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Kind of shitty that they immediately used the computers to fuck people over... The Ohio Inspector General says investigators found an inmate used the comp

Kind of shitty that they immediately used the computers to fuck people over... The Ohio Inspector General says investigators found an inmate used the computers to steal the identity of another inmate, and then submit credit card applications, and commit tax fraud. One inmate, Adam Johnston, reportedly admitted to applying for the credit cards, saying he just looked through the ODRC system for a young inmate with a long sentence, then used his information to get the cards. You'd hope that, provided access to something rare, the use would be benign and reasonable.

greglindahl 10y ago
Blekko had a contract with a VPN provider for search, and they were very popular in Egypt during the Arab Spring. We were hoping that we were powering curiosity about freedom, but the query stream was... 100% porn queries.
- nerdponx 10y ago
  To be fair, porn is pretty benign, and the freedom to consume the porn of your choice is something we probably take for granted too much in the United States.
  - ge96 10y ago
    I wonder with that privacy ISP thing... yeap this guy watches... doesn't take Big Data to figure this guy out.
Banthum 10y ago
People end up in prison for a reason. Though how I wish it wasn't so.
- cooper12 10y ago
  People have gone to the prison in the past solely because of the color of their skin or because of their religion. People today go to prison just for possessing a plant or criticizing their head of state. Let's not pretend that being in prison is anything other than a moral judgement rather than an indication of someone's character. It just makes it easier to dehumanize prisoners ("they deserve it") and harder for them to reintegrate ("they must have been a bad person to get into prison"). It's the same attitude where when someone does something drastic, people who knew them will say to the news "I never expected them to do such a thing" or "they were such a sweet person". It denies that we all have the potential to be criminals depending on societies POV and our own situation.
  - chongli 10y ago
    These, along with victim blaming, are examples of behaviour consistent with the Just World Hypothesis [0]. It's really frustrating how many people seem to fall into this cognitive trap but it's understandable. I can see how people who are more aware of the fact that the world is a cruel, unjust, and arbitrary place could fall into a deep depression. I have been there myself. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis
  - qb45 10y ago
    We need a program allowing prisoners to serve their sentence as home arrest at foster homes of volunteers to isolate them from their pathological upbringing and socialize them with law-abiding citizenry. To eliminate possibility of unjust moral judgments and discrimination, obviously the inmates would get to choose their hosts and not the other way around. I'm sure you would be happy to participate. Problem solved.
    - cooper12 10y ago
      Ah the good ol' tired "why don't you take refugees into your own home" argument. Why would I need to host them when I don't need to host a jail? The same thing with orphans and refugees. The government provides space for them paid for with my taxes. I don't invite every homeless person I see into my home permanently, doesn't mean I don't care about them or believe the government should combat the issue or open more shelters. Trying to put the onus on me saying "why don't you do it if you care so much" is just lazy deflection from the actual issue and a sad attempt of absolving anyone else of responsibility. Anyway, you invented a whole solution which had nothing at all to do with what I said; I never advocated against jails or anything to the effect, please improve your reading comprehension and construct better strawmen to sidetrack me with.
      - qb45 10y ago
