Live data from Hacker News

Woman allegedly impersonated prosecutor, dropped charges against herself

unionleader.com

261–270 of 336 posts

Re: Woman allegedly impersonated prosecutor, dropped charges against herself

#261
post #3

archive link: https://web.archive.org/web/20201028172931/https://www.union...

Thanks. Can't believe sites still do the 'we're unable to show you a page because ... GDPR'.

It makes you wonder how incompatible they are to GDPR when they find it better to block EU than fix the issues

Re: Woman allegedly impersonated prosecutor, dropped charges against herself

#262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having someone else do your prison time was fairly common. Now with more cooperation between organizations and improved biometrics it has dropped. Different people would be arrested, show up to court, or enter the prison. Impossible for organizations downstream to detect or assume a switch had happened.

This seems similar to the Catholic concept of buying indulgences as a carbon offset type concept against sins. Pay to play

It's not; indulgences remit the temporal punishment associated with sin (mortal sins incur eternal punishment in additional to temporal punishment; merely venial sins incur only temporal punishment). Mortal sin can be forgiven only through contrition and reconciliation. Temporal sin can be forgiven at the leisure of the Church (i.e., through indulgences). To commit a sin with the intention of attempting to obtain forgiveness through reconciliation afterward is itself a mortal sin.

Indulgences still exist, and you can still purchase them in the sense that you can make a donation to a priest to offer the sacrifice of the Mass for a specific intention (like the remittance of a portion of the temporal punishment for the sins of a friend or loved one), and the offering of the sacrifice has indulgences associated with it in addition.

This is not the only way to gain indulgences. There are many ways to gain them. Praying for the souls of the faithful departed on All Souls Day (in combination with the usual conditions, i.e. a) being in a state of grace, b) having the interior disposition of complete detachment from sin, even venial sin, c) having sacramentally confessed their sins, d) receiving the Holy Eucharist, and e) pray for the intentions of the Supreme Pontiff) on November 2nd allows for one to obtain a plenary indulgence (which remit ALL temporal punishment) either for oneself or for a person of your choosing.

Re: Woman allegedly impersonated prosecutor, dropped charges against herself

#263
post #84

One has to wonder what legal frauds, asset grabs, and impersonations have transpired that were never discovered. Some perspective on this is the story of Alves dos Reis ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alves_dos_Reis ) who in 1924 stole ~1% of Portugal's GDP in bank notes printed under forged orders. The scheme may have never been uncovered had Reis succeeded in maintaining a controlling interest in the Bank of Portug…

Having someone else do your prison time was fairly common. Now with more cooperation between organizations and improved biometrics it has dropped. Different people would be arrested, show up to court, or enter the prison. Impossible for organizations downstream to detect or assume a switch had happened.

How do you, personally, perceive of things that have changed?

Re: Woman allegedly impersonated prosecutor, dropped charges against herself

#264
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's anyone supposed to do about it? GDPR didn't exactly provide funding to help anyone get compliant and it's hard to argue that GDPR compliance is a priority for a struggling local media site. It's a bummer, but I think it was inevitable in the way the law is structured.

> What's anyone supposed to do about it? Show a basic level of respect for your users' privacy whether or not it's not a legal requirement.

[deleted]

Re: Woman allegedly impersonated prosecutor, dropped charges against herself

#265

I 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…

Good point--judicial orders contain no security features and are printed on ordinary paper. They long ago did away with the embossed seals, so now copying these are trivial and normally not needed unless a certified copy of the order is required. The article shows surprise at the defendant's cleverness in filing electronically. Not so--in many jurisdictions, electronic filing is mandatory. Pleadings filed by parties…

The adversarial system used in US courts assumes the other side will discover such frauds and bring them to the attention of the court.

I think the frauds that appear to be legal but do not actually involve courts are where more harm is. These are the scams asking people to pay fines or else.

