Slashdot Mirror
Your (Australian) Criminal Record Online
An unknown assailant submitted the following: "A new web site calling itself CrimeNet is causing a bit of a controversy in Australia. For as little as $6, you can look up anyone's criminal record and perhaps even become your very own vigilante. The Age had an interesting story on the topic. Now where did I put those pitchforks and flaming torches?" And what if you happen to share the name of a heinous criminal? This sort of site seems inevitable, but ripe for abuse.
P.S. My feet hurt.
Wasn't Australia a penal colony before it was a country? Back when it was known as Van Diemen's Land.
As one might expect, the majority of reaction on /. to this story has been negative, and I can sympathise with opposition to this move; one one hand, we have a criminal management (I am loathe to call it "justice") system which is ostensibly interested in rehabilition, and yet moves like this and sundry similar projects (offenders registers, f'rinstance) have the potential to undermine those attempts by exposing people who have served their time to an unproductive backlash.
However, name publication was originally intended to be an effective tool of the criminal management system; the notion that part of one's punishment as a criminal is that one has a criminal record and that others are freely allowed to republish and access the relevant details. In a sense, making it easier to find out whether an individual has a criminal record is entirely in line with a philosophy of using community and peer pressure to act as a deterrent to crime - I'll leave aside the question of the value of deterrence in crime management for a moment - and allowing people to be forewarned with regard to those with a criminal record. After all, many people would have few qualms offerring a job to someone with a minor offence committed many years ago, but most people would have more qualms about taking on a career criminal.
Hey, don't we already get Spam offering the same services?
Why would I want to use these people?
The Internet Spy tells all!
Also, suing them out of existence won't help if your friendly neighbours already took the law into their own hands and administered friendly local justice to you because they thought you were a paedophile.
It always annoys me that the American culture seems to be "It's OK to do whatever the hell you like, so long as you pay out to people who have the time and money to sue you for it". It's not enough.
It would be helpful if, besides browsing at a certain threshold to avoid the trolls, we could have the choice to add individual users to an ignore list. I for one have read enough about sour feet to last me a lifetime...
And why not? Technological inevitability doesn't mean social inevitability. It has been technically feasible to control
people by embedding electrodes in their brain for a fairly long time. Somehow the practice didn't become widespread.
No, it is not possible with current technology to control someone by plugging electrodes into their brain.
Please stop spreading misinformation.
-Dave Turner.
Become a FSF associate member before the low #s are used
Here's an opinion on our useless Government's farcical privacy bill.
If you have something to say to the Government, tell the Parliament what you think by May 12.
alexgp
(Note: I might have got this story a bit wrong in places.. I wasn't paying a huge amount of attention, and "Today Tonight" isn't known for accurate reporting, anyway)
No... I believe it's still under the mistaken impression it's a real current affairs type show.
Alas gallinaceas de urbe bovis volo
not only that, but publicdata.com will allow you (for a monthly fee) to lookup info on drivers license, death records, license plates, criminal history, voters registration information. It's all only information that is legally available for anyone if you go up to the courthouse and ask for it, but here people can do it easily online. True there's lots of bad things that can be done with it, but that could be said about lots of things in this world....
"Leave the gun, take the canoli."
this is just a placeholder till i send back my real sig from the future.
No, someone could complain about it, but unless the content was deemed to be of the sort that would be in some way 'restricted' in other media, then they wouldn't take it down.
I'm trying to remember the url for the site which allows you to register a complaint, and gives more information, but it escapes me atm..
#include sig.h
..and I'll form the head!!
Newspapers don't really care very much about minor crimes,
Unless they have a deal with the local police to publish the names of johns soliciting prostitutes. Which is very common. And can fuck with your life big-time. Now people who commit this non-crime never get past it...
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
About celebrities.
:-)
If you are a celebrity, this is the last thing you would have on your mind if you were caught for speeding.
Firstly, the regular press will eat you alive. You won't get a chance to tell your side of the story.
