that people being recorded soon forget about the recorder and just keep talking

It also helps with the problem of being sued after the fact for inaccuracy. You'd think federal law enforcement would want to hop all over that.

Wow only took the government 100 years to catch up. Next your going to tell me that they might get those new fangled contraptions called a phone!

Given the experiences of Martha Stewart and Scooter Libby - namely not convicted of anything except lying to a federal agent, you'd have to be nuts to talk to them at all.

They can lie to you with impunity. If you lie to them, you've committed a felony.

Do public defenders challenge FBI pen and ink interview transcripts?
If they do not the FeeBees may come out ahead on conviction numbers. They will loose against well lawyered individuals, but make up for it with convictions of all the trolls who cannot afford their own lawyer, and do not challenge the FBI's fabricated interview transcripts.

Given the number of movies and TV shows that feature FBI agents, I'm surprised this hasn't become a running gag.

Given the experiences of Martha Stewart and Scooter Libby - namely not convicted of anything except lying to a federal agent, you'd have to be nuts to talk to them at all.

Yes. If law enforcement suspects you of a crime and wants to talk to you, identify yourself, and state that you will say nothing without a lawyer. Repeat as needed.

They can lie to you with impunity. If you lie to them, you've committed a felony.

Right again. It is not considered a coerced statement if law enforcement lies to you to get it; the bar for what courts will consider coercion is very high.

Could be the federal agents don't want their own comments to be on that tape.

I've made a career out of manipulating recordings. It gets easier by the hour: The Iphone edits video with titles and transitions and overdubs.....

There's a lot to be said for relying on the humanity's best-tested recording technology, the nib an honest man presses to paper. Technology is not going to make us more just, it can only make us more corrupt. Keeping the focus on the integrity of our police and a real-time (slow) process of investigation is what will reward us in the long term.

This is like the electronic voting machines: There's just no need to be in that much of a hurry. Paper is the best job for many human projects.

Paper is the best job for many human projects.

It is one record that is nearly impossible to alter without evidence. I oppose electronic voting for this reason, especially since most of those machines don't seem to be designed to easily create a paper trail, allow basic auditing, and run notoriously insecure operating systems. Even if the machines are not used game elections, this sort of nonsense is needless fuel for conspiracy theorists.

I play with digital audio myself; many basic applications that allow for easy cutting and pasting require little technical expertise (if you want to play, Audacity is a nifty open source tool one can download for free). That said, there are telltale signs in spoken conversation (the way we co-articulate words) that make some manipulation of spoken recording harder. Though I'm guessing pros can probably do things that mask this problem to the point that it would hard for someone to definitively know it was falsified.

And then you videotape the videotaper, and then you videotape HIM.... It's silly.

If you can't trust your police, THAT'S your problem. Technology won't protect you.

I'm with PricklyPear on this one...they've held off on recording interrogations so that their own tactics would not be on record.

The suspect should have the right to his own recording device at the interview. And, "If you don't have your own recording device, or cannot afford one, then one will be provided to you".

I won't hold my breath, but this should be a citizen's right.

Of course, he shouldn't be talking to the police anyway, without a lawyer.

Never Talk to the Police

Talking is dangerous because there are so many laws that you break every day. You are usually protected by invisibility. The police need to see "probable cause" to examine you further. You are clearly visible when they are asking questions, so watch out.

The suspect should have the right to his own recording device at the interview. And, "If you don't have your own recording device, or cannot afford one, then one will be provided to you".

This is an interesting suggestion, Andrew. Love to see in practice, though I share your pessimism about it happening.

This reminds me of the old copier (Xerox?)commercials featuring "Brother Timothy," the quill and ink scrivener.

"If you can't trust your police, THAT'S your problem. Technology won't protect you."

It won't protect you absolutely, but it will protect you. Case after case after case shows cops' lies being exposed only by the existence of dash cams or surveillance videos. Trust in God, but lock your car; trust in police, but audio/video record everything they do.

