I say eff them, throw them in a hole. or cut off the nuts. there is no "reforming" a pedo. this isn't about criminalizing "bits" it's about criminalizing possession. which has a rich legitimate legal history. possess drugs? go to jail, do not pass go. posess stolen merchandise? (as opposed to the act of stealing). jail. posess an unlisenced gun, or one used in a crime? jail, unless the tea tards get their way about the second amendment. this is the kind of society we live in, and the kind of society i want, despite the ranting of some freetard in norway. maybe norway wants to legalize pedos so they'll all leave US and move there.
Viewing child pornography doesn't make the viewer a pedophile. Neither does thinking about it or having "age-play" fantasies. A pedophile is someone who molests a child and I agree if someone is willing to cross that line they cannot be reformed anymore than you can expect a rapist to develop a conscience.
Philosophy doesn't cover instinctive urges, except to rationalize their suppression. A person will satisfy their desires, no matter what. Those desires become distorted and perverted when puritanical prohibitions against normal, healthy sex, including play 'sex' amongst the kids, are imposed. Prohibition against regular sex actually aids and abets kiddie porn, makes the desire stronger, because of the religious guilt imposed on adults, and they pass it on to the kids. We need more intimate conjugal visits in the work place, seeing as they can always call you at home during suppertime...
A psychopath will satisfy their desires no matter what. Most people aren't psychopaths and do suppress the vast majority of their subconscious urges.
You may have had a dream about murdering your boss but it doesn't mean you'll go do it because you'll think of all the risks and consequences and weigh it out. A psychopath would be unable to resist the urge and would go do it without any thought for the consequences and the lack of empathy would make it much easier for them to enjoy the nature of the act.
So once again I don't think you're correct. I don't think prohibition is correct either because suppressing peoples urges can bring risks of its own, this is why we have violent movies, video games, combat sports, so people don't have to kill their boss.
You had me interested until "There is no good and evil".
VERY elaborate troll, good work.
I hope you don't actually want me to elaborate, since you're so much off on so much levels; I'll just point the most obvious:
Pedo material (on a computer) are just bits => pedo material on a printed medium is just paper? Oh, have I already mentioned that to have pedo material on your pc someone, somewhere a child has been harassed (at the least), AND someone, somewhere has harassed a child? There is still "no good and evil"?
2nd: If someone exterminated your family that would be bad, wouldn't it? Still no good and evil? 3rd: Choice. You're ignoring the very root of human nature. "Getting rid of the idea of criminal responsibility" is like removing human nature from human beings. What's left are automata (which is in line with your post)
Bonus Ponts: "Neuroscience will soon reveal all about the brain" HAHAHA! No. Don't count on it anytime soon ("soon" as in my "grandchildern lifespan"). It actually might be impossibile, but who knows.
Anyway, a very good troll, cheers.
There is no scientifically objective basis for determining "evil". We can say destructive and replace that with "evil" in our discussion if you'd like. In that case psychopaths are more destructive not because they are "evil" but because their brains are literally retarded in areas which would prevent them from being destructive. They lack the ability to resist their urges, lack inhibition, lack remorse, guilt, empathy, compassion, pity. Their frontal lobe development is like that of children and in some cases they have less impulse control than children yet our society treats them as adults.
What I'm saying is there is competent and incompetent, smart and dumb, but there is no objective good or evil. A smart or competent person is a person skilled at making decisions which are in their self interest and in the best interest of the group. None of us are perfect in this but we strive to be as smart or as competent as we can, as smart as our brains and knowledge allow. Just as some people are never going to be good at mathematics or at many different intellectual pursuits because they are less intellectually inclined, the same can be said with regard to decision making/ethics. Some people are simple ethically retarded and when you understand that then you know they aren't evil.
The most radical idea I'm going to propose is that we get rid of the idea of criminal responsibility.
There's a link in the article that shows three Russian kids brutally murdering someone - graphically. You can even see them poking the guy's eyes out with a screwdriver.
Even though they had no moral problem with what they did, they knew they were doing wrong by their society's standards.
They made the choice to brutally murder that man and they have to live with the consequence of that choice - like we all do.
At the same time with neuroscience and in specific FMRI we will know what other humans are thinking, this technology does exist
No it does not. The only thing that can be seen with an MRI and that technology you speak of is which parts of the brain consume more glucose when having certain thoughts - that is all. You CANNOT discern what a person is thinking or what mental illness they may have from those scans.
I think you need to catch up with the science because if you just Google you'll see that FMRI can be used to literally detect the inner speech in a persons head with a relatively high degree of accuracy. It can also detect lies as lies require more brain utilization than telling the truth. It's detecting more and more every day and it can detect blood flow patterns to areas of the brain associated with certain emotions or thought patterns and while you can say some people might have brains which process thoughts in different areas of the brain so that this might not reveal precisely what they are thinking, that is a matter of software algorithms adapting to the specific brain being analyzed to figure out which portion of their brain is used for different thoughts.
Fact of the matter is, the brain to computer interface is here now. It's time to discuss reforming the justice system now because the technology is only going to become more accurate over time. You can try and delay it by saying those teenagers had free will but you cannot prove scientifically how much free will they really had. Considering they are teenagers and in all probability psychopaths, while they may have free will in the same way a drug addict or starving person has the free will to decide not to eat, provided with the right set of circumstances they may binge, may not be able to resist their urges, and the inability to resist urges is a physical problem in the brain and not something which a person can just solve. Some people don't and will never have the ability to resist urges and all people have different degrees of this ability which is associated with the frontal lobes. Psychopaths have less of this ability and children have less of this ability.
