It's time for society to realize that "accused of a crime" does not mean "guilty". It should be illegal to fire someone because they are accused of a crime. (And if your parents disown you, it means you have damn bad parents who you are probably better off without.)
Damn straight on the employment thing. Suspension is reasonable in certain cases (say you work in a bank and are suspected of fraud) But sacking? Hell no.
You should be able to fire someone for any reason. It's immoral to fire people accused of crime, you should treat your employees with respect, but there should be no law involved.
>You should be able to fire someone for any reason.
I disagree. You shouldn't be able to fire someone for being Jewish. You shouldn't be able to fire someone for not voting how you want them to. You shouldn't be able to fire someone for not having sex with you. There are a lot of things that you shouldn't be able to fire someone for.
(Std disclaimer: I don't approve biggotry, but...)
I might be repeating someone here, but the problem is that once you start enforcing laws against things like this you also give the other party the opportunity to slap employers with false claims of sexism/racism. Which in turn might actually lead to even rational non-biggoted employers favouring (other factors being equal) groups that are less likely to make such claims if the employee is fired. Biggots are not going to hire you in the first place, so who's winning here? Ok ok, in many cases the person who hires you is not the person who fires you, so (surprise surprise) it's not that black and white.
Maybe being a heterosexual white male I'm not feeling the problem first hand and that affects my judgement, but usually when thinking these things I come to the conclusion that laws written with good intentions to abolish all sorts of nasty things end up doing more harm than good (and no I'm not a ultra-libertarian either).
You can't fire people based on race, creed, age, or gender, and you can't fire them for not having sex with you. There are laws against those things, those things specifically, and almost exclusively those things.
Except that you will still be _laid off_ for any of those reasons but it would be masqueraded as some other convenient 'official' reason. "The cash is tight", "we are not growing", etc.
If you don't like Jewish people and it's your company you shouldn't have to work with them. It will only hurt you as you are limiting your labor pool to non-Jewish people, and this is the same for any other form of discrimination.
The only place that should not be allowed to discriminate is the government since they represent all people.
Freedom of association is the key hear, you should be able t o associate with anyone you'd like to and vice-versa. Now I'm of course not advocating any sort of discrimination, but I do think it should be allowed. Just as I don't advocate hate speech, but I think it should be allowed.
The problem is that if you discriminate against a minority, then you don't suffer from the limitation of the labor pool very much (since it's a minority). However, that minority can suffer greatly.
So market forces can't hold this sort of behaviour in check, and this can lead to the suppression of an entire culture, which is where the issue lies.
Firing Jewish people doesn't just hurt the bigoted employer, it hurts the people wrongfully fired, too! There is something appealing to letting everyone keep to whatever groups they wish, but historically the idea has led to horrible things for the shunned groups.
Agreed, it hurts everyone involved -- just as hate speech does.
As for the history of discrimination, I believe that the majority of it was actually codified into law. So, I don't know if we can blame individuals acting on their own. Has there ever been a group that was shunned where it wasn't codified into law/sponsored by the government?
"Irish Need Not Apply" was a common sign to see in America when there were a lot of Irish immigrants (Irish Potato Famine era).
> Has there ever been a group that was shunned where it wasn't codified into law/sponsored by the government?
What comes first though? The government is made up of people. So people have to have these attitudes first and foremost before it becomes codified into law. If the public violently disagreed with said laws, then they would be repealed as wildly unpopular.
I think that you are talking past each other because you have different value systems.
I've known plenty of people like dantheman before. They believe in and value the right to private property, which means believing that it is right to let other people do what you don't like with their private property. Add to that the belief that a personal business is private property, and you get the conclusion that no matter how much you personally dislike it, business owners "should" be allowed to discriminate.
By contrast if your belief in private property is not so absolute, then you're more willing to tolerate society restricting the free use of private property in ways that society does not like.
Different fundamental values leads to different conclusions. Even with agreement on the facts, the laws, and how bad discrimination is. And arguing "should not", "should too" back and forth will get you nowhere.
