5 ms·

Ghost in the Cell

38 points by pmcpinto 9y ago

freedomben 9y ago
The debate surrounding the ethicality notwithstanding, it seems like an incredible waste of talent and ability to lock up someone with this kind of mind and work ethic. If for no other reason than this, I hope we can at least have a meaningful conversation about justice reform and the prison-industrial complex.
- FLUX-YOU 9y ago
  Usually that conversation is about lesser crimes, not murderers.
  - freedomben 9y ago
    Totally fair. A case where the perpetrator has deprived someone else of their right to life is a lot less clear cut than say a non-violent drug user.
- nkrisc 9y ago
  Agreed - assuming they had enough of a moral compass to apply that mind and work ethic to something good on the outside. His fraudulent activities would probably have been much easier to perform outside of prison.
- jasonmaydie 9y ago
  That's an interesting way to look at it. Apply your comment to Harvey Weinstein and see if you can give him a pass on an "incredible waste of talent and ability"
  - pizza 9y ago
    Weinstein is talented? Though, you could make this argument with Bill Cosby. World-class talent who went on a decades-long campaign of rapes and sexual assaults. Many people might now feel distraught their idol was a monster.
    - taobility 9y ago
      If Weinstein is talented it would be okay? Why talent matter his morality?
      - pizza 9y ago
        No, it still wouldn't be if he were. This is just about being dismayed by revelations about people whose fans used to look up to them.
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      > Weinstein is talented? Success as a producer probably involves significant skill/talent, of a similar kind that drives success in other organizational/leadership roles.
  - freedomben 9y ago
    Advocating for not locking people up isn't equivalent to arguing that there should be no enforcement of law or punishment for crimes committed, or as you say, giving someone "a pass". This seems to me an example of a false dilemma (logical fallacy). There are other strategies available besides either incarcerating someone or doing nothing at all. I simply think that in general locking people up is inefficient, ineffective, and immoral. There are certainly exceptions IMHO; I'm not an absolutist on this. But I think the actual cases that justify incarcerations are a small percentage of what we currently have.
    - watwut 9y ago
      The argument for not locking up was that "he works hard and has great mind". Imo, both are weak argument to treat that person any different if that person really commuted crime that would put less great hacker to prison.
      - freedomben 9y ago
        No, the argument for not locking up was that he is a human being and has rights, and incarceration is a barbaric practice that doesn't work anyway (if the stated goal is rehabilitation, which it usually is). Hard work and a great mind have nothing to do with the justification for not imprisoning him. Those come into play when considering the waste to society as a result of locking him up. I can see how the two positions were conflated, but hopefully this clarifies.
    - martin1975 9y ago
      Curious where you draw your morals from...
      - freedomben 9y ago
        This is a fantastic question. I tend to vacillate on this, and thus do not have as firm a foundation as I would personally like. However being honest with myself I have a lot of questions for which there are no easy answers. However what I haven't really waivered on is my resonance with Enlightenment values, especially John Stuart Mill. I like a lot of what Michael Shermer has to say regarding a scientific basis for morality. He has a book called The Moral Arc: How Science and Reason Lead Humanity toward Truth, Justice, and Freedom which I find quite interesting. Ultimately this may be the best ground on which to attack my argument, since it is a tripartite argument and one of those is based on morality. I will cede that the argument from morality is subjective, and ultimately some form of argument from authority which is a weak case.
- taobility 9y ago
  So the talent can ignore all laws and murder any people they want?
  - freedomben 9y ago
    Not sure if this is a troll or not, but I'll assume good faith. No I don't believe that to be the case at all. However the punishment or consequence(s) for violating a law (such as murder) should not involve incarceration. I am a big fan of restitution laws where the damages go to the victim, rather than the state. Obviously this isn't always applicable (such as murder where the victim is dead), and I do believe there truly are some people that are dangerous enough to warrant incarceration (although I reserve that for only the most severe cases). But we're way off balance IMHO.