Possession of bits of any source or type out not be a crime.
Bits can represent anything. For example, bits can represent a sum of money in a bank account. Possession of bits in that case is possession of money. And money can represent anything. For example, money can be stolen. Ergo, possession of bits can be proof of some crime.
You're saying that in the case of encrypted or protected bits that possession should be a crime so that digital currencies can be implemented. In that case I'd agree with you that we'd have to at least consider some technical and legal protections but even in those cases, if you lose your wallet in the physical world or in the virtual world you lost your money. It should be illegal if someone robs you of your money and we find them but the level of offense for robbing a bank is less than the level of offense for possession of child porn. That means it's smarter to rob a bank than to possess child porn.
We can't even get Cannabis legalized here, and the arguments for that are much more overwhelming. When children are involved, people shut off their brains.
If their brain shuts off it doesn't make them right just because they are loud and passionate. People are also loud and passionate about the death penalty or abortion or gay marriage.
The problem is who decides what is or isn't pornography? It's entirely subjective. It's based on how we think the person interprets the information, it's basically about what we think the viewer is thinking. A child could be naked in one context, hell a baby could be naked, and it's not considered child pornography but then in another context viewed by a different set of brains and it's child pornography. It's entirely subjective as to what is art and what is child pornography.
For example if a child actress plays out a rape scene in a movie that is not child pornography. If a child models in a beauty pageant that is not child pornography even if the child is dressed like a hooker on a street corner. If a child is in the "sexual positions" and naked then it's child pornography. How do we decide on those "sexual positions"? That part is subjective. Obscenity laws in general are subjective and different communities find different words, body language or levels of nudity as obscene.
Because they can be created without raping an actual child.
So target the actual molester and not the bits. Someone could tell stories about how to molest children and maybe they write from experience and heck for sake of argument lets say a prisoner in prison for serial child molestation writes stories and books, should those books be banned?
My point is the event already took place. The crime was already committed. The bits on the computer at best are digital representations of evidence of the crime but they aren't the crime. The bits did not molest the child.
No. "technically" you are correct. Philosophically you are way off target. Philosophy requires that you think more deeply about imlications, causes and effects. You do know that child porn is created because there is a demand for it, right? Your argument about the flesh and blood predators is just wrong. Maybe not all, but children I deed ARE exploited because of that demand. One might not be paying for it, but by swapping, downloading, and arguably by mere possession, they are enabling contributing to the ecosystem that helps the underground economy thrive.
You're assuming there are child porn sites selling child porn for a profit. In that case yes it would be produced on demand to meet the supply in a very business oriented manner. The pedophile child molester on the other hand is not doing it for business reasons, they are doing it merely to get off. There is no reward for them to share it with others and risk going to prison. Yes there are child porn rings in existence and there are also serial killers who film it and put it on the internet but that doesn't mean the vast majority of these crimes work that way and it doesn't mean there is some organized pedophile cult or ritual child abuse going on.
If it were going on in that matter they'd simply stream the bits over webcam making it next to impossible to trace them and if that is the case the solution would be technical. Make it possible to trace any image or film from any camera in the same way we can trace bullets back to any gun and to who purchased it. None of this requires criminalizing bits. So your argument isn't based on any real evidence and if it were then you'd show at least a few cases where there is an active child porn eco-system on the internet because I've never seen that and I've been on the internet for almost 15 years.
Defending child pornography will just make it easier for copyright lobbyists to claim that all pirates are pedophiles. This is a bad strategy.
Pedophile has become communist. It's like being a witch. You're guilty until proven innocent and it can be used as political weapon to oppress all sorts of different groups of people. If you're part of Occupy Wallstreet, Anonymous, or just a rogue journalist you can be framed by a child porn virus and made to look like a pedophile.
So if the fear is you can't be an activist because you fear looking like a pedophile, you're appealing to fear and basically saying don't fight for free speech at all because they'll make you into a pedophile. Of course they can also make you into a rapist or make you dead given the right set of circumstances and if they knew how to get away with it.
If you still support the ban on child pornography then why isn't there a ban on obscene "teen erotica" literature? Why not ban text descriptions, or ban stories which encourage child abuse?
No actual people are physically harmed.
Who is harmed when bits are exchanged over the internet? Possession of child pornography doesn't do any direct harm to children just as possession of virtual child porn, lolicon or whatever else doesn't do any actual damage to children. So what exactly makes images and video so different from text descriptions or stories? To computers both are just bits.
Aren't there existing protections limiting prosecution to knowingly and intentionally committing crimes? I can't see how legalizing possession completely will "fix" the "problem" of accidental prosecution in an effective way. Baby/bathwater and all that.
No there aren't. Lets say you didn't know the law prior to committing the crime so you didn't even know you were breaking a law? You'd still be convicted.
For all who support the current child pornography laws which criminalize possessions of bits, is there a significant difference between that and a thought crime? If you still support the ban on child pornography then why isn't there a ban on obscene "teen erotica" literature? Why not ban text descriptions, or ban stories which encourage child abuse?
Lets say for argument a corporation decided to produced a hand drawn manga series of lolicon (child porn) erotica and marketed it to an adult population, should the behavior of this corporation be banned? Should purchase or distribution of this material be criminal? Should the website be shut down and all the visitors raided?
