26 ms·
Woman allegedly impersonated prosecutor, dropped charges against herself
- bryanrasmussen 6y agoamusingly enough, coming from the EU the site told me: "451: Unavailable due to legal reasons"
- parliament32 6y agoPlay stupid games, win stupid prizes.
- madsbuch 6y agoWell, if the prices are 1. the legal tools to make Spotify not lockin ones personal content and 2. Read some random article on the internet where the publisher actively does not want to protect the readers privacy then I think I know what price I want.
- jedberg 6y ago> where the publisher actively does not want to protect the readers privacy You don't know that. They may take privacy very seriously, but don't see any point in risking possible GDPR issues, especially if they get no income from people in Europe.
- garmaine 6y agoI really don’t. You’re telling me some music app is more important than being able to access local news from other regions?
- Swenrekcah 6y agoA vpn is always an option, and it's commoditized enough. Eventually all regions that pretend to care about their citizens freedom should adopt a GDPR like law.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago> Eventually all regions that pretend to care about their citizens freedom should adopt a GDPR like law. But unless they all adopt the same one, the requirements will all be different, which means they'd each have independent compliance costs, which means local news providers like this will still block everybody outside of their own jurisdiction so that they only have to pay one set of compliance costs instead of sixteen or a hundred.
- parliament32 6y agoExactly. Attempting to regulate the internet will always end in failure, as we've seen again and again. The EU's initiatives are very noble but I think: as they try to keep enforcing their laws and fines, they're just going to end up with less content being available to people in their jurisdiction. You thought copyright region-restrictions were bad.. just wait until Spotify refuses to serve your continent because compliance is costing more than the profits you generate.
- Swenrekcah 6y agoIf spotify stops taking my money I and millions others will go buy music somewhere else. Spotify is not exactly popular with non-superstar musicians either.
- parliament32 6y agoLike where? It's not exactly a bustling market -- Google is dead since they killed Play Music and tried to force everyone to YT, Apple Music pretty much only appeals to Apple users, and all the other alternatives have relatively small catalogs. I'm not trying to be combative, I'm legitimately asking: what alternatives to Spotify are there?
- madsbuch 6y agoActually, no. Try to reread the comment.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- think814 6y agoGDPR FTW
- quercusa 6y ago451 is a great status code, right up there with 418.
- smabie 6y agoNot better than 420. You could say that 420 is the highest of all status codes
- maxcbc 6y agoMy favourite part of GDPR is getting to use 451 legitimately everywhere.
- OJFord 6y agoI'm not sure it is really though is it? It's legitimate in the same way that '451: we want to load up our site with so much javascript your computer catches fire and burns your house down, but that's illegal in your jurisdiction so this site is Unavailable for Legal Reasons' is. To me 451 is like 404 (nothing here) and 410 (was something here but now there isn't) - it's a further progression/specificity to 'was/sort of is something here but it's not presently available for legal reasons'. Common obvious one is DMCA takedown notices, but it might also be an injunction, or even accidentally published while still under embargo - or deliberately to prime SEO (not advice) - or NDA, etc.
- ben_w 6y agoIt’s a Carol business decision that letting Alices & Bobs view content for free isn’t cost effective if Carol isn’t allowed to track Alice and Bob without their permission and make money by letting Eve, who is unknown Alice and Bob, to build up a detailed profile of Alice and Bob. Project Guttenberg in Germany (and The Pirate Bay in the USA, I think) would be 451.
- wizzwizz4 6y agoWhy is Project Gutenberg illegal in Germany?
- jedberg 6y agoFor local news organizations who don't get any revenue from foreign viewers, it's much cheaper (and more profitable) to just block Europeans than to try and comply with GDPR.
- guitarbill 6y agothis isn't correct, and i wish it would stop being repeated on HN. if you don't target/do business with Europeans specifically, there is nothing to comply with. what jurisdiction does Europe have? however, a lot of "small", local news organisations are actually owned by huge (multi-national) corporations. they might work hard to preserve that small appearance, but do have a reason to fear the GDPR.
- jedberg 6y ago> if you don't target/do business with Europeans specifically, there is nothing to comply with. what jurisdiction does Europe have? Because as you said yourself, they're part of a large organization that DOES do business with Europe, but that part of the business doesn't get any money from Europe, so there is no reason for that part of the business to go to the effort of complying.
- guitarbill 6y agosure, if they do business with Europe, they should be complying with the laws. i don't think that's controversial. you said "local news organizations", and i was simply pointing out if that is what they truly were, they wouldn't have to comply. so i think we agree?
