What It’s Like to Get Online After 25 Years in Prison • Hacker News Board

Re: What It’s Like to Get Online After 25 Years in Prison

#91

Post by jtheory » Tue, Apr 23, 2013, 7:42 PM UTC

hackinthebochs wrote: post #62

salgernon wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Books. They are not backlit, and they get great battery life. Often, they have been localised.

Who is going to pay for books that are up-to-date enough to be useful as a teaching tool for modern life skills?

And which books are easily available to you in prison?

Obviously the tech world is worse than most for how rapidly information goes stale, but still -- compare working with a few copies of things like Netscape 3 For Dummies, Learn Windows 98 in 21 Days and the like with what you can find in 10 minutes searching online.

Also, most books (regardless of the topic) are actually pretty poorly done. Even most instructional books written by experts are bad; the skills in question don't often overlap with the difficult skills involved in effective teaching something complicated with only static text and graphics.

If you want a really good book, you choose your topic then start reading reviews & recommendations online before you buy something.

If you're in prison you won't even be able to effectively research what the good books are, never mind finding them.

Re: What It’s Like to Get Online After 25 Years in Prison

#92

Post by carlyle4545 » Tue, Apr 23, 2013, 7:56 PM UTC

winter_blue wrote: post #89

carlyle4545 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately there aren't any reassurances I can give you. Several code sections in CA prohibit insurance against "willful acts, wrongful acts and criminal acts." However, Comeback's goal with custodial insurance isn't to make the consequences of being convicted of crimes less severe, it's to reduce the likelihood of recidivism upon release. In a state where the recidivism rate is a staggering 65%, at a cost of tens…

> possibly even jail time Are you really ready to go to jail, yet again? That sounds quite bold, and foolish... of you. (No offense intended.) My 2 cents: if you start getting sued again, you should just leave the country, for some place[1] with not as inane laws. Perhaps Comeback might be more viable there. [1] Dunno where though... perhaps somewhere in Europe? They probably have low rates of recidivism to start wit…

>Are you really ready to go to jail, yet again? That sounds quite bold, and foolish... of you. (No offense intended.)

Fortune favors the bold and dances with the daring. I truly believe that.

>As a side point, I can't help but think -- a lot of the recidivism in the U.S. is somehow driven by laws and a system that continues to be upheld by the "stake holders". The stake holders here are, ofcourse those private "prison-as-a-business" corporations.

Bingo. Society has been using non-profit solutions, (i.e. government funded reentry programs) to combat a for-profit problem. It's time to fight fire with fire. Our revenue model relies on our ability to keep our policyholders out of jail. This means we're going to bust our ass to provide career training and job placement to reduce the likelihood of them returning to custody, thus reducing the likelihood of them filing a claim and us having to pay out. Our success is directly tied to the success of our policyholders. The better they do, the better we do. We're making it profitable to keep people out of jail.

Re: What It’s Like to Get Online After 25 Years in Prison

#93

Post by bjterry » Tue, Apr 23, 2013, 8:16 PM UTC

winter_blue wrote: post #88

bramcohen wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Low enforcement might start issuing warrants to hand over your customer list as a list of potential suspects. If I were you I'd start that rumor myself.

> If I were you I'd start that rumor myself. How would such a rumor help him at all? It would ruin his business! > Low enforcement I presume you were using some voice-to-text tool?

The rumor would presumably help him because it would discourage his clients from committing crimes, because they would be under additional scrutiny from law enforcement. It seems unlikely that it would actually matter though, since law enforcement already has a database of convicted felons that they go to first for crimes.

Re: What It’s Like to Get Online After 25 Years in Prison

#94

Post by carlyle4545 » Tue, Apr 23, 2013, 10:26 PM UTC

bjterry wrote: post #93

winter_blue wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I were you I'd start that rumor myself. How would such a rumor help him at all? It would ruin his business! > Low enforcement I presume you were using some voice-to-text tool?