My house is my private property, I can invite whoever I want there, and can discriminate freely on sex, race and so on (not that I do, but I could) because the decision affects only me.
A business is private property and I can hire whoever I want there, discriminating on factors such as suitability for the job, education and other associated factors.
Religion, sex, skin colour and other personal attributes are not amongst those and for very good reason, discrimination on those grounds affects the other party economically, individually and as a group.
In spite of all those rules there is enough workplace discrimination going on as it is, take those rules away and we're right back in the 1950's.
A business is private property and I can hire whoever I want there, discriminating on factors such as suitability for the job, education and other associated factors.
A couple decades ago, businesses in the US would have argued the same thing, claiming that Black and Hispanics are naturally lazier.
Think about a company like Walmart, Ikea (or any company you frequent that has a near monopoly). How would you like it if they suddenly don't like your race and decided to stop selling to you or allowing you into their "private" stores that everyone else can shop at?
Seeing how you come from a predominately white country, I can understand how you cannot conceive this to be a problem.
I think you responded to the wrong person. jacquesm is the one who thinks businesses should not be allowed to discriminate.
Incidentally you're wrong about the "couple of decades ago" timeline. The Civil Rights Act passed in 1964, and the Heart of Atlanta case of 1964 upheld its constitutionality, and the Ollie's BBQ case of 1967 upheld that it applied even to businesses with little obvious interstate commerce (this matters because Congress' authority to pass the Civil Rights Act stems from their ability to regulate interstate commerce). So the basic issues were litigated 40 years ago.
That said, it is still depressingly easy to find people today who make the same arguments. They are just not legally allowed to act on them.
Well I see that now in his other comments, but the phrasing of the comment I replied to wasn't quite right. Discrimination outside of businesses can still be immoral and affect minorities heavily.
And last time I checked, a couple decades ago also includes 50 years ago.
I think it was phrased just right, there is no implication that discrimination outside of businesses can still be immoral and affect minorities heavily, it is just that for private dwellings these laws do not apply. You can like that or not but that's the way it is and it probably isn't going to change. A mans home is his castle, no matter how reprehensible his views.
And that works both ways, you can't be forced to attend the birthday party of a white supremacist either. (personally I'd rather avoid such people completely, effectively discriminating against the minority of white supremacists).
The discussion above has a 'scope', the scope is workplace discrimination. You can expand the scope but you can't expand it and declare a parent of the conversation of not addressing your expanded scope by poor phrasing at the same time.
there is no implication that discrimination outside of businesses can still be immoral and affect minorities heavily, it is just that for private dwellings these laws do not apply
You phrased it as though you support discrimination under the cover of private property. Private property is being used as a blanket excuse for discrimination which is being rightfully challenged in the US in situations such as this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1093375 There are obvious cases like this where the line between public and private is blurred, and at great cost to the welfare of minorities.
And that works both ways, you can't be forced to attend the birthday party of a white supremacist either.
That analogy is incorrect. The correct analogy is being able to choose to attend the birthday party of a white supremacist where admission was being offered to the general public except blacks.
You keep adding twists to your argument in later comments, it's a nice trick but it really doesn't work.
Birthdays normally are 'invite only', and as long as they are they are private functions. Birthdays open to the general public are not common (at least not where I live).
Open to the general public but closed to some subset (the people with red hair, people born on Tuesday and so on) are possibly illegal but as long as they are in someones private dwelling they have the right to toss out anybody for whatever reason so it's going to be very hard to know what the real reason is. In my country if I tell you to leave three times and you don't I have the immediate right to even use force to remove you, whatever my reason for not wanting you in my house.
Houses are special, they are not generally open to the public, and in case they are no doubt the rules change but that was not the example used. So don't twist it that way.
I am not adding twists to be nitpicking. The law is tricky, and many people try to abuse it to the maximum extent such as in the article I just pointed out.
A man's home is not always his castle. You cannot use it to break laws. At least in the US, you cannot:
1. Murder someone on your grounds unless in self-defense. If someone is found shot 5 times or in the back, you will be charged with murder!
