Slashdot Mirror
Build a Secret Compartment, Go To Jail
KindMind writes "Alfred Anaya was a custom stereo installer who branched out to making secret compartments for valuables, who the DEA sent to prison as a co-conspirator when a drug dealer used his creation to smuggle drugs. But Wired points out the bigger question: 'The challenge for anyone who creates technology is to guess when they should turn their back on paying customers. Take a manufacturer of robot kits for hobbyists. If someone uses those robots to patrol a smuggling route or help protect a meth lab, how will prosecutors determine whether the company acted criminally?'"
This is exactly what happened.
He was told to be a snitch and when he refused they punished him.
Since when is money an illegal good?
He knew they were moving large amount of money. That is it.
Right now I have a couple grand in my wallet, am I suddenly some sort of criminal?
My brother repaid a loan that I made him. I will either deposit this money or put it in my safe. If I put it in my safe am I suddenly some sort of drug lord?
There is what's right, and then there's what's true. The accounting saying you should or shouldn't have $800k is how they determine if it's their business. It is right that the money you have is yours, and yours to do anything legal with (and illegal, if you accept those consequences). It is true that you cannot simply walk into most U.S. banks, auto dealers, etc, plop down $10k or more, and have a normal transaction. In fact, making multiple /perfectly legal/ transactions, totalling $10k or more in a short span of time, can get you arrested for evading the laws covering transactions over $10k, because by making transaction below what the law sets as a limit, you are, in the eyes of the law, /evading/ the limit. And that's... not right.
Why would meth use come in so high?
Meth is rather addictive. And meth use correlates very strongly with availability. We don't know what happens with much higher availability.
How about this scenario.... price of drugs comes down, people don't need to buy pure meth anymore, addicts can afford to not inject it.... other, less potent drugs (which have been pushed off the market) re-enter, and many of the people attracted to stims.... switch to those.
Entirely possible. That's what happened with the reintroduction of beer and wine after prohibition. Whisky use fell not increased. That's why I favor regulation to try and make scenarios like that play out.
I doubt it though with meth, people like the very high levels of the drug in the brain. The more they are addicted the higher the level they want, the more they take the more addicted. There is no natural stopping mechanism like there is for alcohol.
Heroin? Why? When opium is available, and there is no pressure on dealers to make the highest profit off the lowest volume, do you really think heroin addicts wouldn't turn to opium in droves? Wouldn't pick safer, less potent drugs and forms of drugs?
Quite possibly. Moreover pharmaceutical heroin is far safer than the street variety. Addictive yes, but the major side effect of regulated use is constipation. Heroin is a terrific candidate for legalization and regulation. Meth and less sure of.
___
As an aside you mentioned alcohol. Prior to prohibition the average american consumed 8 gallons of ethanol per year. After the repeal that number became 1.5 gallons. America's lasting legacy of low alcohol use is a result of the changes in behavior brought about by prohibition. The history of alcohol is a mixed bag.
I would argue that it was evidence that something suspicious was going on... not remotely illegal, unless there is an actual law prohibiting the possession of such large amounts of cash.
I know that ideally, a person should never be stopped from doing what they were normally doing just because it looks suspicious to somebody else, even though it's perfectly legal, but being members of a social community, we have at least some obligation to try to consider how things that we are doing could appear to other people, because once we realize how things might look to others, we may realize that we might need to change the way we are doing things.
I remember when I was in college, it was in '02 to give the situation a bit of context, and one of the courses I was taking was a digital electronics course, where part of the course involved building a working digital clock using elementary logic gates and chips only. Most people only worked on this in the electronics lab, but I had bought my own IC's so that I could work on it at home as well. During one of my break periods during the day, I was working on my clock in a relatively quiet hallway of one of the campus buildings... I was doing an experiment with trying to multiplex the power for the LED's, and so there were some neat flashing lights and numbers, when suddenly a campus security guard told me to step away from what I was working on and come with him. I had to go to the campus security office and was questioned by a couple of the security guards there. He initially wasn't going to let me even pack up and bring my electronics stuff with me, but I think upon noticing the panicked look I might have had on my face when he suggested that I leave this expensive stuff there, he relented. In the office, they then asked me some questions about what I was doing there and what I was building, and I replied completely truthfully. One of the security guards said that what I was talking about sounded reasonable, since they knew the professor I had for the course in question and had heard about the course having a clock-building challenge which apparently had been going on there for many years They needed confirmation from the professor, however... and I had to wait for the professor to come down from his office, and see me... confirm that he knew me and that I was genuinely in his class. I was then free to go, and later that evening, in his lecture, he bemusedly related a story to the class about how one of his students got hauled into the security office for apparently building a bomb He suggested that we only work on the project either at home, or else in the lab, telling us that the lab aide could be reached throughout the day anyways, and would unlock the lab for anyone in the course and allow them to work during the day even when it wasn't scheduled lab time.
The experience taught me something about doing things that look suspicious that I hadn't previously considered, even if they are actually entirely innocent, as I was, and being mindful of that fact gives a person a much better state of preparedness for the possible consequences, perhaps even at some point deciding "no, I won't do that", or maybe just changing the circumstances so that it won't look so suspicious in the first place.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
My school had a few real meth heads when I was in high school. The harm that regular meth did was demonstrable in a way that made DARE completely unnecessary. A lot of students actually avoided meth because they saw the harm it did (damaged intelligence, rotting teeth, misc health issues, etc.)
Just calling the kid(s) on stage at a pep rally for 5 minutes and saying "kids, this is what regular meth use does. This is why we don't want you to use meth. Now Johnny, Susy, etc. please be seated." would stop 95% of kids from ever doing meth. It's not like a STD or something like that it's so in-your-face and repeatable that only morons (even by teen standards) would think it doesn't apply to them.