    - goialoq 9y ago
      So if a murderer shouldn't be incarcerated or pay restitution, then what?
    - Sangermaine 9y ago
      > I am a big fan of restitution laws where the damages go to the victim, rather than the state. So people should be able to kill others and just have to pay a fine to the estates/heirs of the victims?
    - crpatino 9y ago
      There are many things that are not right with current law enforcement and prision systems, but preventing murderers from roaming around is not one of them. I agree that the current state of affairs is far from perfect. Most often than not prisions are universities of crime where individuals of less than great ethics get to know and work with the truly dangerous fuckers, and it may be the case that they don't really have an option to say no. Furthermore, there are many victimless crimes that would not grant imprisonment in the first place, if we lived in a fair world. But there are limits to the rights of individuals, and those come when they vulnerate the rights of other individuals and of general society. We need to put that people behind bars, basically because they are still human beings and we cannot just execute them (which would be easier and cheaper). This, by the way, has nothing to do with how dreadful their crimes were; it is a function of how difficult costly is to prevent them from acting from the inside of the prision. If you strangle toodlers for fun, we can put you in a cell with big burly adults and 50 miles away from any population center and you are neutralized. If you own billions of dollars in illicit funds, and can command others to keep your empire in good health, it gets harder. If you prove that you can keep commiting crimes even from inside jail, it argues pretty badly for a lethal injection.
- wil421 9y ago
  Being in prison is kinda like being a high school kid. You have endless hours to do whatever you want and all of your needs are met. It’s easy to be smart and learn when you have nothing to do.
jasonmaydie 9y ago
> Brady alerted the staff, and a lieutenant squeezed into the cramped space, snapping photos to document what they’d found. A couple of inmates pulled down the computers, and carted them away. Brady later told investigators that he didn’t realize just how troubling the discovery was. “It didn’t click for me that, oops, this might be a crime scene until after we had found everything,” he said. “And a couple days later, I went, ‘Ah, shit.’” really? you found a lowly computer sitting in a ceiling in a prison and he didn't think much about it?
- olympus 9y ago
  Brady was the IT guy, thinking about crimes wasn't his gig. The inmates weren't going to say anything. If the lieutenant mentioned is a police LT and not just a generic term for assistant, then it's the lieutenant's fault for not mentioning that it was obviously illegal. I think the distinction that needs to be made is that hiding a computer in the ceiling is breaking the prison's rules, but not illegal in itself. There is no law saying that felons can't access the internet- that prohibition only happen in specific cases related to computers (fraud, child porn distribution, etc.). It could have been that the inmates were just browsing the internet, which isn't illegal. Brady the IT guy didn't think that convicts have less to lose and are more likely to conduct actually illegal activities with their computer network.
scardine 9y ago
For a minute I thought this was about genetics (I'm listening "The Selfish Gene"[1] audiobook). [1] http://a.co/i5iN6Jm http://a.co/i5iN6Jm
- discreditable 9y ago
  An affiliate link? :/
  - scardine 9y ago
    No, it is not. I gain nothing from this link, I just like the subject and the audiobook is very good.
    - discreditable 9y ago
      > senderCustomerId=A15Z0B2L8G0ZY > Let Paulo know I've redeemed this audiobook. I'm not super familiar with audible but it seems like it could be.
feedjoelpie 9y ago
The buried headline here is that the AFL-CIO apparently used prison labor.
Mz 9y ago
I think one of the takeaways here is that "the virtual world" and "the real world" are not as separate as many people seem to think. I used this fact to good effect to escape homelessness. But, like anything, it can be used for either good or ill. We should perhaps be more mindful of that then we seem to be, on the whole. It is a central element of a lot of complaints about things like Facebook. What happens online has real world consequences, contrary to what a lot of people would like to assert when they are being assholes somewhere on the internet.