Possession of bits of any source or type out not be a crime. What you have here is a thought crime, and it doesn't actually deter actual abuse against children to criminalize or attempt to criminalize the thoughts or track down the bits. Chasing bits does not keep flesh and blood children safe from flesh and blood predators but I suppose it keeps pictures (bits) safe from creepy thinking adults.
A lot of laws are going to have to change with the advance in technology. Neuroscience will soon reveal all about the brain, making our paranoid about child predators seem about as effective as the paranoia about witches or communists. It's 2012 and at this time Google probably has everyone's thoughts...*cough* search records in a database. At the same time with neuroscience and in specific FMRI we will know what other humans are thinking, this technology does exist and ought to completely change the justice system.
The main problem with crime in the past is we assumed we would never know what anyone else is thinking, never have complete understanding of motives, never know the best forms of deterring certain events but imagine for a moment that its some point in the future and we know what everyone's thoughts were before they committed the criminal act? Would we view the acts in the same way if we knew the exact thoughts behind the act? If a criminal could not lie and an FMRI lie detector test has 100% accuracy could we change the justice system completely? What about detecting psychopaths, sociopaths, and others who aren't capable of remorse, empathy or guilt prior to sentencing? As far as I'm concerned we should be moving toward abolishing prisons altogether not because we wont have dangerous people but because eventually our understanding of human behavior will be such that we wont need so many prisoners and also if we wanted to we could probably just use house arrest on the non-violent.
We have to do away with the concept of good and evil. There is no good and evil. There may be smart and stupid or competent and incompetent but there is no good and evil. A sociopath or psychopath is not evil, they are simply retarded in a particular physical area of brain development. It hinders their decision making in the same way that any other disorder can hinder decision making in that it makes them less emotionally intelligent. This has been proven by neuroscientists when under FMRI we can see sociopaths brains aren't capable of experiencing empathy, remorse, and have trouble detecting or interpreting fear in the face and body language of others.
If we were talking about artificial intelligence we'd be talking about it like it's a bug that the AI cannot detect fear, or cannot properly make use of the empathy functions or subroutines, but because it's a human being we call the problem sociopathy and in human beings the problem is physical and not a matter of programming so it cannot be easily fixed. For these sorts of individuals we need prisons, but according to most estimates they only represent 1% of the general population yet 20% of the prisoners. This would mean 80% of prisoners aren't sociopaths or psychopaths, even if we assume 50% of that 80% are violent it still leaves 40$ or so of prisoners who aren't sociopaths or psychopaths and who aren't violent.
The most radical idea I'm going to propose is that we get rid of the idea of criminal responsibility. This probably wont happen until far into the future but if we make it into the future with powerful AI and technology, and we understand human thinking and feeling, at least theoretically we will eventually know the true motivations behind all actions. If the universe is predetermined and a lot of actions are based on genes, consequences, what brain type you have, environment, and situations, none of which an individual has full control over, just what is responsible for crime? The role of suggestion, of subliminal triggers, the role of desperation and poverty, the role of lack of intelligence, a lot of different things can convince a person that
They give pro (facist / police state / surveillance / corporate) forces the perfect justification to slowly destroy the most important source of freedom and information since the printing press: the Internet.
I just hope some of the wiser ones will still be around to help fight the forces of evil (and that ain't a video game console company, FFS).
Lulzsec went about things in the wrong/dumb way. Lulzsec should have never existed as it has diminished the reputation of Anonymous. If you believe in protecting internet freedom then I can understand that you will have something ideological in common with Anonymous, most of us do. But the current form of Anonymous does not do a very good job, as it's run as a headless vigilante organization without any direction. Many of it's ops actually damage it's credibility, such as doing DDOS attacks on sites (censorship), or revealing user information. Those sorts of activities don't enhance internet freedom they diminish it.
Sabu is selling out his former comrades for the lulz.
I doubt lulz come into it. I'm sure he is scared into submission and will do whatever he is told to.
It's the FBI's turn to have lulz now.
And that is what is what he should have thought about before starting Lulzsec and getting all these others involved in it. As far as I'm concerned Lulzsec looked like a honeypot from the very founding of it. The ideology was always directly opposed to law enforcement, Antisec was just ridiculously stupid to the point of just asking to be arrested.
I wonder if that's another arrest they made thanks to Sabu's cooperation, if so, that coop was the best thing the FBI could have done in this whole mess of so-called "hacktivism"
The thing here is it's not like Sabu is the good guy. Sabu is the worst of the worst here because he ruined the lives of the people who trusted him with their lives. Hackers are motivated by money, ideology, coercion or contraband and ego. This is the MICE motivation and in general all human beings are motivated the same way.
So in this case it's not money because these hackers weren't being paid. It was either IDEOLOGY or EGO. What that means is most of these young adults were brainwashed, or psychologically manipulated, probably by Sabu and people like him who also happened to be informants for the FBI. That is what sucks about tihs, we will never really know how many of these kids would never have got involved if Sabu hadn't influenced them. Sabu had no problem sacrificing his ideology for his ego as he threw Lulzsec under the bus for the FBI. Let's just accept that Sabu is a scumbag even by cyber criminal standards.
