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In Chatlogs, Celebrated Hacker and Activist Confesses Countless Sexual Assaults
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- corndoge 9y agoAwful lot of filler and dramatic crescendos. Probably could have cut the word count in half. I also don't see the point in this trend of public character assassination in lieu of criminal charges. If someone raped you in the ass, and you're willing to publicize it on Twitter and Facebook and The Verge, file a criminal charge instead. But no, the real justice is getting their Twitter account stripped of it's verified status! Social media justice is just a bad joke.
- damnyou 9y agoA victim of a crime has the right to pursue justice in whichever way they please, as long as it's legal. Ruining someone's reputation is perfectly legal, last I checked.
- Idontknowmyuser 9y agoI thought, that we as society surrender our right to judge and punish criminal matters to the court, in exchange for a fair trial for each and everyone of us.
- maxerickson 9y agoJust the punishing is reserved for the legal system. For instance, at least in the US, we have pretty strong free speech laws, so you can publicly state opinions about almost anything, such things aren't reserved for courts.
- Idontknowmyuser 9y agoI'm by no way a lawyer, but don't you have libel laws? I thought that's why newspapers use allegedly when reporting on such incidents.
- maxerickson 9y agoSure, we have libel laws. And you can be sure that The Verge had a lawyer look at this piece.
- evgen 9y agoTruth is an affirmative defense against a libel claim.
- damnyou 9y agoNo. We give up the right to use violence to the court system. Not justice in general. Ruining a rapist's reputation is a perfectly fine way to achieve justice, if that's what the victim desires. Other ways to achieve justice outside the court system include protests, strikes, civil disobedience and so forth.
- Idontknowmyuser 9y agoThe problem is that while I can admit that most of the victims are indeed victims. It is also possible that some might be accused infairly or inaccurately.So I would not really call it a fine way.
- damnyou 9y agoThe general notion of "innocent until proven guilty" is simplistic even when applied to just the legal system. Even in criminal court you only have to establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. You do not have to "prove" guilt to the same degree of confidence as, say, the Higgs boson. This means that a small number of innocent people are convicted every year. This is unfortunate, but less bad than the alternative — the only way to guarantee no false positives is to never convict anyone. The legal system, like any other justice system, is about finding an appropriate balance between false negatives and false positives.
- Idontknowmyuser 9y agowhen we talk about proven in the empiric sense a margin of error is always expected. but what "innocent until proven guilty" guarantees is that best efforts were made to make sure that someone is really guilty. Trial by social media cannot reasonably offer such guarantees. Also, I presume you would agree that the police and by extension the court have better means than your average newspaper for determining guilt.
- damnyou 9y agoWhile the legal system might have more power than the average newspaper, that doesn't mean that it is more effective at determining guilt. I was raped 10 years ago when I was a teen. There is no evidence of the crime. No court is going to convict my rapist.
- anigbrowl 9y agoOnly a court can order someone incarcerated or stripped of their assets. As an individual you're perfectly free to shun someone who you think is guilty of atrocious behavior even if they haven't been convicted.
- gjjrfcbugxbhf 9y ago.
- damnyou 9y agoThe victim had presumably considered the trade-offs and made an appropriate choice. It is no one else's position to judge them. In the US, truth is an absolute defense against libel and slander.
- michaelsbradley 9y agocf. libel and slander, and consider that in the United States and many (but not all) societies, a person accused of a crime is to be considered innocent (in a legal context) until found guilty in a court of law (by jury or bench trial).
- maxerickson 9y agoTruth is the gold standard defense against slander and libel. So if someone is raped, they are pretty safe calling the attacker a rapist, they just can't call them a convicted rapist until a court has decided that.
- michaelsbradley 9y agoIt's not always safe. I sympathize with real victims, but some people abuse the principle to influence public opinion in hopes of driving things toward a big monetary settlement in civil court. A personal friend was falsely accused of sexually abusing a minor, really nasty accusations, changed his life forever even though he was/is innocent. An organization that champions the victims of such crimes went all out, and together with the alleged victim's parents slimed him hard, publicly and repeatedly, over a year+ while the thing wound its way through the courts; they were very careful to avoid use of the word "convicted." The press gave the slimeballs all sorts of coverage, as it was a noteworthy case. The criminal case was tossed, with harsh words from the judge for the prosecution, the alleged victim's civil case evaporated, and my friend sued the slimeballs in federal court. The result was the utter obliteration of the organization that slimed him, they are now defunct for all intents and purposes. My friend's suit made claims of injury by libel and slander, and conspiracy to commit the same.