- jedberg 6y agoEven for a truly local news org, it might make more sense to just block Europeans then allow them, because Article 3(2) of the GDPR, which gives the EU extraterritorial powers to prosecute. While it's never been tested, there is a good chance the USA would cooperate with an extraterritorial prosecution, and so it's easier to just avoid it altogether by blocking Europeans.
- tzs 6y agoEven if any tracking your site does already fully complies with GDPR as does your handling of personal data, it still takes some effort and costs some money if GDPR actually applies to your site. If you are not in Europe, the main thing that determines whether or not GDPR applies to your site is Article 3 of the GDPR, "Territorial Scope", and the corresponding Recitals. A big factor there is whether you are offering goods or services in the Union, irrespective of whether or not users have to pay. Mere accessibility from the Union isn't enough to show you are offering things in the Union. What matters is whether or not the site "envisages offering services to data subjects in one or more Member States in the Union". There are several things that can show you are envisaging offering in the Union. Having localized versions of your site in languages that are used in the Union but not in your own country, accepting payment in Euros or the national currencies of Union members, targeting Europeans with ads for your site, and many others. If you aren't doing those things, it gets more subjective. If your site should be of no interest to Europeans, and you don't expect to make any money from whatever Europeans happen to somehow end up on it, it is simplest to do a geoip block on Europe. That should conclusively establish that you do not envisage offering services to people in the Union.
- mytailorisrich 6y agoIt's not only offering goods and services but also "monitoring of behaviour" so analytics and tracking, which, strictly speaking, makes the GDPR applicable to most websites on this planet. In practice, if you don't have high visibility (i.e are small enough, which probably means 90% of websites) and don't have any presence in the EU then just ignore GDPR because no-one is going to go after a website on another continent because it tracks visitors and sometimes people from the EU visit it.
- nabilhat 6y agoIt's just bulk distributed townnews dot com generated content. Search the name "Lisa Landon" to find the verbatim story in dozens of tabloid rags. Some of them are east of the Atlantic.
- willis936 6y agoI thought it was suspicious that the Useless Leader managed to publish an interesting piece.
- fauria 6y agoThe Four Internets... https://stratechery.com/2020/india-jio-and-the-four-internets/ https://stratechery.com/2020/india-jio-and-the-four-internet...
- pornel 6y agoGood to know that their business model is illegal in 27 countries.
- eli 6y agoGDPR requires far more than a compatible business model. In practice, you need a consultant and maybe a lawyer to help with the paperwork and that's assuming all the processes are basically in compliance.
- mgraczyk 6y agoInterestingly, I get this from my US corporate VPN as well
- divbyzer0 6y agohttps://outline.com/3jtrdR https://outline.com/3jtrdR
- fatboy 6y agoarchive link: https://web.archive.org/web/20201028172931/https://www.unionleader.com/news/courts/woman-accused-of-impersonating-prosecutor-dropping-criminal-charges-against-herself/article_1fdb1551-147d-53dd-ad45-6680bfc556fa.html?block_id=897573 https://web.archive.org/web/20201028172931/https://www.union...
- danellis 6y agoThanks. I'm visiting the UK, and I'm astonished at how many sites are blocked.
- cannam 6y agoThey're not blocked, they're blocking themselves.
- noir_lord 6y agoYep, so far "We can't serve you for legal reasons AKA we won't comply with the reasonable provisions of data protection" has been met with a broad shrug.
- OwlsParlay 6y agoFor US-based news sites they might well only get a few European visitors. I only ever get this problem for trending stories like this.
- viraptor 6y agoIf a US site does not have any presence in the EU and is not selling anything to the EU visitors, why would they even bother adding the blocking? They can... do nothing instead. (Or disable buying subscription to the EU)
- solarkraft 6y ago
- racl101 6y agoWhen you kobayashi maru the legal system.
- sabujp 6y agothis is the most hilarious thing i've seen on HN and your comment made me roflmao more
- snazz 6y agoI gotta try that in my next interview.... For those of you who missed it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junior_Salesman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junior_Salesman
- Izkata 6y agoThe Kobayashi Maru is actually from Star Trek. Original context: The Kobayashi Maru refers to a no-win scenario given to the command-track students of Starfleet Academy. They aren't told it's a no-win situation, the goal is to make sure they can keep calm and see how they cope with the situation. In the scenario, they're in command of a starship and have to rescue another ship, named the Kobayashi Maru, but in doing so they fall into a trap that results in both ships being destroyed and all crew killed. TOS-era Captain Kirk was the first to win the no-win scenario. He did so by cheating: reprogramming the computer.