Re: Woman allegedly impersonated prosecutor, dropped charges against herself

#266
post #146
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's anyone supposed to do about it? GDPR didn't exactly provide funding to help anyone get compliant and it's hard to argue that GDPR compliance is a priority for a struggling local media site. It's a bummer, but I think it was inevitable in the way the law is structured.

Doesn't take much money or effort to just not sell my data.

I have no reason to assume they are selling user data. I wish complying with GDPR were as simple as not selling user data.

Re: Woman allegedly impersonated prosecutor, dropped charges against herself

#267
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's anyone supposed to do about it? GDPR didn't exactly provide funding to help anyone get compliant and it's hard to argue that GDPR compliance is a priority for a struggling local media site. It's a bummer, but I think it was inevitable in the way the law is structured.

> What's anyone supposed to do about it? Show a basic level of respect for your users' privacy whether or not it's not a legal requirement.

Is there evidence that they aren't besides not being confident about GDPR compliance? There's a lot more to GDPR than not selling data.

Re: Woman allegedly impersonated prosecutor, dropped charges against herself

#268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a common misunderstanding of canonical Catholic teaching about "indulgentia a culpa et a poena". Keeping the carbon offset analogy, an indulgence in the Catholic sense would be more akin to first making sure you are carbon neutral (all parties are at peace and forgiven/reconciled), then you spend %10 of your salary to go beyond that and offset the carbon credits of the person you wronged.

Instead of sticking with the carbon credits analogy I'll articulate more directly what I understand from reading up on indulgences at https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07783a.htm For a sin that has already been forgiven, an indulgence is associated payment you owe that if you didn't pay, you will spend more time in purgatory. If this is an accurate reading, does it not dilute the meaning of "forgiven"? Does it not amo…

>Does it not amount to a money-making racket at best, or, more probably, extortion?

The vast vast vast majority of indulgences have no money aspect at all. See the list of plenary (meaning all temporal punishment is removed) indulgences on Wikipedia[1], none of them involve money.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indulgence#Plenary_indulgences

Re: Woman allegedly impersonated prosecutor, dropped charges against herself

#269
post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obrigado!

This is Portuguese for Thanks? Off topic, but reading it I just noticed it sounds an awful lot like ありがとう (“arigatou” as in “domo arigatou Mr. Roboto”). I think there’s an etymology lesson in this, although I’m not sure which way it goes, probably Portuguese -> Japanese via Nagasaki.

It's a well known theory but it's most likely false[1], though there are several words imported to Japan via Portuguese that have long remained, such as the word for England, イギリス, which comes from the Portuguese for English (people), Ingles, which drives me a bit potty as it's used now to refer to the whole of the UK and I have trouble trying to distinguish England from Scotland et al when speaking with Japanese people.

Ironically, "Japan" is from an old Chinese word for Japan that was then imported to Europe… by those dastardly misnomerists of countries, the Portuguese!

[1] https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/5481/10723

Re: Woman allegedly impersonated prosecutor, dropped charges against herself

#270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a common misunderstanding of canonical Catholic teaching about "indulgentia a culpa et a poena". Keeping the carbon offset analogy, an indulgence in the Catholic sense would be more akin to first making sure you are carbon neutral (all parties are at peace and forgiven/reconciled), then you spend %10 of your salary to go beyond that and offset the carbon credits of the person you wronged.

An even bigger misconception is that indulgences were actually bought on behalf of _someone else_. They were meant to address a very real problem with catholic heaven/hell theology: What if I belong in heaven, but somene I love, who I can't possibly imagine spending eternity without, belongs in hell? Indulgences were originally meant to address this: the party that belonged in heaven could, through their sacrifice, g…

>An even bigger misconception is that indulgences were actually bought on behalf of _someone else_.

Are you saying it's true that indulgences can be obtained for others or that it's false that indulgences can be obtained for others?

In reality indulgences can be obtained for yourself, or for others, including those in Purgatory. They can't be obtained for people in Hell.

>It was only later that the "sacrifice" become strictly monetary.

Indulgences are not strictly monetary. The vast majority involve no money at all.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indulgence#Plenary_indulgences

Post reply on HN