Virtual Illusions

Sex Offender Paranoia - How We’ve Gone Too Far

Skip down to number 8.  A 2 year old girl wandered away from her pre-school.  She is seen by a man driving down the road.  The man thinks he should do something but is afraid that he’ll be accused of trying to abduct her.

The girl is later found downed to death in a pond.

In that same article is the story of Thomas Pauli and man convicted of second degree criminal sexual conduct, who froze to death because he was denied access to a homeless shelter because he was on “the list”.   He couldn’t stay in the homeless shelters because they were to close to a school.  The article makes no comment about whether he had ever hurt a child, and given that his crime doesn’t include the word minor, it seems likely that he never did.

In this article Stephen Marshall kills two sex offenders.  One of his victims committed the crime of having consensual sex with his girlfriend three weeks before the age of consent.  Marshall got their home addresses from the registry of sexual offenders along with 34 other potential victims and murdered two men in one day.  I assume he will have murdered more if given more time.

Given that 83% of sexual assaults are committed by someone known to the victim and that the recitvism rate among sex offenders is 2/3rd that of released prisoners in general and of those that reoffend only 5.3% are re-arrested for a sex crime, it seems clear that sex offender paranoia does more harm than good.  [source]

I’m not sure what society thinks will happen when they release people from prison who can’t get a job, get a place to live or have any friends, it seems to me the intended effect of the sex offender registries is that more people (children or otherwise) get hurt.

Culture, Justice

Halliburton to pay $559 million to settle bribery probe

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/26/AR2009012601605.html

Doesn’t that seem a bit like paying a bribe to settle a bribery investigation.  It seems unlikely that they’ll learn the right lessons from this.

Justice, Politics

I keep hearing how we can’t negotiate with Hamas until they accept Israel’s right to exist, but my reading of recent history suggests that Gaza has been under existential threat due to siege.  So how come no commentator says Hamas shouldn’t negotiate with Israel until they accept Gaza has a reasonable expectation not to be choked out of existence by Israel.

The cease fire that people keep telling me that Hamas violated seems to have based upon Israel opening up the border crossings.  When Israel failed to keep up to thier end of the agreement, they violated the cease fire by continuing the aggression in the form of a siege.

I keep hearing something to the effect of what country wouldn’t respond to rocket fire.  I ask what country wouldn’t respond to the existential threat of a choking siege.

Both sides have failed to pursue peace in a useful way.  We need to stop pretending there isn’t 50 years of bad blood to work through.

Justice, News, Politics

The Montgomery County (Maryland) Police believe the law doesn’t apply to them.

The police of Montgomery County believe that speed limits are for little people, not big important people like them. Or to put it another way, they are above the rule of law at the very least with regards to speed limits, who knows about other crimes.

I think most rational people understand that when a police officer is responding to a call or if they somehow made the mistake of getting into a pursuit situation they are authorized to travel as quickly as they safely can to respond to that call. This is not in dispute or even a consideration. The question is why does the police officers believe the speed limit doesn’t apply to them when they aren’t on a call?

I’m generally in favor of unions and against speed cameras, but in this case I seem to be against the police union and siding with the speed cameras. The union has claimed that the county should be responsible for tickets issued by police officers ignoring the speed limits. Police sergeants have gone so far as refusing to check if an officer was responding to a call when the camera issued the ticket.

The chief directed lieutenants, not covered by the union, to investigate the matter and in the last 8 months 76 of the 224 tickets issued have been dismissed because the officer was responding to a call. Two thirds of the remaining 148 tickets have not been paid. The union advises its member that speed cameras issue citations to the owner of the vehicle not the driver, so they should not pay the tickets or set court dates.

The Fire Department has had no issue holding its firefighters responsible and making them pay their fines. It is the police who believe they should not be held to the same rules as the rest of us. That is a serious problem.

Sadly it is not limited to Montgomery County, there is an entire web site dedicated to police officers grousing about the injustice because they were issued tickets for traffic violations while they were off duty. This belief that they are above the law is dangerous in police officers, it represents a belief that they are an over-class with some right to oppress an under-class, rather than citizens like any other, attempting to keep order. It isn’t clear that these people should be police officers.

It seem more likely that they are nothing but bullies who wanted to continue the feeling of power as they became adults, rather than individuals with a desire to server their community and make it safer. I’m not so naive as to think all of our police are there or should be there because they have a desire to serve. We need to pay them and give them sufficient benefits so it is an attractive option to enough people. The union should be on the forefront of negotiating those things.

However, we can not negotiate about the rule of law.

