Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Indefinite prison for suspect who won’t decrypt hard drives, US government says

arstechnica.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 224 posts

Re: Indefinite prison for suspect who won’t decrypt hard drives, US government says

#201

Post by vinceguidry »

Programmatic wrote: post #194
vinceguidry wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are you advancing the argument that abuse of children is an economic response to demand, and not that the perpetrator wanted to do it in the first place? There is abuse of children, then there's the act of making recordings of it for others to consume. The latter certainly functions on a demand curve, as it takes more work to produce something than it is to just do it. > How does this argument explain the illegalit…

> There is abuse of children, then there's the act of making recordings of it for others to consume. The latter certainly functions on a demand curve, as it takes more work to produce something than it is to just do it. With the Rhino argument, the entire reason for the act occurring is economic (kill rhino, collect horn, get paid). For paedos, the act occurs because they want to do it. Being able to gain social stan…

> People record child pornography for posterity without distributing it.

Doesn't matter, this material leaks out into the world and becomes part of sharing networks. In these networks, paedophiles can live and participate in a world in which these thoughts and this behavior is OK. With social validation eventually comes boldness and the willingness and desire to create ones own content.

Do you have a hobby? I like food. I like talking about food, cooking food, I take pleasure in being able to discern subtle flavorings in dishes and having an appreciation for real Chinese food as opposed to bland American Chinese shit.

All of that time and effort I put into food, there are vast numbers of paedophiles that do this for videos of children being abused. Without the moral stigma, these people will get bolder and bolder, and before you know it, there's a paedophile political lobby just like the gun and homosexual rights lobby.

Is this a world you want to live in? Countenanced with this, is disgust as a source for the political capital to fight paedophilia really such a bad thing? Do you really want to grant legitimacy to that way of life? Because that's where your line of thought goes.

Yes, it's awful that if you are wired that way, you're pretty much fucked and that's terrible and I feel bad for you. But it's really, really morally fucked up and repugnant and wrong to allow yourself the inner freedom to explore your sexuality on these networks if that's the case. You deserve to be locked up and shamed if you give in to your urges.

There's no easy way through this.

Re: Indefinite prison for suspect who won’t decrypt hard drives, US government says

#202

Post by Bartweiss »

Kristine1975 wrote: post #110
Bartweiss wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's baffling to me that people are treating "he will be found guilty" as evidence that he's already guilty and can be punished freely. We've got a code of laws specifically designed to avoid Inquisition-style "accusation of guilt is presumption of guilt" thinking.

In the past in Europe, there existed the concept of "partially guilty." Someone got shot and you were seen in the vicinity of the crime scene with a gun? You're 25% guilty. Then you're tortured (since you're 25% guilty, it's not torture of an innocent, but punishment), and under torture you "confess", making you fully guilty. Source: Foucault's Discipline and Punish

That's absolutely fascinating, thank you. I need to finally suck it up and go read Discipline and Punish.

As much as I'm not on board with "confession through torture", I wonder if non-boolean guilt could help sort out some of the dumber quirks of our legal system. As is we just have "innocent" and "guilty" (which is either 51% chance of guilt in civil cases, or 'beyond reasonable doubt' in criminal ones).

But we're clearly fumbling around for new values. The Supreme Court decision about retrials (that "probably would have been found innocent at original trial" is not enough to justify a retrial) clearly makes more sense in terms of real-valued guilt - we can then set some actual standard for retrial, which is different from the standard for conviction. Perhaps you get convicted at 90% guilty in criminal cases, but don't get to open a retrial unless your estimate drops to 70% guilty.

Now I'm fascinated. What would real-valued guilt look like in a modern system?