2. Set lethal booby traps.
3. Smuggle illicit goods.
4. Having dogs fight like Michael Vick.
5. View child pornography.
Discrimination by selectively serving the public on private grounds, I believe has not yet been tested in the court of law, but this was the excuse that many private businesses had in the past when they decided to serve white people only.
It is worth pointing out that many workplaces are not open to the public either. So in both cases they are really "private except for a list of people of my choosing" and the difference is that in one case I am allowed to choose on restricted criteria and in the other I am not.
Members of the public may apply for jobs, but most will not be allowed to interview, and those who are allowed to interview will not be given the freedom to wander around the potential workplace.
The process is akin to the fact that everyone in the public is in my potential circle of friends, and once a friend you may be allowed in my house. But that doesn't make my house anything close to publicly available.
I think you've hit the nail on the head. I wasn't being intentionally obtuse, I was just trying to state the case as clearly as I could and answer any objections/clarify any misconceptions. I agree often people fundamentally disagree about core issues, but it only manifests itself at higher levels.
I hope we didn't jump into the "should not"/"should too" argument.
Morality doesn't come into it. Morality is just a different set of laws. If they are just laws, they should become laws of the land; if they are unjust - and a lot of "morality" is intrinsically illiberal - then they should not be. That's why we have rule of law in the first place, rather than rule by church and theologians.
I totally agree, but I think that anti discrimination acts in housing, employment set the tone for the rest of society. If a gay wheelie can't be hired by a Fortune 500 company, what message does that send to everyone/the rest of the world?
So someone in Indonesia, using only a computer with Internet access, got a man in England arrested, labeled a pedo and disowned by his employers and family? We live in interesting times indeed. Hey guys, I live in Moscow, wanna set up a little extortion racket? I hear it's pretty easy to buy stolen credit card numbers in bulk.
...And also I'd like to go on record saying that the real villains in this story are those who fan up public hysteria about child porn.
Yes, but even if your family can be pretty loathsome for some people they're all they've got.
If my family did something like this to me or to any other family member of mine then I'd disown them instead.
Reprehensible doesn't even begin to cover it, if you are family and you can't even wait for the verdict to be in before having a hanging party then it's really sad.
To be honest I'm puzzled as to why they'd cut the guy off even if he was guilty. Condemning what someone has done doesn't mean you can't provide a bit of emotional support.
> Each computer has a unique internet protocol number, or IP address, which identifies the specific computer and its geographic whereabouts whenever it is used to access the internet.
I'm surprised nobody here has responded to this complete falsehood in the article. Did this paragraph bother anybody else?
An IP address is only assigned to one computer at a time. If you have a (recent) timestamp, you can resolve the IP address to a MAC address (and customer account number/address) by subpoenaing the ISP. You might get a router/gateway/proxy, but that's still "one computer" and you've still found it. It's just not the one you wanted.
In the context of the article, the "it" in "whenever it is used to access the internet." refers to the computer that you're using, not your gateway or some proxy machine.
Also, it's not true that an IP address is only assigned to one computer at a time; the IP address 10.0.0.1 is assigned to a whole lot of computers right now. You and I know that, and understand why it's true, but the article implies (pretty directly) that an IP address is a unique identifier for a computer. Which is a widely-believed falsehood that drives me crazy.
10.0.0.1 isn't actually an unqualified "IP address", though; it's specifically a virtual IP address, which should really be dichotomous to "real" IP addresses, not considered a subset of them.
Besides, they never said globally unique. Your IP uniquely identifies you to whatever network you're participating on, the same way your username uniquely identifies you to whatever website you're logging into.
Alternate ending: In the context of the article, they were talking about tracing people via their IPs, as recorded in the logs of Internet-routable ("public facing") servers. The only kinds of IPs such a log would record are other real IPs; there's no real way it could see a virtual IP. Thus, whatever is in the log is "good enough" for pointing the finger at someone, whether that someone is a person, a company, or an ISP. The goal of such a trace is to pass the buck, not to catch the person yourself.