The rumor would presumably help him because it would discourage his clients from committing crimes, because they would be under additional scrutiny from law enforcement. It seems unlikely that it would actually matter though, since law enforcement already has a database of convicted felons that they go to first for crimes.

>The rumor would presumably help him because it would discourage his clients from committing crimes,

That rumor would most likely discourage people from becoming clients in the first place.

While "getting out of the building" and talking to our assumed target demo, one of the reservations people had was the belief that we were working in concert with law enforcement.

Re: What It’s Like to Get Online After 25 Years in Prison

#95

Post by vacri » Tue, Apr 23, 2013, 11:24 PM UTC

MichaelApproved wrote: post #27

ffffruit wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give them access to a static, read-only dump of Wikipedia hosted on an internal prison server. Update said dump once every month.

You'd also want to limit it to the most vetted and monitored articles to prevent someone from the outside from leaving coded messages in articles. I figure the more popular articles could spot strange updates and eliminate them. There's also nothing urgent about the access they get. Articles could be restricted to 1 or 2 years old to further prevent the transfer of timely information.

Isn't worrying about coded info coming into the prison a bit silly, given that inmates have visiting rights? What kind of code could you put into a wikipedia article that you couldn't provide in a face-to-face?

Re: What It’s Like to Get Online After 25 Years in Prison

#96

Post by vacri » Tue, Apr 23, 2013, 11:28 PM UTC

legitsource wrote: post #47

jbrooksuk wrote: post #4

I've read about this guy before and what continues to puzzle me is how well versed his Internet terminology is. Things like "amazed me to see how the search engine indexed so much" just doesn't make sense, this guy was already aware of what indexing is and yet never used a computer inside prison? It also seems that he built up an entire online presence before he'd stepped out of prison, the way it reads.

That phrasing makes me think someone explained internet search engines like a card catalog at a library.

He also has access to TV and movies.

Re: What It’s Like to Get Online After 25 Years in Prison

#97

Post by nickzoic » Wed, Apr 24, 2013, 3:50 AM UTC

marbletiles wrote: post #32

nnq wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How hard it would be to develop a patched browser (on a secured os, plus a firewall of course) that would only allow "read only web access" (not form submitting, no way to manually go to an url by entering it) to a limited number of domains? I guess the number of dangerous inmates with advanced tech skills or outside resources is very low, so you could separate these high risk guys from the rest of the pack. There's…

Even a GET is a signal. As henchman on the outside I can create a page, linked from my wikipedia personal page or on some otherwise innocuous page, that says something like "Boss, should I off Big Tony? Click here for Yes, Click here for No" and wait to see which link he clicks.

Using a GET for this is okay, because `kill` is idempotent.

Re: What It’s Like to Get Online After 25 Years in Prison

#98

Post by jrochkind1 » Wed, Apr 24, 2013, 12:48 PM UTC

winter_blue wrote: post #90

jrochkind1 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "prison IP range"? What's that? There are literally thousands of prisons in the US (4500. We've got more than any other country in the world, go us.) Wikipedia certainly is not interested in the task of trying to track the IP addresses of each of these prisons. (Also, I can guarantee you that the vast majority of these prisons are served by under-resourced barely-competent IT departments.) (Also, it may not even…

I'm just wondering: is the high incarceration rate in the U.S. somehow connected to it's multi-ethnic makeup? In Europe, and other places/countries with more homogeneous ethnic makeups, the incarceration doesn't seem to be that high. Scandinavia, for example.

I think it is, in the sense that the US is a country founded on one group of people imprisoning and disposessing other groups of people for economic profit, with those groups differentiated by ethnicity. But NOT if you're suggesting that a place with a hetereogenous ethnic or cultural makeup is neccesarily more violent or something.

Also, in fact, when you say "in other places with X, the incarceration rate doesn't seem to be as high", X can be _anything_. The US has the highest incarceration rate on the planet, by a fairly wide margin. So in EVERY other place, with any characteristic at all, the incarceration rate isn't as high. Not in Scandinavia, not in China, not in any part of Africa, not in Mexico, not anywhere. The US is alone.