Secondly, magazines like New Idea, Womans Day, will drag it out into a witch hunt, and suddenly find ways of linking it conspicies, not existant mental illnesses. Some idiot will come out of the woodwork to tell how terrible you have been (you probably never seen this person before) and break down in tears describing the terrible mood swings and violence you have exibited.
No, there is a good reason why celebrities get driven around by other people
BTW, about Elian, why havn't they sent him back to cuba yet? His father is there, (he speaks to him on the phone regularly apparrently) so there should be little problem sending him back? What right do those idiot protesters have in deciding the future of a complete stranger? *sorry if this is offtopic, I don't really understand this, I am from Australia*
Imagine: Mr(s) NoGoodnick gets picked up and convicted for something, but they give your name as an alias, that alias is now referenced every time you have a record check, the as far as anyone knows the crime is on your Permanent Record(tm)!
eh, you never know, with the censorship laws down here they might mention the word paedophile or something to many times and get banned ;-) would SurfWatch or NetNanny censor it if you were looking for paedophiles in the area?
just my $0.02
you can do the same thing in north carolina, as well as, i'm sure, other US states, where criminal records and offenses are public record. sites like 123NC.com market themselves as the way to pre-screen your potential employees, coworkers, babysitters, or boyfriends.
it only costs about $6 to run a single search. $12 will give you results state- or county-wide.
i find it a little ironic that a big part of the site is dedicated to privacy concerns - on the part of users, that is.
are there any other states this has been rolled out in, or is it just my bass-ackward corner of the world?
- Entertaining Bits from the Ancient Kernel Tree
the US goverment has a classification level called (I think) sensitive. That is things that are public record, but should not be combined.
An example: It is public record that company a got a contract to build a new top seceret fighter. It is also public record that company a ordered a large amount of Titanium after getting the contract. Take those togather and you can deduct that the new top seceret fighter can break the sound barrior, which is classified knowlege. (titanium is appearently one of the few metals that can stand up to those speeds)
And so we see that information that is public record is not nessicarly something that should be combined.
No, it is not possible with current technology to control someone by plugging electrodes into their brain.
Does the name Jose Delgado mean anything to you?
It's not possible to control a person to the degree of, say, making him believe something or making him rob a bank. However basic stuff like pain centers, pleasure centers, fear centers, etc. is well known. If you can make somebody feel pleasure, pain, fear whenever you want, you effectively control that person.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
IANAL and IANAA, but...
If this site is so disliked, couldn't it be registered with the Australian Government (or whomoever) as an offensive site? Wouldn't it then have to be shut down by the Australian Censorship Laws?
I guess it's just lucky she didn't have a neighbor named Al Niño, they would have probably burned down the whole block.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
To all those people holding flamethrowers, remember that this is not providing police crime records. If anyone commits a crime serious enough to get themselves into a newspaper, then maybe the stigma should stick to them.
I'm glad to find out that the Australian newspapers present all stories in an unbiased manner, despite the fact that they have possible relations with the police, businesses, and other entities that hold great interest in what they publish. I'm even more glad to know that newspapers never commit errors in their reporting, never (accidentally) leave out important facts, and never
doh ... that preview button's waaay too close to the submit! ;p anyhow... I'm even more glad to know that newspapers never commit errors in their reporting, never (accidentally) leave out important facts, and never warp the story to their own points of view.
Please, if this is all true, email me. I'd love to move to Australia right now!
Actually, a federal version of Megan's Law (named for Megan Kanka, a child in the state of NJ who was raped and killed by her neighbor, a convicted sex offender, released on parole). The federal version of the statue established minimum requirements for the state variations of the law. Worth noting is that the section of the law requiring community notification was struck down as unconstitutional in PA (state, not federal constitution). It will be interesting to see how the correction to the law (currently before the state senate) plays out. But I digress deeply off topic... :)
-Jason
If I could only live my life with my threshold at 4...
Here in North Carolina a company called 123NC.com has been selling North Carolina criminal records online for a couple months now. They've got a full-bore radio ad campaign in progress, promoting it for pre-employment screening but also to check out someone you're dating.
