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I appreciate the voice of sanity in your post w.r.t. the access itself.

Can we agree that the problem is that even if the people with access aren't dicks right now that they might become dicks in the future. It only takes one person evading your dick filter for a while to hire some other like-minded dicks and dick everyone over. There's also a pretty convincing thesis that ordinary people with power** are at unique risk to become dicks.

(Also, I'm not saying you're a dick. Just to be clear.)

** One could argue that access is power.

Apart from that there is not reason to go hard on the police officers. There is a simple social solution when problems like this arise.
Split them up. It works on bullies, criminal gangs and neo-nazis.

Relocate them to cities that doesn't have this problem and make sure that none of them works with each other.
Once they are partnered up with honest people and only honest people the undesired behavior will go away.
After a couple of years the can be brought back.

That way the problem disappears without the need to break necks or even prove anything.

-- methane-fueled

Putting even the most honest and trustworthy people into a system of power doesn't guarantee that there will be no abuses -- even honest people abuse their power.

But knowing that someone is looking over your shoulder at all times with surveillance *can* reduce abuses since a cop can't claim "He threatened me!" if no threat was captured on the surveillance device.

You will not develop the capacity to police yourselves. That is for the state.

We developed the capacity to police ourselves a long time ago, the tool we use for that is called the rule of law, it's enforced by courts and (wait for it...) the police. If you have a better idea I assure you I and many others are all ears, but the naïve notion that people will nice to each other if "government just gets out of the way" was disproven with every one of the thousands of hippie communes that started and failed in my youth during the late 60's early seventies. It was said to be the largest US internal migration since the civil war, most communes lasted less than two years the main problem being that since politics was taboo, verbal and physical bullying won the day and the group disintegrated, often leaving the bully with a nice piece of real estate and the "quitters" with nothing.

I find it ironic (and endlessly amusing) that the flower power people and the hard core libertarians suffer from the same naïve delusion that people will nice to each other if "government just gets out of the way". Anthropology and even the most tenuous grasp of history says that given the opportunity we won't "just all get along". Without enforceable laws (democratic or otherwise) society would simply not exist beyond the basic extended family tribe, almost by definition "civilization" would be impossible.

Throwing out "the state" is the easy bit, the real problem has always been and will always be - then what, Napoleon, Mugabe? - We already know anarchy does not work, if it did we wouldn't be "trapped" within our respective democratic nation sates at this point in our evolution, right?

fictional zombie problem

Well of course. I'm sorry, movies and games having people shooting and using a crowbar on threatening live people just wouldn't go over. That'd be like "anarchy of the strongest" or something.

It's not a person you're shooting, just a zombie who happens to just _LOOK_ like a person. And besides, he's the one attacking me, I'm just an innocent bystander who would just happily just ignore them -- they're the ones that started it.

And besides, zombies with all of their bleeding and moaning and shuffling and all look Nothing Like Us, forget about skin color or religion or anything else. They're dumb, offensive, illogical, not human, and they deserve to die. Again if necessary.


Gee, if you have severely limited food stocks with some controlled depot concentrations, you can replace "zombie infection" with "hunger" (you can be infected if you share too much food), the "survivors" with the "ones in control of the local food depots" (?the rich?), and the panic, fear, angst and suffering that the infected deal with along with the power, control, and angst feelings that the survivors deal with, and you've got a uncivilized, more violent Soylent Green

Oh, look: it's the news:
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Don't worry though -- remember, the ones in control over government are here to help YOU -- once they finish helping themselves.

And that's just human nature, that's pretty much what you can expect from everyone -- they take care of themselves and their friends, because -- they're friends. And the sad part is, I'm NOT against government at all -- especially ours -- I'm just again people in government with unlimited power and zero responsibility.

"A government big enough to give you everything you want, is a government big enough to take away everything that you have." ...and I'm only anonymous here because I'm too lazy to figure out my password -- I'll claim this accidental article shortly.

As a victim of police brutality and the inevitable frame-up cover charges that followed and the violent criminal record to show for it, I definitely endorse this idea.

What's more I think any of the typical contempt of cop charges or even more ambitious/serious cover charges like assault and battery with a deadly weapon or drug/firearm possession should be automatically thrown out if the officer does not have 100% video coverage of the event. Cops, especially American ones, have proven again and again that they cannot be trusted and that they are no more immune from the corruption of arbitrary power than the guards in the Stanford Prison Experiment. If anything the kind of people who become police officers in the US, who grew up idealizing violent, out of control TV cops like Dirty Harry or the character in The Wire are less likely to resist the temptation to take out their anger on all non-cops they come into contact with.