Justice, News, Politics

It’s been a few days since the questionably named Protect America Act expired and we haven’t been killed yet. No reason we should be the same wire tapping continues unabated, but now they have to go to the FISA court which never learned the word no. But it is at least has the appearance of oversight. The court could, it if felt the need, actually require some indication of wrong doing. It probably already requires something other than a fishing expedition, thus it’s too much of a hardship to the current administration.

One of the reasons the Protect America Act expired was because congress couldn’t decide whether to give phone companies blanket immunity for its past misdeeds in giving slews of data to the government, which the government was not authorized to ask for. It’s unclear whether they broke any laws but it seem clear they had a huge failure of moral judgment. I would argue that phone companies have at least a moral if not legal obligation to act as my agents to protect my data. I suspect in a few years most people will believe this but at present it’s just wacko techies who think about the implications of other entities holding your data.

Running it through from a very basic level if an entity (used here mostly as company and/or organization) asks for and you give them your information or even if they collect this data in their normal role as service provider, it seems rational that they have incurred a basic obligation to take reasonable precautions to protect that data. At the very least you expect them to secure their systems such that the Russian mob isn’t simply using their servers as data feeds.

Most people have the expectations that an entity that they have given data will attempt to protect it. In a sense they have become our agents. In accepting our information part of the expectation is the idea that they will act on our behalf to protect it. It’s a subtle point that I don’t pretend exists in law yet, but it is how the relationship is viewed by most people if they thing about it. Part of the unspoken contract between your favorite online vendor and yourself is this idea that your data won’t escape into the wild.

I’m not so naive as to think that vendor isn’t selling my data to various third parties in one form or another. As much as I wish it weren’t true, I understand that the use of my data in the entities interests is part of the deal. For that matter I encourage the use of my data in aggregate. But we have certain expectation of who the vendor is selling our data to and for what purposes.

For example I had a retailer (rpgnow.com) sell my email address to a spammer, this violates the understanding I had with them about the acceptable use of my data. As a result I no longer do business with them.

We have already begun to see along the fringes, retailers who are competing on issues of privacy. I suspect this will become more central as the years move on. We will have companies competing on their skill at being good agents for protecting our data.

Which leads us back to the Protect America Act. These companies who collect our data for the purpose of saving money, anticipating demand, allocating capital resources and other competitive advantages, have also incurred the responsibility of acting as our agents. The government isn’t coming to me with a warrant, National Security Letter or other ‘instrument’ so I can’t verify that the ‘I’s are dotted and the ‘T’s are crossed. That falls to my agents.

Those companies now want to given immunity for falling to be good agents. The government wants to send the message that companies should ignore the law and just do whatever the people from Washington in suits tell them to. Don’t worry Washington will take care of any fallout. They want these companies to act as agents of Washington rather than agents of their customers.

We can not let this happen, we need these people to have in interest in making sure they give Washington all the data required by law, but not a bit more. They must remain motivated to make sure that everyone is operating within the constraints of the law and with proper oversight. They are acting as my agents in this regard and they have a moral obligation to protect my rights in this regard.

One day the law will reflect that.

Justice, News, Politics, Tech

I recently received an offensive and wildly inaccurate email about immigration. I took the time to respond to it rather than ignore it and thought I’d share it with my close person friend the Internet.

The following email was forwarded to me (formatting was scrambled but this is my bet guess of its intended format):

This is a subject close to my heart. Do you know that we have adult students at the school where I teach who are not US citizens and who get the PELL grant, which is a federal grant (no pay back required) plus other federal grants to go to school? One student from the Dominican Republic told me that she didn’t want me to find a job for her after she finished my program, because she was getting housing from our housing
department and she was getting PELL grant which paid for her total tuition and books, plus money left over. She was looking into WAIT which gives students a CREDIT CARD for gas to come to school, and into CARIBE which is a special program for immigrants and it pays for child care and all sorts of needs while they go to school or training. The one student I just mentioned told me she was not going to be a US citizen because she plans to return to the Dominican Republic someday and that she “loves HER country.” I asked her if she felt guilty taking what the US is giving her and then not even bothering to become a citizen and she told me that it doesn’t bother her, because that is what the money is there for!

I asked the CARIBE administration about their program and if you ARE a US citizen, you don’t qualify for their program. And all the while, I am working a full day, my son-in-law works more than 60 hours a week, and everyone in my family works and pays for our education.

Something is wrong here. … Right?

I am sorry but after hearing they want to sing the National Anthem in Spanish - enough is enough. Nowhere did they sing it in Italian, Polish, Irish (Celtic), German or any other language because of immigration. It was written by Francis Scott Key and should be sung word for word the way it was written The news broadcasts even gave the translation — not even close.

Sorry if this offends anyone but this is MY COUNTRY - IF IT IS YOUR COUNTRY SPEAK UP — please pass this along.