38 points by pmcpinto 9y ago

The debate surrounding the ethicality notwithstanding, it seems like an incredible waste of talent and ability to lock up someone with this kind of mind and work ethic. If for no other reason than this, I hope we can at least have a meaningful conversation about justice reform and the prison-industrial complex.

FLUX-YOU 9y ago
Usually that conversation is about lesser crimes, not murderers.
- freedomben 9y ago
  Totally fair. A case where the perpetrator has deprived someone else of their right to life is a lot less clear cut than say a non-violent drug user.
nkrisc 9y ago
Agreed - assuming they had enough of a moral compass to apply that mind and work ethic to something good on the outside. His fraudulent activities would probably have been much easier to perform outside of prison.
jasonmaydie 9y ago
That's an interesting way to look at it. Apply your comment to Harvey Weinstein and see if you can give him a pass on an "incredible waste of talent and ability"
- pizza 9y ago
  Weinstein is talented? Though, you could make this argument with Bill Cosby. World-class talent who went on a decades-long campaign of rapes and sexual assaults. Many people might now feel distraught their idol was a monster.
  - taobility 9y ago
    If Weinstein is talented it would be okay? Why talent matter his morality?
    - pizza 9y ago
      No, it still wouldn't be if he were. This is just about being dismayed by revelations about people whose fans used to look up to them.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > Weinstein is talented? Success as a producer probably involves significant skill/talent, of a similar kind that drives success in other organizational/leadership roles.
- freedomben 9y ago
  Advocating for not locking people up isn't equivalent to arguing that there should be no enforcement of law or punishment for crimes committed, or as you say, giving someone "a pass". This seems to me an example of a false dilemma (logical fallacy). There are other strategies available besides either incarcerating someone or doing nothing at all. I simply think that in general locking people up is inefficient, ineffective, and immoral. There are certainly exceptions IMHO; I'm not an absolutist on this. But I think the actual cases that justify incarcerations are a small percentage of what we currently have.
  - watwut 9y ago
    The argument for not locking up was that "he works hard and has great mind". Imo, both are weak argument to treat that person any different if that person really commuted crime that would put less great hacker to prison.
    - freedomben 9y ago
      No, the argument for not locking up was that he is a human being and has rights, and incarceration is a barbaric practice that doesn't work anyway (if the stated goal is rehabilitation, which it usually is). Hard work and a great mind have nothing to do with the justification for not imprisoning him. Those come into play when considering the waste to society as a result of locking him up. I can see how the two positions were conflated, but hopefully this clarifies.
  - martin1975 9y ago
    Curious where you draw your morals from...
    - freedomben 9y ago
      This is a fantastic question. I tend to vacillate on this, and thus do not have as firm a foundation as I would personally like. However being honest with myself I have a lot of questions for which there are no easy answers. However what I haven't really waivered on is my resonance with Enlightenment values, especially John Stuart Mill. I like a lot of what Michael Shermer has to say regarding a scientific basis for morality. He has a book called The Moral Arc: How Science and Reason Lead Humanity toward Truth, Justice, and Freedom which I find quite interesting. Ultimately this may be the best ground on which to attack my argument, since it is a tripartite argument and one of those is based on morality. I will cede that the argument from morality is subjective, and ultimately some form of argument from authority which is a weak case.
taobility 9y ago
So the talent can ignore all laws and murder any people they want?
- freedomben 9y ago
  Not sure if this is a troll or not, but I'll assume good faith. No I don't believe that to be the case at all. However the punishment or consequence(s) for violating a law (such as murder) should not involve incarceration. I am a big fan of restitution laws where the damages go to the victim, rather than the state. Obviously this isn't always applicable (such as murder where the victim is dead), and I do believe there truly are some people that are dangerous enough to warrant incarceration (although I reserve that for only the most severe cases). But we're way off balance IMHO.
  - goialoq 9y ago
    So if a murderer shouldn't be incarcerated or pay restitution, then what?
  - Sangermaine 9y ago
    > I am a big fan of restitution laws where the damages go to the victim, rather than the state. So people should be able to kill others and just have to pay a fine to the estates/heirs of the victims?
  - crpatino 9y ago
    There are many things that are not right with current law enforcement and prision systems, but preventing murderers from roaming around is not one of them. I agree that the current state of affairs is far from perfect. Most often than not prisions are universities of crime where individuals of less than great ethics get to know and work with the truly dangerous fuckers, and it may be the case that they don't really have an option to say no. Furthermore, there are many victimless crimes that would not grant imprisonment in the first place, if we lived in a fair world. But there are limits to the rights of individuals, and those come when they vulnerate the rights of other individuals and of general society. We need to put that people behind bars, basically because they are still human beings and we cannot just execute them (which would be easier and cheaper). This, by the way, has nothing to do with how dreadful their crimes were; it is a function of how difficult costly is to prevent them from acting from the inside of the prision. If you strangle toodlers for fun, we can put you in a cell with big burly adults and 50 miles away from any population center and you are neutralized. If you own billions of dollars in illicit funds, and can command others to keep your empire in good health, it gets harder. If you prove that you can keep commiting crimes even from inside jail, it argues pretty badly for a lethal injection.
wil421 9y ago
Being in prison is kinda like being a high school kid. You have endless hours to do whatever you want and all of your needs are met. It’s easy to be smart and learn when you have nothing to do.

jasonmaydie 9y ago

> Brady alerted the staff, and a lieutenant squeezed into the cramped space, snapping photos to document what they’d found. A couple of inmates pulled down the computers, and carted them away. Brady later told investigators that he didn’t realize just how troubling the discovery was. “It didn’t click for me that, oops, this might be a crime scene until after we had found everything,” he said. “And a couple days later, I went, ‘Ah, shit.’” really? you found a lowly computer sitting in a ceiling in a prison and he didn't think much about it?

olympus 9y ago
Brady was the IT guy, thinking about crimes wasn't his gig. The inmates weren't going to say anything. If the lieutenant mentioned is a police LT and not just a generic term for assistant, then it's the lieutenant's fault for not mentioning that it was obviously illegal. I think the distinction that needs to be made is that hiding a computer in the ceiling is breaking the prison's rules, but not illegal in itself. There is no law saying that felons can't access the internet- that prohibition only happen in specific cases related to computers (fraud, child porn distribution, etc.). It could have been that the inmates were just browsing the internet, which isn't illegal. Brady the IT guy didn't think that convicts have less to lose and are more likely to conduct actually illegal activities with their computer network.

scardine 9y ago

For a minute I thought this was about genetics (I'm listening "The Selfish Gene"[1] audiobook). [1] http://a.co/i5iN6Jm http://a.co/i5iN6Jm

discreditable 9y ago
An affiliate link? :/
- scardine 9y ago
  No, it is not. I gain nothing from this link, I just like the subject and the audiobook is very good.
  - discreditable 9y ago
    > senderCustomerId=A15Z0B2L8G0ZY > Let Paulo know I've redeemed this audiobook. I'm not super familiar with audible but it seems like it could be.

feedjoelpie 9y ago

The buried headline here is that the AFL-CIO apparently used prison labor.

Mz 9y ago

I think one of the takeaways here is that "the virtual world" and "the real world" are not as separate as many people seem to think. I used this fact to good effect to escape homelessness. But, like anything, it can be used for either good or ill. We should perhaps be more mindful of that then we seem to be, on the whole. It is a central element of a lot of complaints about things like Facebook. What happens online has real world consequences, contrary to what a lot of people would like to assert when they are being assholes somewhere on the internet.