After a lot of the crap that's come out over the last ten years or so, I flat do not trust most LE personnel; you have no way of knowing if the one you're faced with is honest and follows the rules or is one who's corrupt/incompetent/bigoted/lazy and will use something you say to hang you just because it's easier than finding the actual crook. Add to that the pressure of some prosecutors to get a conviction without being all that concerned in some cases as to whether they actually have the guilty party or not...

Realistically, the only reason I can think of for this attitude by the FBI is that they want to be able to say or do things they don't want on tape, or to be able to manipulate the words of the one being questioned. And it annoys the hell out of me that I've had to come to that conclusion.

You guys don't realize how presumptuous you're being about the nature of decency anyway.

You're presuming, like good little Obamazoid authoritarians, that the infection is contained in this one small part of the process, the one burly, rat-bastard cop with ugly chest hair and a fat belly who's going to tell lies. As if their can't or won't be coverups all the way up the chain. As if we can get this ONE PERFECT RECORDING of the event, and the First Lady Michelle or one of the girls will look it over and fix any problems.

That ain't how it is.

Heh, this is the FBI, of course they don't want mere civvies seeing their interogations. These are the folks who tried to steamroll and scam Richard Jewell during the 96 Atlanta Olympics. IIRC, they wanted him to make a video showing how to handle bombs, even "mock" interview him and read him his miranda rights in the video...

Crid, that corruption goes all the way up the chain, is obvious. That doesn't mean folks shouldn't look out for themselves and record law enforcement folks. The first lady won't help ya but youtube and any number of video sites likely will.

Were I to build an interrogation room, I'd have it set up so that everything was videotaped and sound recorded. I'd build it into the room is such a way as to be invisible to the occupants.

Then I'd put a video camera in the room on a tripod, and it would work and have a monitor everyone could see. I'd put it in there so it could be shut down at some point, so the suspect could be questioned “off the record”. Of course, the installed system would still be running.

Yes, I can be sneaky and devious. If there is something you don't want the cops to know, don't tell them.

I have a Zoom H4n I use for recording music. It's a wonderful device, easy to use right out of the box, and creates reasonably high quality sound files. It can fit in a large shirt pocket. It's way better than a tape recorder, and only set me back a little over three-hundred bucks. I imagine the Justice Department could afford a few of them.

I can't imagine how you would not be allowed to record an interrogation. You shouldn't submit to one without a lawyer, and the lawyer should show up with a Zoom H4n of his own. If LE won't allow it, they'd have to arrest me or let me go. I wouldn't hang out.

Crid, I like a lot of what you have to say, but you are flat out wrong here. Where on earth did I ever say I liked Obama? He's worse on civil liberties than Bush, which is really saying something. I don't advocate trusting ANYONE with the power to write and enforce laws without being held accountable to external standards of justice (i.e., it's wrong to hurt people who aren't causing any harm). As things stand, we have a system characterized by dangerously overbroad criminalization and an equally dangerous lack of accountability in our law enforcement officers.

(Specific example, if it helps - it's totally legal for officers to lie to get search warrants. Like, explicitly and in practice sanctioned by the courts. When you are *rewarded* for lying, what possible incentive would you have not to lie as you go after people for drug possession or having an unlicensed firearm or what have you?)

Are you really suggesting that you're AGAINST having audio/video recording of police-citizen interactions? That we're somehow more noble if we don't verify the things these uniformed men and women say? Read the daily reports at http://www.injusticeeverywhere.com and tell me we should blindly repose our trust in cops.

So keep throwing up your straw men about First Lady Michelle fixing everything, because no one's suggested that as a 'solution.' Do you want to use technology to protect ourselves against the predation of others, remembering that historically, many predators wore uniforms and acted under color of law?

Recording seems like a good idea to me. Especially if the questionee (or better, their lawyer) can have their copy without it passing through the FBI's hand.

In reality, most recording technologies can be analysed closely and things will show up that make it suspicious - changes in background noise - if compression is used (i.e. compressed @ recording -> uncompressed -> tampered with -> re-compressed) then often times affects of the first compression are visual in the second where they should not be. I have read a number of papers on these techniques - mainly having to do with pictures.

