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Former WSJ reporter says law firm used Indian hackers to sabotage his career

reuters.com

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Re: Former WSJ reporter says law firm used Indian hackers to sabotage his career

#121

Post by alex_smart »

fareesh wrote: post #96
watwut wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Racism does not have to focus on skin color. As a super easy example, with Nazi did not defined races and their hierarchy by color. Also notably, people that have a thong against Indians and Asians I encountered in real life have literally zero idea about internal subdivision. They could not tell sub-groups apart, not by look and not by language. If you have a thing against people from India, it is India in general a…

The publisher here (Reuters) is well aware of everything I've mentioned. They don't need to customize their headlines to modify the reaction of the people you are referencing. Those people should not be leading the decision making process for excluding facts from headlines.

>They don't need to customize their headlines to modify the reaction of the people you are referencing

Why not? Doesn't media regularly customize their headlines to avoid stating factually true things that would propagate negative stereotypes against minorities and other protected groups?

I think most responsible media organizations do avoid putting headlines like "Muslim man stabs three in church in Nice". Even if they do mention the religion, it is usually called "Islamic terrorism", and they have also invested quite some significant effort into emphasizing that most of regular Islamic people do not in fact have anything to do with Islamic terrorism.

As far as I can tell, media companies certainly seem to be aware of the effect their headlines can have on propagating negative stereotypes and good editorial judgement usually involves an attempt to avoid doing that as much as possible.

Re: Former WSJ reporter says law firm used Indian hackers to sabotage his career

#122

Post by frognumber »

rchaud wrote: post #115
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #28

One thing that I should point out, is that he is not going after the WSJ, for any impropriety in his firing. They are really the ones that damaged his career. So I suspect that there is more to this story than is apparent.

It seems to me that his beef is not with the WSJ because he was aware of the possible consequences regarding the potential conflict of interest. WSJ is entitled to fire someone if they have verifiable evidence supporting that decision. If the evidence was illegally obtained....well, it would be an trial admissibility issue, but that wouldn't apply to a work/employment matter.

Employment is generally at-will. Employers can and do fire for a broad range of reasons, including suspicion without evidence.

9 times out of 10, in case of improprieties, a person is fired, and no further action is taken. In most cases, there is no upside to prosecution, and a lot of potential downside. In every legal case I've been involved with, there were deep improprieties, such as fabrication of evidence. If you're right, that's no guarantee of winning a case, and in most cases, both sides come out scarred and tarnished.

The legal system is random, and a high risk for everyone.

Re: Former WSJ reporter says law firm used Indian hackers to sabotage his career

#123

Post by la64710 »

Another click bait by HN to attract anti Indian haters. Because just saying mercenary was not enough. Media including HN continue to profile issues around race or ethnicity instead of action because that way they sell more . Is it too hard to imagine ther are good and bad people in every country and what matters is their action and not their fucking culture or ethnicity?? It is not but media will not do it for their own vested interest.

Re: Former WSJ reporter says law firm used Indian hackers to sabotage his career

#124

Post by rchaud »

frognumber wrote: post #122
rchaud wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me that his beef is not with the WSJ because he was aware of the possible consequences regarding the potential conflict of interest. WSJ is entitled to fire someone if they have verifiable evidence supporting that decision. If the evidence was illegally obtained....well, it would be an trial admissibility issue, but that wouldn't apply to a work/employment matter.

Employment is generally at-will. Employers can and do fire for a broad range of reasons, including suspicion without evidence. 9 times out of 10, in case of improprieties, a person is fired, and no further action is taken. In most cases, there is no upside to prosecution, and a lot of potential downside. In every legal case I've been involved with, there were deep improprieties, such as fabrication of evidence. If yo…

> Employers can and do fire for a broad range of reasons, including suspicion without evidence.'

Employers can, but those that are at the size of the WSJ probably don't. The bad PR, reputational damage and legal damages of an unfounded firing, isn't worth it.

Re: Former WSJ reporter says law firm used Indian hackers to sabotage his career

#125

Post by hansvm »

hutzlibu wrote: post #102
px43 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's covered in the Dark Basin episode of Darknet Diaries, but India apparently has a reputation for especially aggressive private investigators, who were historically used to dig up dirt on families before committing to marriage pacts, but in the modern era are used regularly for PR and corporate blackmail. Apparently this practice is ingrained enough into the culture that digging up dirt on people by any me…

"digging up dirt on people by any means necessary is widely accepted, and not even illegal in most contexts." Well, digging up dirt is also legal in the west, the question is what "any means necessary" is. I cannot believe that it is legal to hack someone for example.