- snazz 6y agoIn that episode of The Office, Clark uses that Star Trek reference and his superior knowledge of the position he's applying to to get the job instead of Dwight's friends. I'm aware that it's from Star Trek (that's also mentioned in the episode), but I appreciate your detailed explanation! Kobayashi Maru + the word "interview" makes it a double reference :)
- katurian 6y agoclever girl
- mrlonglong 6y agoWith smarts like that she could make something of herself, rather than go down the path of criminality. Edited for typos.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- hutzlibu 6y agoJudging from the outside is always easy.
- giantg2 6y agoNot necessarily. For one, it probably doesn't take much smarts to fill out the paperwork or trick the system. The system is full of people who don't know their job and have no real incentive to (can be difficult to fire government employees). For example, I am involved with a case in which a state trooper made 4 or 5 mistakes, including mis-citing a statute so badly that the court system shows it as invalid and he lacked probable cause to write the citation under the statute that he tried to cite, and thus we were subjected to unjust restrictions for weeks. The trooper even lied to the judge. I filed a complaint and the subsequent investigation confirmed his mistakes, yet he still has a job... after lying to a judge in court to cover up his mistakes... Did I mention that the judge in the case was replaced because he was arrested on multiple charges (gambling with campaign funds, perjury, etc). The courthouse will not give us replies to many of our requests, such as our petition under the pertainate judicial rule to dismiss the case. They can't even issue a correctly formed subpoena duces tecum. So yeah, I feel disillusioned with the effectiveness and legitimacy of the system. Our lives are ruled by morons. I'm considering contacting a civil rights lawyer so this stuff doesn't happen to others in the future. Second, intelligence is often the most overstated component to success according to many studies on the topic.
- 6y ago
- throwawaymanbot 6y agoGenius!
- pwinnski 6y agoIt's amusing that the reason this was caught was a human picked up the phone and said, hey, is this right? She would have gotten away it, too, if it weren't for that meddling forensic examiner!
- dylan604 6y agoThe forensic details are lacking. Sure, it would be natural to suspect the person benefiting the most from the charges being dropped. However, do they have her personal home IP address shown accessing the system? Also, if the court system can be so easily manipulated, it might be time to take a look at that.
- throwaway0a5e 6y agoI give her 40% odds of beating the headline charges. Not a chance in hell she's walking away without at least a misdemeanor of some sort though. On one hand: It's not exactly a stretch to imagine her boyfriend doing it on her behalf or something similar. A middling defense lawyer should be able to create enough doubt (barring some unreported facts that are damning for the defense). If the government's processes are so broken that this could happen as they say it did then she deserves to walk free for giving them the free audit. If she's really such a bad person they'll catch her again for something else. On the other hand: Hillsboro county is the second worst jurisdiction in NH in which to be accused of committing a crime against the government (Cheshire county is hands down the best any day). It's going to be almost impossible for a jury to not have at least a few people who take the view "I don't care if she did it, there's a reasonable chance she did and someone must pay for this". This is assuming it goes to jury trail (only a moron would go for a bench trial when the crime is against "the system" though).
- tclancy 6y agoCan you expand on the part about various counties and what you mean? Just in case I ever decide to commit a crime round these parts.
- scintill76 6y ago> In several instances, she used the New Hampshire court system’s electronic system to file documents. This suggests that there is either no authentication (insane), or any display of the authenticated sender is being ignored by people just looking at the claimed sender in the headings of papers (disappointing, a failure of the court processes at the human level, and probably a UX shortcoming.)
- Zigurd 6y agoThat smirk on her face seems well deserved, even in what might be a mugshot
- squeezingswirls 6y agoShe looks like John Belushi doing a Saturday Night Live sketch
- itronitron 6y agoThat is the smirk of someone that is just getting started.
- triceratops 6y agoPrime r/madlads material.
- nojokes 6y agoYou were not wrong https://www.reddit.com/r/madlads/comments/jjtrto/woman_allegedly_posed_as_prosecutor_dropped/ https://www.reddit.com/r/madlads/comments/jjtrto/woman_alleg...
- supernova87a 6y agoI guess this brings up and interesting issue -- once someone knows the ins and outs of a system, sometimes there are very few barriers internally to check that an order/paperwork is legit. There was a story in WSJ like last week about how the Japanese red stamp / seal still survives and is a barrier to them adopting new technology for practical every day speeding up of tasks. And keeps things like faxes around unnecessarily. Yet sometimes, these old checks are there to prevent maybe the worst case of bugs getting into the system. Maybe?
