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A comment on Police hid use of cell phone tracking device from judge because of NDA.

Re:Police hid use of cell phone tracking device from judge b... by csense on Monday March 03, 2014 @05:50PM (#7337115)
The police department has Constitutional obligation to follow the Fourth and Fifth Amendments. Don't these obligations trump the provisions of any private contract?
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Re:Police hid use of cell phone tracking device from judge b... by jerf on Monday March 03, 2014 @06:47PM (#7337444)
The logically correct answer is that the police department should not have signed the contract due to a legal inability to keep up their end of the bargain. You can offer someone a contract in which they promise to pay you ten million dollars, but when they subsequently fail to pay up it isn't really a defense that they never had ten million dollars, nor any realistic expectation of having it. That doesn't mean they should just sign anyway, it means they should not sign. This is also the correct response to silverstorm's sibling post... the failure occurred at the signing, not in court. By then the police department had already lost.

The police department should be legally compelled to tell the judge about this, then they should be held in breach of contract. This will not happen, of course, and our trust in our institutions and our belief that our society is based on anything other than raw power will take another fully-rationally-justified blow.

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Re:Police hid use of cell phone tracking device from judge b... by rosser on Monday March 03, 2014 @08:08PM (#7337787)
If they don't, then the boilerplate verbiage that appears in pretty much every contract I've ever seen, which voids any provisions of said contract that are illegal or unenforceable without prejudice to any other terms of the contract, does.

That is to say: any contract which includes such a clause can't bind you to do something illegal, just because you signed it.

It's generally illegal to lie to a court, particularly when under oath.

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Re:Police hid use of cell phone tracking device from judge b... by judk on Monday March 03, 2014 @10:21PM (#7338246)
The oath doesn't change legal status, it just a psychology hack.
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Re:Police hid use of cell phone tracking device from judge b... by rosser on Monday March 03, 2014 @10:35PM (#7338289)
False. Perjury is a Federal crime.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1621

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Re:Police hid use of cell phone tracking device from judge b... by sliverstorm on Monday March 03, 2014 @05:54PM (#7337141)
If companies are people, isn't disclosing private information belonging to that company is a violation of a person's privacy? Doesn't that mean the gov't also has a constitutional obligation to not break the privacy of companies?

What do you even do when you have conflicting constitutional obligations...

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Re:Police hid use of cell phone tracking device from judge b... by skywhopper on Monday March 03, 2014 @06:06PM (#7337227)
You err on the side of protecting the innocent and allowing the guilty to go free. That's the entire premise behind our justice system--that it's better to allow criminals to get away with crimes than to punish innocent people.
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Re:Police hid use of cell phone tracking device from judge b... by dllthomas on Monday March 03, 2014 @06:32PM (#7337373)
"That's the entire premise behind our justice system--that it's better to allow criminals to get away with crimes than to punish innocent people."

Well, that's the premise behind many aspects of our justice system. No justice system at all accomplishes it better than any justice system at all, without other considerations, so it's clearly not the entire premise behind the whole of our justice system.

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Re:Police hid use of cell phone tracking device from judge b... by nness on Monday March 03, 2014 @06:39PM (#7337412)
Interesting thought, but you've completely misunderstood the specifics of corporate personhood. Personal privacy is not reserved for incorporated entities at all.
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Re:Police hid use of cell phone tracking device from judge b... by maxerickson on Monday March 03, 2014 @06:20PM (#7337308)
The straightforward resolution is that the government shouldn't enter into agreements that create the conflict.

(I guess the more complicated answer is that there are lots of legal cases determining how to balance the two sides in such conflicts)

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Re:Police hid use of cell phone tracking device from judge b... by judk on Monday March 03, 2014 @10:22PM (#7338247)
Then you ask the judge for a gag order so the secret info doesn't reach the public.
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Re:Police hid use of cell phone tracking device from judge b... by george88b on Monday March 03, 2014 @05:55PM (#7337147)
No one wants to get sued, no matter how frivolous.
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