I am not against immigration — just come through like everyone else. Get a sponsor; have a place to lay your head; have a job; pay your taxes and live by the rules –AND LEARN THE LANGUAGE as all other immigrants have in the past — and GOD BLESS AMERICA!

PART OF THE PROBLEM

Think about this: If you don’t want to forward this for fear of offending someone — YOU’RE PART OF THE PROBLEM! It is Time for America to Speak up

If you agree — pass this along, if you don’t agree — delete it!

Yep, I passed it on !

Since writing my response I also researched Pell grants and confirmed they require legal status, congruent with my belief that the immigrant in question has refugee status. Also keep in mind that the PELL grant caps out at about $5k/year so no one is really sitting pretty on a Pell grant. Also a Pell grant only applies to educational costs.

Although it probably needs more polish, this is my response (I feel like I need some phrases in all caps to scream back):

Someone who disagrees should not silently delete this, they should respond and enter into a dialog. Of course most of the facts of this idealogical screed are unverifiable by intent, but we can discover some things.

According to the Internet Caribe stands for Career Recruitment and Instruction in Basic English. So when the author (whoever that is) screams that immigrants should learn the language, this is a program to do exactly that. As it happens it is only available to immigrants who have been given refuge or asylum status. So it isn’t surprising that this person would like to return to their country if they could do so safely.

So to be clear this “horrible” person described in the screed is not an illegal immigrant but actually a legal immigrant here under refugee or asylum status. So when they say they are all for legal immigration they are lying.

The refugee status explains the access to the pell grants and all the other assistance granted a refugee to this country. Many of these programs trigger negative consequences for the recipient if they start
making money or are not sufficiently a full time student. I do not know if that applies in this case because I don’t think I can trust as unbiased most of the information provided.

Are you aware that as part of our foreign policy each year the federal government assists students from all over the world to come to the united states and become educated in American schools. We don’t do this out of the goodness of our heart. We do it so that they return to their country and spread our culture or at the very least a tolerance of American attitudes.

My sister-in-law is one of them and because of the program they can not return to the United States for any length of time for another six months despite the fact that she married my brother and now have a child who is a U.S. citizen.

As for singing the National Anthem in Spanish, I am proud of them. I am glad that someone believes that the anthem isn’t a hollow symbol but is meaningful enough in their lives that they would like to make it part of themselves.

For a symbol to have meaning it needs to periodically be reinvented. Jimi Hendrix reinvented that very same symbol while on acid in the ’60s. Someone is making the effort to make a symbol of America accessible to more people. They are doing America a boon, not a disservice.

By the way it was translated into German in 1861, Yiddish in the 1940’s as well as French, Samoan and Latin. Francis Scott Key wrote it as a poem and he had nothing to do with turning it into a song (the tune is a British drinking song). It wasn’t our national anthem until 1931 and can’t even be construed as a defacto anthem until 1916 at the earliest. Things change, that isn’t always bad.

Immigration is a complicated issue. Recent studies in Virginia indicated that immigrant entrepreneurship ended up generating millions of dollars of revenue in excess of the cost of services to immigrants.

Our immigration system is fundamentally broken, the defacto compromise that has been brokered over the years is that if you make it into the country and keep your head down and work low wage jobs we will turn out heads and provide opportunities to your children.

Recently it has been suggested that we need to normalize immigration. This includes expelling people who arrived in the United States before their first memory, kids who arrived here before their third birthday and are now graduating high school or college. This is their cultural home and they’ve never known anything else.

However even if it was just, expelling 12,000,000 people is logistically impossible in any reasonable time frame. If you did expel that many people we don’t have spare capable workforce to replace them. I don’t mean that business would have to pay more, I’m all for that, I mean the actual physical people with minimal physical and social skills (keep in mind they are replacing people who may not speak English, so I do mean minimal) do not exist.

I do take offense at the email, I don’t think it is anything more than undisguised bigotry. This may be your country but it is mine as well and I’d prefer a rational policy towards immigration that deals with the actual needs and pressures on this country rather than some idealogical kick out every one who isn’t a “real” American for some value of “American.”

Culture, Justice, Politics

I was discussing prisons over lunch with some co-workers and came up with two ideas which seem interesting and certainly couldn’t hurt our prison problem.

First as a qualification to become a warden at a prison an applicant would need to have served some time in jail. Selecting and finding these people may be difficult, ideally they would have served and then gone on to become contributing members of society. But they would have to choose to step back into a prison, which seems like it would difficult even if you are doing it on the other side of the cell door. My suggestions below may make this easier.

Having wardens with prisoner experience would make sure the agency keeping order in prisons remembered that the prisoners were human and still had the potential for a successful civilized life. They would also know what parts are the most de-humanizing and thus stand in the way of a rehabilitation process. They’d also know how prison culture works and may be able to nudge it without heavy handed techniques.