While this may not stop them from tazing 14 year old girls in the head it would at least discourage or eliminate some of the inevitable false charges that often follow, literally adding insult to injury. No, this won't directly stop all police brutality because they will usually remove or turn off or even break whatever recording device they are issued before beating anyone, but it may prevent their excuses, the false charges which led them to having to violently 'defend themselves' from whatever unarmed 10 year old girl/ninja that was attacking him. Without the comfort of the always reliable cover charges, lawsuits start to become more of a concern and certain cops may think twice about beating or killing people when they cannot just make up a story about having to defend themselves from a violent and out of control attacker.

Those were soldiers run amok over a short period of time. A number of them went to jail. They were criminals, and were treated as such.

Agree "following orders" is not a valid excuse for war crimes. However that's only half the story, it has been common knowledge since the 70's that normal humans will behave like a death camp guard/inmate if they find themselves in the right environment, there was even a movie about it. The catch 22 from those famous experiments? - Turns out the more you believe that you are incapable of acting like a dungeon master/slave the more likely you will do so if you find yourself in the right social environment for what is essentially (but uncomfortably) "normal human behavior" to emerge.

While the army were busy identifying scapegoats for prosecution did any of them stop to wonder why all the "bad apples" were found in the same small barrel, a remarkable "coincidence", no? The Iraq prison system of which we speak could not have created a real life "stanford prison" environment any better if they had done so on purpose. So the (multi-part) question was (and still is): Who set up the system that created this environment? Why did they not know the first thing about the psychology of imprisonment? Or if they did, why aren't they in jail?

Having said that, any army would instantly be mowed down on the battle field if it did not take full advantage of it's soldiers natural ability to dehumanize the enemy.

Eventually, your kind will attempt to invade with real-world laws

It's much more likely to be a coup from within, reason being "your kind" are also humans. The bit that "your kind" haven't worked out yet is that the ability to discern the folly of humans in large groups does not imply the ability to avoid it.

We understand this. You don't.

"My kind" get the hyper-organism thing, it's not created by "my kind", it spontaneously forms whenever a human society grows past a handful of related individuals. It's only when "your kind" fully realize "your kind" are not immune that "your kind" will start to understand why society 'doesn't work'.

You're on to something there - there have been several psychological experiments showing that almost everyone* is capable of truly atrocious behavior in the right circumstances. Sadly I can't remember the names of the studies,

The Stanford Prison Experiment: http://www.prisonexp.org/ The Milgram Obedience Experiment: http://psychology.about.com/od/historyofpsychology/a/milgram.htm

The number of violent, dangerous, angry, sadistic cops on the force is nothing but an embarrassment for the state. Police brutality and perjury is not just routine it is expected by almost everyone.

They're not angry. They're simply psychopaths.

People become cops because they enjoy your suffering.

Those that become cops for other reasons often become psychopaths (Is that possible? Perhaps they simply demonstrate psychopathic behavior) as demonstrated in the much referenced Stanford Prison Experiment.

Everyone given power of that nature will become a bully and thug.

It is a fundamental human characteristic.

http://www.prisonexp.org/

I didn't realize that a coin toss (assuming fair coin tosses of course) introduced selection bias. Please elucidate -- or at least provide a reference for your statement.

People are indeed nice, because they have learned via evolution (social or biological) that cooperation is more productive overall than fighting (just ask military people what is the reason for professional armies and how many soldiers shoot in the air during battles). However, the civilization system that we build promotes and rewards above else cheaters and sociopaths. And thus, the level of psychopathy is proportional to the wealth/power. Being anti-human is a requirement to become very powerful in our paradigm.

Just make a search on "iterative prisoner's dilemma" and you will see that as long as defection is not rewarded WAY higher than cooperation (it should be higher though - one time cheating is usually profitable) people tend to cooperate. Make the reward for defection really big and well....people will cheat.

After all wealth is tight with survival chances and longevity so there is a very good biological incentive to seek wealth. The system rewards bastards, so we tend to become bastards.

I hope I am clear enough.

Only people aren't nice when they are prison guards. Suddenly they become mean torturers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
http://www.prisonexp.org/

It's smarter to be nice thats why.