Re: Indefinite prison for suspect who won’t decrypt hard drives, US government says

#203

Post by Retric »

vinceguidry wrote: post #198
Retric wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't move goal posts, has no effect is enough to make it harmless with that line of thinking. So, if you want to use it you need to demonstrate harm. Sure, it's easy to make a counter argument along the lines of "Making things taboo adds to their appeal. Supervised underage drinking seems to have a long term positive impact." However, that's also meaningless unless you study the issue. I really don't know, but I als…

> So, if you want to use it you need to demonstrate harm. That's a false dichotomy. We cannot have perfect knowledge about everything that could possibly help or harm society. We need to retain the ability to act in its absence. > I really don't know, but I also accept I don't know. Not all things should be treated this way, but in the case of kiddie porn, I'd argue that defaulting to the stance that all conduct in t…

I get where you are coming from. I think the sanctity of thought needs to be maintained so you can examine new evidence with minimal bias.

However, as something to consider. There is a very long history of things people assume without evidence being wrong. Abstractly, unsupported ideas are random in nature and the number of true ideas are vastly outnumbered by the number of wrong ideas. So, IMO the default assumption for unsupported ideas should be they are false.

Anyway, nice chatting with you.

Re: Indefinite prison for suspect who won’t decrypt hard drives, US government says

#204

Post by coldtea »

cpncrunch wrote: post #192
coldtea wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is the constant narrative that the government is out to get us all. And historically, from Jim Crow laws, to J.E. Hoover and McCarthy, and onwards to Snowden, this is wrong, because?

>And historically, from Jim Crow laws, to J.E. Hoover and McCarthy, and onwards to Snowden, this is wrong, because? Most of the examples you gave are historical. Regarding Snowden: has anything been used against anyone? I'm not condoning the snooping, BTW. I think when you compare the US government to the likes of Russia and China, you'll see that the US is really not "out to get you". Certainly in this case it's pre…

>Most of the examples you gave are historical.

Historical doesn't mean "belonging to lore" or "ain't gonna happen again". It precisely means "this things happen". And I don't consider stuff from 40 and 60 and 80 years ago as "deep history", like it's the Roman times or something and now we're totally different. In some cases those that did or suffered those things are still alive. In others, their direct 1st-gen legacy (sons, proteges, people they mentored etc) still rule.

>I think when you compare the US government to the likes of Russia and China, you'll see that the US is really not "out to get you"

Not sure what this means. With 25% of the world's inmates in only 5% of the world's population, I'd say it's very much out to get a heck of a lot of its citizens. And in prison conditions that compared to places like Germany or Sweden are like third world dungeons. The only way not to see this is to conveniently consider all those people are somehow subhumans, or criminals who "deserve it" (then one has to wonder why in the US 10x more of the population "deserve" such a fate compared to those in the German or the French population).

Or maybe let's talk police shootings? One is much more probable to get shot in the US ('walking while black' et al) than most parts of the world, China and Russia don't even compare.

Or are those not part of the government, and those laws and that climate is not fostered by government policies and political demagogy?

Re: Indefinite prison for suspect who won’t decrypt hard drives, US government says

#205

Post by marssaxman »

tptacek wrote: post #127
danjoc wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have logs on my site showing many users who enter their passwords from memory regularly only to forget them months later after not using them. Since the user hasn't been made to recall the password for months, it's plausible that he forgot it. I know I have personally forgotten passwords to accounts after months of disuse. For instance, I had an old yahoo email account for many years. I didn't use it for about six…

My point is just this: the notion that you have or haven't forgotten your password is something that gets argued in court, just like everything else. Tech people have a bad habit of pretending that the uncertainties that our work generates are the first uncertainties the court system has ever dealt with. But most of criminal law turns in large part --- mens rea --- over a court making decisions about what's in the he…

Most of criminal law is therefore undecidable and insane, so far as I can see, amounting to little more than a thin coat of gloss over a clumsy, ignorant, violent, and almost entirely unaccountable iron fist.

Re: Indefinite prison for suspect who won’t decrypt hard drives, US government says

#206

Post by TrevorJ »

shortly wrote: post #95
sametmax wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would work for your average Joe, but not for Congressmen. Unless somebody more powerful than them want them gone, they will have the resources to just deflect the problem. Honestly, how many politicians have you seen going to jail ? Does it match the global % of population in jail ?

it's almost as though congressmen undergo some kind of selection process which attempts to find responsible, non-criminal members of society

Oh they undergo a selection process alright.

