Texas Dad Says 'Find My iPhone' Glitch is Directing Angry Strangers to his Home (abc13.com) 161
An anonymous reader shares a report from the New York Post:
A supposed glitch in the popular "Find My iPhone" app has been directing random strangers to the home of an unsuspecting Texas dad at all hours of the day, falsely accusing him of stealing their electronic devices.
[Software engineer] Scott Schuster told the local news station KTRK that he's been visited by close to a dozen irate people over the past few years, telling him that their missing phone had last pinged at his address. "[I] had to wake up and go answer the door and explain to them that I didn't have their device, and people don't tend to believe you," the dad of two told the outlet.
The Texas resident tells KTRK that his biggest concern was "someone coming to the house potentially with a weapon."
And the same station reports that local sheriff Eric Fagan "said he was so shocked and concerned that he informed his patrol units and dispatchers, just in case anyone called about the address." "Apple needs to do more about this," Fagan said. "Please come out and check on this. This is your expertise. Mine is criminal and keeping our public safe here in Fort Bend County." Fagan added that Apple doing nothing puts a family's safety in jeopardy. "I would ask them to come out and see what they can do. It should be taken seriously. You are putting innocent lives at risk," he said....
There have been other high-profile device pinging errors elsewhere in the country, with at least one that brought armored vehicles to a neighborhood. In 2021, body camera footage captured a Denver police SWAT team raiding the home of a 77-year-old woman in Colorado over a false ping on the app. Denver officers believed she had stolen guns connected to a car theft after tracking a stolen iPhone to her address using the Find My app. That woman later sued the lead detective.
ABC13 has tried contacting the software giant since Tuesday. Someone called back, so we know they are aware of the incident. Still, no one has said if they are going to fix the issue, or at the very least, look into the matter.
[Software engineer] Scott Schuster told the local news station KTRK that he's been visited by close to a dozen irate people over the past few years, telling him that their missing phone had last pinged at his address. "[I] had to wake up and go answer the door and explain to them that I didn't have their device, and people don't tend to believe you," the dad of two told the outlet.
The Texas resident tells KTRK that his biggest concern was "someone coming to the house potentially with a weapon."
And the same station reports that local sheriff Eric Fagan "said he was so shocked and concerned that he informed his patrol units and dispatchers, just in case anyone called about the address." "Apple needs to do more about this," Fagan said. "Please come out and check on this. This is your expertise. Mine is criminal and keeping our public safe here in Fort Bend County." Fagan added that Apple doing nothing puts a family's safety in jeopardy. "I would ask them to come out and see what they can do. It should be taken seriously. You are putting innocent lives at risk," he said....
There have been other high-profile device pinging errors elsewhere in the country, with at least one that brought armored vehicles to a neighborhood. In 2021, body camera footage captured a Denver police SWAT team raiding the home of a 77-year-old woman in Colorado over a false ping on the app. Denver officers believed she had stolen guns connected to a car theft after tracking a stolen iPhone to her address using the Find My app. That woman later sued the lead detective.
ABC13 has tried contacting the software giant since Tuesday. Someone called back, so we know they are aware of the incident. Still, no one has said if they are going to fix the issue, or at the very least, look into the matter.
I wonder (Score:2)
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Re: I wonder (Score:2)
Re:I wonder (Score:5, Informative)
and then wind up at this guy's place
It isn't the first time a company has screwed up like that.
A few years back, a homeowner had a similar complaint about the most popular geolocation system at the time which tagged their home as the "somewhere in the United States" location, and had to sue to get it changed [washingtonpost.com]. (another version of the story [theguardian.com]) I'm pretty sure it was discussed a few times here on /. as well, but search isn't finding it.
The family was accused of everything from child porn to stolen vehicles to fraud to missing persons cases, doxxed, had tons of government agents visit with guns drawn, and more, until the mapping company moved the position of the tag to the middle of a lake and paid off the family.
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Looks like it isn't even the first time for Apple, sending people to the wrong address until a lawsuit forces them to fix it. [fortune.com]
Re:I wonder (Score:4, Interesting)
But Apple did invent "screw up locations when reporting a Find My Device request".