- rightbyte 6y agoA manual sanity check is ofent nice. Also it makes it easy to override stupid bugs.
- shadowgovt 6y agoOne could argue the internal barriers are unnecessary if "trust but verify" works. In this case, it worked; she was able to play the system until verification identified something was wrong, and now she gets to go to jail over it. (Technical systems often need more stringent protections because "screw around and go to jail" isn't a threat that, say, Facebook can bring to bear).
- 35fbe7d3d5b9 6y agoThe mistake here is messing with the legal system itself. Lots of scams and schemes can fly under the radar, but as soon as you start committing fraud against the court, you're done. Just ask the con artists at Prenda Law how lying to federal judges went: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prenda_Law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prenda_Law https://www.popehat.com/tag/prenda-law/ https://www.popehat.com/tag/prenda-law/
- dredmorbius 6y agoUnless you're sufficiently large. The RIAA, Tobacco industry, ExxonMobile, POTUS.
- causality0 6y ago
- roywiggins 6y agoPeople have pulled the same trick to get themselves released from jail. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/florida-killers-arent-first-forge-get-out-jail-free-card-flna8C11417560 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/florida-killers-arent-fir...
- interestica 6y agoNot that far off from the scene in Idiocracy.
- Veen 6y agoIt amazes me that two and half years after the introduction of GDPR, sites like this still block EU residents.
- Nasrudith 6y agoIncentives matter - if there is no profit from it and they are outside their domain anyway why would they waste any time on the IT project alone? Let alone the business model changes causing at least short term negative profits (even if better behavior could help user base growth). Apparently empathy of all things is useful to soldiers ironically because being able to understand how others would react to movements and attacks gives a big edge in predicting them. You don't have to sympathize with the targets but it can help prevent being caught off guard by incorrect assumptions. In law knowing how the subjects would react helps predict and mitigate perverse incentives and loopholes or lure them into doing what you really wanted in the first place.
- marcosdumay 6y agoI don't think the goal was ever to avoid sites blocking the EU. The bill was clearly aimed at not contributing to bad practices with the EU GDP, what it isn't. Besides, the news can be found elsewhere (all news can nowadays), and the GP isn't much worse (I dunno, maybe even better off?) because of that blocking. At the same time we are here indirectly discussing tracking, and this is not the only thread about it.
- unimpossible 6y agoWith the improvements in speech recognition, NLP, speech generation, I wonder how long before we can quickly spin up a network of false personas simply to provide "witnesses" or verify false information, or even provide alibis.
- ada1981 6y agoA competent hacker could deep fake zoom hearings and communications and have the actual prosecution dismissing the case on video.
- totalZero 6y agoThis depends on the actual prosecutor never attempting to participate in the case. Plus, I imagine that the penalty for getting caught defrauding a court is pretty steep.
- ada1981 6y agoSo maybe you submit motion to dismiss request for a number of random cases. You become hidden among the others.
- lolc 6y agoDifficult tradeoff because that multiplies the chances of detection.
- ada1981 6y agoI wonder how often this actually works. Especially now with virtual systems. It’s a pretty amazing hack if you can pull it off. And also, couldn’t be that hard to hide your tracks so it’s not clear if it was you or someone who supports you. You could see this being done by activists or others.
- gumby 6y agoThey should give her time off for creativity and perhaps some money for college, but I suspect they will not have a sense of humor about this.
- elchief 6y agoBut can she do it again?
- jolmg 6y agoSo in a case like this, can the filing be reversed or did she get away with her prior charges?
- justaguyhere 6y agoIllegality aside, this is quite impressive! and creative!
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- mshumi 6y agoOne has to wonder what legal frauds, asset grabs, and impersonations have transpired that were never discovered. Some perspective on this is the story of Alves dos Reis (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alves_dos_Reis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alves_dos_Reis) who in 1924 stole ~1% of Portugal's GDP in bank notes printed under forged orders. The scheme may have never been uncovered had Reis succeeded in maintaining a controlling interest in the Bank of Portugal and eliminated the paper trail.
- hobbes78 6y agoThere's a TV series watchable on-line about him. Only in Portuguese, though... https://arquivos.rtp.pt/programas/alves-dos-reis/ https://arquivos.rtp.pt/programas/alves-dos-reis/
- airstrike 6y agoObrigado!