There are all sorts of ways in which a routable ip address can be shared. At the most basic, a pair of routers or load-balancers sharing a virtual ip using CARP. And you can do weird and wacky things if you control an entire routable netblock ( /24 or larger) using bgp to tell different peers to route it to different gateways etc.
Most of the time you can get away with thinking of an address as being tied (at least temporarily) to a particular location. But once you throw in things like NAT and proxying and the like... That abstraction starts to look more and more sieve-like.
An ip address in a web-servers logs isn't going to tell you much, for one thing it's probably not the address of a specific device; it's going to be the address of a gateway that does address translation for a private subnet; for another, what happens if the machine on the client end of the transaction is acting as a proxy for the real eventual destination of that stream of bits?
In digital forensics, an IP is only one piece of evidence; you need to be able to assemble lots of pieces to get a complete picture.
This is really horrible, but i can't help but be reminded of the episode of "The IT Crowd" Where the lead character goes on a date with Peter File. Just goes to show how much value all societies place on titles, no matter how un-deserved.
That's the terrible thing about even being accused of a crime (regardless of your innocence), it can still destroy your life. Even if it's not a bad title (as in this case), just having to defend your own innocence can have high costs (both legal and emotional).
Pertinent issue, but in future please note the date of publication in the title if the article is more than a year old. I wish people started standardizing the way articles are published to the web so that this sort of metadata could be derived as easily as the page title.
It's upsetting to read that he just now started being wary of credit cards and shredding his papers. Someone should not have to go through such an ordeal before caring about the privacy of their personal information. The same goes for his "once bitten, twice shy" comment - why did he have to have his life ruined before being 'cautious' (a.k.a. exercising common sense) about online shopping?
Still, this is absolutely terrible. I think the police automatically assuming that anyone buying child porn was stupid enough to use their own credit cards is ignorant and obnoxious.
> why did he have to have his life ruined before being 'cautious' (a.k.a. exercising common sense) about online shopping
It's not even 'online shopping.' A couple of the huge cases of stolen identities were by employees at credit card processors, so it didn't matter how respectable or secure the stores themselves were.
More likely: Be aware, your identity is easily assumed and 'bad people' may ruin your life very casually.
He's had an object lesson in the consequences, it lost him a ton of money, you really can't fault the guy from trying to recoup some of his losses with his new-found knowledge.
The article indicates that his number was stolen from a well known and generally believed safe online retailer. Someone else was stupid enough to get his number stolen. His savvy-ness is irrelevant.
"Being arrested and accused of what is probably one of the worst crimes known to man, losing my job, having my reputation run through the mud, it's a living nightmare."
I love how downloading a stream of bytes - simply copying a file from A to B - is now "one of the worst crimes known to man". I wonder how long this kind of crap goes on before the average person considers it a good use of their time to learn about encryption.
Well, you could argue in this case that the crime he was accused of was purchasing child porn which encourages and supports the producers though I have a feeling that the author just mean 'child porn' (in general) when he wrote that.
Funny how that argument only works with kiddie porn. I mean, you could argue that by buying Nikes you're encouraging and supporting child labor. You could argue that by buying a diamond you're encouraging and supporting slavery. You could argue that by buying pictures of Abu Ghraib the media "encourages and supports" the behaviour at Abu Ghraib.
But this supposed causal chain of responsibility between purchaser and producer is only enforced, indeed only even mentioned, when it comes to the bogeyman of child porn, which means it's nothing but an excuse.
This is a rather common logical fallacy. It should have a name, but the "zeroes and ones fallacy" doesn't sound too good. A stream of bytes has a meaning which has to do with not only the bytes themselves but their context, and I can think of several ways in which copying a file from A to B could be among the worst crimes known to man. This fallacy ignores the context of the bytes.
It's a difficult scenario and definitely an extreme example. It's hard to see what could have gone differently (apart from the family and employers being douches)
I would say that more than one piece of evidence would have to be brought before arresting someone, and they should have had a very good look at the counter-evidence, which was apparently already available at the time of the arrest.
Very sloppy police work this, basically someones life got altered indelibly for something he really had nothing to do with.
