from Hacker News

For six years, man who refuses to identify himself has held in a Canadian prison

by ductionist on 11/21/19, 2:07 AM with 58 comments

• by steveharman on 11/21/19, 1:09 PM

  > Police in Britain, meanwhile, said a fingerprint check came back positive for the name Bouon Emmanuel Febile, a citizen of Cameroon. Any elation at a breakthrough was muted by a follow up cable from London: It was also positive for a different citizen of Cameroon, a citizen of Haiti, and a man of unknown citizenship.

  Err, does this cast doubt on the reliability of fingerprint evidence?

  The term "unique" is widely used in conjunction with fingerprints.

• by perlgeek on 11/21/19, 12:57 PM

  It's fun to speculate why somebody would behave this way.

  A few things I could imagine:

  * he fears being treated worse if his identity is found out (like an extradition to the US where he could face capital punishment, or detainment by another power that would treat him worse)

  * he has a fundamental distrust of authorities that makes him somehow behave that way

  * he has serious mental health issues (the article doesn't mention any psychological assessment)

  Given his history of fraud, I'd tend toward the first idea, but who knows?

  Any other ideas?

• by keiferski on 11/21/19, 1:03 PM

  The courts have designated the man “the Unknown Person” and he has been behind bars for more than six years because officials don’t know who he is. This puts him in a bizarre state of limbo: Until Canadian officials know his identity and nationality, they cannot deport him; until they can deport him, they don’t want to release him.

  The headline is clickbait and I have flagged it. He was arrested for a crime and refuses to identify himself, isn’t a Canadian citizen, and the police haven’t had luck figuring out his identity. They can’t deport him and they can’t just release him if he arrived illegally. This is all in the article.

  I don’t know what else one could expect the police to do. It’s certainly an odd Kafkesque situation, but he doesn’t seem to want to get out of it.

• by keiferski on 11/21/19, 1:51 PM

  I’ve always wondered if the world would benefit from a “Freeport” type city/country. No borders, minimal government, no identity documents. Places like this existed in the past; America itself was essentially a “fresh start” country for a good portion of its existence. If such a place existed today, the Canadian government could just put him on a one-way flight there.

  But I feel like today, it would probably just end up as a crime haven. I can see far-flung space colonies fulfilling this role if/once space travel really kicks off. An interesting thought experiment, at least.

• by pbhjpbhj on 11/21/19, 1:49 PM

  This raises an interesting question for me, can we use biometric data to establish country (ie geographic region) of origin, in the general case?

  Hair composition, dental treatments, inoculation marks, fingernails, faeces, blood .. obviously some of these are short term indicators.

  How good of a probability can we get to, how tightly can we pinpoint someone geographically?

• by jmpman on 11/21/19, 9:52 PM

  Why don’t they just find the other three people with similar fingerprints. Confirm they exist, and call it a day.

• by gpvos on 11/21/19, 1:47 PM

  The article is from May 2019 and says he asked for a meeting "next Wednesday". Any news about that?

• by RickJWagner on 11/22/19, 3:15 AM

  This would make an interesting movie, once we learn the whole truth.

• by winter_blue on 11/21/19, 1:04 PM

  In the US, there is an effective limit of 6 months on the detention/incarceration of people whose nationality cannot be determined (or who are stateless). They are protected by two Supreme Court rulings: Zadvydas v. Davis (2001)[1] and Clark v. Martinez (2005)[2].

  Although, right now, the conservative majority Supreme Court is in the process of slowing rolling back these protections, taking us to a darker period. With Jennings v. Rodriguez[3], asylum seekers can effectively be imprisoned indefinitely without even an opportunity for a bond hearing (not actual release, but even the opportunity to seek one) while their asylum (or other immigration) case is pending.

  Conservatives Supreme Court justices have in the past, during oral hearings, spoken from the bench, about their contempt for Zadvydas v. Davis. It’s uncertain how long these basic human rights protections will survive.

  [1] Zadvydas v. Davis: https://www.oyez.org/cases/2000/99-7791 ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zadvydas_v._Davis

  [2] Clark v. Martinez: https://www.oyez.org/cases/2004/03-878 ; https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clark_v._Martinez

  [3] Jennings v. Rodriguez: https://www.oyez.org/cases/2017/15-1204 ; https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/jennings-v-rodri...

• by thbr99 on 11/21/19, 1:16 PM

  With illegal border crossing happening everyday at Roxham border, cases like these are bound to happen even more costing Canadian taxpayer $$$.