When you kobayashi maru the legal system.
this is the most hilarious thing i've seen on HN and your comment made me roflmao more
Woman allegedly impersonated prosecutor, dropped charges against herself
71–80 of 336 posts
Re: Woman allegedly impersonated prosecutor, dropped charges against herself
#72I guess this brings up and interesting issue -- once someone knows the ins and outs of a system, sometimes there are very few barriers internally to check that an order/paperwork is legit. There was a story in WSJ like last week about how the Japanese red stamp / seal still survives and is a barrier to them adopting new technology for practical every day speeding up of tasks. And keeps things like faxes around unnece…
One could argue the internal barriers are unnecessary if "trust but verify" works. In this case, it worked; she was able to play the system until verification identified something was wrong, and now she gets to go to jail over it. (Technical systems often need more stringent protections because "screw around and go to jail" isn't a threat that, say, Facebook can bring to bear).
The mistake here is messing with the legal system itself. Lots of scams and schemes can fly under the radar, but as soon as you start committing fraud against the court, you're done.
Just ask the con artists at Prenda Law how lying to federal judges went:
Re: Woman allegedly impersonated prosecutor, dropped charges against herself
#73Prime r/madlads material.
You were not wrong https://www.reddit.com/r/madlads/comments/jjtrto/woman_alleg...
Re: Woman allegedly impersonated prosecutor, dropped charges against herself
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
451 is a great status code, right up there with 418.
My favourite part of GDPR is getting to use 451 legitimately everywhere.
I'm not sure it is really though is it?
It's legitimate in the same way that '451: we want to load up our site with so much javascript your computer catches fire and burns your house down, but that's illegal in your jurisdiction so this site is Unavailable for Legal Reasons' is.
To me 451 is like 404 (nothing here) and 410 (was something here but now there isn't) - it's a further progression/specificity to 'was/sort of is something here but it's not presently available for legal reasons'.
Common obvious one is DMCA takedown notices, but it might also be an injunction, or even accidentally published while still under embargo - or deliberately to prime SEO (not advice) - or NDA, etc.
Re: Woman allegedly impersonated prosecutor, dropped charges against herself
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Years ago I was working somewhere and instead of getting a supervisor to approve some minor thing we would just put in a supervisor id that was known to people. Eventually, we got caught because that person had quit working there a few years ago and someone saw her code being used to approve things.
It's surprising when people casually admit to dishonest behaviour as if it's no big deal.
Maybe it’s not a big deal, unless you value honesty above all else.
I am not always honest, especially when it’s obvious to me that the other party will only use my goodwill to their advantage.
In the case of the parent, I can imagine many scenarios where it is difficult or untimely to get supervisor approval, but failure or delay in doing so results in the employee catching all the heat for it.
Re: Woman allegedly impersonated prosecutor, dropped charges against herself
#76It amazes me that two and half years after the introduction of GDPR, sites like this still block EU residents.
Incentives matter - if there is no profit from it and they are outside their domain anyway why would they waste any time on the IT project alone? Let alone the business model changes causing at least short term negative profits (even if better behavior could help user base growth). Apparently empathy of all things is useful to soldiers ironically because being able to understand how others would react to movements an…
I don't think the goal was ever to avoid sites blocking the EU. The bill was clearly aimed at not contributing to bad practices with the EU GDP, what it isn't.
Besides, the news can be found elsewhere (all news can nowadays), and the GP isn't much worse (I dunno, maybe even better off?) because of that blocking. At the same time we are here indirectly discussing tracking, and this is not the only thread about it.
Re: Woman allegedly impersonated prosecutor, dropped charges against herself
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
this isn't correct, and i wish it would stop being repeated on HN. if you don't target/do business with Europeans specifically, there is nothing to comply with. what jurisdiction does Europe have? however, a lot of "small", local news organisations are actually owned by huge (multi-national) corporations. they might work hard to preserve that small appearance, but do have a reason to fear the GDPR.
> if you don't target/do business with Europeans specifically, there is nothing to comply with. what jurisdiction does Europe have? Because as you said yourself, they're part of a large organization that DOES do business with Europe, but that part of the business doesn't get any money from Europe, so there is no reason for that part of the business to go to the effort of complying.
sure, if they do business with Europe, they should be complying with the laws. i don't think that's controversial.
you said "local news organizations", and i was simply pointing out if that is what they truly were, they wouldn't have to comply. so i think we agree?
Re: Woman allegedly impersonated prosecutor, dropped charges against herself
#78I guess this brings up and interesting issue -- once someone knows the ins and outs of a system, sometimes there are very few barriers internally to check that an order/paperwork is legit. There was a story in WSJ like last week about how the Japanese red stamp / seal still survives and is a barrier to them adopting new technology for practical every day speeding up of tasks. And keeps things like faxes around unnece…
One could argue the internal barriers are unnecessary if "trust but verify" works. In this case, it worked; she was able to play the system until verification identified something was wrong, and now she gets to go to jail over it. (Technical systems often need more stringent protections because "screw around and go to jail" isn't a threat that, say, Facebook can bring to bear).
How many times have people gotten away with something similar without every being discovered, though? It could be very many.
Re: Woman allegedly impersonated prosecutor, dropped charges against herself
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just wear a hardhat and carry a clipboard.
I used to participate in a city-wide water pistol assassination tournament. Skipped the hard hat, got white coveralls from Home Depot, pinned my work id to it, carried a clipboard. Got in everywhere I needed to be, including a heliport and a private boat dock. I forget where I read it, but the phrase "just act like you're supposed to be there" has stuck with me a long time, and paid dividends.
>I used to participate in a city-wide water pistol assassination tournament
TIL that that's a thing!
Re: Woman allegedly impersonated prosecutor, dropped charges against herself
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
I used to participate in a city-wide water pistol assassination tournament. Skipped the hard hat, got white coveralls from Home Depot, pinned my work id to it, carried a clipboard. Got in everywhere I needed to be, including a heliport and a private boat dock. I forget where I read it, but the phrase "just act like you're supposed to be there" has stuck with me a long time, and paid dividends.
as a teenager, i remember marveling at a friend who could successfully walk into bars and order drinks. you have to both look the part and play the part (i could do neither). even at places that carded, they wanted to serve you, so the ID had to only provide enough plausible deniability to the bouncer or bartender to credibly claim they were duped into serving you. i'm sure some bartenders secretly got a kick out of…
In college there was a beer delivery service that would even deliver directly to the dorm if you gave that as your address. If you paid with your debit card over the phone, they wouldn't even card you since the beer was already bought and paid for.
One time they did check, and my friend lied and said he didn't have his ID with him. Then the delivery guy who was probably only a couple years older than us just asked to see his actual underage ID to prove he wasn't a cop and handed us the beer anyway.