Re: the "don't talk to police" line of reasoning, don't forget that Stewart and Scooter Libby were convicted of crimes based solely on statements they made to investigators, all while they had representation.

When they say "don't talk to police" they mean "DON'T TALK TO POLICE"

> I don't advocate trusting ANYONE with the
> power to write and enforce laws without being
> held accountable to external standards of justice

So? You wanna hold people accountable, nobody's stopping you. Men were held accountable long before the invention of the VCR.

Y’know, if state power is ever used to prosecute MY ass, I’m going to think it ought to be worth someone’s time to write it down longhand. This is very much like the electronic voting thing. People are eager for it for no good reason, as if the third world wasn’t sufficiently impressed with our laser-fied grocery scanners any more.

Some chores are too important for machinery.

The electronic voting machines in Ohio have a "side" window that when you cast your ballot, it prints on the side that you can see what boxes are checked. The also run a percentage audit that says the paper matches the general returns.

As far as recording the police stopping you -- in several states they made it illegal to record the cops in doing their duty.

This is the same thing as the fight in the other thread about the abuse of women, and the one about the lady general who charged another high-ranking officer with sexual harassment etc etc etc...

You guys think SHAME can do everything. It's not that you want everything done out in the open... (Well, some of you probably want that, too.) It's that you think that when something goes wrong, all you have to do is tell some other party about it and it will be taken care of... As if there's some super-reliable daddy figure out there, an authority more powerful than what happens when your own appreciation for detail is matched to your own sense of justice.

This bugs me. Because there is no such force. If you don't care that cops are telling lies, we're fucked anyway.

Crid, I'm having a hard time getting a handle on your position here. "Some chores are too important for machinery" - so I assume that whenever you read something you consider especially valuable, you choose a monk-copied manuscript rather than something created by that infernal new printing press?

The goal of recording an interrogation is to have an exact record of what was said by both parties. Surely you wouldn't allow the suspect, with his or her vested interest in a specific outcome, to provide the sole record of the proceedings. "Yeah, he beat me up, then told me I didn't have the right to remain silent, and I *never* said that I knew where the body was hidden..." It doesn't make much more sense to allow the other side to provide it either, since regretfully we see many, many cases where the objective record is all that shows that a cop is, or that multiple cops are, lying. (Check out the Otto Zehm case as a good example.)

I also can't understand where you'd get that I "don't care that cops are telling lies." Of course I do, that's why I think everything should be audio/video-taped so that everyone can have objective evidence available from which to determine what actually happened. No one's talking about a "super-reliable daddy figure" - people need the tools to defend themselves and to prosecute crime, and audio-video taping is a powerful tool both to help innocent suspects as well as to vindicate good cops.

Shame isn't the issue. Truth and fairness is what we should be seeking out, and technology gives us lots of great ways to facilitate that. Opposing them because you believe blindly trusting cops is somehow more noble or right simply doesn't make sense.

> whenever you read something you consider especially
> valuable, you choose a monk-copied manuscript rather
> than something created by that infernal new
> printing press?

When I want a meal that's especially flavorful, nutritious or elegant, I go to a place where a thoughtful person has crafted it by hand, not to a place a where distracted teenagers knock it out with a microwave. Having someone who understands how ingredients should be selected and handled makes all the difference.

The big error I think you guys are making is the liberal error about so many matters: You're too concerned about things, and not concerned enough with people. It's the same pattern as with guns, and CFLs, and plastic bags, etc. You have a cops problem, not a notation problem. The fact that an interrogation is easier to distribute electronically is not a meaningful concern. When yours are the balls by which a criminal will be hoisted, it's just the one page of copy that does the damage.

> everything should be audio/video-taped so that
> everyone can have objective evidence

EVERYTHING? Everything should be videotaped? Listen, the world is going that way. Do you think things are more just?

No. Recordings introduce their own distortions. They're subject to manipulation.

Worst of all, they assume there's a baseline of decency out there that will make things happen. The fantasy seems to go something like the plot of a lot of bad Redford movies from the 70's, something like this: 'Here's a reel of tape that they CAN'T ignore!'