The second and much larger change would be create a matriculation process. Create a number of levels, each independently housed, which a prisoner would be expected to move through during their time in jail. Each level affording more freedoms and demanding more responsibility from the prisoner. At each level the prisoner is incentivized to get to the next level and greater freedoms and privacy, but also have the risk of stepping out of line and being sent back down to a previous level.

Getting to higher levels isn’t just about not breaking the rules it is about conforming to what we expect out of a contributing member of middle class society. There are social, moral linguistic and even dress norms that are expected to be adhered to at least in public. I’m not suggesting that prisoners have to become something they aren’t but they need to become adept at donning the guise or respectability which will serve them in job interviews and holding down jobs once they are released.

With luck, at higher levels the prison environment should be very similar to a boarding school. Prisoners should be attending classes, either in tradecraft or a two or four year degree. At some point prisoners should function in a “cash” economy (in quotes because actual cash may or may not be in the hands of prisoners).

They should hold down and get paid for jobs which can be accomplished from prison. A call center comes immediately to mind (though anything being outsourced can likely be done by prisoners who can’t leave the prison yet). Once they are paid for their work, they will be gradually ramped up to paying for going market rates for room and board and they will start being able to make choices on how to spend their money on different accommodations and benefits (pay more for a larger room, a better dinner occasionally or save it for later uses).

Prisoners aren’t just released all at once, there would be levels where the prisoner is aided in finding employment outside the prison and is allowed to travel on their own to these jobs but is expected to return to the facility for room and board. There would a be a number of slow incremental steps weening the prisoner away from the facility until they could stand productively on their own two feet (even then the prison system should always stand prepared to lend aid and advice when requested/required).

Which such a matriculation system a judge could assign a prisoner to a particular level as they are sentenced for a major crime and when they finish the program their sentence has been served. This may take longer or shorter depending on whether the prisoner embraces or fights the process.

It was an interesting enough idea that I thought I’d present it to the Internet.

This would serve well for prisoners who committed crimes primarily due to their economic or cultural roots, however, a true sociopath or drug kingpin would easily pass through the system without necessarily changing or growing. I’m not sure how the system should be adjusted to handle this.

Related Items:

• 1% Incarceration
• Death Penalty

Culture, Justice

A man, Dempster, was acquitted of manslaughter charges yesterday. The death that the prosecutor believed Dempster should have been accountable for is described as such:

In the early hours of April 25, Dempster fled on foot in a wooded area after an officer who suspected that he was driving while intoxicated attempted to pull him over. Hoffman, one of the officers searching for Dempster on foot, was struck by a police cruiser as he stood on the side of a narrow, poorly lighted road.

At trial last month, prosecutors argued that Dempster, 20, ought to be held accountable for Hoffman’s death. “Because of the defendant’s selfishness and concern for only himself, Montgomery County police officer Luke Hoffman lost his life,” Deputy State’s Attorney John Maloney said during opening statements.
– http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/18/AR2007121801853.html

Justice, News

Often when I tell people that I am an optimist they laugh as if I’m making a joke. And it is true that I believe the situation right now is ‘teh suxor’, but I am an optimist because the below letter to the editor of the Washington Post is very close to my own belief which is an optimistic view of the future.

======

In one throwaway comment, Jeffrey H. Birnbaum crystallizes the attitude problem of insider media. After describing a few reform efforts in “Washington’s Once and Future Lobby” [Outlook, Sept. 10], Mr. Birnbaum adds, “Don’t imagine for a moment that anything will really change.”

Those words, worthy of George Orwell’s “1984,” could be carved in stone above every door where the powerful come and go. They perfectly sum up the self-delusion that sustains all ruling classes. And it is always a delusion. As the British Empire, the Jim Crow South and the Soviet Union each discovered in my lifetime, sooner or later every system of exploitation will “really change,” no matter how permanent and mighty it seems.

The shameless corporate abuse embodied by the K Street lobbies is no exception. The system will, sooner or later, overreach and be transformed.

LARRY YATES
Maurertown, Va.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/18/AR2006091801213.html

Justice

Remember the cyberpowerpc issue (http://nephlm.livejournal.com/84068.html) back in April? I finally got my money out of them. It seems that after the Fedex processed the claim and they promised my refund would be processed the next day they ‘misplaced’ my refund for two weeks until I started calling and yelling at them.

When they tried to tell me no refund was due and I started insisting on talking to a supervisor they started hanging up on me. Four times in a row they hung up on me. Only when I threatened them with lawyers if I was hung up on again did they decide to talk to me.

Finally done with them.

Justice, Life, Tech