The company has a contract with the state and a direct link to the central court records database. It's the genuine article. They may do civil court records eventually, too.
That's all well and good, but this could also be considered dangerously close to cruel and unusual punishment - because even if you've served time and repaid your debt to society after being convicted of a crime, people are still likely to discriminate against you based entirely on the contents of the db and things you did years ago (imagine not being able to ever get a good job because you went out joyriding once at age 15).
Simply aggregating the data and making it so trivial to look through will have a chilling effect on how people behave in society. And it effectively extends your punishment for even minor crimes throughout your entire life, which is generally not appropriate.
There have already been documented cases of this sort of thing happening - it's even more of a nightmare than having bad credit reports, b/c at least there are laws that prevent bad items from staying on the report for more than 7 years (good items stay forever)
Additionally, what if there's an error. A huge percentage of credit reports contain errors that have significantly harmful effects on the people they concern, and these errors are nigh-impossible to correct because the errroneous data continues to propagate, rather like a virus. What if chkingg's file gets confused with chking's file? What error correction mechanisms are in place? How does it comply with court orders to seal records?
There are REAL DANGERS involved with massive databases. It's important to actually frickin' think about them ahead of time and carefully regulate them - how they're used, how they're compiled, corrected, time limits on the data, etc.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
The Crimenet site can be found here, at www.crimenet.com.au, for those who want to see it.
You know, the ones who have done many bad things and never been caught. I'd be much more afraid of them than the ones who are always screwing up and going to jail. For all you know, this is the fellow next door who's working on your bank account or your daughter or whatever. Actually, there's something to be said for the time when everyone lived in a small village and knew everyone else there. No privacy, but not much injustice either.
What does Australian law say about Databases? In Europe, the information HAS to be accurate, but I think European Data laws are more strict than anywhere else. It would also probably be illegal to refuse someone for a job based on a completely unrelated criminal offence. In the US I get the impression that anything goes. Australia is most likely different from both.
Perhaps they should list people who aren't criminals!
It's interesting that they gather their data from newspaper reports, etc. All you need is a web server and some minimum-wage workers to scan the newspapers to enter this business. It's a do-it-yourself Megan's Slaw.
BTW, even though this is not a government sanctioned list, and it's happening in a foreign country, it means we should be careful about supporting things like Megan's Law, even if we don't like pedophiles or child molestors
--- Speaking only for myself,
Why the fuck should your employer care? What you do on your own time should be your business and your buiness alone. Employees are replacable. If it is ok for employers to do this, then thats say its ok for them to impose a certain moral code on you. NO ONE has that right.
Doesn't matter?! If you make a habit of speeding, you're running an increased risk of ending up in jail, hospital or maybe the morgue because of your selfish stupidity. This would be bad news for your employer.
Don't call this discrimination, because we're talking about a choice you make.
it's in private time. your employer has shit to say about what you do with it. I am very much against the disclosure of criminal records. after you have paid your fines, done the jail time, had the therapy, and worked the social job you were sentenced to, you are supposed to have served your penalty. It makes no sense to add to this penalty by making it harder to re-integrate into society, I even think it is very much counter-productive.
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
For $12 per search, $6 per record, you can look at the criminal records of people in the state of North Carolina at 123nc.com. Check out if your new roommate is a murderer! Is your babysitter a child molester! Wonderful country.
- Zilch
I'm surprised I haven't seen anyone mention this yet, but North Carolina has had something like this for at least a few months. Says 123nc.com's front page: "Why worry about someone's past when you can know the truth right now."
And they're advertising. I've seen/heard plenty of spots for these guys on radio and TV -- feel-good, soft-spoken ads that make you feel like you're choosing a health care provider or baby powder.
I see no problem with such an undertaking, per se. After all, these are public court records, and if someone wants to pay others to get the info for them, fine. But I do have a problem with
It's certainly a gray area, ethically. All I can do is not patronize them, and hopefully they'll go away or take a low profile.
--
wcb
[Mob] She look's like one.
[Criminal] They're the ones who've dressed my like this.