(knowing almost nothing about indian culture) The boundary between what's legal and what's culturally accepted can be pretty broad. Just two days ago a coworker was describing his friend getting arrested for flipping off a cop, and when I pointed out that precedent going back hundreds of years clearly shows the cop abusing their authority to violate the constitution with almost no exceptions (proportionally), they still responded that their friend deserved it and should have known that flipping off a cop wouldn't have any positive outcomes. Culturally, a substantive chunk of the country is totally fine with clamping down on offensiveness, especially if it's directed at people risking their lives to make the country better, despite that not being a part of our legal framework in the slightest.

Similarly, I wouldn't be shocked if "by any means necessary" is also illegal in India but is culturally accepted.

On some level it's no different from the stop-sign culture in California. Almost nobody stops, ever, including the police force, and it results in dozens of deaths annually just in my community. The act is blatantly illegal for good reason, but it still happens out in the open, and it's "not illegal" in the sense that if a person blows a stop sign and the police witness it or are sent a video of the act then there's approximately a 0% chance of any negative repercussions for the perpetrator.

Re: Former WSJ reporter says law firm used Indian hackers to sabotage his career

#126

Post by fareesh »

alex_smart wrote: post #119
fareesh wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only prominent definition one could cite which includes national origin is the one used by the United Nations Popular dictionaries (Webster/Oxford) don't include national origin

"Indian" is not just an national identity but also an ethnic one. A person of Indian origin born in America or the UK is still very easily identifiable and is identified by their Indian identity. The usage of the word "racism" to include xenophobia is common enough in a casual context that I cannot believe that you are simply not aware of that usage. By choosing to argue over the semantics of the word racism over usa…

It is not an ethnic identity (see my other comment)

Re: Former WSJ reporter says law firm used Indian hackers to sabotage his career

#128

Post by P5fRxh5kUvp2th »

alex_smart wrote: post #119
fareesh wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only prominent definition one could cite which includes national origin is the one used by the United Nations Popular dictionaries (Webster/Oxford) don't include national origin

"Indian" is not just an national identity but also an ethnic one. A person of Indian origin born in America or the UK is still very easily identifiable and is identified by their Indian identity. The usage of the word "racism" to include xenophobia is common enough in a casual context that I cannot believe that you are simply not aware of that usage. By choosing to argue over the semantics of the word racism over usa…

If you need such a broad term, use the word 'bias'. Racism has a specific meaning, people are holding to account for a reason.

Re: Former WSJ reporter says law firm used Indian hackers to sabotage his career

#129

Post by P5fRxh5kUvp2th »

anemoiac wrote: post #111
Aunche wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>So you get people renting out their backyard as a toxic waste dump. Or murdering people. Or breathing smog. Or selling children. Yet, despite all of this, these people are living longer, healthier, more educated, and less violent lives. A more redistrutive society would have the exact same number of greedy assholes as we do today, and they wouldn't be any more altruistic. The difference in our society is that a gree…

> A more redistrutive society would have the exact same number of greedy assholes as we do today Are you sure? Doesn't culture impact human behavior? Won't a society that encourages getting ahead at all costs produce a different social environment (with its own distinct behavioral incentives) than one with alternative priorities?

influence is not control.

This is a typical problem with technical people, where they're used to perfect authoritarian control.

Some children are going to see a puppy get run over and at a very young age and it's going to affect them in ways we can't even fully understand. One child may grow up just fine, the other may find themselves doing bad things 10 years down the road because it started them on a path due to whatever lesson they learned from it.

The fact that paedophiles exist is the glaring counter-example. There is no culture on this earth that finds it ok to have sex with a 5 year old, yet these people exist DESPITE that.

Re: Former WSJ reporter says law firm used Indian hackers to sabotage his career

#130

Post by P5fRxh5kUvp2th »

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #62
permo-w wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is a very salient way of explaining the need for wealth redistribution in society. this doesn't necessarily mean communism or socialism, but it should mean more Keynesian economics. high taxes on the rich - including rich corporations - and strong public spending in the right areas: education, small businesses, healthcare, and safety nets so people feel like they can take risks without having the fear of becomin…

Yeah, one of my big shifts politically as an adult was debunking more naive libertarian views I held when younger. I think an honest reading of post ww2 history shows you need both a healthy private and public sector. There's arguments about exactly where to draw the line, but evidence is countries prosper with 1/4 to 1/2 of their economy being redistributed through the public sector. Where to draw the line within th…

When people say this, do they ever consider that they're still wrong and will be "debunking" themselves in 10 years?
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