Just think of it, credit card numbers + matching expiry dates and CVVs are for sale in bulk on underground black markets, every piece of evidence found in a case as serious as this should be held to the highest standards before taking steps that can't be undone.
Since his computer wasn't implicated at all before it was seized, if they had tried to tie the case to the guys IP they would have seen he had nothing to do with it immediately that shouldn't have happened at all.
This was simply a fishing expedition and a mans life was changed in a very bad way because of it.
What other information? An ip address? Not particularly relevant.
In th case of indecent images the police are pretty much required to investigate with evidence of this type. Not doing so is just too dangerous all round for them.
I'd say this was just one of the extreme cases your always going to come across. It sucks, lots.
Edit: by required I mean its shaky legal ground not to pursue it aggressively. Especially if he suspect is a parent. If hey ignore it and it turns out the guy is guilty they are fucked, badly. The differing ip address is important but only circumstantial because ips are two a penny.
No, seriously, the fact that there was no other corroborating evidence means that there are NOT enough grounds for suspicion.
A credit card number is way too easily jacked / faked / cloned. I've had it happen to me in a restaurant, before I finished my trip home (another 700 km drive) there had been a few thousand $ of online charges on the card.
A credit card number is not an identity. If it isn't enough to cross a border with then it certainly shouldn't by itself be a reason for an investigation.
Especially because in cases like these the chances of the perp using fraudulent information are substantially higher than when looking at the transactions for say amazon.com.
Of course pedos are going to try to cover their tracks, using a stolen credit card number is a lesser crime considered to the one they are already committing so the barrier is a pretty low one.
Yes, if I was the victim in this article I would strongly consider suing the police for wrongful arrest. He would have an excellent case against the police for negligence causing him substantial loss. If the police had investigated his case properly they would have seen that there was no prospect of successful prosecution, but every chance of ruining his life.
You would be surprised at the number that are caught using their own cc. The standard approach in such a case would be to ask the guy in (or arrest him if you were suspicious) and sieze the computers. Then you decide what to do depending on the interview.
Rereading it maybe your right; it shouldn't have gone so far.
If someone is dumb enough to use their own cc then I hardly think they have the wherewithal to proxy the requests through indonesia.
Rereading it maybe your right; it shouldn't have gone so far.
Maybe you don't realise it, but you come across as amazingly blasé towards this miscarriage of justice. There is no "maybe" about it. And it shouldn't have gone anywhere at all. The state has fucked this guy's life up for no reason other than its own incompetence.
I get the feeling that those in law enforcement are so brainwashed as to the monstrous nature of their "enemy" that they rationalise away "collateral damage" like this guy as a necessary evil.
> but you come across as amazingly blasé towards this miscarriage of justice
Sorry, not my intention.
I dont think this is considered a "necessary evil". I think fuck ups and mistakes happen; yes this should be investigated (I have no idea if it has been) and it should be considered how to stop mistakes happening. I think this guy has been screwed by society and his employer as much as the system of law. It's an extreme case and we need to find ways for it not to occur.
However I am also of the opinion that we shouldn't second guess what happened on the basis of a news article. It's hardly a complete investigation.
We have no idea what happened; if there is an investigation then I personally would be happier forming an opinion :)
At the end of the day it comes down to a wire choice for the investigator. Does he pursue this aggressively and risk tarnishing an innocents reputation. Or does he back off from his cases and risk letting a pedophile go free. The LE officers I know tread this line with skill and dedication: I dispute the idea that this mistake, a situation where the line was crossed in the wrong way, is representative of the entire picture. :)
When accusing someone of a crime that serious you tread with care. There is no 'undo' button on that operation.
I can sneak large numbers of files on to your computer without your notice (you'll have to trust me on that one, I'm not going to explain here how for obvious reasons, but if you want we can correspond by email about it, I'm sure I'm not the only HN'er that can think of tricks like that but I don't want to give the less capable ideas), one phone call later to some anonymous reporting facility and you'd be in a world of trouble.
It shouldn't be that easy to ruin somebody's life.