For the record I don't endorse Lulzsec, I think they were a bunch of idiots and my posts reflect that. Being an idiot shouldn't mean 15 years in prison, that is a political sentencing and I disagree with that. I also disagree with what Sabu did on a personal level, as he was a bad person, a rotten human being, but this has nothing to do with what he did on a professional level which may have actually put an end to Lulzsec.
It's just to deter other people who might want to do the same kind of things. And when it doesn't work (it never does), lawmakers will just up the ante. By the turn of the century, cybercriminals will all face the death penalty. At least, if they get caught in the wrong state of the US.
Deterrence doesn't work. MICE, in this case IDEOLOGY is not going to be deterred by prison. EGO and MONEY might be deterred by prison because they weren't paid for it and most people wont get an ego boost by 15 years in prison but it doesn't change the fact that some people truly believed in the Lulzsec Antisec ideology to the point where even in prison they'll still believe in that ideology.
I definitely believe criminal activity should be punished but sending in prison a 20-year old for 15 whole fucking years and treating him as if he is a war criminal or serial killer, for simply hacking into a computer of a multi-billion-dollar company (which as it seems didn't care to invest some of it's awfully lot of money in protecting it's customer's data) , is a little too much. Especially when at the same time there are other criminals out there who roam free thanks to their financial status.
But it doesn't matter. His life is destroyed now and honestly you can thank Sabu for playing informant and helping to destroy it. He can also thank himself for being an idiot.
I come at it from the opposite direction: I'm no fan of LulzSec, but Sony deserves to have its toenails removed for being so bloody sloppy about security.
Lulzsec didn't accomplish anything. They helped Sony more than hurt Sony and I don't like Sony but the revealing of user information made Sony into the good guy.
Hmm.. hate to break it to you but there ARE ways to be untraceable.. just like any criminal who gets bored they also get sloppy and hence getting caught.
There are ways but they don't work all the time. Proxies could be run by the authorities or acting as a honeypot. VPN services could be run by FBI agents. Groups like Lulzsec could be FBI fronts run by FBI informants, etc.
If you do stupid things like align yourself with Antisec movement and declare war on the police agencies you should expect to get arrested. Who is stupid enough to target the CIA website?
Hopefully with these arrests and others a few months back, the keyboard warriors out there will start to realise that they're not untraceable and can't just do as they damn well please on the internet.
I'm no fan of Sony but I hope this guy is banged up for a long time for stealing all that private data. And before any wannabe heros mod me down you might want to consider that YOUR data could be part of it.
I agree they went too far and I hate Sony too. I don't think revealing user data served the purposes of Anonymous in any way and if anything made Anonymous look like the bad guys and helped the opposition gain political cover to attack Anonymous and everything Anonymous was trying to do politically.
But herein lies the problem: anonymous and software development are not comparable, not unless you want to stretch the definition of problem statement. But that's just Reductio ad Absurdum just to fit an argument.
Anonymous could be reduced to an algorithm and so can software. Another aspect they have in common is both usually depend on continuous optimization.
Which problem of decision making are we referring to here?
Just gathering a mass of emotional people does not produce good decisions without direction. Not all programmers make good design decisions and if you look at open source software you'll see a lot of great software ideas designed horribly. Napster was an example of a great idea with a horrible design.
How does this draw lessons for software development, and to general projects and missions with identifiable players? Is it a legitimate argument that requires Anonymous as an example (which is what the article says, remember the topic)?
I think it's more Anonymous can learn something from the software development process. Anonymous is like a piece of "software"that offers conceptual and philosophical cover as an umbrella organization. The problem is that concept and philosophy are receiving the least attention while the most attention is being put into the hacktivist aspect which may actually be the least important function of Anonymous as a concept.
Separations of duties are subject (for good or bad) to managerial control (or lack thereof, there is such a thing as bad managerial control by omission). Considering that the premise of the original article intends to draw lessons from Anonymous in the context of excessive control, then that puts micro-management as the main focus of the discussion.
Micro-management is just bad management. Separation of duties can be a part of good management practices.
And that typically ends horribly in the form of architect astronauts building crystal citadels. I've seen in the enterprise and in the defense sector. The moment you separate design from hand-to-hand development, you are typically doomed. Development gives immediate feedback about the consequences of architectural/design decisions.
I'm not saying it has to be separate to the point of the designers not being able to read or understand the code. The designers should understand the code. Designers should review the code continuously. Designers don't have to actually do the coding because a lot of coding isn't much more than implementing the design typing stuff in and testing it for bugs. The hardest part of software development is the design process and that is the part which requires abstract thinking while the coding part just requires following of orders, checking your work for bugs to make sure it works, all which could be part of a blueprint or set of instructions. Consider that most development teams want to produce a lot of code for cheap it's going to cost a bit more money to try and take junior coders and turn them into lead designers.
You, as a designer (or as part of a design team) can create design blue prints send to junior developers (local or offshore), but you need to be substantially involved in day-to-day development (in addition to conducting frequent code reviews to ensure your juniors/minions are implemented the design as intended.) The only time I've seen such partitioning working out is when the designers are involved in coding as well. It rarely works otherwise.
When did I say the designer shouldn't be involved? The designer has to keep track of everything to make sure it's all going according to the design or make changes to the design.
