Depressingly accurate, I’d wager.
The USA is teetering on the edge of becoming an dystopia.
“Teetering”, let me fix that for you; falling into the abyss of dystopia, while we type this.
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I am prepared to accept, even argue, that many or most FBI agents are fundamentally decent people who got into their jobs because they want to make a positive contribution to society.
That does not mean the FBI in this case was acting decently, nor in many other situations. Power structures attract people who exploit systems for personal gain, and absolute power can corrupt. I don’t even know how I would function in such an environment, I am as vulnerable as the next to groupthink, tribalism and jumping to conclusions.
All that said, the man was innocent and got treated like a monster. Treated monstrously, despite a total lack of evidence. This is a problem. Any power structure in which it is possible to destroy (or even end) the lives of others must have a strong, third party oversight system of accountability. The FBI might be a good agency, or not. It is not run by gods and is subject to human fallibility. Since the rest of you are then subject to that same fallibility, you want to be very sure that the FBI is tightly overseen.
We have similar problems here in Canada. It is a delicate balance. On the one hand we want the police and security agencies to protect us, capture criminals and where possible prevent crime. On the other hand we don’t want to be abused, mistreated or wrongfully persecuted. Our police forces are badly out of balance right now and in desperate need of oversight and accountability.
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His story is the perfect embodiment of “confirmation bias”…
No, his story is the perfect embodiment of corruption, abuse of power and various other criminal acts.
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It’s not that there wasn’t a total lack of evidence, its that there was thin and ambiguous evidence that was interpreted as confirmation of pre-existing beliefs. This isn’t to say that it was OK, that there should be no oversight, or that redress is inappropriate, but it is to say that these types of incidents don’t mean that someone is monstrous or that they have necessarily been corrupted (especially early on in the process, and before they get into the cover-our-asses stage of things). The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
More likely, the Spanish police want to solve the case.
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Richelieu was right, you can always hang an honest man by his own words. An oily evasive dishonest prick is usually more careful about what he says than an honest man.
Confirmation bias isn’t the only major bias that humans are prone to, and just think: every single cognitive bias forms a spectrum with “rational” at one end, and “insane” at the other. The extreme end-stage of confirmation bias, where no evidence can be seen as anything other than confirmation is called “delusion”.
I think what we just saw here was someone’s life being all fucked up by a bunch of insane people with guns. And the fact that most people will re-cast this as “the FBI made a mistake and were a bit stubborn about admitting it” is truly alarming.
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But it illustrates the US-mentality splendidly.
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“Epitaph”? Did you mean “epigraph”? (Not sure, haven’t read it.)
Clearly, this is why we should allow prosecuting some additional, maybe 10?, ‘precautionary perps’ for every person we convict of a crime, just in case the conviction was a miscarriage of justice… Then we could imprison the innocent and still have a chance of getting the guilty off the street!
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[citation needed]
IIRC this case was also highlighted on a PBS show (I forget Nova, FrontLine, etc.) where they were discussing forensics and how many of the techniques are unproven, you don’t need actual science & proof, and people lap it up.
Part of keeping pursuit, other than the FBI being xenophobic pricks, was to admit that the fingerprints matched more than 1 person would “damage” that tool. It is also what you see in court cases where someone is wrongly convicted, evidence made up and in the face of that the prosecutor doubles down and tries to keep the innocent in jail to protect the “system” from being questioned (not to mention their own win/loss record).
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It happened here to a police officer in a murder case a few years back. Partial at the scene implicated her same way. I forget what happened to her, but I think she was cleared eventually.
Thus ended even the concept of science or objectivity in the investigation. Cherrypicking and fishing expeditions are unacceptable in science generally, and even more so when people’s lives are on the line. The courts have to at least hold themselves to the standards of the scientific method. Otherwise what keeps a single witness’s testimony from being equally persuasive compared to properly acquired audio-video footage, or a bank transaction ledger?
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An epitaph is not an epigraph.
I just watched a Frontline episode last night about forensic evidence that highlighted this case.
His prosecution was only stopped because Spain caught the person responsible.
Our government has a problem with admitting errors, and then trying to cover them up. (Yes, really! xD) Even when there’s clear cut evidence of an error or misconduct, it’s right there in your face, they will continue to proclaim the guilt. It’s astounding.
As a USian, no I will not stop using it. Sorry. “Americans” is presumptive and “USians” has 6 characters for the plural.
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If only we could consult some record of past events to determine whether the FBI manufacturing evidence and violating civil rights was a one-off tragedy or part of a larger pattern of illegal behavior.
Oh right. It’s called history and the FBI indeed has a history of this kind of thing. Right back to its founding.
If the FBI violated the civil rights of US citizens and manufacture evidence implicating them once and I’ll chalk it up to good intentions gone wrong. Since they’ve done it hundreds, maybe thousands of times over the course of decades I’d feel like a bit of an idiot if I tried making excuses for them.
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So you think that confirmation bias is a one-and-done sort of phenomenon? Everything looks like a nail when you’re a hammer, and this doesn’t stop being true just because you’ve already hammered one thing down.
