Edward Tufte's Defense of Aaron Swartz and the "Marvelously Different" 152
zokuga writes "Data visualization pioneer Edward Tufte spoke at hacker-activist Aaron Swartz's public memorial. In his message, he described how he came to know Swartz at Stanford and how Tufte's own college hacking exploits had the potential to ruin his own life."
Poor young people (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Poor young people (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, I was going to say pretty much the same thing. In high school, a friend and I had a running interaction with NASA security at the Manned Spacecraft Center (Lyndon B. Johnson Spacecraft Center to you modern folk). This involved penetrating the MSC by walking into places we *really* should not have walked into looking stupid / innocent. This was tolerated to a large degree until we found a place were we *** really *** should not have been.
Then we were politely told by security to cut it out. Enough fun. We weren't arrested. It was logged - when my friend went to get some high security clearance they brought it up (as well as asking for the every time we had done drugs since college - every time). Didn't seem to be a problem.
I hate to think what would have happened if we had done this in the past decade. We probably couldn't even get past the first gate now. We'd be in some high security prison somewhere learning really useful things like home made weapon production instead of being nominally useful members of society.
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Then we were politely told by security to cut it out. Enough fun. We weren't arrested.
Now what would have happened if you kept doing it?
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Dunno. We were stupid, but not that stupid.
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I suspect that if Swartz had stopped the first couple of times MIT tried to block him, that would have been the end of it.
(No, Swartz did not deserve years in jail for what he did and the whole situation was a tragedy. I'm just noting that you were warned and you stopped. Swartz was warned and he kept at it).
Re:Poor young people (Score:4, Insightful)
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And how do you know that we weren't searching for the Texas version of Area 51?
(Well, we weren't but we could have been).
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The silliest thing about this is that JSTOR is working towards exactly the same goal.
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Re: Poor young people (Score:2)
It's all about liability (Score:4, Insightful)
*IF* something would happen, OMG, someone could sue us!
Today, they find ways to make you regret you were even born.
So what's left to blow steam?
Doing bad things because that's all there is left.
You can't sneak into a flooded quarry to swim that's on private property.
You can't jump your bike into a river for fun.
OMG, someone could sue...
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Blame the litigation happy culture that has arisen.
"My boy Jonny died on your property. Sure he had to climb a 10 foot electrified fence with barbed wire on top and then get past 5 security guards and surveillance cameras. But you should have done more to stop him. I'm going to sue!!!"
Re:It's all about liability (Score:4, Insightful)
Blame also the courts that refuse to understand that their process is intrinsically harmful, even to an innocent defendant. Unlike a grieving parent, we have every reason to expect reasonable and rational behavior from our courts, but we don't get it.
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Re:It's all about liability (Score:5, Insightful)
Kiddo, there are plenty of things one can do to "blow steam". If you want to do "bad" things, there are generally consequences, hence the "bad". I don't really know what point, if any, you're trying to make.
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"Kiddo, there are plenty of things one can do to "blow steam". If you want to do "bad" things, there are generally consequences, hence the "bad". I don't really know what point, if any, you're trying to make."
Because decades of kissing ass builds up during our rebellious period. I won't say teen years because it isn't always individuals in their teenage years that are affected. You know when you think most people are morons when you point out their fallacies in their reasoning but stil
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Potassium chlorate, anyone?
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Thermite!
The day goes brighter with a little bit of Thermite!
Re:Poor young people (Score:5, Insightful)
The great hypocrisy is that the older adults implementing all of this zero tolerance all likely have a history that wouldn't stand up to the level of scrutiny they impose today.
The law doesn't care if you inhaled, it only cares if you had the tiniest trace of a dried plant in your possession.
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I did worse.
Apologies for reposting this, but we really need the 25k signatures on the fire Stephen Heymann petition :
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/fire-assistant-us-attorney-steve-heymann/RJKSY2nb [whitehouse.gov]
Please spam your friends! :P
It's a poorly written petition. And nobody who sees only the petition understands that Heymann also drove another probably innocent young hacker to his death, way back when Heymann wanted to be the first ro prosecute a juvenile under the CFAA.
Anyway this prosecutor seems pa
fuck the "justise" system (Score:3, Insightful)
more like injustice amirite?