[Sir Bedivere] Did you dress her like this?
[Mob] NO! No... Yes. But she does have a wart. BURN HER ANYWAYS!
Sorry, I'm getting way OT. I just had to laugh at the mention of vigialantes...
kwsNI
I absolutely agree that court records should be public as in the first sense, but the second is scary.
All opinions are my own - until criticized
It's not as easy as you think. Jose Delgado invented a type of electrode that could, if the brain were better understood, be inserted in the brain to provide people with the sensation of pain at will. But this is nothing like mind control - it's a naked threat. It doesn't take brain surgery to control someone through fear - all it takes is a gun.
-Dave Turner.
Become a FSF associate member before the low #s are used
The problem is one of striking a balance between the needs of the community and the needs of the individual.
On the one hand, it is understandable that the community may want to know if a convicted paedophile or rapist has moved into the area. On the other hand, the person in question may have undergone treatment/been under the influence of [drugs alcohol a cult] at the time. Do not forget, also, that once they have been released from prison they have paid their debt to society (in law, at least).
Yes, I would want to know if a convicted paedophile moved in next door to me, or into the same area - I have a five month old daughter, and of course, as she grows older, I will be concerned for her safety. OTOH, if I had some minor conviction fomr my youth (possession of canabis, or something), I would be unhappy at the thought of prospective employers having an easy way to find this out and possibly refusing me an offer of a job that they would otherwise have made.
There is also, of course, the danger of people convicted of certain "unsavoury" crimes (rape, paedophilia, race hate crimes, etc) being victimised or even lynched. Whatever you may think of such people, you have no right to exact your own punishment on them. That is what the court system is there for - it may not be perfect, but it's better than leaving law and order up to roving gangs of vigilantes...
Cheers,
Tim
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Gosh, everyone is so focused on what a dangerous thing this could be. But let's think about the positive applications of this. For instance, let's say you are a crime lord, and you're looking to expand. Now, dice.com isn't exactly going to be able to handle your particular staffing needs. Well now you can just plug into CrimeNet and get yourself a listing of hundreds of potential employees!
"CrimeNet: News for criminals. Stuff that matters." wow...cheap way to get dirt on people you hate. I know...I think I'll register "TrollNet.com" and sell spam and useless post records of Trollers everywhere...and at a mere $5.50 a piece, I'll have that Beowulf cluster in no time...
I don't think it will be possible to have privacy in the information age, the best we can hope for is that nobody (not even our government) will have privacy,
That's the position originally put forward by
David Brin, right?
OTOH, long time ago I read a science fiction story on similar lines. In it a kind of a time machine was developed that allowed people to watch anything in the past (but not interact with it). The use of the machine was heavily restricted. A couple of guys thought this was unfair and, to put it in contemporary terms, posted the blueprints of the machine to the 'net. Well, it turned out that the machine could go no deeper than about a hundred years into the past, but it was most useful for watching what has happened a second ago -- it was a total surveilliance device -- and now everybody and his dog could easily have one. The final words of the story were: "Welcome to the new world. I hope you like living in an aquarium".
Most people would recoil in horror from this idea, but consider what kind of a society would result from this.
I have considered it, and I didn't like it one little bit. I don't think that losing one's privacy is compensated by other people losing it, too.
we may not have a choice in the matter.
And why not? Technological inevitability doesn't mean social inevitability. It has been technically feasible to control people by embedding electrodes in their brain for a fairly long time. Somehow the practice didn't become widespread.
In any case, I'm not going to stick a camera out of my bedroom window, even if I could sell the footage to somebody.
"And now, the latest spring styles of the Darth Vader-type helmets..."
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
So, I guess they're putting the latest census data up on line? Australia being, after all, Great Britan's Penal Colony!