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I say eff them, throw them in a hole. or cut off the nuts. there is no "reforming" a pedo. this isn't about criminalizing "bits" it's about criminalizing possession. which has a rich legitimate legal history. possess drugs? go to jail, do not pass go. posess stolen merchandise? (as opposed to the act of stealing). jail. posess an unlisenced gun, or one used in a crime? jail, unless the tea tards get their way about the second amendment. this is the kind of society we live in, and the kind of society i want, despite the ranting of some freetard in norway. maybe norway wants to legalize pedos so they'll all leave US and move there.
Viewing child pornography doesn't make the viewer a pedophile. Neither does thinking about it or having "age-play" fantasies. A pedophile is someone who molests a child and I agree if someone is willing to cross that line they cannot be reformed anymore than you can expect a rapist to develop a conscience.
Philosophy doesn't cover instinctive urges, except to rationalize their suppression. A person will satisfy their desires, no matter what. Those desires become distorted and perverted when puritanical prohibitions against normal, healthy sex, including play 'sex' amongst the kids, are imposed. Prohibition against regular sex actually aids and abets kiddie porn, makes the desire stronger, because of the religious guilt imposed on adults, and they pass it on to the kids. We need more intimate conjugal visits in the work place, seeing as they can always call you at home during suppertime...
A psychopath will satisfy their desires no matter what. Most people aren't psychopaths and do suppress the vast majority of their subconscious urges.
You may have had a dream about murdering your boss but it doesn't mean you'll go do it because you'll think of all the risks and consequences and weigh it out. A psychopath would be unable to resist the urge and would go do it without any thought for the consequences and the lack of empathy would make it much easier for them to enjoy the nature of the act.
So once again I don't think you're correct. I don't think prohibition is correct either because suppressing peoples urges can bring risks of its own, this is why we have violent movies, video games, combat sports, so people don't have to kill their boss.
You had me interested until "There is no good and evil".
VERY elaborate troll, good work.
I hope you don't actually want me to elaborate, since you're so much off on so much levels; I'll just point the most obvious:
Pedo material (on a computer) are just bits => pedo material on a printed medium is just paper? Oh, have I already mentioned that to have pedo material on your pc someone, somewhere a child has been harassed (at the least), AND someone, somewhere has harassed a child? There is still "no good and evil"?
2nd: If someone exterminated your family that would be bad, wouldn't it? Still no good and evil?
3rd: Choice. You're ignoring the very root of human nature. "Getting rid of the idea of criminal responsibility" is like removing human nature from human beings. What's left are automata (which is in line with your post)
Bonus Ponts: "Neuroscience will soon reveal all about the brain" HAHAHA! No. Don't count on it anytime soon ("soon" as in my "grandchildern lifespan"). It actually might be impossibile, but who knows.
Anyway, a very good troll, cheers.
There is no scientifically objective basis for determining "evil". We can say destructive and replace that with "evil" in our discussion if you'd like. In that case psychopaths are more destructive not because they are "evil" but because their brains are literally retarded in areas which would prevent them from being destructive. They lack the ability to resist their urges, lack inhibition, lack remorse, guilt, empathy, compassion, pity. Their frontal lobe development is like that of children and in some cases they have less impulse control than children yet our society treats them as adults.
What I'm saying is there is competent and incompetent, smart and dumb, but there is no objective good or evil. A smart or competent person is a person skilled at making decisions which are in their self interest and in the best interest of the group. None of us are perfect in this but we strive to be as smart or as competent as we can, as smart as our brains and knowledge allow. Just as some people are never going to be good at mathematics or at many different intellectual pursuits because they are less intellectually inclined, the same can be said with regard to decision making/ethics. Some people are simple ethically retarded and when you understand that then you know they aren't evil.
The most radical idea I'm going to propose is that we get rid of the idea of criminal responsibility.
There's a link in the article that shows three Russian kids brutally murdering someone - graphically. You can even see them poking the guy's eyes out with a screwdriver.
Even though they had no moral problem with what they did, they knew they were doing wrong by their society's standards.
They made the choice to brutally murder that man and they have to live with the consequence of that choice - like we all do.
At the same time with neuroscience and in specific FMRI we will know what other humans are thinking, this technology does exist
No it does not. The only thing that can be seen with an MRI and that technology you speak of is which parts of the brain consume more glucose when having certain thoughts - that is all. You CANNOT discern what a person is thinking or what mental illness they may have from those scans.
I think you need to catch up with the science because if you just Google you'll see that FMRI can be used to literally detect the inner speech in a persons head with a relatively high degree of accuracy. It can also detect lies as lies require more brain utilization than telling the truth. It's detecting more and more every day and it can detect blood flow patterns to areas of the brain associated with certain emotions or thought patterns and while you can say some people might have brains which process thoughts in different areas of the brain so that this might not reveal precisely what they are thinking, that is a matter of software algorithms adapting to the specific brain being analyzed to figure out which portion of their brain is used for different thoughts.
Fact of the matter is, the brain to computer interface is here now. It's time to discuss reforming the justice system now because the technology is only going to become more accurate over time. You can try and delay it by saying those teenagers had free will but you cannot prove scientifically how much free will they really had. Considering they are teenagers and in all probability psychopaths, while they may have free will in the same way a drug addict or starving person has the free will to decide not to eat, provided with the right set of circumstances they may binge, may not be able to resist their urges, and the inability to resist urges is a physical problem in the brain and not something which a person can just solve. Some people don't and will never have the ability to resist urges and all people have different degrees of this ability which is associated with the frontal lobes. Psychopaths have less of this ability and children have less of this ability.
