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Famous Criminal Opines that Technology Breeds Crime
jcatcw writes "In an interview with Computerworld's editor in chief, Don Tennant, Frank Abagnale spoke about his life of crime and crime prevention. Abagnale is a notorious criminal, whose exploits were portrayed in the movie 'Catch Me If You Can.' Abagnale claims: 'It would be 4,000 times easier to do today, what I did 40 years ago, and I probably wouldn't go to prison for it. Technology breeds crime — it always has, it always will ... I really think the more technology there is in the world, the more you have to instill character and ethics. You can build all the security systems in the world; you can build the most sophisticated technology, and all it takes is one weak link — someone who operates that technology — to bring it all down." This would seem to echo commentary in a New York Times article about the rise of Russian hackers in recent years.
What exactly is the difference?
Ignoring the pedantic difference of "breeds" vs "feeds" (both of which are metaphors anyway), it's essentially "technology facilitates crime" vs "criminals utilize technology", which both describe the exact same thing. You can't have one without the other.
I realize you are reacting against the fear that people will hear this and fight against technology instead of fighting against crime, but that's them being irrational. The best way to fight irrationality is not more irrationality, and the claim that technology does not help criminals is irrational. Teach them to oppose the crime, not the technology. But also accept that sometimes the best way to oppose the crime is to limit the technology.
A very good example is credit card receipts. Presently, receipts are not allowed to contain a certain amount of data. This all but eliminates one avenue of identity theft/credit card fraud.
Language attempts to convey limited information about reality. That information is not just conveyed through the explicit meanings of individual words, but also through more complex means such as context, emphasis and innuendo.
"Technology Breeds Crime" places the emphasis on technology whereas "Crime Feeds On Technology" places the emphasis on crime. I would say this is a story more about crime than about technology, so the second is more appropriate.
And a tool is neither good or evil. It only empowers the one able to wield it to use it for good or evil. Take whatever invention ever created and you will see that it can be used for both.
Weapons are of course an easy example, but everything human ever invented works. It is something that gives the one able to use it a power edge over someone not equipped with it. Knowledge works a similar way, but to a lesser degree.
And having more power than someone else can be used to exploit him. Ever been that way, ever will be. Technology is power. Superior technology allowed the exploitation of Africa and Asia as colonies. Superior technology (or rather, superior knowledge of technology) allows a trojan writer to exploit the "clueless" user with his infected machine.
But that doesn't make technology a device for more crime. It makes technology a device of power. Not more, not less.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It's not just "ethical and moral" issues, it really changes the battlefield. It's not that morality has changed, only that people have gotten the ability. For example, notice how many people are very rude in imperonal conversation, the way they'd never speak to you on the phone or face to face. Why? Because the way we communicate has changed. Same with the respect for copyright law - I don't think the morality or ethics was that different in the days of mix tapes. They've just gotten new opportunities to carry them out. Sometimes technology enables behavior we don't want, but there's just no turning back time.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Actually, there is nothing new on the table. The basic concepts of "DRM" and easy copying of Copyrighted material go back to the days of player pianos and rolls of punched paper that played copyrighted songs.
The internet and digital music are NOT new concepts. The ONLY difference is the speed and ease by which these things may be done. The legal concepts, the morals, and the ethics are all the same as they were 150 years ago!!!
The only difference today is the degree to which the public has accepted the arguments of corporations regarding what those corporations' "rights" should be, in regard to copyrighted material. They have tried to extend it far beyond the rights that were ever allowed to individual copyright holders. And that is sad. Partly because the corporations, in general, have been full of shit. And partly because actually, corporations do not have "rights" at all. They have certain legal privileges, but rights belong to individuals, not companies. And partly because, ultimately, it is individuals working for or with those corporations who actually created the content that those corporations "bought". The reality is: the corporations have been all for them, and none for you. So the idea of supporting them at all in this endeavor is foreign to any reasonable concept of justice. They should be fought at every turn, with every angle available. Because indirectly but inevitably, their goal has been to make your life more expensive and difficult.
He said this years ago, but in any case it was in fact easier for him. There were no video cameras and no dna evidence and he was not fingerprinted ever before conviction. IE, no paper trail and no way to say it was him until he slipped up, had he changed certain elements he could have continued. He was only caught because a stew recognised him, too bad he didn't go to a country where he couldn't have been extradited first. I'd say it was easier for him, the only easy thing today is that the tools he had to find are now downloadable.
FlyingPizzas.com, for the tasteful hermit
Technology breeds criminals implies that technology needs to be slowed or stopped.
No it doesn't. If that's what you infer, you're jumping to conclusions.
Actually, you're the one who is wrong. To breed means to create. Saying that technology breeds criminals means that it creates them where they wouldn't otherwise be, and that implies that technology is to blame. Therefore, if it is the cause of creating criminals, it must somehow be held in check.
It's a pretty clear implication.
By contrast, saying that criminals use technology means simply that. It acknowledges that criminals will be there whether or not they have new gadgets to use, but will use the technology that they have available.
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
This is not a rationale, this is an opinion.
Nor does it make it unacceptable. This is not a rationale either. Every behavior is contextually sensitive; every action; every reaction.
No, doesn't even remotely hold up. Stopping Hitler was an act of violence. Killing germs is an act of violence (and one very close to aborting crimes of violence against one's self by preemptive strikes against an offender who has made thier violent intent known to you.) Killing cockroaches and flies is an act of violence. All of which are well justified.