But of course,'they' ARE ignoring it already, aren't they?

Technology treats the symptom, not the disease. Having recordings doesn't mean you've made cops trustworthy, it means you've paid someone to video tape them. And then you're going to pay other people to review those tapes. So now that's three parties you're "trusting blindly".

No thanks

To Crid,

Yes, law enforcement is more just in those cases where video provides more information that is not easily altered. Policemen have been fired because an inconvenient video showed they were lying.

You say "recordings introduce their own distortions. They're subject to manipulation." Do you have some examples in mind?

Yes, the police can ignore a video, or try to. Sometimes, they suppress evidence. I don't see the conclusion that we should give up acquiring the evidence.

Let's generate more video evidence and pursue a more accountable police. We can do both. The whole idea of more direct and tamper-proof evidence is that we don't have to trust the police as much.

I would rather have a video than a scribbled written record biased by the policeman who is writing down the bits that he selects.

> Do you have some examples in mind?

Every TV show I've ever watched (or edited). You have weird ideas about objective truth: 'But I saw the tape!'

> I would rather have a video than a scribbled
> written record biased by the policeman who
> is writing down the bits that he selects.

If you think so little of these men, you shouldn't be arming them and giving them constabulary authority to begin with.

You guys want justice to be a really good episode of the old 60 Minutes show, where Mike Wallace squeezes them by the balls while you cackle from the comfort of your Sunday night TV room, and then moving on to something else.

Blech ptooie.

To Crid,

Well, you got me there. I won't try discussing anything with you in the future. You are a master of the false analogy. Really skilled. A lot more skill at it than I have.

My hat is off to you.

About the policemen. You are so right. I'll fire the bad ones tomorrow and revise the force. Sorry that I didn't do this sooner. I don't know why I ever hired them.

Your reply to Amy of "Blech ptooie". A class act. You really surprised me.

Well, Jeez, you curt-sentenced pilgrim you, I'm sorry to have scuffed your delicate feelings so deeply... But I think you guys are being terrifically naive about this. You're so sunny about it; so quick to presume (without even a comment) that technology could solve this ancient and intensely human conundrum, how police should handle suspected criminals. And not only that, the technology has already been developed! It's been around for years! It's a tool as comfortable and easy-to-understand as a weeknight's entertainment... The teevee! Because after all, no one could ever be deceived by what they see on television! THE ENTIRE COMMUNITY WILL BE ABLE TO MAKE JUDGMENTS, using essentially the same life skills they bring to the appreciation of game shows, sitcoms, and Saturday-morning cartoons. It won't even require literacy! Expertise, nuance, social integration, and community standing will all be made completely irrelevant....

We just had a serial killer taken off the streets of LA this week after at least twenty-five years of horror. We're told that "CSI" and "48 Hours" were his favorite tv shows. Make of that what you will, I've never seen 'em.

PS—"Class" is not a factor. You want "class", watch a Fred Astaire movie.

This isn't the Dalrymple piece I was looking for on this topic, but it's a start.

Basically, you guys sound like you want to reduce justice to a simple thing that any child could measure through a tv screen. And I think that will give us a child's standard of justice.

I'm for doing whatever's possible to see that there isn't a miscarriage of justice, lying about what was said, etc. Allowing a suspect to do that protects his or her rights, and that's a good thing.

Let me see if I have this straight - Crid, on the basis of his experience watching and editing TV shows, believes that audio/video-taping police officers is a bad idea because...well, he never really tells us why it's a bad idea, just keeps implying that it's somehow more noble just to blindly trust cops, while insulting "you liberals."

Let me see if I can correct a few of the misconceptions on which he appears to rely:

1. Audio/video taping means paying more people in whom one must blindly repose trust.
- False. The audio/video taping is done by the same officers who are already conducting the interview. The tapes are reviewed by the same district attorneys and defense attorneys and judges who would be handling the case regardless; it's just that now they have more objective facts and don't have to rely on the officer's self-serving memory of the encounter with the suspect.