RIP Aaron, we'll avenge you.
So Tufte was a phreaker. He and a pal did this "longest long-distance call" thing. AT&T caught onto it of course, and a tech rang 'em up. The tech just said, don't do it again, don't tell anyone, and nothing happens. But seriously, the tech (and by extension AT&T) could have seriously ruined Tufte's life. But didn't because it was just a silly prank that didn't actually harm anyone.
By extension, one of Aaron's legal team contacted Tufte who talked to JSTOR and convinced them not to participate in the ruining of this young man's life. After all, there was no harm to anyone, and nothing of value was lost or stolen (copies were made, which Aaron subsequently deleted after being caught).
So, in conclusion, fuck the system.
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After all, there was no harm to anyone
Not quite. MIT and JSTOR had to spend resources addressing this problem. (In theory, maybe the didn't really *have* to, but if JSTOR routinely ignored such actions, they'd run in to trouble with the journal publishers. If MIT ignored it, they'd run into trouble with JSTOR. And, they can't tell the difference between something innocuous and something more malicious until they investigate.) As part of it, JSTOR cut off access to MIT. That's the sum total of the harm that resulted. How much of that is attribut
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I agree with your comment. However, the "damages" they're talking about are the expense of a response to his actions -- investigating and mitigating those specific actions. It's not the same as someone exposing a need for more security. It's still arguable, but it's fairly different. (You could argue that unless their expenditures were unusually high, that their actions are simply a normal cost of maintaining security. You can't pin the cost of having a guard on whatever thief he happens to catch. You can a
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I should be "made whole" in civil court.
Remember, in the United States, crimes are almost always "the people vs. the defendant" or "the government vs. the defendant" which is just two ways of saying the same thing.
Whether pulling someone's pants down like this should be a crime or not, and if so what the criminal penalty should be, depends largely on society's attitude. Is the frequency of such activity or the harm done by it high enough that the general public wants to stop it so badly that they want to m
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All prison would do is render the 'mad pantser' financially unable to compensate you for your loss. Should the 'justice' system be a bit more merciful, all it will do is extract a huge fine from him that should have gone to you as compensation but won't. You're better off if he gets a chance to become a useful member of society and pay you for your damages according to a ruling in civil court.
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The real bastards here are the people discriminating against you on penis size.
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*THAT* is the biggest injustice we have in this country. Our justice system should NEVER be privately owned or controlled. It's simply immoral and the stuff of bad science fiction. When we see contractors in charge of delivering policy, punishment, pressure or power on behalf of the government, it should be 100% accountable to that same government. Contractor soldiers? NO! Contractor prison guards and management? NO!!! Mail? Hell no. TSA? Well, as much as we dislike it, I would rather not see air
Justice system reform (Score:5, Interesting)
Glenn Reynolds [pjmedia.com] just posted his essay Due Process when Everything is a Crime [ssrn.com] relating in part to the Aaron Swartz case.
Cases like the Aaron Swartz prosecution are a direct result of the huge, intrusive, abusive government we have. Unfortunately most Slashdotters seem to support this government and want to make it even larger and more involved in everyone's daily lives. Will Slashdot learn anything from Aaron Swartz's death? Or are we still just a few more government programs away from living in a utopia -- this time for sure?
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Libertarian Logic: I have chronic pain in my knee. Time to get out the bone saw and cut off my leg!
The government probably killed another basically good person during the time it took you to write that. Congrats.
On the other hand, he probably wasn't a geek and probably didn't invent anything cool when he was a kid. So who cares, right?
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Isn't that the same logic everyone else is trying to use as an excuse for gun bans?
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Re:Justice system reform (Score:5, Insightful)
You know what, maybe instead of bringing out this offtopic canard about libertarians, you should read the article. It's thought provoking. Like how in the 80s prosecutors would play a game where they prosecute the person not the crime, i.e, pick a famous person like Mother Theresa and find a crime that would put that person in jail, not because they did anything wrong, but because you're such a clever prosecutor. That sounds not like justice, but persecution.
