Slashdot Mirror
Googling the Trail of a Serial Rapist
theodp writes "Innovative Interactivity has a behind-the-scenes look at the Washington Post's On the Trail of a Serial Rapist series. Information Designer Kat Downs details her experience designing and building the impressive interface for the series, including the use of Google Maps to track the rapist. Wary, perhaps, that it might encourage vigilantism, the WaPo stopped short of allowing readers to add their own input to the maps and urged anyone with additional information to contact the police."
Tracking people in this fashion is unethical, even if it is a rapist. Leave it to the authorities -- this is vigilantism, nothing more. And that's not something that we can tolerate in an information-saturated society. Anytime a person is tracked electronically like this by someone with a personal agenda, it's wrong. There should not be exceptions, because the moment we allow that line to be crossed, we damn all of us to the potential to have our privacy invaded under false pretext.
You want to help? Volunteer your services to a responsible authority like the local police. Work with them and follow their ethical guidelines. Believe me, they want citizens to come to them and the system functions best when done under professional and ethical oversight by a disinterested party. This kind of behavior, however well-intentioned, harms those efforts and undermines the entire system of justice.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
He wasn't measured at 5'7" and then measured at 6'1" later. The victim's statement described the attacker as 5'7" in one case, and another victim many years later described the attacker as 6'1".
If you only look at cases with DNA evidence, two cases right next to each other in 1997 have a victim describing the attacker as 5'6", and the next case has a victim describing the attacker as 5'10". DNA says this is the same person.
It would seem that either the DNA evidence is completely flawed, or the victim's guesses at the attacker's height is flawed.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
What happened to "it is better 10 guilty go free than 1 innocent gets punished"?
Who are you to judge who is guilty or not, and maybe you and your family should be murdered, if you make a wrong judgement in your vendetta for revenge and blood?
Blood-feuds is a mark of less advanced societies. Violence breeds violence. They can last for generations, and usually develops to become worse and worse with time and violent events, not better.
It is not necessary EVERY crime gets punished. But that notorious criminals gets locked up, and get time to rethink their strategies in life. Sometimes they get educated in prison and become better human beings after a few years. Sometimes not.
Your own lust for revenge does not count in this context. You should learn to deal with your own emotions, or you might get stuck in a vicious violent cycle yourself! Wether you are police or criminal, you will be no better than your counterpart then. Not a very wise move..
I'm not a fan of Jackson's music, just not my thing, but have a little sympathy:
1) The burns he suffered during that pepsi commercial left him nearly as disfigured as darth vader - he had to wear wigs and get plastic surgery on his face to attain a semblance of normalcy.
2) He's not white out of choice - he had vitiligo - the trademark white glove was actually used to cover up the first signs of it that could not be concealed by regular clothing. The whole thing about him sleeping in an oxygen chamber was him trying to cure the vit, its a common (but mostly ineffective) treatment. I know a girl who was similarly depigmented and even though she turned out to be the most exotically gorgeous woman I have ever met, the 20 years or so that it took for the disease to kill most of her melanin were psychologically brutal and left her emotionally scarred and she didn't even have to deal with all the extra baggage of being famous and a role model for millions of underprivileged kids.
So, cut the guy some slack. I don't know anyone who would trade all the shit he ended up going through for the financial success his musical talent brought him.
As long as there's a single pot smoker in jail, "limited resources" has no pull whatsoever.
The police spend a greater portion of their money solving drug crimes and paying off drug informants than they do trying to catch rapists. If they want to catch rapists where are the informants? Somehow they have an endless supply of informants who will rat you out for smoking a joint but nobody when it's time to catch a real criminal?
Typical.
... which has nothing to do with rapists. On the other hand, you have a point - for decades there was a problem of well-connected, powerful Japanese men molesting women on subway trains that, despite the efforts of the police, was covered up by the (ashamed) women.
This is why the Yakuza exists. These men can pay the gangsters and keep their lives, a portion of the money can be transfered to the victims. Yes this is extortion but that is street justice.
As a libertarian, this scares the hell out of me.
As a process improvement professional, this sounds like a damned cool thing to have access to!
Libertarian isn't the same as "anarchist". Libertarian means you want to maximize liberty for people who don't harm anyone. The legalize drugs, prostitute, line of thinking is not the same as thinking rape or violence crime should be legal.
The best we can do as libertarians is design technology which promotes freedom for the user.