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>the US Treasury Department should impose fines on parents who want to pay the ransom for their kidnapped children Some countries does actually criminalize pay
by desdiv 6y ago
>the US Treasury Department should impose fines on parents who want to pay the ransom for their kidnapped children
Some countries does actually criminalize paying ransom for kidnapped children. The logic being that if society make it harder to pay ransoms (both via criminalization and strong currency controls at the bank), then less kidnappers will get paid, which leads to less kidnapped children (hopefully).
The vast majority of people in this thread probably disagree with such a law. I certainly do. But on the other hand I realize that if I had been born in one of these countries and lived there my whole life, I would probably be a fervent defender of such a law.
- ClumsyPilot 6y agoFrom my cursory reading of the topic, three is basically no precedent for jailing such ransom-paying parent, and securing a conviction with a jury is very unlikely
- desdiv 6y agoYes, I should probably clarify: the point of such a law is to _discourage_ the behavior, but not to actually _punish_ the ransom payer, since no jury is going to vote on putting grieving parents in jail. So you end up deterring ransom payments without actually introducing negative externalities.
- jart 6y agoThe Hacker News vocal minority gives off this vibe that they'd rather have something like the fda stop by at your office each week with an inspector who logs into the backup system and checks off boxes if your local tech union is complying with the regulations. I feel like I'm going to gag.