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People who join the US army should be forced to watch videos of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo torture, they should be forced to watch testimonies of people in drone
by anc84 11y ago
People who join the US army should be forced to watch videos of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo torture, they should be forced to watch testimonies of people in drone-bombed municipalities. But I am afraid that for many the "we good, they bad" mentality would justify those atrocities. Like another commenter said, who is bad and who is good really depends on your viewpoint.
- tptacek 11y agoPeople who say things like this make it much easier for people who work at places like Gamma and Hacking Team to rationalize what they do.
- 542458 11y agoI think that's a little bit of an excessively simple viewpoint. The US army does much more than Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and drones (in fact, a lot of what you just described is probably managed by agents outside the army such as the CIA). To flip this around, should every employee of a Silicon Valley company be shamed for rising property values in the area that have left many homeless? Should every Google employee be shamed for the illegal wifi capture done by Streetview vans?
- wmt 11y agoRising property values doesn't sound that bad compared to actively helping repressive governments to hunt, torture and murder the people speaking against them.
- discardorama 11y ago> should every employee of a Silicon Valley company be shamed for rising property values in the area that have left many homeless? Property values have nothing to do with homelessness. The roots of homelessness lie in the closure of mental-health facilities all across the US and California. These people need mental health counseling more than anything else.
- pound 11y agoit's not just closure of mental-health institution. You may also say the roots of homelessness lie in liberal values. Here is a bit of context for often mentioned closure of mental hospitals/services: at first there was a decision NOT to force anyone with mental issues to be admitted into such establishments against their will unless they dangerous to themself/others. And only ofter that closures of half-empty at that point mental facilities started. How do you think, how many of those psychos on the streets of SF/SJ will seek institutionalising on their own?
- criley2 11y ago" You may also say the roots of homelessness lie in liberal values." LOL - no. Liberal values include state housing which is proven time and time again to end mass homelessness at a smaller cost than the law enforcement, judicial and social cost of managing homeless populations. Liberal values strongly support taking from the rich to support the poor, including the mentally ill and homeless. You do not see many liberal values at play here. Conservative values of "everyone must work, no work means you get no pay, no pay means you have no home" is the core cause of modern homelessness. Not everyone in our society will or can work, and those who don't are lucky enough to be supported privately or publically or they're eventually homeless. This is the reality of a conservative value system. Also, it's not just mental illness, homeless and mental illness are not synonyms. Many people are homeless, living in cars, couch surfing, and are not mentally ill requiring institutionalization.
- pound 11y agoliberal values as not submitting someone to mental health institution against their will. we are not kgb or nazies, ain't we?
- woah 11y agoNo, the landlords and the activists who block new development should be shamed. They're milking the tech industry for all it's worth, with the side effect that middle income people are thrown under the bus. The tech industry is the victim of this scam.
- MichaelGG 11y ago>Should every Google employee be shamed for the illegal wifi capture done by Streetview vans? Oh FFS. I dislike Google. But doing tcpdump and forgetting to write -s 64 should hardly be a crime. Just because courts are technologically incompetent doesn't change the ethics of it.
- 542458 11y agoYeah, In retrospect I shouldn't have used that as an example - I was talking about something that I didn't know much about. My apologizes.
- godgod 11y agoThe problem is that we don't teach ETHICS to software developers. Just because we can create skynet, does it mean we should? The power to create comes the power to destroy.
- kartan 11y ago> To flip this around And that is to flip it a lot. The talk was about direct help to commit crimes against humanity. Your examples don't apply at all. I think that helping dictatorial regimes to commit crimes should be itself a crime. "I just did it for money" is not an excuse legal nor moral.
- fineman 11y ago> The US army does much more than Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo [...] Sure. If it was just that stuff we'd abolish it. But recruits (and the public) need to see the atrocities they needlessly commit all to easily. Without knowing the costs of the tool, how can we reasonably use it? Hmm? > [...] illegal wifi capture [...] No, nobody should be held liable for breaking stupid laws and making it illegal to listen to radio signals (that even pass through your body) is not only rude and unreasonable, but also 100% unworkable. Such a law only provides broken but apparently working security - the worst kind. Users think it's hard to get into their devices so they don't demand stronger devices, and so actual bad-guys have a field day.