methods outside the law (edit: I mean outside of legally compelling me via a warrant or similar) to get me? No, I’m never going to consent to any sort of search without a warrant. If you think I have something to hide, why are you afraid to get a warrant?
That’s the thing, often you don’t know if someone has committed a crime and looking into their phone can also prove that they’re not guilty.
I ain’t talking about any method outside of the law. Willingly cooperating isn’t illegal. Nothing forces you to be friendly with your neighbors, but being friendly with your neighbor isn’t illegal.
Sorry, by “outside of the law” I meant apart from legally compelling someone. The word choice made it sound like I meant illegal methods. I meant volunteering information. I don’t think people should ever do it. I’ve edited that in for clarity.
It’s my personal opinion that the police should not even be allowed to request voluntary searches, but that’s a different topic and one I recognize as more extremist. It’s just too easy for requests to sound like demands in a society with manners. Phrases like “Would you please do X?” are often used for both optional things and required things because “Do X” sounds rude to people.
I don’t know why your getting downvoted and have replies with ACAB…
Keep in mind I come at this from an American perspective.
I do have to disagree with the first paragraph. You do not need to access to or to search my phone to perform your job. If the phone becomes part of a criminal investigation then ideally a warrant would be put out by a judge and a Computer Forensics team would take it from there.
At least in the USA, the bad perception of cops is not just because of their apparent lack of accountability and ability to get away with murder, but also how expansive the scope of their duties are. So much authority intrusted in one person clearly seems to go to their heads more often than not here.
I understand in many European countries the scope of a cops duties is much more restricted. I know Britian doesn’t even provide their law enforcement with firearms.
I’m going to preface this by saying the whole Americanised ACAB stuff is silly. Not everywhere has a shitty, militarised police force like theirs. Where I am, my experience with the police has been pretty positive, even with me being an immigrant with darker skin.
But man, no.
If police want your data, they can ask you politely, and if you say no, then that should be it. End of discussion. People have the right to privacy.
Maybe the officer wouldn’t do anything nefarious. But then again, maybe they will. You have no way of knowing what type of person that officer is. Even good police forces have plenty of shitty employees, so police powers should be limited to avoid them just doing whatever they want.
If there’s a genuine reason to have your data, say you’re implicated in some criminal investigation, then they can go through the proper channels and get a warrant.
Police absolutely should not have the power to just do whatever they like. If you let them, have that, it leads to shitty police forces like they have in the US and elsewhere.
