Comment by 0xbadcafebee
1 day ago
Are you familiar with parallel construction? That's what this is for. If they have a warrant and show it to you, it says what they can search and why. If they don't tell you what they're searching for and why, they can look for anything, and then construct a separate scenario which just happens to expose the thing they knew would be there from the first fishing expedition. They then use this (usually circumstantial) evidence to accuse you of a crime, and they can win, even if you didn't commit a crime, but it looks like you did. And now they can do it with digital information, automatically, behind the scenes, without your knowledge. (or they can take your laptop and phone and do it then)
I don't see the problem with this. It's inadvisable to try to stop the police from doing whatever they want to do if they assert that they have the right to do it. You then get the lawyers involved and sort it out afterwards. Comparing the timestamp on the warrant to the time of the police action should hopefully determine whether parallel construction is taking place.
> It's inadvisable to try to stop the police from doing whatever they want to do if they assert that they have the right to do it.
The police regularly lie to and manipulate people about their rights in order to coerce them into consent. If you believe the officer is in the wrong, push back.
> You then get the lawyers involved and sort it out afterwards. Comparing the timestamp on the warrant to the time of the police action should hopefully determine whether parallel construction is taking place.
Parallel construction means they are using the opportunity to go on a fishing expedition. Dealing with it later is too late, they've already gone fishing.
This is a much bigger issue regarding the metadata of a wireless carrier. They're not issuing the warrant to you, they're issuing it to the carrier, who has a duty to reject overly broad searches. If they don't even get to see the warrant, they can't reject the search based on the merits. So now the police get to collect everyone's metadata. Who cares if we look at the warrant after? They've already got the data. Even if they "delete it" after, they already got to go fishing.
Nothing good is going to be solved by expanding law enforcement's power, reach, or lightening any existing restrictions. We are not suffering from crimes due to lack of law enforcement's legal scope. It's quite the opposite.
Your parallel construction is still too linear; this isn't git history. If they get a warrant AND tell you about it, the warrant dictates what they can look at, what you have to share, etc. Now they can look at anything because you have no idea what is off limits. If they find something unrelated they don't have to act on it immediately; they can then look for motivating reasons to get a warrant targeting an area they know will turn out. They go fishing, but for next time.
But the warrant still has to originally exist with, presumably, a timestamp that shows it existed prior to the search. And modification of the timestamp or lack of such a feature would be a good way to get the evidence thrown out?
That’s not how evidence works in Canada. Illegally obtained evidence is still evidence - you simply also have a tort against the officer for breaching your rights.
It would be inadmissible if the court deems it to impact the fairness of the trial, no? https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/csj-sjc/rfc-dlc/ccrf-ccdl/chec...
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The existence of a category of warrants that allows operation that is indistinguishable from warrantless searches creates a kind of legal hazard and personal risk that is hard to overlook. Police lie on the regular.
...and are allowed to lie within narrow and specific contexts, which seems a "balance of rights" scenario. My fear in this case is that a lie of omission is far more dangerous (specifically for misuse) than a specific & explicitly lie.
This is a good perspective, thank you.
I don't get why people downvoted you, this is a very reasonable question.
There were two commenters that responded 15 minutes prior to your comment. I'd suggest starting there if you want to understand. Then if you disagree with those, you can comment and actually contribute to the conversation ;)
I agree with you. However, talking about downvotes is not interesting and against guidelines.
Improperly down voted comments typically even out in the end anyway.
i know this is an american thing, but does it actually happen in Caanda?
Respectfully, whether it "actually happens" is irrelevant. We want to prevent it from happening.
one of those 'does it happen' vs. 'can it happen'. the latter is all that matters.