There is no "stain" for legitimate self-defense. As for your presumption that acts of violence outweigh any perceived benefit, I expect you to stop washing your hands, taking antibiotics, walking on grass, eating meat or any product that was harvested by machine without carefully picking off the insect life first, then washing with clean water, gently, to preserve the maximum amount of microbial and viral lifeforms. You may no longer spit, as doing so exposes millions of life forms to a violent death by environmental catastrophe, you may no longer bathe, clean your bedclothes, your home, drive any vehicle... you get the point. You do violence all the time. Terminal violence. You do it so as to enable your ability, and your family's ability, to get on with what you consider to be a normal life.
My position on home invasion is that by so doing, the invader has demonstrated that normal social conventions do not apply; I can presume that just as they violated the bounds of my home and property, they may very well intend to violate the bounds of my family's health and safety. Just as you would wash your hands, knowing that a germ on your hands may take the next step and colonize - and kill - you. Those germs have made their intent known by doing this many times previously. This is your justification for putting them down before they (may) put you down. Action signifies intent. Now, you may not understand this, but I assure you, it is so.
Thank you; you've precisely made my point for me, as I knew you would. It is a very bad thing to even contemplate someone coming to your home with violent intent. This is what underlies my reaction to the actual act.
Further, no threat of mine was implied. All I have advocated here is defending one's home. My point in asking you to post your address is that your security depends upon people not crossing your home's boundaries. By exposing your address on the Internet, you would enlarge the number of people who might cross that boundary enormously, especially here on Slashdot, where social norms are routinely violated with impunity. Once someone comes to your home - regardless of who it is, or why - and violates your boundaries, you are at risk. Your thesis requires you to let them murder you and your family and your pets and burn your home to the ground after taking everything you and yours have worked for to enrich themselves. I find that unacceptable. If you want to visit, simply knock and behave like a gentleman; you'd be at no risk, I assume you. Come stealthily, and you've just earned yourself all the consideration I would give a staphylococcus colony. I'd put you down just because you're a member of the class of beings that often causes trouble, and you're (metaphorically speaking) trying to establish yourself on my hand.
The home invader is the soil here. Putting them down is simply the act of washing.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Japan, Inc is quite a nationalistic and non-multicultural nation. They are outward traders, but still quite insular, and it is their culture, along with a sense of "superiority" and "obedience to the state and traditions".
"Fast" multicultural societies with a more anarchistic bent (the US is one example, especially in coastal large urban areas, or the opposite economic extreme, somalia with zero functioning government) have no unifying core set of values or experiences or social mores to share (even to the point of quite different languages in very short geographical distances being the norm), hence, more crime, because it is one or two steps away, isolated as it were, with selfish well being as a community "whole". It takes multiple generations to establish a functioning unified community. You are less likely to commit crimes inside your own "family" or "tribe" if you are a recognized member, it is safer to go outside that construct, and if "outside" is merely a few blocks away at the most, it becomes a "who cares?" proposition, and greed and human nature takes over.
This civilization deal is very very thin veneer, ask anyone who has experienced a major riot in any developed nation. It takes 5 minutes tops to go from civilized to criminally horrendous, so the potential is always there beneath the surface. The other factor is globalization and the rise of near universal anonymity, no sense of actually belonging anywhere, and the feeling that no one on the planet cares for "you", so this "you" guy develops a sense of, again,"who cares?" and is more apt than not to tend to slide to criminality when the situation presents itself, even casually. Witness, joe law abiding will be tempted buying a cheap laptop off the street, or cob something from work, or cut corners in his work or family life duties, etc. In his mind, it is barely a half-crime, socially acceptable, because at the macro level, he sees that this is the way his giant corporations and governments "work". Once on that path, slippery slope takes over.
So to avoid that, you must not create the conditions that foster this in the human collective. slow and steady and tried and true must balance "new and shiny and foreign and gee whizz". You need a balance between this anarchistic "me,me,me, greed is good, anyway I can get it is OK" idea, and the perpetual drooling luddite locked down never changes at all type society. Places that can address both sides there with some moderation and common sense do well, others they fail one side or the other experience rises in crime, loss of economic stability, increasing polarization, and so on. A productive and happy and near culturally equivalent middle class is the best option if you want stability and low crime. If you work towards greater economic disparity (as is the globalization model as conceived and run right now by the most wealthy right now, not the "globalization" pie in the skyperfect world theory that is never implemented), towards a two class society, with the vast bulk of the people set against each other in competition for the crumbs and dregs, you'll get more crime.
In todays world, expect crime to keep increasing as long as they push forced massive change multiculturalism and dog eat dog globalization. If your so called leaders in politics and business don't give a crap about you, why should "you" give a crap about anything but snagging as much as you can, any way possible? We are really just going to see more and more crime as this plays out, technology or not, because we have traded profits at any cost for stability and common shared cultural civilized norms. You get what you pay for.
Right, but what is your burden of evidence? Unless your bank is willing to take your word that you didn't make the transaction, this is worth the paper it's not printed on.
Sean
I live in a giant bucket.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
Tech creates new opportunities for everyone, including criminals. The best way to get rid of crime is to give everyone a fair go. In this world, where a child's wealth and education are fated to be little better than their parents', crime is only going to get worse.
Software patents delenda est.