If you ever were a kid and you went and punched another kid that kid is probably going to punch you back and harder than you punched them. If you pull a cats tail it's probably going to scratch or bite you. People learn to be nice because usually that is the only way to live a long life. Mean people don't get as much sympathy when something bad happens to them, and people who like violence often don't live very long unless they become professionals.

Are people nice? Yes but people are nice because they learn to be. In many cases people are nice because they have to be. Experiments have shown the exact opposite of this result. The Milgram experiment proves that deep down people aren't nice when no one is looking or when some authority tells them to be mean. The Stanford prison torture experiment proves the exact opposite as well in that people actually enjoy hurting others when they know they can get away with it.

The article is disinformation. It's looking at neuroscience (what people think and feel) vs what they actually do. People tend to do whatever is easiest, then they do what is smarter, and if being mean is easier and smarter than being nice then people can be mean.

OT I know, but this is the same guy who did this http://cnr.berkeley.edu/ucce50/ag-labor/7article/article35.htm which together with the Stanford Prison experiment http://www.prisonexp.org/ shed some light on the darker side of human tendencies.

I [snip] Give someone REAL power and they WILL abuse it [snip]

c.f. The Stanford Prison Experiment

have a nice day

You have to understand that these folks are doing their jobs not because they want to, but because the alternative is much worse - unemployment, starvation, homelessness, etc.

Bullshit. The TSA employees act like jackasses because you give the otherwise unemployable power over those they detest such as high-level jobs that require travel or those that are flying away to vacations.

the TSA crew got the full support of the organization

Is that because they were doing such a stellar job, or because the head of the TSA is playing down a potential hornet's nest? Your boss can claim you are not an ass all day, but that doesn't mean you are not an ass.

Power corrupts. Or maybe you haven't heard. Read up - here is an example: http://www.prisonexp.org/

Keep it coming baby! Prisoner #416 has always been disruptive and deserves everything he gets!

This little experiment has confirmed the big experiment, and you all are living proof. I really do thank you (mods) for your input. Very very enlightening..

Oh.. here.. This is an even better illustration of your thoughts..

Prisoner #416 coped by going on a hunger strike to force his release. After several unsuccessful attempts to get #416 to eat, the guards threw him into solitary confinement for three hours, even though their own rules stated that one hour was the limit. Still, #416 refused.

At this point #416 should have been a hero to the other prisoners. But instead, the others saw him as a troublemaker. The head guard then exploited this feeling by giving prisoners a choice. They could have #416 come out of solitary if they were willing to give up their blanket, or they could leave #416 in solitary all night....What do you think they chose? Most elected to keep their blanket and let their fellow prisoner suffer in solitary all night.

Capiche?

I'm saying you cannot by default consider everything the government says and does is illegal or untrustworthy.

Yes you can, and when dealing with coercive, secretive authority, you should ALWAYS default towards that direction. This little paper on the the nature of nature clearly illustrates why...

You're right about one thing, failure to comply will usually lead to violence, but it won't originate from where you think it might. Sounds to me like you would blame the victim. In that light, I can no longer consider this a serious discussion... The message you are sending is, "Prisoner #819 is a bad prisoner. Because of what Prisoner #819 did, my cell is a mess, Mr. Correctional Officer."

If the Stanford Prison Experiment has taught one and only one thing is that given power without oversight always leads to abuse and corruption.

No, it didn't teach that. It taught that it might -- it's just one instance.

What are you saying, that a sample size of one isn't enough to go on when drawing universal generalizations? Preposterous!

If the Stanford Prison Experiment has taught one and only one thing is that given power without oversight always leads to abuse and corruption.

No, it didn't teach that. It taught that it might -- it's just one instance.

HISTORY, on the other hand, has taught us that power without oversight usually leads to abuse and corruption. (And even then it's not always.)

If the Stanford Prison Experiment has taught one and only one thing is that given power without oversight always leads to abuse and corruption.

Is it just barely possible that there is no world wide conspiracy to bring about a global police state?

It seems to me that's exactly what the US has been up to. I don't think those 800+ military bases around the world are landing strips for Santa and his 8 tiny reindeer. I don't believe it is because all of those other countries are too stupid to defend themselves. It is so we can exert control.

Doubtlessly some might argue that we have every right to exert such intimidating force on our neighbors. I say, try to remember what being an American was supposed to be about. What would you say of the bully on the playground who dominates and forces his will upon everyone else through slander, intimidation and violence. I hate those fuckers. Yet, that is what my country has become.