Re:I wonder (Score:5, Informative)
Uh.. They didn't actually invent that either. "Maxmind" would return one kansas farm for any IP address that didn't have any valid location assigned to them.
The owners were visited by the local police, FBI, ambulances, and more regularly.
This sounds very similar.
https://splinternews.com/how-a... [splinternews.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re:I wonder (Score:5, Informative)
This sounds very similar.
In the 80s-90s when the general public was first gaining second-hand exposure to computers in their daily lives, it quickly became a geek meme just how completely and deeply rooted was the concept that "computers are Never wrong, computers do not lie".
A human screwed up some data entry at the bank, and now that the computer is the thing displaying that screwup, it must be an infallible fact.
Not only did most people never question this, but they would argue it with their last breath.
The only things surprising today is that people still exist that believe this (despite all the evidence to the contrary) and even more so is the number of people on a geek site like slashdot so strongly backing this notion!
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Uh.. They didn't actually invent that either.
Of course not, they just perfected it into the perfect interface. Until now angry mobs were following crude poorly designed map markers, rather than navigating using and device and interface which can only be described as pixels dancing in unison in literal perfection.
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The tricky bit with trackers was always how to get the signal out at a minimal cost, both in financial and power terms.
What apple did with the airtag was leverage their massive installed base of phones to solve that problem.
It happed to us (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It happed to us (Score:5, Insightful)
You probably had an open wifi, or someone else close by.
The phone connected to his mother base and this was the latest report of its location.
Or it still had a cellphone connection, but lost it shortly after it last report from close by you.
It is not rocket science. If it happens once: the phone most likely was close by and this is its latest report. There is nothing magically or unbelievable about this. If it happens many times, like in the story: there is something wrong with the book keeping at the mother base.
Re: It happed to us (Score:2)
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Could just be that whoever took it was walking past your house the last time it registered on Apple's "Find My" network. Maybe one of your iPhones reported the ping and location back o Apple, sending the mother and daughter to you.
Another possibility is WiFi. Apple uses known WiFi access points, collected by wardriving and from customer's iPhones, to supplement location data. If a WiFi AP moves it can throw off location information until the system updates.
I've got a solution (Score:5, Funny)
When someone shows up looking for their phone, just be like, "Oh, that's too bad. Maybe someone already took it."
Farm in Kansas (Score:5, Interesting)
This happened before with some farm in Kansas. Due to it being nearly dead center in the continental US, it was picked as the center point for any location where they had no information other than "United States"
https://splinternews.com/how-a... [splinternews.com]
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I remember this. It's kind of like the old UCSD Pascal compiler that ran out of error numbers at one byte (255) so any new error message got the last error message: "semicolon missing" as the default. That was always puzzling because it pointed right at the "missing" semicolon when the error was really something else.
This is an error in programming. QA and the programmers should have covered this. Sometimes these are amusing errors and sometimes deadly.
May I suggest that the guy start an iPhone blackmar
Temporary solution (Score:5, Informative)
Sign on house:
“Apple is incorrectly directing people with lost phones to our house. Call the police if you need to confirm, or read this article in the NY Post:” with QR code.
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Sign on house:
“Apple is incorrectly directing people with lost phones to our house. Call the police if you need to confirm, or read this article in the NY Post:” with QR code.
Yes, the kind of person that will roll up to a stranger's house looking for their stolen property will be dissuaded by a sign.
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and have Apple sue them for libel/slander?
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with QR code.
Which they can scan with their lost phone?
Important questions missed ... (Score:2, Interesting)
AFAICT, none of the reporting actually tells us (or Apple) what it is that (allegedly) is sending these irate visitor to the door. If the guy was at (lat,long) of (0,0) I could imagine it. But that's about 1000km off the coast in
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If the guy was at (lat,long) of (0,0) I could imagine it. But that's about 1000km off the coast in the Bight of Benin, which is not now, and never has been, in Texas. If the address had (lat,long) of (Apple's #1 US base, Apple's #2 US base), I could imagine it. But at the moment, this is just an unsupported claim by JoeRandomTexan, which never has been the strongest base for believing anything more consequential than the state of the weather in Texas.