2. Recordings introduce more distortions.
- False. It is possible to manipulate audio/video recordings, but it's a very difficult and expensive process. For recordings to introduce MORE distortions, it would have to be easier to digitally alter an audio/video record than it would be to make up something that didn't happen (or even subtly alter an actual event) and write it down. One of those things takes substantially less time and leaves substantially less of a trail. Just because recordings CAN be altered doesn't mean that practicality allows for that to be done on any kind of a regular basis.

3. Using audio/video recordings means you don't trust cops.
- Partially true but extremely misleading in the context used. One, I don't trust cops. The Founders wouldn't have either. They're human beings given tremendous amounts of power over others - some of them are going to misuse it, that's human nature. Our goal is to set up a system of laws, not of men, that allows us to govern the behavior of everyone wearing a uniform and exercising the authority of the sovereign. So there's nothing noble, as Crid keeps insisting, about trusting cops to the point of allowing them to make things up without accountability.

Two, audio/video recordings PROTECT good cops against false allegations of brutality, abuse, illegality, etc. The test of whether a cop is good or not is whether s/he supports taping all encounters for the protection of both parties.

And yes, the more objective recording we have, the more just outcomes will be in the criminal arena. So none of this intellectually dishonest "the world is going your way..." business - I'm a criminal defense attorney, and I can tell you right now that there is a LOT of pushback against taping police encounters, ostensibly because of cost. Funny, A/V equipment cost is never a factor when they're setting up another drug bust going after someone who has Xanax in a non-prescription bottle.

Audio/video recording of all police-citizen encounters is an unquestionably good policy.

> just keeps implying that it's somehow more
> noble just to blindly trust cops

I said that? Where?

> it's just that now they have more objective facts

No, "they" have video recordings.

> it's a very difficult and expensive process

Wait a year.

> Using audio/video recordings means
> you don't trust cops.

Worse, it means you're simultaneously trusting them and telling them that they're not trustworthy. It's like someone who hires Mexican day laborers in West LA... They WORK like humans, there's just less cost.

> One, I don't trust cops

And your expression of your distrust isn't to get involved in the policing of your community, but just to spend money on video cameras and the technocrats to manage and review the recordings?

Silliness

So, Crid, are you saying you find a real time audio visual reording less objective then a hand written report created hours or even days after an interview?

I think your pornographic interest in voodoo objectivity is a big part of the problem. Next comes people who say "I don't trust cops" as if society weren't built around them. It's like saying 'I don't trust B6' or some other essential nutrient. Civilization has been constructed around trust in constabulary forces. Our intimate interest in their work isn't something that can be shortchanged.

I was on a jury a couple years ago that let a criminal walk for no reason that people think they're being daring and clever by saying "I don't trust cops". (There'd been no procedural error, no contradicting evidence, just the cynical pose of sophistication in the jury room.) They'll cut their own humanity out of the process and then complain the world's going to Hell.

They'd rather watch TV.

Now you're not even making sense. "Civilization has been constructed around trust in constabulary forces" - are you kidding me? Even assuming you want to define "constabulary forces" as broadly as possible (unpaid sheriffs and whatnot from feudal Europe), you're talking MAYBE the last 500 years. But if you're referring to anything even remotely resembling the police force that we have today in the US, that concept is barely two centuries old. Your claim is beyond historically inaccurate, and all it would have taken for you to realize that is a quick visit to Wikipedia.

Sorry, Crid, but at this point you have to be written off as someone incapable of rational discussion on this subject. I even went to the trouble of organizing your incoherent ramblings into three main arguments, making it easier to discuss each one; rather than addressing those arguments, you pulled out random phrases from my response and replied with nonsense like "silliness" or "wait a year." (Incidentally, as a public defender, I'm pretty darn involved in the policing of my community.)

So if you're ever in the mood to discuss the issue with, y'know, evidence and arguments and whatnot, look me up.