(Smiley captioned for the humor impaired)
-=Bob
I know this story is going to get a lot of posts, so I want to get straight to the point: This is a HORRIBLE idea... and I'm saying this from the "well duh department" because we can only scratch the surface on what the implications of something this big are. Say I go to work for company X, and they dig up a 3 year old list of speeding tickets on me (hey, it's a misdemeanor in many US States). So now I'm getting rejected a because of some arbitrary crap that doesn't even matter to my work performace? Ok, another scenario for you to think about: I'm a typical programmer going out for a quick 3AM meal and I get arrested because I fit a profile (it's a stretch, but not really), I get processed and released but then 3 months down the line... BAM, my face is in the database. Now I know that in certain agencies (Experian/Equifax), you can get these things cleared up, but that can take months.
Any body wanna guess what happens when you have bad credit? Not *that* big of a problem.
Anybody wanna guess what happens when you get arrested for a crime (and processed)?
I think they need to put the privacy checks in place before they actually start selling my personal life (true or not).
Hammer of Truth
http://123nc.com/
...looking for a reason to hate someone? Check here! I can't WAIT until this is as mandatory as voluntarily providing your secret social security number currently is. Of course, there will be some dumbfuck saying "It's not a problem if you have nothig to hide" as there always is, to which I reply, "don't ask for help when they come for YOUR group, stinky."
"123nc connects you to every courthouse in North Carolina. 123nc contracts with the North Carolina Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) to provide you with access to these records."
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
--
Care about electronic freedom? Consider donating to the EFF!
Well, the fix would be a rehibilation program, but since we don't care about people anymore we'd rather just lock them up and let them rot. Besides that would cost too much money, so its not worth it. I wonder how soon it will be to do this to anyone that violates the law. I thought part of being human was having compasion, and the ability to forgive others. Another poster said whats a few innocent people dying as long as we get most of the guilty ones. To him i say, i hope he remembers that if he is ever getting strapped to the electic chair. He does not value human life. ALL human life is valueable. Even those of criminals. Even criminals have rights. Thats what this country was founded on, that EVERYONE, NO MATTER WHAT has certain rights from the day they are born. You might be stupid or an asshole, but that doesn't mean i can take away your rights.
once a criminal, always a criminal.
Well, i'llremember thta if i ever get convicted of anything. B/c if i do, and that is how most of society thinks, well then i'm gonna have a blast after that, b/c, what the hell, i'm branded a crimal forever. Might as well have some fun if i'm gonna be outcast like that. Oh, i guess if your kid ever smokes pot yu'd throw him right the hell out, after all, he's a criminal now, and will never be anything else. And smoking pot will ONLY lead to other drugs. And of course you'll never forgive him,you have no son now. You're an idiot.
Good remember that when i shoot you in the head for tailgatting me. Your life has no value anyway. Better yet, i'll put you in jail for a while, then shoot you in the head. From all accounts i've heard prision is not the most desirable enviroment to be in.
find hookers, dealers, whatever you need. open source alternative lifestyles, i say!!
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
Nevermind that somewhere might be a person without a record, yet trying to build a bomb big enough to wipe out the east coast. But hey, he's not no record, so he is safe.
In the USA, I believe that many states make criminal and court records to be public records. In the state of Texas, you can look up criminal records (for a small fee) or sex offender information (for free). There is a disclaimer on the site warning about trying to use information based solely upon a person's name. Personally, I believe that court records should be a matter of public record.
---
---
"Go Metallica. Die RIAA." -- Linus Torvalds
I would like to send out a thank you to all who corrected my post about Australia's past. I apologize for the inaccuracies.
If they did not better themself then something is done wrong in jail. If that is the case you should fix that, not the result.
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
And as for "bettering themselves", once a criminal, always a criminal. Scientific studies have shown that convicted criminals are more likely to commit a crime than people without any convictions, so the "bettering yourself" argument seems to fall flat on its face.
This a a silly abuse of statistics. Say there is a chance that 5% of someone is will commit a criminal act, and a chance of 6% if that person already has a conviction on his/her name. That means that 94% of convicted criminals do better them selves. Ofcourse these numbers are not correct, but what are the odds of a criminal bettering him/herself without being given a chance by society.
If you've been convicted in a court of law, you are guilty. This is not something you can just shrug off five years down the line, it is a part of who that person is. It's always better to be safe than sorry.