His address could be the geographic center of a larger area - like the city, state etc. It has happened many times before with map systems on not found addresses (but city, state etc valid) - I recall somebody even died in Australia following their GPS to some geographic center of a state that was the middle of nowhere.
Re:Important questions missed ... (Score:5, Funny)
somebody even died in Australia following their GPS to some geographic center of a state that was the middle of nowhere.
Did they get a Darwin Award?
Re:Important questions missed ... (Score:4, Funny)
Only if the city they were looking for was Darwin, NT.
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You would hope that in that case the display would show a large circle, indicating the whole geographic area the item could be in. I seem to recall that they put a dot in the middle, and that is quite misleading. They should make it very clear in the UI that the device could be anywhere in the entire area.
They should also indicate how old the location data is. If it's a day old it's probably worthless for a mobile device like a phone. If it hasn't pinged in a day it's probably been wiped or stripped for par
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Yep, seen that before. Entered the post code (which should cover a range of less-than about 50 addresses constituting a "bundle" of letters for the postman (-woman, not yet -robot) to deliver) for a tourist attraction. Went to indicated position on SatNav - no tourist attraction. Since the attraction was around 40m tall, this was surprising. Later worked it out that the location I was being steered to was the geographic centre of the limits of th
Re: Important questions missed ... (Score:2)
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So, this Apple "Find-a-Gunman" tool actually works by somehow "other" phones logging the location of the missing phone and reporting it to Big Brother In Cupertino?
That is incredibly optimistic. and incredibly invasive.
Does it depend on you (a "passer-by" or the "missing" device) having all of BlueTooth, GPS, and several of the "NFC" tools enabled? I do know of such things - and turn them on when needed. Which has been zero times this year for GPS, zero times for NFC, and when I'm talking to
I have had this happen before. (Score:5, Interesting)
Where someone comes to my door claiming their find my iphone says it is in my house. Fortunately they were generally nice about it, but I did have to insist. I had to tell them it must be wrong several times with technical explanations before they finally gave up and left. At first they seemed to think how could it possibly be wrong? I can easily see this kind of thing not ending well for either party. I would be really pissed if this kept occurring. After then 2nd one I would put up a sign.
Get a Lawyer (Score:3, Insightful)
Sue Apple.
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Get an AirTag, attach it to someone else's property, and claim they stole it from you.
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Get an AirTag, attach it to someone else's property, and claim they stole it from you.
I hear that some people do that to women's cars. Just sayin'.
Occams razor (Score:2)
Maybe it's someone nearby causing it (Score:3)
Since we know the thing works properly in a very, very large percentage of situations (you can use it to locate your own devices if you misplace them, and I know for years, it's accurately shown me where all of mine are), I'd at least want to see what else was in the general vicinity of this guy's place.
I could see where someone might even take stolen phones and leave them in the yard of someone else until their battery runs down. Then go and retrieve them. That would throw off people searching for them and put the blame on someone else.
Well... (Score:2)
So why does this happen? (Score:2)
In this case: Apparently theres a lost iPhone. A nearby iPhone detects it, sends its location to apple, apple sends it to the owner. It is the location of the nearby phone, the lost phone doesnâ(T
Re: So why does this happen? (Score:2)
Do you get timestamps with these things? So you could make an educated guess whether a location ping is just a sign that the object of interest passed by, or whether it is presently pinging from that location?
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My guess: location services uses GPS if available, but falls back to wifi.
If you have a thief in the neighborhood, this dude's wifi could be the last time the phone gets a location fix, and the last-known position of the phone.
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It happens because "precision" isn't stated well.
There are many sources of location information.
First, you have GPS, if you can get a signal, this will give you a fine location.
Second you have WiFi. If you capture some WiFi beacon packets, you can use the MAC address to location databases to identify the general area where that WiFi is located.
Third, you have cell tower - cell towers have IDs and just like there's a database of WiFi MAC addresses to locations, there's a database of cell tower IDs to locatio
Gun Laws (Score:2)
This happened to me (Score:2)
I had this exact scenario happen to me -- albeit only once so far.
