6 ms·

"Pre-crime" You thought it was a movie, now it's reality. Soon, it'll be something you get arrested for. Mark my words.

• barking 14y ago
  If you have a record then isn't it understandable that you might attract more attention than someone with a blameless past? It seems logical to me anyway. Obviously not to the extent that you'd be held but keeping an eye on you is fair enough imo.
  • dirtyaura 14y ago
    Do you really think that a previous record and terrorist acts correlate significantly?
    • barking 14y ago
      Yes. Membership of the domestic terrorist groups in my country correlates very strongly with a history of juvenile anti-social behaviour. These youngsters frequently come into contact with these groups either when subject to vigilante punishment or 'get taken under their wing'. Most terrorists aren't university graduates
      • jlgreco 14y ago
        > Membership of the domestic terrorist groups in my country correlates very strongly with a history of juvenile anti-social behaviour. Is the reverse true?
        • barking 14y ago
          Can you explain what you mean by the reverse?
          • jlgreco 14y ago
            Domestic terrorists may very likely have exhibited juvenile anti-social behavior. How likely is the reverse? That is, how likely is it that someone who exhibits juvenile anti-social behavior will eventually be a domestic terrorist? My money is on "it is very unlikely", and that is a problem.
            • barking 14y ago
              That's analagous to saying it's a problem that Health screenings are often targeted at high-risk groups when the vast majority of those groups won't get the disease in any case.
              • jlgreco 14y ago
                .....and, where the cost of false positives is sufficiently high and the rate of false positives is sufficiently high, that is a very relevant consideration that is in fact made by the medical community. That is just a basic of modern medicine. The world is not black and white. These are things that must be weighed and considered rationally with real data, not emotionally with fabricated absolutes. You don't get to discard half of your equation because when you include it the results don't make you feel warm and fuzzy. P(A|B) = \frac{P(B | A)\, P(A)}{P(B)} Not a hard concept.
                • barking 14y ago
                  I'm sorry but you have gone off on a tangent there. We weren't arguing about the effectiveness of the policy just the rationale behind it, I believe. I don't have any stats on that, do you?
                  • jacquesm 14y ago
                    You were never arguing. You were being educated.
                    • deleted 14y ago
  • betterunix 14y ago
    "If you have a record then isn't it understandable that you might attract more attention than someone with a blameless past?" Not when we have people who were charged with sex crimes because when they were 17 years old they dated a 15 year old, and who now have to register as sex offenders. The law has become completely out of control -- saying that someone has broken laws in the past is no more of a justification than saying that a person breathes air.
  • thwarted 14y ago
    Eventually, having a blameless past will be cause for suspicion, if it's not already. Because at some point, not having a record is is sufficiently different from everyone to not be "normal".
    • barking 14y ago
      Good point. That reminds me of hearing how traffic cops decide to pull someone over to check for drink driving. One of their criteria was any car that appeared to be sticking too rigidly to the speed limit