Easiest way to be safe is to just shoot all criminals (cheap too). Btw it is even safer to have a chip implanted in everyone at birth that monitors what they do and reports it. No I think that in this instance I am rather sorry than safe. (Do you live in a bunker defended by a minefield etc?. That is safer:)
But then I also believe that if someone served their time, they have payed their debt to society and should be given another chance.
Grt,
Arnaud.
Most people would recoil in horror from this idea, but consider what kind of a society would result from this... we may not have a choice in the matter.
--
Criminal records are usually public information. The obvious 21st century method will be to migrate such public information to the Internet. There is an obvious way to avoid having your criminal record revealed -- don't engage in criminal acts.
I live in a state where I can get a list of sex offenders on the web. Without that I never would have known the nice old man at the corner who is always trying to give my daughter candy is a convicted sex offender.
Secondly, this sort of data used to be available in Victoria on the web, through the department of justice(http://www.justice.vic.gov.au/), can't find it at the moment though...
Thirdly, Australia is actually implementing some privacy controls. The federal government is (was?) trying to introduce a law which would mean that anyone collecting personal information to put into huge databases would have to have your permission first. Problem was, this doesn't apply to current databases, which means that they can get together with you credit card company, ..., (satellite imaging company[1]), big brother, and get together all the info they like, so long as they set it up before July 1, 2001 (I think), they can do whatever they like.
[1] Any that actually believes that satellite photography can be used to track you is greatly mistaken. It is used by people such as surveyors, to make big great whopping maps of countries, especially road networks, ecologists and the like in remote sensing, i.e., finding out what vegetation there is without having to surevy the whole field (quick hide those mull plants out the back, big brother is spying on us from above...)...
A list compiled from newspapers would be a list of crimes with "news value". If Anonymous Coward gets a speeding ticket, he's off, but if some celebrity is involved (s)he not only gets a fine and headlines, but ges listed on this site.
Sort of like that Elian srory. A clear case until someone called the press.
All opinions are my own - until criticized
Given Australia's history as a penal colony, does this mean you can look up her founding fathers in this list?
Thad
Thad
It may be too late for anyone to see this, but these guys have been doing this for years in Texas, Florida, Iowa, Wyoming, and some other states. They started in Texas, IIRC, and had to move off shore when they pissed some locals off. The compile drivers' license information, automobile registration, felony records, sexually related crimes, medical exams and other publicly available data. It's pretty cheap, and anyone can get and account.
Yes...I am a rocket scientist.
There's a similar story I read once, where a society developed technology that allowed the ultimate sharing of information. Basically it was a belt, and when you two people both wore one, they shared all knowledge. So if you knew how to program in x86 assembler, and wore a belt, and I also wore a belt, then I also would know x86 assembler.
The short of it is, that this society allows travellers to come into their world. The travellers find out what the belt does, and steal it. Once the travellers take it back to their own world, they copy it (since they now know how to make them), and share it around, but ultimately their society falls into chaos as no one has any secrets any more.
SECRETS are a GOOD thing. There are things I don't want to know.
--
Read more of this story at Slashdot.Read more of this story at Slashdot.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Chances are such things as this will be mostly a harmless curiousity. Maybe on occasion some good will come of it by a check on a potential employee or renter or such.
The potential problem isn't someone being actually listed who should be, though after a time some consideration should be given to the passage of time (Did someone do something dumb in 1997? And it's 2013 now and nothing else? Good indication a lesson was learned, there.)
The real misuse or abuse will be subtle and is already a problem with other things; this will be no different. In the mid-1980s when the Tylenol poisonings where happening there was a suspect, 'James Lewis' questioned. I knew a different James Lewis ans the coincidence was joked about.. but if someone looked but not too close, he could have had problems.
Will any such collection of information be harmful? No, not of itself. Just people being stupid about how to use it will be. Just like now. The fear is that now more people will be able to misuse and misinterpret the information.
I don't subscribe to RMS's GNUtopian vision.
