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Blackmail as a Victimless Crime: Reply to Altman (1998)
81–90 of 102 posts
Re: Blackmail as a Victimless Crime: Reply to Altman (1998)
#82I'll bite. Was canceling celebrities throughout the 2010s victimless?
Yes, celebrities don't count as human
Re: Blackmail as a Victimless Crime: Reply to Altman (1998)
#83Blackmail is a stupid crime, because you could basically always do it in a way that doesn’t fit the definition of the crime. The threat never has to be directly made, and the offer never has to be directly associated with it. Only the clumsiest blackmail practitioner would ever find themselves creating evidence of a blackmail crime.
> Only the clumsiest blackmail practitioner would ever find themselves creating evidence of a blackmail crime.
Unless they are deliberately creating environments where multiple people would be susceptible to being blackmailed. Jeffrey had plenty of security cameras.
Re: Blackmail as a Victimless Crime: Reply to Altman (1998)
#84insider trading, a victimless crime
How are you not a victim if the secret is a compromising photograph? Surely, everyone is naked at times, still when secretly captured on camera, you can become a victim. (Edit: this was supposed to be a root comment)
Blackmail doesn't always only involve the blackmail target. There can be other victims as a result of collateral damage from the blackmailing process.
Re: Blackmail as a Victimless Crime: Reply to Altman (1998)
#85There's a very simple explanation: Rules are created to optimize outcomes, not to be logically consistent. That's it. People who think everything flows from a small set of elegant axioms are wrong. Such systems never survive contact with reality, because reality is messy and not mathematically elegant. Rules are also created by multiple parties, in multiple circumstances, and with various compromises, tradeoffs, subj…
> It allows one to wield far more power than one would legitimately wield.
Historically, even law could not stop this if the blackmail material was damaging enough and the targets powerful enough.
Re: Blackmail as a Victimless Crime: Reply to Altman (1998)
#86Is this what passes for "insight" in economics nowadays? Can't wait to hear this author use the same logic elsewhere. "It's legal to wish for someone's death, and legal to hand over briefcases full of cash. In this paper I will demonstrate how hiring a hitman is, in fact, ..." or "It's well-known that hydrogen is an explosive gas, and oxygen is an explosive gas, Q.E.D., the author maintains that the chemical H2O shou…
> Can't wait to hear this author use the same logic elsewhere.
It doesn’t look pretty - he has written a book with the same logic about how discrimination based on sex, race and sexuality is totally fine.
Re: Blackmail as a Victimless Crime: Reply to Altman (1998)
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hanged. Just a small nitpick probably unworthy of HN, but it might lead someone to see why I posted, and the difference.
I can't see; could you explain pls.
Contextually, it hardly matters. However, "hung", as described of a person (usually male), typically refers to the endowment of their genitals and "hanged" will refer to the result of "hanging" as a method of execution.
Re: Blackmail as a Victimless Crime: Reply to Altman (1998)
#88Literally none of this matters by the way. Within the next 10 years, any form of blackmail is going to be falsifiable due to generative AI. Anyone who has been blackmailed will have plausible deniability if their blackmailer decides to release the blackmail material itself.
Re: Blackmail as a Victimless Crime: Reply to Altman (1998)
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
Basic evidence is that the victim makes a connection between the threat and the offer. It is illegal to cause this connection. One can try plausible deniability but it's a gamble. Very smart people get convicted on circumstational evidence.
The threat is a necessary element of the crime. To convict somebody of extortion or blackmail you have to prove that the threat occurred, and that the accused intended to make the threat (which is slightly different in the case of extortion via intimidation rather than threat). Extortion is not a strict liability crime, and the interpretation you've provided doesn't account for the mens rea requirement. If your inter…
Yes my wording was incomplete. It requires intent, just causing the connection is not enough. What I wanted to say is that it's hard not to leave evidence of one's intent. And be it circumstantial. So while I'm sure a lot of blackmail happens with most cases never reaching the courts, I'm also sure that even people who are smart about it run the risk of a conviction.
Re: Blackmail as a Victimless Crime: Reply to Altman (1998)
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the US, publishing true information generally cannot be defamation.
I think that you may even be legally bound to reveal certain true information that you've come across, regardless of whether that would be humiliating for someone (say, information about a corrupt politician taking bribes).
I don't think that's the case, outside of some very specific crimes and roles (for instance, mandatory reporters of indicators of child abuse).
If you're a politician and I find out you're taking bribes, I don't have a legal obligation to tell anybody. I just can't blackmail you about it.