A mildly inebriated young man and his friend rang my doorbell late at night claiming that his phone was somehow in my house. I politely sent him away. He actually came back a few minutes later re-asserting his claims. I told him to call the police if he believed I had his stolen property. Mercifully, that was the last I saw of him.
No-fault machine automatic pardon! (Score:2)
Find my phone behavior is ML and robotic based service kinda crude AI search. Evidence to what kind of future is in store for humanity dependent on machines.
This could work well ... (Score:2)
Example: Kohberger (alledged Moscow Idaho killer) gets the search warrants of his parents home thrown out because his cell phone location data may very well have been in error.
Weird (Score:2)
Location-wise Richmond TX seems like an unlikely default result.
Brazil, Brazil, Brazil (Score:2)
That darn fly!
This is why "Truck Thief Gunned Down" was scary (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember a week ago when Truck Thief Gunned Down by Owner After AirTag Gives Away Location [slashdot.org]? Remember how a bunch of people said, essentially, good, serves him right? This story is the counterpoint, and what scares me about that whole attitude. It could have gone down the same way here. Doorbell rings. The guy calling claims the homeowner stole his iPhone. Homeowner denies it. Accuser gets belligerent, someone ends up dead. Doesn't matter which one. Neither of them stole anything. Just someone dead because of a misunderstanding and a macho sense of entitlement. He's a thief, he deserves to be shot, right? Or, the other guy came to someone's home, made false accusations, and threatened(*) the homeowner, so he deserves to be shot. Isn't that the way it works? (* Doesn't matter if he did anything actually threatening, so long as the homeowner says afterward that he felt threatened.)
Accuracy issues with no explanation. (Score:2)
The various find X programs are set up to give you the 'best possible' results and do not show the accuracy.
If they obtain accuracy to the nearest meter / yard, they pick a spot in the middle. That works fine. If they get accuracy to the nearest zip code, they show the middle of the zip code. That does not work fine.
Nearest county works horrible. Nearest state is worthless. Nearest country is the worst example I ever heard. There is a farm house in the exact center of the country that used to have pol
Re:bill apple for his own gun the protect his TX p (Score:4)
Re:bill apple for his own gun the protect his TX p (Score:5, Funny)
It's Texas. If somebody angry and armed shows up at night and he shoots them, the police are going to give him advice on cleaning and disposal services, not arrest him.
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Uh, while I was being snarky, can you find evidence of any Texas homeowners being charged, much less convicted, for shooting somebody who doesn't live there and is making a disturbance while armed at the home?
I mean, this is the state that acquitted the guy who shot and killed a prostitute after she refused to service him(after being paid).
It's one of those things where you'd actually have to have access to police records, I think, because it's such a common case as to not be newsworthy(drowned out by schoo
Re:bill apple for his own gun the protect his TX p (Score:4, Insightful)
Unless you live in Blueville, otherwise known as Austin.
Except every major city in Texas leans blue. A grand jury didn't indict Joe Horn for shooting two thieves robbing his neighbor's house in Houston.
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The idea that if major cities lean blue, the state legislature should be blue is a fallacy. If 51% of the population in the cities votes blue, and 99% of the rural population votes red, then it doesn't take a large rural population to make the overall vote 51% red.
Exercise: Make your own spreadsheet to see how the 3 different numbers interact. (fraction city vote blue, fraction rural vote red, fraction all voters rural)
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IDK, I think most people that vote actually do vote by party. They vote for their parties candidate, regardless of how terrible this person may be, because they are at least 1% better then that other guy in the party they know they hate.
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The claim that "cities are blue so state government should be blue" only works in California, Oregon, and Washington State...on the West Coast of the US.
The reasons why are simple:
- These states gerrymander districts so there are as few right-leaning districts as possible, ensuring majorities or supermajorities in legislative bodies.
- These states are now being known for the departure of mostly right-leaning voters due to the absurdly high crime rates in those states.
