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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.
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!
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
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.
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.
The Crimenet site can be found here, at www.crimenet.com.au, for those who want to see it.
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
- 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
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
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!
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.
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.
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.
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"Go Metallica. Die RIAA." -- Linus Torvalds
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.
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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.
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?
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.
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
What if everyone in Australia legally changed their names to Rupert Murdoch? That would piss of the ol' bastard, now, wouldn't it?
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.
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.
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)