Please read this. That is what we are doing to ourselves and the rest of the world. We are the guards.

The Asch Conformity Experiment

The Stanford Prison Experiment

The Milgram Experiment

And lets not forget those Nazis who ran the ovens were just citizens too.

People do what they're told when someone in charge tells them to. It's human nature. Sure, we SAY we won't, but studies show that 4 out of 5 people were willing to electrocute a puppy to death because the person in charge of the experiment told them to. Sure, saying "go kill some innocent civilians" might be easy to oppose, but "Oh no, a band of terrorists is charging the capital and trying to over throw the government! We have it on good authority that they're being supplied weapons and support by the North Koreans!" and we'll see how many compunctions the man in the bomber has about firing on them. For the good of the nation and it's good people of course.

Yes, I'm also an old fart who remebers how police departments around the world were run before the stanford prison experiment became common wisdom. The people who sterotype cops do not understand their own human nature let alone have the ability to resist it. They are therefore the most likely group to be bad cops if the shoe was on the other foot.

Or - psychopathy is genetic, not learned.

And F = m*v. At least, that's what I'd really like to believe, so I'm going to keep repeating it on the Internet and completely ignore all the evidence to the contrary.

Psychopathy is opportunistic. Everyone has the capacity. Most people take advantage of the opportunity when they have it.

Having worked in the industry, I agree with all the above.

But I think you give Managers and Coders too much credit.

The reason this kind of abuse happens routinely is Managers can get away with it and Coders let them.

This is just the Stanford Prisoners' Experiment played out in real life.

If you don't like the situation, stop playing your roles. And I promise you, the Managers love their roles.

Does anyone else think that the TSA is exhibiting symptoms of: The Stanford Prison Experiment, wiki: here. Basically, when given power and the mandate to do something without proper checks and balances then stupidity or sadism emerges. The Stanford Experiment had to be called off early because normal people when put into that framework extremely mistreated other normal people. So, does the TSA need a good spanking and a bit of restructure?

On the contrary, the things you list are changes in the expression of human nature, not in human nature itself.

Although slavery is a particular expression of human nature and is thus not part of human nature per se, the drive to dominate and to profit from the work of others is part of human nature. As a result, slavery still exists today, as does indentured servitude that borders on slavery. Look at slavery in parts of Africa. Look at sweatshops in China. And so on. We do our best to suppress that part of human nature because we know it to be wrong, but it still remains just beneath the surface.

Similarly, hunting and gathering behavior is also part of human nature. People horde resources---money, food, cars, computers.... People hunt, too. In the southern U.S., it's a popular sport. And indeed, all sports are to some degree an expression of hunting and/or mating instincts. These days, we are more likely to hunt for a closer parking place at the mall than for a wild buffalo, but in either case, you're searching for your goal, then pouncing on it. Pickpockets search for their mark, then prey upon him or her. Same for thieves, serial killers, etc. It's all the same underlying instinct, just expressed in different ways.

Egalitarian behavior is anything but human nature. It is the way we culturally believe things should be, but human nature is for the strong to dominate the weak. That's why we have slavery, third-world nations, etc. Any egalitarian behavior is, by definition, a deliberate agreement by civilized people to suppress their innate tendencies for the good of society. Indeed, that ability to suppress one's nature is in itself a big part of human nature.

Violence is very clearly also a part of human nature. Again, we try to suppress it, but even in polite society, every time we hear about someone going postal or shooting up a high school or beating his/her wife or husband, we are reminded that the propensity for violence is very much there. Not all humans are particularly violent by nature, mind you, but looking at humanity as a whole, it is part of human nature. And even the least violent people you know can become violent in the right circumstances. If you haven't done so already, read about the Stanford prison experiment. It's eye opening.

As our environment changes, the expression of our innate tendencies changes along with it, but the basic tendencies themselves remain the same.

If anyone wants to look at the facts and decide whether I'm right or gujo-odori is right, my position is supported by:

1. Israelis commit just as much terrorism as the Palestinians (and the Israelis have killed far more Palestinians than vice versa)
http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/MDE02/005/2002

2. The U.S. government commits entrapment by having its paid informers entice otherwise law-abiding Muslims into breaking the law.
http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1088

3. Most normal people will commit war crimes just like the Nazis did if they are placed in an environment like the Nazis were in. This was proven by the social scientists Stanley Milgram http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment and Philip Zimbardo. http://www.prisonexp.org/ . This was confirmed by the real-world experience of the U.S. military in Afghanistan and Iraq.