- These states are manifesting insane ta
Re: bill apple for his own gun the protect his TX (Score:2)
Blue in Texas means something different than on the East/West coast. In Texas, it's more in line with what the world thinks of as classical liberalism. Which includes respecting others civil rights. On the two coasts, blue means cardiac arrest from a Fentanyl overdose.
Re: bill apple for his own gun the protect his TX (Score:2)
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A lot? How often do you lose your phone?
Re: bill apple for his own gun the protect his TX (Score:2)
I know several people who use them to track their own kids.
One lady stuck an couple of air tags one in her son's ski jacket and one in his bag. Since ski is club is often late returning and lots of kids have iphones she can track when they leave the ski area to pick him up on time.
When explained how air tags work she didn't like it but it was still useful to her.
She knew where her son was and he could still go do things without his parents.
Re: bill apple for his own gun the protect his T (Score:2)
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Re: bill apple for his own gun the protect his TX (Score:2)
The US. Where "defending" means killing, every single time.
Re: bill apple for his own gun the protect his TX (Score:2)
Not necessarily true. Some states have a "duty to retreat". In these states you must flee if able.
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Yeah, it's pretty sad. Someone's threatening you in a space you have a right to be in and yet you have to leave while the person threatening you is a okay. Makes no sense at all.
Re: bill apple for his own gun the protect his TX (Score:4, Funny)
>This situation wouldn't happen in a blue nation anyway. Government regulation of businesses would force Apple to fix a defect that clearly puts people in danger. And police would have sufficient oversight and/or be replaced by more appropriate personnel, so that citizens could trust them to handle these situations rather than go vigilante.
True Democratism arises only when the revolution is brought to everybody, not reserved to disparate states and cities. When the nation goes entirely blue, that is the moment when Americans will ascend into the sky as beings of pure energy, able to show their now plasma penises to children as was never possible under corporeal Republican tyranny.
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Re: bill apple for his own gun the protect his TX (Score:4, Interesting)
the police need to have military-grade armaments to avoid being outgunned.
Weird. I was told that the gun owners are all responsible, well trained, non-criminals and that's why they shouldn't ban guns.
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bill apple for his own gun the protect his TX property
Of course because who doesn't want to die in a gunfight! /s
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Or live with the feeling of guilt over killing someone even if it was self defense.
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I kind of doubt the person that owns a gun is going to fill much guilt over shooting someone that broke into their home. We aren't talking about liberals here. They feel guilty for being born the wrong skin color for crying out loud.
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IANAL, but I don't think "stand your ground" applies if you're trying to retrieve your stolen iThingy. Stand your ground laws generally have a clause requiring that (in layman's terms) you don't intentionally go looking for trouble.
Now if the homeowner blew away someone for behaving in a threatening manner, yeah, that'd be a textbook stand your ground defense.
The moral of the story is remote wipe/iCloud lock your iDevice and make peace with the fact that it's gone. Maybe Apple should start adding a discla
Re:Christ in Texas this is a real danger (Score:5, Informative)
Now if the homeowner blew away someone for behaving in a threatening manner, yeah, that'd be a textbook stand your ground defense.
Actually, it wouldn't be. ;)
To be more accurate, it wouldn't be "textbook", because if they do the shooting from their home(and it can be any resident, not just the owner), it would be more accurately called "castle doctrine". Basically, that somebody's home is their castle, and that there is no valid retreat from your home/castle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Stand your ground is thus normally explicitly for outside your place of residence and/or work, expanding "castle doctrine" to anywhere you are publicly allowed to be. Note: Not a lawyer, and trying to phrase it in a common way. Roughly speaking, it removes the duty to retreat if you're legally allowed to be where you are and were otherwise not in the commission of a crime.
Note: I highly recommend that, again, keeping language plain, you don't shoot anybody unless you are in a situation where the vast majority of people would agree that you're at immediate serious risk of life/limb at the hands of the person you're going to shoot.
No, the southpark "He's coming right for us!" doesn't work in a real court of law(it was tried in florida).