Bits can represent anything. For example, bits can represent a sum of money in a bank account. Possession of bits in that case is possession of money. And money can represent anything. For example, money can be stolen. Ergo, possession of bits can be proof of some crime.
You're saying that in the case of encrypted or protected bits that possession should be a crime so that digital currencies can be implemented. In that case I'd agree with you that we'd have to at least consider some technical and legal protections but even in those cases, if you lose your wallet in the physical world or in the virtual world you lost your money. It should be illegal if someone robs you of your money and we find them but the level of offense for robbing a bank is less than the level of offense for possession of child porn. That means it's smarter to rob a bank than to possess child porn.
We can't even get Cannabis legalized here, and the arguments for that are much more overwhelming. When children are involved, people shut off their brains.
If their brain shuts off it doesn't make them right just because they are loud and passionate. People are also loud and passionate about the death penalty or abortion or gay marriage.
The problem is who decides what is or isn't pornography? It's entirely subjective. It's based on how we think the person interprets the information, it's basically about what we think the viewer is thinking. A child could be naked in one context, hell a baby could be naked, and it's not considered child pornography but then in another context viewed by a different set of brains and it's child pornography. It's entirely subjective as to what is art and what is child pornography.
For example if a child actress plays out a rape scene in a movie that is not child pornography. If a child models in a beauty pageant that is not child pornography even if the child is dressed like a hooker on a street corner. If a child is in the "sexual positions" and naked then it's child pornography. How do we decide on those "sexual positions"? That part is subjective. Obscenity laws in general are subjective and different communities find different words, body language or levels of nudity as obscene.
Because they can be created without raping an actual child.
So target the actual molester and not the bits. Someone could tell stories about how to molest children and maybe they write from experience and heck for sake of argument lets say a prisoner in prison for serial child molestation writes stories and books, should those books be banned?
My point is the event already took place. The crime was already committed. The bits on the computer at best are digital representations of evidence of the crime but they aren't the crime. The bits did not molest the child.
No. "technically" you are correct. Philosophically you are way off target. Philosophy requires that you think more deeply about imlications, causes and effects. You do know that child porn is created because there is a demand for it, right? Your argument about the flesh and blood predators is just wrong. Maybe not all, but children I deed ARE exploited because of that demand. One might not be paying for it, but by swapping, downloading, and arguably by mere possession, they are enabling contributing to the ecosystem that helps the underground economy thrive.
You're assuming there are child porn sites selling child porn for a profit. In that case yes it would be produced on demand to meet the supply in a very business oriented manner. The pedophile child molester on the other hand is not doing it for business reasons, they are doing it merely to get off. There is no reward for them to share it with others and risk going to prison. Yes there are child porn rings in existence and there are also serial killers who film it and put it on the internet but that doesn't mean the vast majority of these crimes work that way and it doesn't mean there is some organized pedophile cult or ritual child abuse going on.
If it were going on in that matter they'd simply stream the bits over webcam making it next to impossible to trace them and if that is the case the solution would be technical. Make it possible to trace any image or film from any camera in the same way we can trace bullets back to any gun and to who purchased it. None of this requires criminalizing bits. So your argument isn't based on any real evidence and if it were then you'd show at least a few cases where there is an active child porn eco-system on the internet because I've never seen that and I've been on the internet for almost 15 years.
Defending child pornography will just make it easier for copyright lobbyists to claim that all pirates are pedophiles. This is a bad strategy.
Pedophile has become communist. It's like being a witch. You're guilty until proven innocent and it can be used as political weapon to oppress all sorts of different groups of people. If you're part of Occupy Wallstreet, Anonymous, or just a rogue journalist you can be framed by a child porn virus and made to look like a pedophile.
So if the fear is you can't be an activist because you fear looking like a pedophile, you're appealing to fear and basically saying don't fight for free speech at all because they'll make you into a pedophile. Of course they can also make you into a rapist or make you dead given the right set of circumstances and if they knew how to get away with it.
If you still support the ban on child pornography then why isn't there a ban on obscene "teen erotica" literature? Why not ban text descriptions, or ban stories which encourage child abuse?
No actual people are physically harmed.
Who is harmed when bits are exchanged over the internet? Possession of child pornography doesn't do any direct harm to children just as possession of virtual child porn, lolicon or whatever else doesn't do any actual damage to children. So what exactly makes images and video so different from text descriptions or stories? To computers both are just bits.
Aren't there existing protections limiting prosecution to knowingly and intentionally committing crimes? I can't see how legalizing possession completely will "fix" the "problem" of accidental prosecution in an effective way. Baby/bathwater and all that.
No there aren't. Lets say you didn't know the law prior to committing the crime so you didn't even know you were breaking a law? You'd still be convicted.
For all who support the current child pornography laws which criminalize possessions of bits, is there a significant difference between that and a thought crime?
If you still support the ban on child pornography then why isn't there a ban on obscene "teen erotica" literature? Why not ban text descriptions, or ban stories which encourage child abuse?
Lets say for argument a corporation decided to produced a hand drawn manga series of lolicon (child porn) erotica and marketed it to an adult population, should the behavior of this corporation be banned? Should purchase or distribution of this material be criminal? Should the website be shut down and all the visitors raided?
Why or why not?
Possession of bits of any source or type out not be a crime. What you have here is a thought crime, and it doesn't actually deter actual abuse against children to criminalize or attempt to criminalize the thoughts or track down the bits. Chasing bits does not keep flesh and blood children safe from flesh and blood predators but I suppose it keeps pictures (bits) safe from creepy thinking adults.