Re: Indefinite prison for suspect who won’t decrypt hard drives, US government says

#207

Post by Programmatic »

vinceguidry wrote: post #201
Programmatic wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is abuse of children, then there's the act of making recordings of it for others to consume. The latter certainly functions on a demand curve, as it takes more work to produce something than it is to just do it. With the Rhino argument, the entire reason for the act occurring is economic (kill rhino, collect horn, get paid). For paedos, the act occurs because they want to do it. Being able to gain social stan…

> People record child pornography for posterity without distributing it. Doesn't matter, this material leaks out into the world and becomes part of sharing networks. In these networks, paedophiles can live and participate in a world in which these thoughts and this behavior is OK. With social validation eventually comes boldness and the willingness and desire to create ones own content. Do you have a hobby? I like fo…

I do agree that there's no easy way thought this, and it sounds like we'll likely have irreconcilable viewpoints. I hope that you will at least seek to ensure that the constitutional rights everyone are upheld, even for people that you find repugnant. If we don't uphold fundamental rights for the worst of us, the powers that be can use that as the thin edge of the wedge to remove those rights for the rest of us. It was enjoyable to converse with you, have a good one.

Re: Indefinite prison for suspect who won’t decrypt hard drives, US government says

#208

Post by kragen »

Ars Technica chose to illustrate this article with a perspective-distorted screenshot of md5-crypt-encrypted passwords, the entire point of which is to prevent the person who has the encrypted password from being able to decrypt it.

Re: Indefinite prison for suspect who won’t decrypt hard drives, US government says

#209

Post by vinceguidry »

Programmatic wrote: post #207
vinceguidry wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People record child pornography for posterity without distributing it. Doesn't matter, this material leaks out into the world and becomes part of sharing networks. In these networks, paedophiles can live and participate in a world in which these thoughts and this behavior is OK. With social validation eventually comes boldness and the willingness and desire to create ones own content. Do you have a hobby? I like fo…

I do agree that there's no easy way thought this, and it sounds like we'll likely have irreconcilable viewpoints. I hope that you will at least seek to ensure that the constitutional rights everyone are upheld, even for people that you find repugnant. If we don't uphold fundamental rights for the worst of us, the powers that be can use that as the thin edge of the wedge to remove those rights for the rest of us. It w…

Yes, I do believe in constitutional rights for everyone. If I have led you to believe otherwise, please tell me which constitutional rights I am implying should be withheld from which group of people. If it's freedom of speech for paedophiles, then I believe the Supreme Court has set clear precedent that the ban on child pornography is an allowable restriction on speech, correct me if I'm wrong.

Re: Indefinite prison for suspect who won’t decrypt hard drives, US government says

#210

Post by cpncrunch »

duncan_bayne wrote: post #199
cpncrunch wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And historically, from Jim Crow laws, to J.E. Hoover and McCarthy, and onwards to Snowden, this is wrong, because? Most of the examples you gave are historical. Regarding Snowden: has anything been used against anyone? I'm not condoning the snooping, BTW. I think when you compare the US government to the likes of Russia and China, you'll see that the US is really not "out to get you". Certainly in this case it's pre…

> I think when you compare the US government to the likes of Russia and China, you'll see that the US is really not "out to get you". Have you any evidence that the US Government has changed their modus operandi? Programs like COINTELPRO weren't public knowledge until some time afterwards, ditto "rendition" of terrorism suspects for overseas torture. Snowden has demonstrated that your Government still engages in wide…

>I'd say the only reason such abuse seem "historical" is that we're unaware of the abuses going on right now.

That's my point. The US government may or may not be mildly abusing it's citizens by spying on them illegally, it's hard to know. Compare to Russia or China where it most certainly is vehemently abusing people it disagrees with.

Also, I think the rendition was only for non-citizens. The US doesn't really give much of a shit about you if you're not a US citizen.

Post reply on HN