And how is the complaint that the government has made criminal so much stuff so divorced from common sense, entitled to some epithet about libertarians? Everyone should be worried because when everyone can be charged and sent to prison for random things, the government has total tyrannical power. That's an issue only libertarians worry about? I think not.
Read the essay. It's only 6 pages -- takes you a few minutes. Then come back and explain what in there sounded like the ravings of a "my property GTFO" type libertarian. It contains nothing like that all -- not even a hint. Instead it talks about how the decision to prosecute and what to charge is made in a milieu of total immunity without any consequences at all, and how that decision is perhaps the most important part of the due process rights which we are supposed to enjoy, but instead we have absolutely no protection at all when prosecutors decide to get medieval.
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Because who needs thinking and reasoning and reading and understanding? You want to bash someone for "libertarian-style flamebait" and it's bashin time!!!
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Because who needs thinking and reasoning and reading and understanding? You want to bash someone for "libertarian-style flamebait" and it's bashin time!!!
Is this really hard to understand? You throw bombs, people are going to throw bombs back at you. "Or are we still just a few more government programs away from living in a utopia -- this time for sure?" is just as much of an off-topic canard as the AC's response.
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And I obviously have no problem with that. But does it really have to completely preclude any thinking or rationality?
Why do Slashdotters keep supporting government abuses? When will they decide that their love of free stuff and their prejudice against the greedy corporatists and the hated religionists doesn't justify the toll of government-caused death and destruction? Can we stop it sometime? Please?
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And I obviously have no problem with that. But does it really have to completely preclude any thinking or rationality?
You realize you are complaining about what an AC said? There is no preclusion here, just one guy making a response in the spirit of the post he was responding to. Jesus.
Why do Slashdotters keep supporting government abuses?
Yes, slashdotters are all about supporting government abuses. If you think statements like that are a basis for "thinking and rationality," no wonder you can't grasp what's going on here.
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Yes, slashdotters are all about supporting government abuses. If you think statements like that are a basis for "thinking and rationality," no wonder you can't grasp what's going on here.
And yet, Slashdotters continue to support government abuses and continue to vote for and support increased power for government and increased government control of everyone's life.
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Preaching to the choir has never converrted a single soul. With friends like you, libertarians don' t need any enemies.
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Libertarian Logic: I have chronic pain in my knee. Time to get out the bone saw and cut off my leg!
That's a pretty good metaphor for Libertarian Logic. Cutting off a knee that's giving you a lot of trouble is a good solution if there is a better alternative. We're probably only a decade or so away from prosthetics that are as good or better than the real thing. When that happens I wouldn't be surprised if doctors recommend amputation as a treatment for chronic knee pain depending on severity of the pain lifestyle and age. Actually technology as a replacement for what government once did is one of the rea
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Are you saying a Libertarian government wouldn't have data crime laws, or that it would suppress harsh prosecutions, or...
I'm having a hard time figuring out how Libertarianism would be linked to state prosecutions.
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Libertarianism in general seeks to abolish most laws, leaving in place only those relating to the protection of property and life. If your computers are hacked, it's your own fault for not having good enough security. Sounds almost good, except that they apply this everywhere. Your house burn down? That's your own fault for not paying the local private fire service to send the fire engine around to put it out. Rival business flooding your phone lines with fake calls, posting advertisments in your name promi
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And the "ridiculous extreme" is just that. It has the support of very, very few people.
So why bring it up? Are you arguing that the government needs to be able to kill an unlimited number of people whenever it wants because otherwise we can't have a fire department to put out fires? Or can we be more thoughtful than that?
Re: Justice system reform (Score:2)
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I've no idea who Glenn Reynolds is by the way, but he's spot on. I see the same in my country where the actions of (our equiv
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Not really, our current government that has degenerated into this mess started out with people so paranoid about government power that they felt compelled to ensure that the people were afforded the tools needed to overthrow it by force (in take 2. The 1st take was so toothless that it fell apart).
Meanwhile, a socialist revolution would be (for now) deeply suspicious of any prosecution that looked like it could be oppressing the workers for the benefit of big capital.
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Meanwhile, a socialist revolution would be (for now) deeply suspicious of any prosecution that looked like it could be oppressing the workers for the benefit of big capital.