        I don't think I have ever been more obviously sarcastic than here. Of course I knew very well that, despite painting prisoners as victims of moral judgments and suggesting that moral judgments are something wrong altogether, you wouldn't want this crowd anywhere near your house. With my comment, I only wanted to point out this exact hypocrisy. So thank you for confirming that my cynicism is justified. I feel better about myself now :)
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- djsumdog 10y ago
  Yes, they do. Sometimes it's cause cops make up a crime. Sometimes it's because they had a little bit of weed on them at a traffic stop. Sometimes it's because they commit a real crime that actually harms someone. Many times it's because one of the things above happened, they got out, wanted to go straight, and no one would hire them for anything because they had a criminal record. They tried to live straight, get some job training, but were low on money, could barely feed themselves with foodstamps and ended up stealing and back in prison. Or maybe it as something stupid like being caught begging with an open container not in a little brown bag. America has 1% of its population in the system (either incarcerate or on parole at some point in their lives). That's insane. Yea they end up there for a reason, but it's not the reason you think. The people who should be in jail (most congressmen and women, most senators, all the CEOs that ran banks during the 2008 financial collapse) aren't because they have power and money, which buys them a different level of justice than you or I.
  - a_puppy 10y ago
    According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics [0], 52% of convicted felons in state prisons are there for a violent crime; 18% for property crimes; 18% for drug crimes; and 9% for public order crimes [1]. Violent crimes obviously harm someone. I would guess that property crimes and some of the public order crimes do as well---remember that we're talking about felony convictions, which means crimes that resulted in a sentence of one year or more. For the sake of discussion we'll suppose that drug crimes never harmed anyone. So a reasonable estimate would be that around 3/4 of prisoners in state prisons are there because they committed a real crime that actually harms someone. Now obviously it's bad that 1/4 of prisoners are there for trivial reasons. In particular, we need to end the drug war. But you seem to think that the prisons are full of people who were caught with a speck of weed or who stole a loaf of bread to feed themselves, and that really isn't true. Minor crimes usually result in a fine, community service, or at most a few months in jail (which is not the same thing as prison). For the most part, people in prison are there because they did something genuinely bad. The original article mentioned one specific prisoner by name, an Adam Johnston; I found what I think is his record [3], and he's serving twenty years for murder. [0] https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p09.pdf https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p09.pdf [1] "Public order crimes" means "weapons, drunk driving, court offenses, commercialized vice, morals and decency offenses, liquor law violations, and other public-order offenses". [2] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d3/Felony_Sentences_in_State_Courts.pdf https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d3/Felony_S... [3] http://www.drc.state.oh.us/OffenderSearch/details.aspx?id=A414233&pg=x http://www.drc.state.oh.us/OffenderSearch/details.aspx?id=A4...
bonniemuffin 10y ago
I'm really surprised they did anything other than look at porn.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
codezero 10y ago
Or this is just the spin the prison puts on it to make it sound worse, and to justify their own incompetence. Imagine if this didn't happen at all, and the inmates used this just to get online. This is what I assume.
- djsumdog 10y ago
  I wouldn't put it past the prison either.