Jeroen
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
I wonder how well they check for accuracy. The local newspapers here often have rather serious errors in thier reporting of this sort of stuff. Not only that they often spell peoples name wrong or accidentaly swap one person's first name with anouther's last name.
Stuff like this could cause all sorts of problems for a database like this one.
One thing that would be interesting is a site with records of what corporations are found guilty of. One might want to know who they are buying from/investing in.
I don't have a problem with people seeing my crimanal record under one condition.
I get to know that they are looking. I think every Australian should be able to access this site and see a list of names (from the credit cards) of everyone that has bought there criminal profile off the site.
"Do you think we could wipe out world hunger forever if scientists figured out how to make AOL's Free CD's edible?"-
CrimeNET, as stupid as they are, is simply a compilation of all the crime information from newspapers ect. This information is already in the public domain and is freely avaliable.
To all those people holding flamethrowers, remember that this is not providing police crime records. If anyone commits a crime serious enough to get themselves into a newspaper, then maybe the stigma should stick to them.
PS. Newspapers don't really care very much about minor crimes, so I wouldn't worry about speeding tickets (unless the police were chasing you) and other minor offenses
Don't get caught!
Actually, you can. It's the entire basis of the punishment system. After yu've done the time for your crime, you should have a clean slate. I know that in real life it's not quite that simple, because a criminal record isn't exacty a plus in job interviews, but that's besides the point.
*Note: this is not meant as a flame, troll, or 'anti-american'!
Has anyone wondered what would happen if the Elian story was reversed?
Say Elian is from Anytown, USA...he decides to hop on a raft, and head to Cuba...how long before the USA is at war with Cuba to get the kid back? That's right...about 10 seconds!!!
Isn't this a very cut and dry case? Illegal alien. Send him back.
Sorry if this offended anyone...I just wanted to see if anyone else agreed with my (Canadian) opinion!
Thanks,
binner
Say what you mean, mean what you say! But please know what #$@% you are talking about!
It is better that a few innocent men be occasionally hanged than that murders routinely go on to repeat their crimes.
What if they look like you, or have a similar name? Do you want to be that innocent man?
Put my clarinet beneath your bed 'till I get back in town.
What if everyone in Australia legally changed their names to Rupert Murdoch? That would piss of the ol' bastard, now, wouldn't it?
Everybody would benefit from it, oh wait nobody is left.....
Jeroen
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
So I have to agree, it's a horrible idea, in general. I'm all for Megan's Law however.
However, it should be pointed out that this Perth-based company formed by an ex-police member, is getting the information that they need for their databases from Australian Newspapers and court records.
I don't know about the court records (who can read them etc) but the newspaper based information was public domain anyway. I guess they are just making it much easier.
It should also be noted that they list serious crimes only.
I'm not sure what this means, really. I tend to take a pretty harsh view of anyone who commits a serious crime that involves violence or sex offender. I generally think that people who commit a serious fruad crime are pretty dumb.
Michelle
----
Be true, regret not, and let your star shine forth!
An Arab man headed to Jordan was detained in London because his flight left the Oklahoma City airport 30 minutes after the bomb went off. Because Arab extremists bombed the Word Trade Center, authorities were sure the bomber had to be Arab. Their certainty proved wrong, but I don't think the Arab man ever got an apology (or his luggage back).
My best fiend's last name is McVeigh. She's not related to the Oklahoma City bomber. Her brother (whose name is not Tim), was in the Navy and stationed in Pensacola at the time of the bombing. Not only did her family (who was visiting him at the time) face numerous hassles on their trip back home, but he got phone calls from news programs, papers, Larry King Live, and countless others who believed he was related to the Oklahoma city bomber.
It's one thing to request a background check for a specific reason. You don't want a pedophile working around kids or an embezzeler as an accountant. But just seeing if someone has committed any crimes can hurt lots of uninvolved people.
Put my clarinet beneath your bed 'till I get back in town.
Agreed. This would result in a drastic decrease in crime, which would benefit everybody.