> are you kidding me? Even assuming you want to
> define "constabulary forces" as broadly as possible

As if you weren't banking on them every day of your life... As if marauding warlords ruled our freeways, keeping the nutrients from your belly, the fabrics from your back and the shingles from your roof, with flocks of rapists savaging our schools and hospitals, threatening your home with torches and farm implements. I imagine the terror in your voice as you awaken your wife every morning with a clammy-handed shake of her shoulder: 'Honey, it's a jungle out there... And we can't trust the cops!'

> at this point you have to be written off as someone
> incapable of rational discussion on this subject.

And yet you continue to comment....

> I even went to the trouble of organizing your
> incoherent ramblings into three main arguments

...And with such courtesy, too! But I like speaking for myself and choosing my own words.

There's nothing "blind" about my appreciation of the police. I live in LOS fucking ANGELES, fer Chrissake.

But one tires of macho posturing and chewing gum solutions to eternal challenges of our social machinery—

"TV cameras!"

Funny, but that was the same reply offered by the popular mind forty years ago when someone noticed that the schools don't teach... And things aren't getting any better.

It's true, I do continue to comment - you have a certain curmudgeonly charm that overrides my usual reaction to people who aren't making any sense. (The fact that you often do make sense is a contributing factor as well.) And since no one else is bothering to read the exchange at this point, what's the harm?

So, once more unto the breach.

As for the matter of constabulary forces: nothing you said in any way proved your original assertion, which was that civilization has been constructed around trust in constabulary forces. That's an astounding statement in and of itself, both in terms of its demonstrated lack of veracity and what it says about some people's view of the source of human achievements.

This isn't to say that I don't like and respect police. Believe me, as a small, weak person (incidentally, you got my gender wrong) who sees details of brutal crimes on a somewhat regular basis, I am a wholehearted supporter of law enforcement. It's just that I have these crazy ideas that it shouldn't be okay to hunt people down and lock them up if they haven't hurt anyone else, and that having a 4th amendment is a good thing. This puts me in a distinctly opposed position to the criminal justice system as a whole, where bashing someone's door in in the middle of the night because you got a tip that he had Xanax without a prescription (true story) is our operating policy, and police conduct searches with literal impunity.

But anyway, please stop trying to pigeonhole my views and thereby dismiss them - I respect the roles of law enforcement and prosecution, it's just that the serious problems with the character of both the law and its enforcement have made the situation more dire than most people realize. And even if they weren't dire, there would still be no reason to reject a virtually costless method of providing an objective record of an encounter between two parties, both of whom have a motive to lie. As I explained above, this is not some additional layer of bureaucracy, it's simply another tool for discerning the truth. Sure, it's not infallible. But it's much less fallible than a human being.

Of course you appreciate the police; we should all respect the people who sacrifice their own safety to protect us from the predations of others. It's just that far too much of their function has strayed from that mission, and too much of the predation is coming from people wearing uniforms. Obligatory cite, http://www.injusticeeverywhere.com Kathryn Johnston, Jonathan Ayers, Cory Maye, etc. I'm sure I've mentioned before that I spent a short time with the DC city attorney's office where I helped defend police brutality cases, so I'm far from unsympathetic to the unique challenges faced by these brave men and women. That doesn't mean I think good people get a pass to enforce unjust laws.

Then there are the bad ones! There are rotten apples in every profession, and just think - if you're sadistic and not that bright, are you more likely to become an accountant or a cop? How can you suggest that we not videotape them, especially when case after case reveals them to be unquestionably lying?

I'm not giving up on you, here. There's still time to back off from your ridiculous position that using readily available technology to provide an accuracy check on fraught police-citizen encounters is somehow a bad idea.

> There's still time to back off from
> your ridiculous position

What happens when it's too late?

> that using readily available technology
> to provide an accuracy check

Machines don't check things.

It's neat how we so quickly got from

> One, I don't trust cops.

to

> Of course you appreciate the police; we should
> all respect the people who sacrifice their own
> safety to protect us from the predations
> of others.

It's kind of like how we got from ANYTHING I said to

> we should blindly repose our trust in cops.

People are fuckin' nuts.