- maxerickson 9y agoWhat does your comment have to do with So if someone is raped,, which is what I said?
- michaelsbradley 9y ago
- linarism 9y agoRape is traumatizing and the criminal prosecution process is not helpful in letting the victim recover. Imagine being told to recount the events in front of strangers countless times, while one party's job is to make anything you say doubtful and convince others you're wrong to be traumatized. At least with social media you only have to write it out once.
- Idontknowmyuser 9y agoImagine if other forms of violent assault were held at that standard.
- tptacek 9y agoThey are. For instance: more than one college basketball coach has been fired over allegations of physical abuse of players.
- Idontknowmyuser 9y agoI was not aware of that. You're right. Guess I'm too idealistic in my views.
- tptacek 9y agoIt's a strange sort of idealism that denies the victims of sexual abuse the agency to make their own decisions about how to relate those abuses to their peers.
- damnyou 9y agoThank you! I was about to say the exact same thing. First the act of rape takes away the victim's agency. Then random commenters on this site are presumptuous enough to try and take it away as well.
- Idontknowmyuser 9y agoWell to each his ideals and his priority of ideals. I for one think that: * social ostracisation is a form of punishment. * It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer. * social media in most cases are worse at determining guilt than the justice system. and view that: - social media and public opinion in general have favored the accused in the past( victim blaming,..) and as an overcorrecting favors the accuser now. In both cases such a system leads to unfairness and unregulated punishment. These 3 ideals and one experience lead me to prefer a world where all crimes no matter their nature are decided on by court. if that's strange, well I'm strange. Although, I'd like to say that in this idealised situation the victim is free to relate those abuses in his closed social circle and to the public after the judgment is made
- ImSkeptical 9y agoIf I understood the article, he has confessed to this behavior, there are many victims with similar stories, and corroborating evidence. I agree he should have a trial and a criminal conviction, but reporting the abundance of evidence that a person is a serial rapist hardly strikes me as "character assassination." What's especially troubling for me is that this was apparently known, by some, for a long time, and nothing effective was done to deter this person from committing additional rapes.
- timthelion 9y agoPeople keep on blaming women, asking "why didn't she come forward earlier". Simultaneously, many women HAVE gone to the police and the police have ignored them. Often times, cases where women came to the police and were ignored come to light only after many years. Don't you think that these maters should be solved in public so that at least it is publicly known that an accusation has been made?
- corndoge 9y agoI didn't blame women, and no I don't. Innocent until proven guilty. Hate all you want after the verdict comes in and not before.
- tptacek 9y agoThat's absolutely not how reputation works. Your logic is easily flipped onto its back: if they're lying, they're doing horrific damage to him. Why is he not suing? We know why he's not suing, and that's why he's finished.
- giggles_giggles 9y ago>Don't you think that these maters should be solved in public so that at least it is publicly known that an accusation has been made? Ideally, no, it would be settled in courts so that unsubstantiated allegations wouldn't damage the reputations of any innocents accused. What I would like to see in public is all of these cases the police are ignoring and those investigators brought to task, because they are presumably the root of the rot in the legal system which makes it such that the only perceivable route of justice is instead through the court of public opinion. I fail to understand why this isn't the primary political thrust of activists regarding this issue, seeing as that's the part of this equation addressable by public policy. Loss of trust and faith in the legal system is deadly to a society.. with that restored, these women would have justice, the perpetrators would be in jail where they belong, and the critics who call "witch hunt" wouldn't have a leg to stand on.
- runesoerensen 9y ago
- tomjen3 9y agoCorndoge below has been downvoted so badly that I can no longer reply, but he does have a point: the proper place to solve this is through the courts, not through the press.
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- rhizome 9y agoDo you know what the statute of limitations is for rape? Sexual assault?
- Buldak 9y ago> the proper place to solve this is through the courts Solve what? The question of whether he should be imprisoned or face other legal penalties, yes. But it's a mistake to conflate that with dealings with Marquis-Boire in general.
- mynewtb 9y agoThat person being 'Marquis-Boire', a name I have never heard before.