A lot of laws are going to have to change with the advance in technology. Neuroscience will soon reveal all about the brain, making our paranoid about child predators seem about as effective as the paranoia about witches or communists. It's 2012 and at this time Google probably has everyone's thoughts...*cough* search records in a database. At the same time with neuroscience and in specific FMRI we will know what other humans are thinking, this technology does exist and ought to completely change the justice system.
The main problem with crime in the past is we assumed we would never know what anyone else is thinking, never have complete understanding of motives, never know the best forms of deterring certain events but imagine for a moment that its some point in the future and we know what everyone's thoughts were before they committed the criminal act? Would we view the acts in the same way if we knew the exact thoughts behind the act? If a criminal could not lie and an FMRI lie detector test has 100% accuracy could we change the justice system completely? What about detecting psychopaths, sociopaths, and others who aren't capable of remorse, empathy or guilt prior to sentencing? As far as I'm concerned we should be moving toward abolishing prisons altogether not because we wont have dangerous people but because eventually our understanding of human behavior will be such that we wont need so many prisoners and also if we wanted to we could probably just use house arrest on the non-violent.
We have to do away with the concept of good and evil. There is no good and evil. There may be smart and stupid or competent and incompetent but there is no good and evil. A sociopath or psychopath is not evil, they are simply retarded in a particular physical area of brain development. It hinders their decision making in the same way that any other disorder can hinder decision making in that it makes them less emotionally intelligent. This has been proven by neuroscientists when under FMRI we can see sociopaths brains aren't capable of experiencing empathy, remorse, and have trouble detecting or interpreting fear in the face and body language of others.
If we were talking about artificial intelligence we'd be talking about it like it's a bug that the AI cannot detect fear, or cannot properly make use of the empathy functions or subroutines, but because it's a human being we call the problem sociopathy and in human beings the problem is physical and not a matter of programming so it cannot be easily fixed. For these sorts of individuals we need prisons, but according to most estimates they only represent 1% of the general population yet 20% of the prisoners. This would mean 80% of prisoners aren't sociopaths or psychopaths, even if we assume 50% of that 80% are violent it still leaves 40$ or so of prisoners who aren't sociopaths or psychopaths and who aren't violent.
The most radical idea I'm going to propose is that we get rid of the idea of criminal responsibility. This probably wont happen until far into the future but if we make it into the future with powerful AI and technology, and we understand human thinking and feeling, at least theoretically we will eventually know the true motivations behind all actions. If the universe is predetermined and a lot of actions are based on genes, consequences, what brain type you have, environment, and situations, none of which an individual has full control over, just what is responsible for crime? The role of suggestion, of subliminal triggers, the role of desperation and poverty, the role of lack of intelligence, a lot of different things can convince a person that
They give pro (facist / police state / surveillance / corporate) forces the perfect justification to slowly destroy the most important source of freedom and information since the printing press: the Internet.
I just hope some of the wiser ones will still be around to help fight the forces of evil (and that ain't a video game console company, FFS).
Lulzsec went about things in the wrong/dumb way. Lulzsec should have never existed as it has diminished the reputation of Anonymous. If you believe in protecting internet freedom then I can understand that you will have something ideological in common with Anonymous, most of us do. But the current form of Anonymous does not do a very good job, as it's run as a headless vigilante organization without any direction. Many of it's ops actually damage it's credibility, such as doing DDOS attacks on sites (censorship), or revealing user information. Those sorts of activities don't enhance internet freedom they diminish it.
Sabu is selling out his former comrades for the lulz.
I doubt lulz come into it. I'm sure he is scared into submission and will do whatever he is told to.
It's the FBI's turn to have lulz now.
And that is what is what he should have thought about before starting Lulzsec and getting all these others involved in it. As far as I'm concerned Lulzsec looked like a honeypot from the very founding of it. The ideology was always directly opposed to law enforcement, Antisec was just ridiculously stupid to the point of just asking to be arrested.
I wonder if that's another arrest they made thanks to Sabu's cooperation, if so, that coop was the best thing the FBI could have done in this whole mess of so-called "hacktivism"
The thing here is it's not like Sabu is the good guy. Sabu is the worst of the worst here because he ruined the lives of the people who trusted him with their lives. Hackers are motivated by money, ideology, coercion or contraband and ego. This is the MICE motivation and in general all human beings are motivated the same way.
So in this case it's not money because these hackers weren't being paid. It was either IDEOLOGY or EGO. What that means is most of these young adults were brainwashed, or psychologically manipulated, probably by Sabu and people like him who also happened to be informants for the FBI. That is what sucks about tihs, we will never really know how many of these kids would never have got involved if Sabu hadn't influenced them. Sabu had no problem sacrificing his ideology for his ego as he threw Lulzsec under the bus for the FBI. Let's just accept that Sabu is a scumbag even by cyber criminal standards.
For the record I don't endorse Lulzsec, I think they were a bunch of idiots and my posts reflect that. Being an idiot shouldn't mean 15 years in prison, that is a political sentencing and I disagree with that. I also disagree with what Sabu did on a personal level, as he was a bad person, a rotten human being, but this has nothing to do with what he did on a professional level which may have actually put an end to Lulzsec.