But, since a vast majority of socialists are basically fools who can be convinced of anything that confirms their personal prejudices, they'll continue to empower the government and continue to be surprised when "big capital" uses this power against them over and over and over again. The resulting anger just reinforces the prejudices, making them even easier to fool.
Or we could finally learn that concentrating power in the hands of government overlords isn't helping.
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Or we could finally learn that concentrating power in the hands of government overlords isn't helping.
I fail to see how concentrating it into the hands of individuals will be an improvement. Eventually, one of them gets the upper hand and we have a king again.
I'll spare you the ad-hominems against the majority of libertarians.
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When power is in the hands of individuals, it isn't concentrated.
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That makes no sense at all. Are you saying a king has no concentrated power?
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Not without his government, no.
And that has been my whole point all along: less government power, more individual autonomy.
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Because powerful people never amass a private army and become the government, except all the ones that have throughout history, of course.
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But, since a vast majority of socialists are basically fools who can be convinced of anything that confirms their personal prejudices
All the proponents of various "-isms" have a tendency to do that. Libertarianism included.
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Indeed. Proclaiming adherents of an opposing -ism are gullible fools indicates a considerable lack of self awareness on the part of the adherent to the more favored -ism.
Socialism doesn't have all the answers, neither does capitalism or libertarianism. Reality is somewhere in the middle.
As to Government, it wasn't dropped down from a UFO. It isn't some alien construct forced upon us. It, like any human creation, can be a force for good or for evil.
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But when those evil Libertarians prey on your prejudices and get elected, the endgame in their master plan is ... to leave you alone.
The other "-isms" claimed the same thing.
So long as the state exists there is no freedom. When there is freedom, there will be no state.
That's a quote by Lenin btw. He claimed and probably truly believed there would be no state and thus some kind of utopia when his particular "-ism" was implemented. Of course it didn't work in reality. His "-ism" was nothing more than a bunch of sound bites designed to gain devout followers who wound up allowing some of the worst crimes in history to occur.
You always need to take a step back. If you believe your particular "-ism" will fix everything and you a
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So you can't even acknowledge the clear quote i gave where a proponent of Communism has suggested there will be no state governing over you when he's elected? Do you not see that both Libertarians and Communists rose to power on the promise of a stateless society? Do you not see how easily corrupted such a belief is?
You do realize how ridiculous you are? Your post history shows absolutely nothing but religious fervor advocating Libertarianism dating back for months. I went a fair way back and couldn't find
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To a lot of them such a thing is a contradiction.
To the others - well the word is pretty meaningless when you've got the range full on anarchists to devoted royalists that want to see Koch or similar as King while pissing on Washington's grave. It's a bunch of people wrapped up in a flag to hide whatever they really are, which is often useful idiots to hard right Republicans.
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I think you are making a logical leap in your post. The fact that the law is so complex that everybody could be charged and jail for something is definitively true and a major problem. Though I do not see how government involvment is related to any of it.
Involvment and control are different things. The government needs (in my opinion) enough power to fix things, but not enough to screw things up. Associations and the government are the only entity somewhat interested in teh greater good. But associations ty
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The government needs (in my opinion) enough power to fix things, but not enough to screw things up.
Enough power to "fix" things is always going to be a lot more than enough power to screw things up.
There's always something that needs to be "fixed" when someone wants more power. He'll always tell you you can trust him too. Sometimes you can. You can't trust all of his successors.
A better answer: fix it yourself.
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Why bother? Obama's got an executive order for that!
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*hands him/her a hammer*
Practice what you preach, go to the east coast and rebuild it. By yourself. Without help.
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They should fix it themselves. It's one of the richest areas of the country. They need poor people in Michigan to pay for their repairs?
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A better answer: fix it yourself.
In other words, do your best to accumulate enough power to 'fix' things (while messing things up for everyone else) before someone else can gather enough power to 'fix' things for himself while messing it up for you?
You said it yourself, "enough power to fix things is always going to be a lot more than enough power to screw things up" (emphasis mine).
Now, look at where you are and compare to Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, the board of Goldman Sacks and most of the current Washington bigwigs and ask yourself, wh
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You argument is an old one:
No one can be trusted to fix anything for himself. Therefore we should give someone vast government power. Because giving someone vast government power somehow magically turns him into a saint. You couldn't trust him before. Now he has lots and lots of power over you. Now we can trust him. Nothing can possibly go wrong. We are wise. See how we care about fixing problems?