- kevinburke 9y agoSeveral comments in this thread seem to purport that we shouldn't say or assume anything about the truth of the matter until he is proven guilty in a court of law. That's a really ridiculous standard, for a few reasons: - The standard of proof in a criminal trial is "beyond a reasonable doubt", which is a very high bar to meet. (FWIW, I think it meets it in this case). We made it that high because we would rather a guilty person walk free than put an innocent person in jail. The costs of you and I incorrectly choosing not to associate with someone are far lower. There are other standards for guilt in other cases, such as "more probable than not" in civil trials. - A prosecutor may believe a crime has occurred but decline to bring a case for a number of reasons (limited budget, jurisdiction, statute of limitations, difficulty or unreliability of evidence, because they think they don't have a good chance to win) - We make decisions all the time about who we'll partner with, who we hire, who we fire, based on standards far lower than this. In general it's not a crime to be an asshole but you'd never say I should wait until it's proven in court before deciding not to hire one. There's more than enough evidence about this person specifically, and in most cases, for me/you to feel fine never associating with this person, or working with an organization he's involved with, ever again, even if a court of law never gets involved.
- trisimix 9y agoI would argue that, it's a high bar to meet to convict a guilty person. But the lowest possible bar to avoid convicting innocent people. At least in theory.
- Scarblac 9y agoThat is reasonable for individuals. But it's on here, in Google, lots of other sites -- millions of people who had never heard of him now form an opinion of him based on this article (or just the comments, or the headline). It's probably career destroying. That's in effect more like jail time than like some individuals shunning him.
- kevinburke 9y agoI'm not sure that I follow. My point is that credible allegations of repeated rape and sexual assault should be career destroying even if they are not met with a guilty sentence in a court of law. I could not in good conscience let this person near my coworkers or colleagues for fear for their own physical safety. I don't need a court to send him to jail to make that assessment.
- jnordwick 9y agoI am hoping more of those involved in technology come forward. I've heard horrible stories from others, and tech isn't immune to this national cleaning house that is long overdue. #metoo isn't just for the entertainment industry.
- stareatgoats 9y agoInnocent until proven guilty (in a court of law) has been put to the test and found lacking in the current wave of revelations. The main reason for this seems to be that too many appeal institutions have been protecting perps, out of some notion that such abuse is not important enough (or something!). Complaints have not been taken sufficiently seriously to start serious investigations leading to serious consequences. This is the situation which actually legitimizes public shaming of the perps, and which will allow victims (women mostly) to get a fairer hearing moving forwards, and not continue to be told to keep quiet and endure, or worse. And so we can hopefully expect to return to upholding 'innocent until proven guilty' once these (seemingly new) moral standards have taken hold even in places of authority. Because that is one of the hallmarks of a civilized society.
- geofft 9y agoIt's also important to remember that innocent until proven guilty is a check on the otherwise unchecked, absolute, and final power of the state depriving a citizen of their fundamental rights by imprisoning them. If you are not a state, it may well still be a good ideal, but it's not nearly as binding on you—in much the same way that e.g. free speech is also a good ideal for individuals and companies but you are not obligated to avoid having opinions on the content of speech the way the state is.
- anigbrowl 9y agoObviously, but the idea that we can only have one standard or the other seems like a false dichotomy. Maybe we should be looking at how to take a more Bayesian approach to legal decision-making.
- geofft 9y agoSure. The legal system does sort of support that - the standard of evidence in a criminal trial is a lot higher than in a civil suit. It's quite possible to be in a situation where for some reason the government cannot punish you for a crime (maybe failure to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, maybe expiry of the statute of limitations, which is also a check on the government's power), but someone can publish that you have committed a crime, and another suit will decide that what they've said is true enough to avoid them having libeled you. Or they can find you in breach of a contract where you said you wouldn't do what you did, etc. (My understanding is that this is basically why you sometimes see contracts banning illegal behavior. It's hard to prove illegal behavior to the extent required to throw you in prison, and that's a good thing, but it's easier to find you in breach of contract.)
- mlazos 9y agoSomething that gives me hope in the recent wave of sexual assault revelations is that I think we are getting closer to a point where victims are getting more comfortable reporting what has happened. As long as this trend continues this will allow opportunity for the justice system to actually work as intended because victims might feel comfortable enough to report what has happened before the statute of limitations has expired.
- deftturtle 9y agoWhatever became of Jacob Appelbaum? Plenty of people have accused him of sexual assault, but it's been months since I've heard anything.