4 ms·
Hacking a computer system is wholly different from convincing someone to carry out an attack. You are prescribing trying to goad the mentally ill into violence
by ahelwer 6y ago
Hacking a computer system is wholly different from convincing someone to carry out an attack. You are prescribing trying to goad the mentally ill into violence instead of providing them medical treatment. On a smaller scale, try subjecting your friends or personal relations to loyalty/character tests and see where that ends up.
To make it more clear: trying to hack a computer system does not change that system. Trying to convince a person to carry out an attack (via social pressure, provision of materiel, planning, etc.) definitely changes that person.
I mean really, the more I think about this the more ridiculous it gets. Imagine coming up with an online persona to try to seduce your significant other with all your personal knowledge about them, as a form of penetration testing. We rightly view people who do this as being very controlling & insecure - not normal or justifiable behavior at all, and it materially changes your relationship with them regardless of how it turns out!
- shadowgovt 6y agoI'm afraid I don't see the relationship between the notion of catfishing one's significant other and setting up a honeypot for somebody seeking weapons to harm other people. The arrested individual wasn't married to the FBI agent, and I don't think anybody reasonable maintains a similar trust relationship with either strangers or government agents to the one that they maintain with their significant others. Can you clarify your meaning?
- ahelwer 6y agoThe people generally aren't seeking weapons to harm other people, or at most have very angry thoughts about some target. The feds do their research. They gain their trust. They play on their fears & desires. They suggest the crime.
- shadowgovt 6y agoIt appears juries have concluded that people that suggestible cannot be trusted in open society (based on the Buzzfeed article you linked to).
- ahelwer 6y agoNo, the juries decided whether the people violated the laws as written. Their decisions have no bearing on the validity of those laws as such.
- big_curses 6y agoIt of course matters how far they went in interacting with him, but if all it takes for someone to try to bomb a building is another person online going, "do it, I'll sell you a bomb", they should probably not be free and are clearly a danger. If this is mainly due to mental illness, that can and should be considered during the trial as far as punishment/rehabilitation goes, but has no bearing on the fact that they were willing to bomb a building.
- ahelwer 6y agoThis is a very unrealistic idea of how these cases usually play out. I linked this article elsewhere in the thread: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/peteraldhous/fbi-entrapment https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/peteraldhous/fbi-entrap...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]