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Now tell me why my objection to your scenario is all wrong. Something that doesn't involve a fantasy world where the less wealthy pool their resources to fight the wealthy madman but somehow the collective doesn't become a government.
You're not solving the problem, you're proposing a dark age while we re-arrange the deck chairs.
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We must fight these mad wealthy bogeymen! That's why everyone needs to write me a $5000 check right now! No time to think about it! They'll eat you children and steal your reproductive organs if you wait one more second. Write a check before it's too late!
Do these evil wealthy madmen have a particular skin color you don't like? Or are they part of one of the bad religions? Or is this particular prejudice based on something else?
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Or is this particular prejudice based on something else?
It's based on thousands of years of human history.
It's also based on the clear sense of entitlement some (certainly not all) of the wealthiest members of our society demonstrate repeatedly.
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And your cunning plan is to give a centralized government control of (more or less) everything. Because no wealthy person could ever find a way to exploit that.
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It sure seems to beat your idea. At least central governments in democratic republics have some track record of actually working. Your plan has always devolved into a feudal system requiring a bloodbath to eliminate.
If there is going to be oppression and corruption, it's better if it is inefficient (and preferably incompetent).
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I don't understand. Who makes the laws? It is the government. If the legal codebase is so large, vague, and complex, that every person commits a Federal felony every day, and the government made that law, how is the government not to blame?
http://www.harveysilverglate.com/Books/ThreeFeloniesaDay.aspx [harveysilverglate.com]
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I don't understand. Who makes the laws? It is the government. If the legal codebase is so large, vague, and complex, that every person commits a Federal felony every day, and the government made that law, how is the government not to blame?
You, like the OP, are confusing the existence of government with corruption of government. It is a fatalistic view which surrenders our civilization to the worst actors. Government will never be perfect, but that doesn't mean it can't be good enough.
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Democracy means that you get the government you deserve.
Democracy means you get the government the majority deserves.
FTFY. Don't claim to know how I vote based on how the majority votes.
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You get as much democracy as you can afford, like justice.
FTFY. Don't claim that it matters how you or anyone votes when all sides are owned, and not by the majority. I will agree that the majority are duped into thinking they have a voice though.
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Maybe some of us can learn something this time.
Re:Justice system reform (Score:5, Insightful)
"Unfortunately most Slashdotters seem to support this government and want to make it even larger and more involved in everyone's daily lives."
You must be reading a different Slashdot that I am. For instance, you should check out any post that has to do with gun control, s/w piracy or net neutrality.
Also, Swartz's death is a sad story, but I'm a little irritated that so many people are using his suicide to further their own agendas, no matter how just they may be. He left no suicide note. The claims that he killed himself because of his legal woes will always remain conjecture. The guy suffered from depression, after all, and depression is a documented killer. Ten percent of people that suffer from it end up committing suicide.
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For instance, you should check out any post that has to do with gun control, s/w piracy or net neutrality.
So creating a new neutrality police to harass and prosecute neutrality criminals is less intrusive government now?
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We already have mechanisms in place to regulate public utilities. We don't need to invent any new "neutrality police". You are pushing the "but on the Internet fallacy" which basically claims something to be new just because it's being different in a slightly different way.
It's usually used to abuse the patent system but it works in this context too.
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The burden of a criminal case and spending however many years getting raped in prison in the mind is bound to lead towards depression.
If that was his concern, than the answer to "however many years" is either 4 months or up to 6 months, depending on which of the two offered plea bargains he took. It's very possible he could have gotten time served, but if he wanted to minimize the risk of prison time, 4 months.
Of course, it would still be counted as a felony conviction. If he fought it out of principle and lost, he could face more time.
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Oh, sweet jaysus! You sound like one of those believers in faux populist, Ron Paul (FYI, sonny, real populists aren't anti-worker and anti-union and forever submitted legislation in congress which is anti-worker --- read up on the greatest congressman populist to ever come out of Texas, the Honorable Wright Patman, now there was a real populist!!!!).