- SllX 6y agoThis is Portuguese for Thanks? Off topic, but reading it I just noticed it sounds an awful lot like ありがとう (“arigatou” as in “domo arigatou Mr. Roboto”). I think there’s an etymology lesson in this, although I’m not sure which way it goes, probably Portuguese -> Japanese via Nagasaki.
- brigandish 6y agoIt's a well known theory but it's most likely false[1], though there are several words imported to Japan via Portuguese that have long remained, such as the word for England, イギリス, which comes from the Portuguese for English (people), Ingles, which drives me a bit potty as it's used now to refer to the whole of the UK and I have trouble trying to distinguish England from Scotland et al when speaking with Japanese people. Ironically, "Japan" is from an old Chinese word for Japan that was then imported to Europe… by those dastardly misnomerists of countries, the Portuguese! [1] https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/5481/10723 https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/5481/10723
- aksss 6y agoGood effort. I wonder if she would have been able to ascertain whether the evaluation was scheduled and in doing it over could have covered that base proactively, or if there was no way of her knowing about that angle (even in doing it over again, no way she could have known about that in order to address it). In other words, was this defeated because of an oversight on her part, or was this an unknown unknown for her.
- pseingatl 6y agoShe could forge a letter from the prosecutor saying that there was no need for an exam because the case was nolle prossed. The problem is when the forensic examiner sends in a bill, unless they are on a retainer and don't have to submit timesheets. One issue not addressed is scale. Law doesn't scale. A prosecutor with more than 500 cases will have difficulty staying on top of them all; if you had to deal with Google or Twitter numbers (tens or hundreds of thousands) you wouldn't notice if a case disappeared off your docket.
- russellbeattie 6y agoWow, now that's an odd thing to see on HN: Non-tech local news from the small town you grew up in. And an article in the "Union Liar" no less! One of only a dozen times on HN.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- bronlund 6y agoFirst time I've seen a 451.
- WayToDoor 6y agoMirror for people in Europe (451: Unavailable due to legal reasons). https://outline.com/3jtrdR https://outline.com/3jtrdR Side note : why are some sites still not GDPR complient ?
- Fnoord 6y agoHere one which does not require JS [1] [1] https://archive.is/YR1YO https://archive.is/YR1YO
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- reitzensteinm 6y ago"Please tell us about the time you (...) most successfully hacked some (non-computer) system to your advantage"
- cambinoda 6y agoShe should now sweep in to save herself as her own defense attorney, then become the court reporter to ensure the correct story is told, finally accepting the plea for all charges to be dropped while impersonating her judge.
- OpieCunningham 6y agoCan’t find a reference online, but in 1993/1994 a Russian fabricated paperwork to place him in charge of a newly formed Ministry. He was about to have a building assigned in Moscow and he got caught.
- annoyingnoob 6y agoMy brother is a Public Defender. He tells me that this wouldn't work in California because it requires a court appearance here.
- dredmorbius 6y agoA RISKS Digest classic: A prisoner was wrongly released after a fax was received from a grocery store stating that the Kentucky Supreme Court had demanded his release http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/24/65#subj7.1 http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/24/65#subj7.1 https://web.archive.org/web/20070426034707/http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/21/wrongly.freed.ap/index.html https://web.archive.org/web/20070426034707/http://www.cnn.co... There are numerous examples in news reports. "Who are you?" is the most expensive question in information technology. No matter how you get it wrong, you're fucked.
- jasonhansel 6y agoThe legal system should really have a bug bounty program...
- zxcvbn4038 6y agoWell, it worked for Captain Kirk. And Not Sure. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobayashi_Maru https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobayashi_Maru [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pibqo6Z4Cgo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pibqo6Z4Cgo
- iphorde 6y agoWho knew it was that easy? I wonder if her new charges are worse than her previous charges.
- yuskii 6y agoIncredible.
- haram_masala 6y agoThat is one of the most unrepentant mugshots I've ever seen.
- aquarin 6y ago451: Unavailable due to legal reasons
- camillomiller 6y agoOff topic. This website blocks me as I try to access from Germany, because they don’t want to comply with the GDPR. To me this equal as saying that, as a website, you don’t care about my privacy at all, and therefore disqualifies you in all regards. No matter what you’ll write and say, you’re running a website that has no clue or does not care about protecting user privacy.
- loydb 6y agoThis was amazingly well thought out for a meth head. Points for effort.
- _a1_ 6y ago451: Unavailable due to legal reasons Does it work for anyone?