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It doesn't matter what they deserve. Suppose that you have a horrific knife slasher, let's call her Sally. She runs around town and kills people with a knife.

It doesn't matter what they deserve. Suppose that you have a horrific knife slasher, let's call her Sally. She runs around town and kills people with a knife. However, let's suppose that she gets raped. Will it not be beneficial to society that she is willing to go to the police over the rape case? It's like perfidy. As a general principle you don't use the fact that people want to do something good against them, even if they're bad. There may be deeper situations where this analysis doesn't hold, for example, if your enemies are providing people schooling or food, that may be an even stronger reason why it's important to attack them, but aside from things like that, this generally holds.

robertlagrant 4y ago
So if there's a hierarchy as you say, does that mean you'd be fine with the reverse situation happening? DNA from a burglary used for a rape case?
- jakelazaroff 4y ago
  As in, if you are the victim of a burglary, and you voluntarily submit your DNA because that will somehow help catch the perpetrator…? That's a pretty tortured hypothetical, but sure — the police shouldn't be able to use that DNA as evidence against you.
- arrrg 4y ago
  No need for a hierarchy, just a simple rule: if someone goes to the police to report a crime the DNA they provide as part of that process cannot be used against them. That‘s a very simple rule.
  - robertlagrant 4y ago
    Then why mention incentivising behaviour with some crimes over behaviour with other worse ones?
    - arrrg 4y ago
      That’s a bad argument, no doubt.
- impossiblefork 4y ago
  No, I do not say that it's a hierarchy, in fact, that is almost the opposite of what I am saying. What I am saying is that one should not treat information given for a socially useful purpose so as to discourage anyone from offering the information for that purpose. If someone volunteers his DNA for research, you do not look for crimes using that information. If someone volunteers his DNA for a rape inquiry, you do no search for burglaries. If someone volunteers his DNA for a burglary, you do not use it in rape inquiries. The goal is to treat information in a limited way in order to ensure that as much useful information as possible can be volunteered.
  - robertlagrant 4y ago
    Fair enough. That's not what I understood from your initial post, so I appreciate the clarification. I got the hierarchy idea from your example that catching a rapist is better than catching a knife slasher and extrapolated from there.
    - impossiblefork 4y ago
      No, the core idea is that you want the incentives to be right even in bad situations. So if your enemy has medics who he lets tend the wounded, even if they're your wounded, then you stay away from them. You want surrender and truces to be respected, so you don't make use of false surrender or truces as ruses. But even though you respect such things, your enemy is still your enemy. Similarly, in this case Sally is still a criminal, but you want her to report crimes if she happens to be willing to do so for some reasons, so you don't exploit people's reports of crimes in order to go after those people themselves, unless the report itself is malicious or deceptive and is therefore not a report at all.
tinalumfoil 4y ago
If Sally is going around stabbing people maybe her rape story is a little bit suspect. Maybe she's deranged and is trying to do anything in her power to get the nosy bird watchers off her back. I think the issue is the person that goes to the police and submits the report has essentially shielded themselves from all criminal liability. But of course the people the people who's DNA is being tested get no such protection. It'd be one thing if, as a general rule, only people that explicitly consent can have their DNA used in a search. But in reality the police have this huge database of DNA nobody consented to be used to arrest them, and then Sally comes in, bloody hands washed, and gets to use this giant database of un-consenting victims for her own ends, but none of her own victims can benefit from her DNA, even though she was perhaps the only one of the bunch who willingly gave DNA to the police. In other words, if it really is a privacy rights violation to test someone's DNA without their permission, and maybe that's the case, they wouldn't need to collect it because they wouldn't have anyone to test it on.
- impossiblefork 4y ago
  Of course she's deranged, she's stabbing people, but the point is that you still want her to report the rapist-- imagine that you were her neighbour, you'd want her to report burglary attempts, surely? Similarly with rape. Whether she is reliable only matters for the investigation of the crime. I don't see it as a matter of a privacy violation. I see it as a socially contra-productive act, a kind of perfidy-- like pretending to surrender and then attacking somebody in war or pretending to be a medic in order to attack somebody.
  - tinalumfoil 4y ago
    Honestly, the perfidy claims just really throws me for a loop. I genuinely don't understand how the police using evidence you willingly provide them to charge you is perfidy. > like pretending to surrender and then attacking somebody in war or pretending to be a medic in order to attack somebody There's international courts with the lofty goal of prosecuting "war crimes" and if you submit evidence that some country or group is committing war crimes, like killing medics, you don't get some special protection from the evidence you submit. If you submit a video where you and your opponent are both killing medics, everyone involved can be tried for war crimes. If you submit a video where you're killing A's medics and B is killing your medics, everyone involved can be prosecuted. In the US if the prosecution, has evidence that's both inculpatory and exculpatory they don't get to just tell the jury to ignore the exculpatory elements. I don't see how any court could be fair if this was not the case.
Dma54rhs 4y ago
But they use the DNA of a rape kit running it mainly against criminals whose DNA they got for other criminal activities.

