Live data from Hacker News

You've been added to the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List – how long will you survive?

statwonk.github.io

31–40 of 41 posts

Re: You've been added to the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List – how long will you survive?

#31
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think criminal society is that well integrated. Nor that the people commonly a part of it are particularly 'with it' individuals. After all - drawing left to right top to bottom, from the FBI most wanted list as of shortly before this post - we have: 1) Kidnap and murder of a little girl 2) Beating and raping a woman in march 1998 - Alleged beating, raping and murder of a second woman while out on bail 3) All…

I'm guessing you've never been to jail. There is a pervasive subculture with a long history there.

What does a pervasive subculture with a long history have to do with intelligence and planning/executing? I do not think that the existence of a "pervasive subculture with a long history" is meaningful/informative.

You have an isolated group of people: how surprising is it that a social animal develops its own culture distinct from the larger population that they are forcibly segregated from?

This social phenomena has persisted for a long time: Is the length of the history indicative of some quality unique to members of the subculture or is it one of the necessary byproducts of existence of a legal system?

Re: You've been added to the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List – how long will you survive?

#32

I worked as a lawyer in Chicago in the late 1990s and represented a client who was on the FBI top ten most wanted list. His name is Nate Hill. He was a Chicago drug dealer. He fled to Africa and was running a coffee business as a front. US Marshals flew to Africa, found him, kidnapped him, and put him on a flight back to O'Hare. More details on his case: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1999-05-25/news/990525017...

Are all arrests kidnappings? Or was there something not kosher about the execution of the warrant?

Re: You've been added to the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List – how long will you survive?

#33
post #32

I worked as a lawyer in Chicago in the late 1990s and represented a client who was on the FBI top ten most wanted list. His name is Nate Hill. He was a Chicago drug dealer. He fled to Africa and was running a coffee business as a front. US Marshals flew to Africa, found him, kidnapped him, and put him on a flight back to O'Hare. More details on his case: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1999-05-25/news/990525017...

Are all arrests kidnappings? Or was there something not kosher about the execution of the warrant?

He was on foreign soil in a country with no extradition treaty to the US. With the help of local bounty hunters, the Marshal's captured him, put a bag over his head, and put him on a plane back.

Re: You've been added to the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List – how long will you survive?

#34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good find! I guess my memory from back then was a little off. Still, super interesting case to work. I met Hill briefly in the MCC.

I can't imagine what it'd be like to work a case like that. Was he really friendly to you?

We spoke only for a few moments. I needed to visit him in the lockup to obtain a signature for some legal document. He seemed dazed but upbeat.

Re: You've been added to the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List – how long will you survive?

#36
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are all arrests kidnappings? Or was there something not kosher about the execution of the warrant?

He was on foreign soil in a country with no extradition treaty to the US. With the help of local bounty hunters, the Marshal's captured him, put a bag over his head, and put him on a plane back.

So, isn't that like invading a foreign country and breaking the law? Or so Americans think they can do anything they like? How'd they fill if some foreign power did the same in American soil?

Re: You've been added to the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List – how long will you survive?

#37
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was on foreign soil in a country with no extradition treaty to the US. With the help of local bounty hunters, the Marshal's captured him, put a bag over his head, and put him on a plane back.

So, isn't that like invading a foreign country and breaking the law? Or so Americans think they can do anything they like? How'd they fill if some foreign power did the same in American soil?

They do because they can. Others don't because they wouldn't dare.

The only exception is Mossad who have a history of both foreign soil kidnap and assassination. Russia has a history of assassination.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Alexander_Litvinen...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mordechai_Vanunu

Re: You've been added to the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List – how long will you survive?

#38
post #31
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing you've never been to jail. There is a pervasive subculture with a long history there.

What does a pervasive subculture with a long history have to do with intelligence and planning/executing? I do not think that the existence of a "pervasive subculture with a long history" is meaningful/informative. You have an isolated group of people: how surprising is it that a social animal develops its own culture distinct from the larger population that they are forcibly segregated from? This social phenomena ha…

What does a pervasive subculture with a long history have to do with intelligence and planning/executing?

Everything. The subculture is a mechanism by which an ethic of existence (or survival in this case) is propagated. Techniques, warning signs, all of these things. In this case, it is indeed unique to these people in that the techniques may only be useful when you are on the lam.

In fact, the uniqueness of this situation seems to be exactly what you are trying to handwave away as "it's own culture distinct," but you are ignoring the word itself: subculture exists not separate from other cultures, but as a part of them, and as a part of larger ones, such as the legal system. The legal system itself has a multitude of cultures: correctional officers have an interdependency with the judiciary, but you wouldn't say that they operate by the same terms. Judges and court reporters don't usually go to the same parties, and thus the culture of incarceration and evasion of the law also operate on their own terms and by the terms of the legal system at large. As a case in point, that is.

Re: You've been added to the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List – how long will you survive?

#39
post #30

Interesting article - the title however is not only misleading but disturbing. I clicked because it implied that the FBI had dispensed with the inconvenient laws and judicial system and just started killing fugitives when it found them. I mean, they sometimes do, but that's not what the article is about. If the author is reading, maybe change "will you survive" to "until you're found".

Thanks. Yeah, I worried it might be confusing. I use survival analysis and speak about how statisticians use jargon and I wanted that to be in the title somehow.

Re: You've been added to the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List – how long will you survive?

#40
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of these secondary factors (preparations, etc.) can themselves be regarded as "random" or at least unknowable in their extent and their effects. Much like lifetimes of individuals -- having some clear predictability on an individual basis, but in aggregate, well-modeled as random variables. To be a bit more abstract, just because something is "random" does not mean it cannot be characterized with a distribution,…

The effectiveness of preparation is not random. Charting the effectiveness of such efforts, were it possible to do so, might yield a random distribution; this does not, however, imply that "all of these secondary factors" can or should be "regarded as random" for anything more than a high-level treatment that becomes worthless in the (individual) context where it actually matters.

You don't understand statistics very well.
Post reply on HN