These government agents are professionals at manipulating people. You are an amateur at defending yourself from their manipulation. You don't know what you could be manipulated or tricked into doing.

The government informer threatened to kill John DeLorean's daughter. Would you have let them kill your family?

You can't condemn someone else by saying that you would never have done such a thing. You don't know.

And funny enough, that's the age of soldiers in most parts of the world...

It also reminds me of a psychology experiment about prisons...

bingo: http://www.prisonexp.org/

Isn't this a job for the military police?

... I don't think you quite get it. Read up on the Stanford Prison Experiment. Now go re-read what the GP said. Then go find some articles on living conditions in prison, abuse by guards, and abuses by civilian police departments. Now re-read what he said and what you said, and ask yourself what difference that could make.

It doesn't matter if it's FBI agents, soldiers, sailors, marines, frat boys, federal prison guards, state prison guards, sworn police officers, or a group of psychologists. The psychology behind situations like this is extremely powerful, and people will do... what they have been doing.

http://www.prisonexp.org/

Stanford University

iirc they had to shut it down early because it got out of hand

Psst, bud, your naivety is showing.

Smart people can behave in illogical ways.

One battered woman that I know is a molecular biologist - not stupid, and yet she waited for her husband to end the marriage. In many cultures, a battered wife is more or less the norm, and we seem to have evolved a coping mechanism that seems odd when viewed in the context of modern American society.

most so-called "psychology" that I've seen is a big stinky pile of bull shit.

I know I shouldn't be feeding the troll here (mod parent down), but I got to stick up for my field. (PhD in Clinical Psych).

Woe be unto those who mock the research of great Mad Scientists and the research conducted in the name of psychology! We lead the scientific fields in alien abduction research and other feats of astounding science. Clearly, the Anonymous Coward is unaware of their own ignorance - he or she will rue the day!

...*cough* ahem. I don't know what came over me there. Seriously, psychology is, as the GP poster suggested, an exciting field for those who choose to pursue it further down the line; while there are nerdy moments, there are moments of great fun and an opportunity to explore just about any human endeavor.

the Stanford Prison Experiment.

I don't think profiling is inherently bad, I just think it needs to be dealt with delicately by framing the objectives in the proper context. If we view people or people's traits as something to be reduced or extinguished then at best we have DNA-ism and at worst we have an all out witch hunt. Bandura performed a variant of the Milgram study where dehumanizing labels were applied to the shock subjects (Power of Evil) . It was shown that such labels caused the actual test subjects to apply greater voltage to the presumed to the supposed victims. In the same manner, if we look for people 'criminal behavoir' we may be more inclined to hurt them for simply being different. A change in context, however, might produce more positive effects. Like, we think this person might be more musically inclined so we should promote those attributes. Again, this is a sensitive issue for which the morality of it needs to be dissected before it should ever be implemented.

or maybe the U.S. government is just gathering data on how far they can push their citizens. Useful info.

Probably the 'Stanford Prison Experiment' on a larger scale?

CC.

How has the Standford Prison Experiment not been mentioned yet?

Take a few volunteers pay them $15 a day and split them up into Prisoners and Guards. These are just normal people off the street. The experiment had to be canceled early because of the psychological trauma that the Prisoners were experiencing. And we're not talking 30 days of 60 days in, the experiment was canceled in 6 days.

Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely

The guards were given no specific training on how to be guards. Instead they were free, within limits, to do whatever they thought was necessary to maintain law and order in the prison and to command the respect of the prisoners.

The guards broke into each cell, stripped the prisoners naked, took the beds out, forced the ringleaders of the prisoner rebellion into solitary confinement, and generally began to harass and intimidate the prisoners.

The guards again escalated very noticeably their level of harassment, increasing the humiliation they made the prisoners suffer, forcing them to do menial, repetitive work such as cleaning out toilet bowls with their bare hands. The guards had prisoners do push-ups, jumping jacks, whatever the guards could think up, and they increased the length of the counts to several hours each.

There were three types of guards. First, there were tough but fair guards who followed prison rules. Second, there were "good guys" who did little favors for the prisoners and never punished them. And finally, about a third of the guards were hostile, arbitrary, and inventive in their forms of prisoner humiliation. These guards appeared to thoroughly enjoy the power they wielded, yet none of our preliminary personality tests were able to predict this behavior. The only link between personality and prison behavior was a finding that prisoners with a high degree of authoritarianism endured our authoritarian prison environment longer than did other prisoners.