It's just to deter other people who might want to do the same kind of things. And when it doesn't work (it never does), lawmakers will just up the ante. By the turn of the century, cybercriminals will all face the death penalty.
At least, if they get caught in the wrong state of the US.
Deterrence doesn't work. MICE, in this case IDEOLOGY is not going to be deterred by prison. EGO and MONEY might be deterred by prison because they weren't paid for it and most people wont get an ego boost by 15 years in prison but it doesn't change the fact that some people truly believed in the Lulzsec Antisec ideology to the point where even in prison they'll still believe in that ideology.
I definitely believe criminal activity should be punished but sending in prison a 20-year old for 15 whole fucking years and treating him as if he is a war criminal or serial killer, for simply hacking into a computer of a multi-billion-dollar company (which as it seems didn't care to invest some of it's awfully lot of money in protecting it's customer's data) , is a little too much. Especially when at the same time there are other criminals out there who roam free thanks to their financial status.
But it doesn't matter. His life is destroyed now and honestly you can thank Sabu for playing informant and helping to destroy it.
He can also thank himself for being an idiot.
So, if your bank left your money sitting out front and people took it, you wouldn't blame the bank? That's effectively what sony did. Even better, they were WARNED they had left your money out. http://www.justpushstart.com/2011/02/is-your-private-information-safe-with-sony/
In my mind they are most definitely responsible. More so than the kids who took it (and apparently did nothing with it).
It doesn't matter. Lulzsec still were the victimizers, the bad guys. What they did they could not defend politically.
I come at it from the opposite direction: I'm no fan of LulzSec, but Sony deserves to have its toenails removed for being so bloody sloppy about security.
Lulzsec didn't accomplish anything. They helped Sony more than hurt Sony and I don't like Sony but the revealing of user information made Sony into the good guy.
Hmm.. hate to break it to you but there ARE ways to be untraceable.. just like any criminal who gets bored they also get sloppy and hence getting caught.
There are ways but they don't work all the time. Proxies could be run by the authorities or acting as a honeypot. VPN services could be run by FBI agents. Groups like Lulzsec could be FBI fronts run by FBI informants, etc.
If you do stupid things like align yourself with Antisec movement and declare war on the police agencies you should expect to get arrested. Who is stupid enough to target the CIA website?
Hopefully with these arrests and others a few months back, the keyboard warriors out there will start to realise that they're not untraceable and can't just do as they damn well please on the internet.
I'm no fan of Sony but I hope this guy is banged up for a long time for stealing all that private data. And before any wannabe heros mod me down you might want to consider that YOUR data could be part of it.
I agree they went too far and I hate Sony too. I don't think revealing user data served the purposes of Anonymous in any way and if anything made Anonymous look like the bad guys and helped the opposition gain political cover to attack Anonymous and everything Anonymous was trying to do politically.
I want to see everything I can as many good things as I can and experience as many good things as I can for as long as possible.
Fuck dying.
But herein lies the problem: anonymous and software development are not comparable, not unless you want to stretch the definition of problem statement. But that's just Reductio ad Absurdum just to fit an argument.
Anonymous could be reduced to an algorithm and so can software. Another aspect they have in common is both usually depend on continuous optimization.
Which problem of decision making are we referring to here?
Just gathering a mass of emotional people does not produce good decisions without direction. Not all programmers make good design decisions and if you look at open source software you'll see a lot of great software ideas designed horribly. Napster was an example of a great idea with a horrible design.
How does this draw lessons for software development, and to general projects and missions with identifiable players? Is it a legitimate argument that requires Anonymous as an example (which is what the article says, remember the topic)?
I think it's more Anonymous can learn something from the software development process. Anonymous is like a piece of "software"that offers conceptual and philosophical cover as an umbrella organization. The problem is that concept and philosophy are receiving the least attention while the most attention is being put into the hacktivist aspect which may actually be the least important function of Anonymous as a concept.
Separations of duties are subject (for good or bad) to managerial control (or lack thereof, there is such a thing as bad managerial control by omission). Considering that the premise of the original article intends to draw lessons from Anonymous in the context of excessive control, then that puts micro-management as the main focus of the discussion.
Micro-management is just bad management. Separation of duties can be a part of good management practices.
And that typically ends horribly in the form of architect astronauts building crystal citadels. I've seen in the enterprise and in the defense sector. The moment you separate design from hand-to-hand development, you are typically doomed. Development gives immediate feedback about the consequences of architectural/design decisions.
I'm not saying it has to be separate to the point of the designers not being able to read or understand the code. The designers should understand the code. Designers should review the code continuously. Designers don't have to actually do the coding because a lot of coding isn't much more than implementing the design typing stuff in and testing it for bugs. The hardest part of software development is the design process and that is the part which requires abstract thinking while the coding part just requires following of orders, checking your work for bugs to make sure it works, all which could be part of a blueprint or set of instructions. Consider that most development teams want to produce a lot of code for cheap it's going to cost a bit more money to try and take junior coders and turn them into lead designers.
You, as a designer (or as part of a design team) can create design blue prints send to junior developers (local or offshore), but you need to be substantially involved in day-to-day development (in addition to conducting frequent code reviews to ensure your juniors/minions are implemented the design as intended.) The only time I've seen such partitioning working out is when the designers are involved in coding as well. It rarely works otherwise.
When did I say the designer shouldn't be involved? The designer has to keep track of everything to make sure it's all going according to the design or make changes to the design.
The problem with Anonymou