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Even Texas has a 'don't go looking for trouble' clause, which is likely why this man was convicted of murder on Friday:
https://www.texastribune.org/2... [texastribune.org]
But since he killed someone who the governor doesn't like, Abbott plans to pardon the shooter:
https://www.texastribune.org/2... [texastribune.org]
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...you can show up to somebody's house and shoot them dead and it's 50/50 whether stand your ground applies to you and get you off the hook.
That's not how Stand Your Ground laws work. Not anywhere in the U.S. If you go to someone's house and shoot them dead, you just murdered someone.
That's why I said 50/50 (Score:3)
But some of it is just plain laws being selectively enfo
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Well, ... as far as I can say: he could fly to Amsterdam, Netherlands, and tape the
you are telling nice stories and there is certainly a grain of truth in them, but:
a) The laws are very inconsistently enforced. That is not the point/problem. The problem is a damn jury of idiots says: guilty or non guilty.
b) And of course you've got Joe Rogan smoking weed
Despite point a) : you still have to proof he actually smoked weed. How do you do that? Depending in what state he made the taping, it might even be legal
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And? What is wrong? That he is a billionaire? That he banged a prostitute? That the prostitute was underaged?
This is the most disgusting thing you've ever posted. Having sex with children is wrong. Full stop. It is always rape, as explained below.
If you pay a 16 year old to have sex with you, and actually did pay: it is not rape.
It's called statutory rape. Children can not consent to sex, you disgusting pervert.
No, it's not okay to hire underage prostitutes even in shithole countries where it's "legal". It's called "sex tourism" and we put sick freaks like you, who think they can travel to world to molest children without consequence, in prison all the time.
You're sick. Get help before you
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This is the most disgusting thing you've ever posted. Having sex with children is wrong.
Underaged does not say children. It says underaged.
How can a child be a prostitute?
That does not compute.
It's called statutory rape.
In your country.
Not in mine.
Children can not consent to sex, you disgusting pervert.
A 16 year old or a 14 year old is regaring sex: not a child.
It is a basic human right, granted in the human rights charter to have sex from age 14 on.
The pervert is who supports a perverted law system ...
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Underaged does not say children. It says underaged.
How can a child be a prostitute?
WTF do you think underaged means? Sick fucks like you ought to be in prison.
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The problem is cops not juries (Score:2)
I get it, you don't like that we're not a nation of laws and Justice. Do something about it.
And a) he was banging 14 year olds and b) the age of consent probably shouldn't be 16. What's that joke about libertarians and "It's not pedophilia it's X!".
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That's why I said 50/50....
No, you said it's 50/50 that Stand Your Ground laws protect the person going to someone else's house and shooting them dead. I think you realized your mistake, but tried to derail the conversation into something entirely irrelevant.
You're not wrong on the other counts, though, as we all know there are two sets of laws in the U.S.: one for the rich, and one for everyone else. Financial inequity is even enshrined into our laws, in complete contravention of the Constitution's prohibition against excessive bail
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If you go to someone's house and shoot them dead, you just murdered someone.
If you can follow someone down the street harassing them and then shoot them dead when they respond to your threat, then you can definitely go to someone's house, harass them in their front door, then shoot them when they try to kick you out of it. At least, if you're white, and they aren't, and you're in a shithole state.
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Re:Christ in Texas this is a real danger (Score:4, Informative)
"Stand your ground" generally means there is no duty to retreat from a threat. It doesn't give you license to use deadly force if you are not in what you believe to be actual threat of death or great bodily harm to you or someone else. It also doesn't necessarily matter if you are on your own property or not (depends on the State). In these 28 States it doesn't matter where you (legally) are: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and West Virginia Wyoming.
https://www.ncsl.org/civil-and... [ncsl.org]
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The front door of your home is your publically accessible place for people to contact you. You'd need a gate and keep the hell out sign if you don't like it.
Laws against dropping off newspapers or fliers (sometimes even calling it littering) have been trashed by the Supreme Court using just this reason. People have a right to speak to you, insofar as leaving info on your front porch, the public access to knock. You don't have to answer it, of course.
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In fact, that "[a citizen's] home is his castle" has been bullshit since approximately the low-numbered Edwards. Why people think it is now, or ever has been, true defeats me.
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Because that always ends well...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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