If a case isn't iron clad why spook the suspect (after all, simply monitoring them would give you hard proof or reason enough to drop the case quietly, maybe issue a warning that the guys card was cloned, which after all is what the police was for).
In the current system you might as well be guilty, even when you are not.
I personally hate child pornographers with a vengeance, for very good reason (they occasionally use my websites as their means of transportation), but I hate sloppy police work even more.
> When accusing someone of a crime that serious you tread with care. There is no 'undo' button on that operation.
Agreed. Im of the opinion we can only deal with the facts of the case; and we have very few of those. Random scenario: he refused to answer questions (for example on the advice of a lawyer) or provide an alibi (I know I am making that up - but things can slant this either way).
> after all, simply monitoring them would give you hard proof
There are strong arguments against that. Firstly, of course, cost. Secondly the privacy argument (could you imagine the fuss if it turned out the police were monitoring potential suspects secretly? :P).
> In the current system you might as well be guilty, even when you are not.
Agreed. I think this is a general problem with the society as well as the system. Im not sure why this investigation was not confidential - most are. Indeed most of those accused and cleared of CP offences are not generally affected (according to the references I have read at least; which are solid, but I admit not my first hand knowledge).
> I can sneak large numbers of files on to your computer
Ofc. Those sort of cases are difficult. We do get cases which come in where a girl has accused an older male of abuse and looking at child porn where the officer has noted they think she may be maliciously lying. The problem is how do you prove things like that - the best way is to grab his machine and have a look for solid physical evidence then go from there.
I dont think you could accuse someone anonymously quite like you suggest and have them arrested straight away.
In this case the CC payment is tangible. In retrospect your probably right and they should have taken more care in investigating his alibi (if he gave it) before pushing the case one. But again we have no information on the sequence of events and who did what - so ultimately all of this is speculation :)
At the end of the day, as you say, it comes down to a question of incentives, power, and consequences. The problem is that there is little or no consequence to an LE officer ruining someone's life. Every incentive is there to pursue further, make sure they're not a threat, err on the side of presumed guilt. Having no incentive other than personal morals to treat the guy fairly is a big, big problem.
I personally respect you and I'm sure your colleagues are equally stand-up guys. But the system as a whole is sick. For LE officers to whimsically decide whether or not to ruin someone's life with charges of kiddie porn is too much power. Way too much.
"Child porn" has outgrown all reasonable legal bounds and i now used as a general person justification for doing basically anything. Look at us in Australia - it is now used as an excuse for censoring the entire internet. Other countries cannot be far off. You must realise this. I am not even sure where to start putting down the child porn bogeyman but it is absolutely, absolutely, a manufactured fear.
I see what your saying; and in truth there is a good point in there.
> For LE officers to whimsically decide
I dont think that is the case necessarily. It's more a careful choice I think.
> "Child porn" has outgrown all reasonable legal bounds and i now used as a general person justification for doing basically anything.
On this we are in agreement. I actually just contributed to a book about the new French web monitoring/filtering laws which are being "legitimized" using child porn as an excuse. We argue that really it has no effect on the "business" of CP and basically it is just political posturing (Ill provide a link if your interested).
> I get the feeling that those in law enforcement are so brainwashed as to the monstrous nature of their "enemy" that they rationalise away "collateral damage" like this guy as a necessary evil.
I'm sure that on some level they feel bad about it, but they find ways to rationalize it away so they they can continue their job, and the politicos in the department try to keep everyone hush-hush to avoid lawsuits and a PR storm if someone were to admit to a mistake.
> It's hard to see what could have gone differently
Really??? It would have been trivial for them to check and see that the child porn was purchased in Indonesia they should have been able to do a very quick check on his border records and see that he did not visit there. Instead they were just lazy and cast a wide net and pulled everything in. I hope he considers suing them.
> It would have been trivial for them to check and see that the child porn was purchased in Indonesia
Not particularly trival. And more importantly accessing another IUP is trivial; there is common software for the purchase of this material that uses various random proxies to protect your location/identity.
The fact the IP address is in Indonesia tells us very little; tracing the actual IP to a physical location is relatively hard and time consuming. There isnt the money available to do that.