I ended the study prematurely for two reasons. First, we had learned through videotapes that the guards were escalating their abuse of prisoners in the middle of the night when they thought no researchers were watching and the experiment was "off." Their boredom had driven them to ever more pornographic and degrading abuse of the prisoners.

Second, Christina Maslach, a recent Stanford Ph.D. brought in to conduct interviews with the guards and prisoners, strongly objected when she saw our prisoners being marched on a toilet run, bags over their heads, legs chained together, hands on each other's shoulders. Filled with outrage, she said, "It's terrible what you are doing to these boys!" Out of 50 or more outsiders who had seen our prison, she was the only one who ever questioned its morality. Once she countered the power of the situation, however, it became clear that the study should be ended.

Like most people, I'm disgusted by the actions of those guards at Abu Ghraib. However, the suggestion that the guards at Abu Ghraib would have signed up anyway is contrary to experimental data. The prison environment converted normal Stanford undergraduates into abusive prisoners and a well-established professor into a vindictive superintendent.

The sociopathic view of depersonalized action, unfortunately, doesn't always hold water. First, consider a few responses that you might pull out of a freshman's psycholgy/sociology textbook.

1971 Stanford prison experiment ( http://www.prisonexp.org/ )
Milgram "shock" experiment ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment )
Third Wave experiment ( http://www.vaniercollege.qc.ca/Auxiliary/Psycholog y/Frank/Thirdwave.html , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Wave )
Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes experiment ( http://www.janeelliott.com/, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/divi ded/ )
Kitty Genovese case ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitty_Genovese)
Bystander effect ( http://faculty.babson.edu/krollag/org_site/soc_psy ch/latane_bystand.html )

These experiments strongly suggest that average people have the capacity to be phenomenally callous, vicious, and even violent when they are exposed to minimally appropriate (inappropriate?) circumstances.

Now, let's put the "spammer" case into focus, since I'm playing the devil's advocate anyway. Let's say that you and a squad of 5-6 techies and other vigilantes get together and start doing the internet research, paper-mining, and footwork necessary to track a couple of these lumps of simian excrement down. After somewhere between 3 and 8 months of free time spent looking for Mr. Hub, you finally sift past a couple layers of zombie networks and brain-dead script weenies to find someone in charge of a spam network, and -- let's play pretend -- the jerk is actually living in a semi-civilized nation. You and a couple beefy associates hop a plane, arrange room and board, then drop by the slum-side cyber sweat-shop and server farm the jerk is living out of. You corner him and haul him in. Again, let's be idealistic and say the police/feds/whatever accept your citizen's arrest prima facie and hold him while they check out the case against him (using your research, no less). A month goes by; you're an expert witness for the case, so you're stuck waiting around for a summons to go to court (which you're happy to comply with). The docket rolls around, and you hop a plane again, carrying a freshly-ironed suit. You show up, and lo and behold, Mr. Hub's pond-scum attorney found a way for him to duck punishment without giving you so much as a chance to say "your Honor." Out the door his smirking face goes. Now, you know that Mr. Hub's going to vanish within a day into some mole warren and pop up a week later in No-juristan doing the same garbage all over again. Now, you have a few options:

A) Curse the wretchedly backward system that let Hub go. Optionally, lobby for legal reform (if you have local citizenship/contacts). Hope to latch onto a bureaucrat/politician savvy enough to recognize the difference between a modem and a mouse and fresh enough to call for change.
B) Try to catch Mr. Hub in the act again, praying you can snag him in a jurisdiction that gives a crap. Good luck catching him red-handed in such a place.
C) Try to find a new Mr. Hub and nail this one for dealing dope/missing taxes/breaking click-through EULAs.
D) Wire Chet and Steiger credit for plane tickets, corner Mr. Hub the instant he jumps jurisdiction, and put his fingers through a meat grinder/throw his (be creative) into a pig sty/"beat him up with a baseball bat" with the understanding that if he comes within three degrees of contact of an SMTP server you'll be back faster than a Google search f

While this concept is, as moderated "interesting" in some respect, it has been controlled for in famous and fundamental experiments which to the contrary, strongly support that it is in fact power which corrupts. The Stanford Prison Experiment is certainly the most famous and instructive. For recent interpretations of this and related work, try consulting Zimbardo.