Not necessarily. Contrary to the circular assumption implicit in your statement, crime is not caused by just there being a bunch of criminals out there. Crime is caused by a lot of complex social, political and economical circumstances. Killing convicts in no way addresses these.
I don't see how you can argue against it really - after all, the only people being harmed are those that have done something wrong.
Under the assumption that everybody who is convicted has done something wrong, and that everybody who has done something wrong is convicted. Hardly warranted assumptions.
And prevention is better than a cure - this would be a great way to prevent people from commiting criminal acts - certainly better than the threat of "community service".
Crime, again, arises because of the interplay of very complicated social factors, not because "the authorities are not being tough enough".
And prisons take up a lot of money we could use in better ways - why should honest people pay for criminals to live in luxury?
You must be trolling. You really believe prisoners are living in luxury? Hahaha!
What were you trying to do? There wasn't one last night when I posted that.
I tried checking it, but it seems to be Slashdotted at the moment.
I do. Or did. A guy with the same name as me was executed a few years ago in Pennsylvania for killing his wife, I believe.
There's plenty of stuff really worthy of being moderated down available. This should be marked up as funny. For a hint, check where the link in the sig *really* goes to.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
These people will be marked as 'dangerous' the rest of their lives. If guilty people are wrongly released then you should fix the problem, not a result of it.
Many people easely forget that such things also have negative sides. I would rather have someone guilty free if the only way to get them would also cause someone innocent to be a victem of that method.
Jeroen
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
Several people have voiced a worry about errors in the database. If they have errors, it's libel, pure and simple. You can then sue them out of existence (which I hope will happen). It would be best if they pissed off someone rich first (i.e. Rupert Murdoch :), so that person could clean their chronometers. A poorer person may have trouble closing the company down.
Somewhere out in California some poor guy named Al Niño was bombarded with phone calls blaming him for the bad weather a few years ago. How much easier is it going to be for clueless knuckledraggers to mistake John A. Doe for John B. Doe? Not to mention clueless HR departments.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
It still only takes one person to do enough damage to ruin the lives of dozens, if not more.
That is true. However you too are a potential threat. Who knows if someday you go nuts and shoot somebody? So how do we stop this from happening. It's easy, install camera's in all houses. Have echelon like computers analyse everything that is said and done. If you say the wrong thing you are automatically electrocuted via the chip in your brain. It sounds extreme, but severely reduces crime rates and will make productive citizens out of us all.
Easiest way to be safe is to just shoot all criminals (cheap too).
Agreed. This would result in a drastic decrease in crime, which would benefit everybody. I don't see how you can argue against it really - after all, the only people being harmed are those that have done something wrong. And prevention is better than a cure - this would be a great way to prevent people from commiting criminal acts - certainly better than the threat of "community service". And prisons take up a lot of money we could use in better ways - why should honest people pay for criminals to live in luxury?
The simplest argument that is irrefutable is that the justice system is fallable. Would you like to live in a society, where if you are accidently accused, you get shot? Furthermore societies differ, what is a crime in one country is not in another and for each country this also changes in time. Where do you draw the line?
What you are proposing is a scary kind of society, where extreme measures are used to creat a false sense of securty.
Btw, If you believe prisoners live in luxury, why don't you commit a crime and do the same?
Grt,
Arnaud
P.S. Don't mind my spelling.
P.P.S. In my opinion a punishment should serve to rehabilitate the punished.
Yeah, don't shoot me for watching it, I was eating.
There were two site, this CrimeNet one, and another, even worse one that was called "World Wide Records" or something.
This second one allowed you to submit people you claimed had not payed debts to you, and then rewards would be payed for finding them. The details could include pictures.
Fortunatly, it seemed that the Privacy Commisioner (toothless though he might be) though that it would break existing laws, mainly because it had to do with peoples credit history, which strict laws exist about.
The owner of the business didn't seem worried, though. He's in my city, too - maybe I should go and see what the real story is.
(Note: I might have got this story a bit wrong in places.. I wasn't paying a huge amount of attention, and "Today Tonight" isn't known for accurate reporting, anyway)