robertlagrant 4y ago

So if there's a hierarchy as you say, does that mean you'd be fine with the reverse situation happening? DNA from a burglary used for a rape case?

jakelazaroff 4y ago
As in, if you are the victim of a burglary, and you voluntarily submit your DNA because that will somehow help catch the perpetrator…? That's a pretty tortured hypothetical, but sure — the police shouldn't be able to use that DNA as evidence against you.
arrrg 4y ago
No need for a hierarchy, just a simple rule: if someone goes to the police to report a crime the DNA they provide as part of that process cannot be used against them. That‘s a very simple rule.
- robertlagrant 4y ago
  Then why mention incentivising behaviour with some crimes over behaviour with other worse ones?
  - arrrg 4y ago
    That’s a bad argument, no doubt.
impossiblefork 4y ago
No, I do not say that it's a hierarchy, in fact, that is almost the opposite of what I am saying. What I am saying is that one should not treat information given for a socially useful purpose so as to discourage anyone from offering the information for that purpose. If someone volunteers his DNA for research, you do not look for crimes using that information. If someone volunteers his DNA for a rape inquiry, you do no search for burglaries. If someone volunteers his DNA for a burglary, you do not use it in rape inquiries. The goal is to treat information in a limited way in order to ensure that as much useful information as possible can be volunteered.
- robertlagrant 4y ago
  Fair enough. That's not what I understood from your initial post, so I appreciate the clarification. I got the hierarchy idea from your example that catching a rapist is better than catching a knife slasher and extrapolated from there.
  - impossiblefork 4y ago
    No, the core idea is that you want the incentives to be right even in bad situations. So if your enemy has medics who he lets tend the wounded, even if they're your wounded, then you stay away from them. You want surrender and truces to be respected, so you don't make use of false surrender or truces as ruses. But even though you respect such things, your enemy is still your enemy. Similarly, in this case Sally is still a criminal, but you want her to report crimes if she happens to be willing to do so for some reasons, so you don't exploit people's reports of crimes in order to go after those people themselves, unless the report itself is malicious or deceptive and is therefore not a report at all.

tinalumfoil 4y ago

If Sally is going around stabbing people maybe her rape story is a little bit suspect. Maybe she's deranged and is trying to do anything in her power to get the nosy bird watchers off her back. I think the issue is the person that goes to the police and submits the report has essentially shielded themselves from all criminal liability. But of course the people the people who's DNA is being tested get no such protection. It'd be one thing if, as a general rule, only people that explicitly consent can have their DNA used in a search. But in reality the police have this huge database of DNA nobody consented to be used to arrest them, and then Sally comes in, bloody hands washed, and gets to use this giant database of un-consenting victims for her own ends, but none of her own victims can benefit from her DNA, even though she was perhaps the only one of the bunch who willingly gave DNA to the police. In other words, if it really is a privacy rights violation to test someone's DNA without their permission, and maybe that's the case, they wouldn't need to collect it because they wouldn't have anyone to test it on.

impossiblefork 4y ago
Of course she's deranged, she's stabbing people, but the point is that you still want her to report the rapist-- imagine that you were her neighbour, you'd want her to report burglary attempts, surely? Similarly with rape. Whether she is reliable only matters for the investigation of the crime. I don't see it as a matter of a privacy violation. I see it as a socially contra-productive act, a kind of perfidy-- like pretending to surrender and then attacking somebody in war or pretending to be a medic in order to attack somebody.
- tinalumfoil 4y ago
  Honestly, the perfidy claims just really throws me for a loop. I genuinely don't understand how the police using evidence you willingly provide them to charge you is perfidy. > like pretending to surrender and then attacking somebody in war or pretending to be a medic in order to attack somebody There's international courts with the lofty goal of prosecuting "war crimes" and if you submit evidence that some country or group is committing war crimes, like killing medics, you don't get some special protection from the evidence you submit. If you submit a video where you and your opponent are both killing medics, everyone involved can be tried for war crimes. If you submit a video where you're killing A's medics and B is killing your medics, everyone involved can be prosecuted. In the US if the prosecution, has evidence that's both inculpatory and exculpatory they don't get to just tell the jury to ignore the exculpatory elements. I don't see how any court could be fair if this was not the case.

Dma54rhs 4y ago

But they use the DNA of a rape kit running it mainly against criminals whose DNA they got for other criminal activities.