greglindahl 10y ago

Blekko had a contract with a VPN provider for search, and they were very popular in Egypt during the Arab Spring. We were hoping that we were powering curiosity about freedom, but the query stream was... 100% porn queries.

nerdponx 10y ago
To be fair, porn is pretty benign, and the freedom to consume the porn of your choice is something we probably take for granted too much in the United States.
- ge96 10y ago
  I wonder with that privacy ISP thing... yeap this guy watches... doesn't take Big Data to figure this guy out.

Banthum 10y ago

People end up in prison for a reason. Though how I wish it wasn't so.

cooper12 10y ago
People have gone to the prison in the past solely because of the color of their skin or because of their religion. People today go to prison just for possessing a plant or criticizing their head of state. Let's not pretend that being in prison is anything other than a moral judgement rather than an indication of someone's character. It just makes it easier to dehumanize prisoners ("they deserve it") and harder for them to reintegrate ("they must have been a bad person to get into prison"). It's the same attitude where when someone does something drastic, people who knew them will say to the news "I never expected them to do such a thing" or "they were such a sweet person". It denies that we all have the potential to be criminals depending on societies POV and our own situation.
- chongli 10y ago
  These, along with victim blaming, are examples of behaviour consistent with the Just World Hypothesis [0]. It's really frustrating how many people seem to fall into this cognitive trap but it's understandable. I can see how people who are more aware of the fact that the world is a cruel, unjust, and arbitrary place could fall into a deep depression. I have been there myself. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis
- qb45 10y ago
  We need a program allowing prisoners to serve their sentence as home arrest at foster homes of volunteers to isolate them from their pathological upbringing and socialize them with law-abiding citizenry. To eliminate possibility of unjust moral judgments and discrimination, obviously the inmates would get to choose their hosts and not the other way around. I'm sure you would be happy to participate. Problem solved.
  - cooper12 10y ago
    Ah the good ol' tired "why don't you take refugees into your own home" argument. Why would I need to host them when I don't need to host a jail? The same thing with orphans and refugees. The government provides space for them paid for with my taxes. I don't invite every homeless person I see into my home permanently, doesn't mean I don't care about them or believe the government should combat the issue or open more shelters. Trying to put the onus on me saying "why don't you do it if you care so much" is just lazy deflection from the actual issue and a sad attempt of absolving anyone else of responsibility. Anyway, you invented a whole solution which had nothing at all to do with what I said; I never advocated against jails or anything to the effect, please improve your reading comprehension and construct better strawmen to sidetrack me with.
    - qb45 10y ago
      I don't think I have ever been more obviously sarcastic than here. Of course I knew very well that, despite painting prisoners as victims of moral judgments and suggesting that moral judgments are something wrong altogether, you wouldn't want this crowd anywhere near your house. With my comment, I only wanted to point out this exact hypocrisy. So thank you for confirming that my cynicism is justified. I feel better about myself now :)
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
djsumdog 10y ago
Yes, they do. Sometimes it's cause cops make up a crime. Sometimes it's because they had a little bit of weed on them at a traffic stop. Sometimes it's because they commit a real crime that actually harms someone. Many times it's because one of the things above happened, they got out, wanted to go straight, and no one would hire them for anything because they had a criminal record. They tried to live straight, get some job training, but were low on money, could barely feed themselves with foodstamps and ended up stealing and back in prison. Or maybe it as something stupid like being caught begging with an open container not in a little brown bag. America has 1% of its population in the system (either incarcerate or on parole at some point in their lives). That's insane. Yea they end up there for a reason, but it's not the reason you think. The people who should be in jail (most congressmen and women, most senators, all the CEOs that ran banks during the 2008 financial collapse) aren't because they have power and money, which buys them a different level of justice than you or I.
- a_puppy 10y ago
  According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics [0], 52% of convicted felons in state prisons are there for a violent crime; 18% for property crimes; 18% for drug crimes; and 9% for public order crimes [1]. Violent crimes obviously harm someone. I would guess that property crimes and some of the public order crimes do as well---remember that we're talking about felony convictions, which means crimes that resulted in a sentence of one year or more. For the sake of discussion we'll suppose that drug crimes never harmed anyone. So a reasonable estimate would be that around 3/4 of prisoners in state prisons are there because they committed a real crime that actually harms someone. Now obviously it's bad that 1/4 of prisoners are there for trivial reasons. In particular, we need to end the drug war. But you seem to think that the prisons are full of people who were caught with a speck of weed or who stole a loaf of bread to feed themselves, and that really isn't true. Minor crimes usually result in a fine, community service, or at most a few months in jail (which is not the same thing as prison). For the most part, people in prison are there because they did something genuinely bad. The original article mentioned one specific prisoner by name, an Adam Johnston; I found what I think is his record [3], and he's serving twenty years for murder. [0] https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p09.pdf https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p09.pdf [1] "Public order crimes" means "weapons, drunk driving, court offenses, commercialized vice, morals and decency offenses, liquor law violations, and other public-order offenses". [2] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d3/Felony_Sentences_in_State_Courts.pdf https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d3/Felony_S... [3] http://www.drc.state.oh.us/OffenderSearch/details.aspx?id=A414233&pg=x http://www.drc.state.oh.us/OffenderSearch/details.aspx?id=A4...

bonniemuffin 10y ago

I'm really surprised they did anything other than look at porn.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

codezero 10y ago

Or this is just the spin the prison puts on it to make it sound worse, and to justify their own incompetence. Imagine if this didn't happen at all, and the inmates used this just to get online. This is what I assume.

djsumdog 10y ago
I wouldn't put it past the prison either.