I've spent a lot of time around politicans, their staff, and their active supporters, at the national level in the U.S. Most people get into politics at this level with altruistic intentions. I am political and partisan personally, but however entirely I disagree with the other side's interpretation of the world, I respect that people on the other side are involved because they truly believe they are in the right. No, I'm serious. New Members of Congress especially come in with full heads of do-gooder steam.

It doesn't take long for most of them to compromise so much that, from the outside looking in, it would appear they have been corrupted. Some never slide all the way into vote trading, nepotistic business-as-usual, but they are in the minority and either end up as failures or highly respected successes. IOW the mainstream, beaten path in a position of power is a corrupt one.

Most people entering any path will walk right up the middle of it, even if they are natural leaders. Newton's first law: it's not only mechanics ... and power: it corrupts; when absolute, absolutely. BG

I'm one of the people who see the implications of the Zimbardo prison experiment in everyday situations

You have to trust in the institution, and fix the broken individual people that pollute it.

The institution by its nature is broken. The very nature of a full-time professional police force with special authority is problematic enough, especially with increasing militarization of policing in the past few decades; so long as on top of that they're tasked with enforcing unethical drug, vice, and other "consensual crimes" laws, police forces are broken by design.

Your vision sounds like a milder version of the Stanford prison experiment. You could really mess with some people's psychology.

Better experiment

I'm sorry, but what kind of 'expirement' was ever a failure?

For examples, see the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, or any project with Josef Mengele listed as a researcher. In a gentler vein, the Stanford Prison Experiment was nearly a failure, but it was halted in time to preserve the team's reputations. If the point of an experiment to learn, then anything which is both costly and doesn't produce new knowledge is a failure.

The shortcomings of the spaceplane concept had already been demonstrated by 1985, which would've concluded a responsible experiment. The "failure" is that it thoughtlessly continued long past that point, wasting several lives, $50,000,000,000, and 20 years of NASA's time.

What is wrong with you? You want to get into management to fight corporate abuse of workers by becoming one of the abusers? You're going to change the direction/collective-mind of the angry mob by joining the mob?? As a psychology student, you should be aware of the Stanford prison experiment- http://www.prisonexp.org/

You said, "a good management team will never have the problem of unions", yet what happens to those workers who aren't blessed with enlightened bosses? Without collective bargaining and the power of the strike (which is the only real power the worker has), you're going to get sweatshops. Which is what happened by the end of the Machine Age. You yourself considered organising at one point when you were on the pointy end of the stick. Not everybody in that position has the luxury of just leaving. There's rent, bills, kids to consider.

Go study some more history before you repeat it. "I decided that I could do more good by getting a graduate degree and fighting corporate abuse of employees at higher levels."

haha haha haha haha haha haha haha

haha haha haha haha haha haha haha

sorry, that was the funniest thing I've seen all summer. Lemme tell you how much of a higher level you're gonna achieve if you don't play by the corporate ladder rules- none. You don't get promoted by bucking the system, bucko.

pax,
fred

"What I argue is that if I'm going to be held accountable for my actions that I should be allowed to record ... my actions," Mann said. "Especially if somebody else is keeping a record of my actions."

Does this make sense to anyone?

Taking pictures of cameras taking pictures of you is not keeping a record of your own actions.

Well in fact it makes alot of sense. Not only is it the fact that you HAVE the SAME video to play with, so technically you could conduct your own analysis (hey...in the shadows back there...it WAS a smoking gun..this is a police cover up! ) of the raw unedited feed, but also you YOURSELF are sending a very clear message to the "watchers". We are watching what you're doing. The game is played the same way. It may stop here, it may not. But now at least you can share a little of the kind of paranoia you try and instill in us.

See, techical uses aside, its a powerful role reversal, with all the ramifications that this implies. We just need to go to Zimbardo (http://www.prisonexp.org/) to know that a huge perecentage of the surviellance and security field is based on psycholgical plays of power. Simply confronting a security guard for example, or a cop directly will have little effect, because you are directly playing into the power game. They're ready for that. In fact they're probably hoping for that. But to step *aside* from the power trap. To do something like this, is not what they're expecting. Its outside of what a traditional conflict entails. And presumably is a great equalizer. And suddenly the watchers, are being watched. If only for the psychological value, its great.

Use P2P and download Das Experiment. It's a modern German remake of the Stanford Prison experiment. Normal people can turn into monsters very easily in the right circumstances.