Try AT&T's awesome influence, coupled with that there "regulatory captur
Prosecutorial discretion is important (Score:3, Interesting)
However, it must be wielded with - pardon the pun - discretion.
It's NOT okay to have strict liability crimes without almost universal knowledge of the crime and likely punishment.
It's NOT okay to use discretion to coerce plea agreements.
In general, the discretion should be based on published, preferably well-known guidelines that all prosecutors in a given geography and who are prosecuting given types of crimes agree on. In other words, there shouldn't be "good luck" and "bad luck" for the defendant when c
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Interesting and well-thought-out. Have you read the Volokh write-up?
I would argue that in this case it's not civil disobedience, since he was actively trying to avoid being caught. That's not the nature of civil disobedience. (One might argue that he was only avoiding being caught to be successful, and he would reveal himself upon releasing the documents, but that would be conjecture.)
The Volokh piece talks about the accepted standard for punishment in this case, which is "special deterrence" -- since there
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Actually most slashdotters are for a refocusing of the governments efforts. They've been left to the lobby groups and their own devices for too long. Regulation needs to be done but other regulations that have been put into place need to go. I'd go so far as to say peel back every law since Jan 1, 1998 and have done. Require any new criminal law to pass a 30% public vote in favor. The majority of the ridiculous laws have been passed or modified into ridiculousness since then.
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You must be an anarchist then, because libertarians generally support the continued existence of the courts and prosecutors. Some support continued government police forces, others prefer hired goons.
Who hasn't? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm guessing every half-decent engineer working in computing has some of this in their past. It's part of the process of how someone becomes an engineer - exploring, testing limits, finding way to use things in ways they weren't intended to be used. I know I did, I know my coworkers did. I work in education, and we've caught a student there trying to hack our network. Give him another ten years, and he'll be the admin trying to keep out the next generation of engineers-to-be. I'm not even an engineer: I'm a lowly technician.
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The problem now is that the law has sort of caught up with computing networks. In the Good Old Days, people did indeed hack into systems, piss off security and make long distance phone calls. But it was on a one off basis. It didn't rise to the level that people thought they needed legislation to protect themselves. There was little legal precedent to go after people with. Then the Feds decided that hacking into systems was a 'crime' and defined it in a nebulous, overbroad fashion. Well, they ALWAYS do
Yet Another True Confession (Score:2, Interesting)
In the Bush-the-first Administration a friend and I "hacked" into a password-less guest account and over-wrote the login shell script with ftp. This made the low-privilage account a lot less low-privilage than the system administrators wanted. We let the administration know after the fact. They fixed the problem.
By today's laws and possibly those of the time, we committed a felony under both state and federal law. Morally I knew it was probably criminal but common sense and the morals of the time would
The Ode to the noble Aaron Swartz, (Score:1)
Funny story... (Score:2)
I got in a ton of trouble for things. At least one, I finally figured out 20 years later what happened.
The college I was at had terms of use. I read them. I followed them.
One of the rules was that you must not access other student's accounts. So I didn't. But I was curious about a lot of stuff, and I did things like write something to check common dictionary words against passwords (this was before shadow passwords). And I wrote something that emulated, down to the effectively-slower bit rate, the behavior
Similar Experience with AT&T (Score:2)
In the early 1990s I was into Audix running on System 85s. I figured out that 800-##AUDIX and 800-AUDIX## were back end access to AT&T's entire Audix infrastructure. With the help of ToneLoc, myself and some like minded individuals were making short work of the ##AUDIX range. I was living at home with my parents at the time.
After a week or two (it was not long at all), I was at the dinner table and my mom explained to me that she had a long conversation with AT&T corporate security. They explain
Carmen Ortizâ(TM)s Sordid Rap Sheet (Score:3)
The article continues:
And, finally:
What imbecile appointed Carmen Ortiz as a prosecutor, anyway?
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It's clear that the increasingly low standards seen throughout the US justice system have their origins in the normalisation of previously extraordinary Drug War practices.
Let me guess... (Score:3)
The only plausible alternative would be a "Stupid Beyond Belief" mod, and they don't exist...
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A bit far from /b/ today aren't we?
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More likely the prosecutor is now going after Tufte.