[HN Gopher] A SpaceX Engineer's Dark Web Insider Trading Sparks ...
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A SpaceX Engineer's Dark Web Insider Trading Sparks an SEC First
Author : leephillips
Score : 132 points
Date : 2021-03-20 05:19 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wired.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wired.com)
| paulpauper wrote:
| He should have just done the twitter imposter bitcoin giveaway
| thing. Make $27-50/k in a single day completely undetected, no
| SEC getting involved. one guy made $500k. Anything having to do
| with insider trading is going to be full of feds, no matter how
| small the $ is or how accurate or inaccurate the tips are. One of
| the worst ways to make money, either trading from insider info or
| selling it. Same for the dark web, which has probably more feds
| than actual users. Smart internet criminals stay away from onion
| sites.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| This feels like a great time to mention that insider trading is
| perfectly legal for Congress and is insanely profitable for
| them.
| koheripbal wrote:
| Insider Trading is legally defined as registered company
| insiders trading or selling insider information for profit.
|
| It makes no sense to say that a congressman is "insider
| trading" because they are given a report on the outbreak of
| disease in China.
|
| There is no such thing as "insider trading" for geopolitical
| or macroeconomic events.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| If you think about "insider trading" in the sense of
| trading on "material non-public information" then it makes
| sense to say that congresspeople are legally insider
| trading.
|
| If I hear from a friend at X that company X is about to Y
| and trade off that, that's insider trading. Right? If a
| congressman heard in closed testimony that a bad thing is
| about to happen to X and trades off that...
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| The article is worth a read. The perpetrator was apparently doing
| a lot more than just insider trading on the dark web:
|
| > As far back as 2016, the account with that moniker bought
| names, addresses, dates of birth, and Social Security numbers on
| the underground marketplaces that traffic in illicit online
| goods. He took that personal info to open banking accounts in the
| names of unwitting strangers, and used those accounts to make
| trades based on insider information he gleaned from others
|
| The claimed amount of Bitcoin he earned from these activities is
| low. Certainly low in the context of what a talented engineer
| should be earning. Either he's hiding his actual profits, or he
| was simply doing this for the thrill of doing criminal things on
| the dark web. Strange case.
| paulpauper wrote:
| it's space-x, not google. the salaries are probably not that
| great, especially after taking into account living expenses .
| $20k in net profit is a nice even for an engineer.
| blobbers wrote:
| It really isn't. SpaceX is in LA, and engineers that can get
| jobs there can easily work at google. $20K in net profit is a
| drop in the bucket.
| dehrmann wrote:
| I assume SpaceX is like the game industry. People are
| overworked and underpaid because their work is their passion.
| yaacov wrote:
| I used to work at an aerospace startup with a lot of ex-
| SpaceX people. They worked 60 hrs/week and felt like they
| were on vacation.
| Traster wrote:
| I'm not actually that surprised. There are lots of people who
| have decent paying jobs, but want more, and it's not as easy as
| saying "I earn $100k working at X, I can easily earn an extra
| 30k doing it freelance on the weekend". It is extraordinarily
| difficult to actually leverage your skills in a way that earns
| immediate profits - especially since your skills are often
| specializing in a niche that your company probably dominates.
| 27k for a stupid stock prediction scam seems like a decent pay
| off _if_ you think your technical expertise means you have an
| extremely low chance of getting caught. Maybe you would be more
| willing to do this if you worked for a guy who repeatedly
| flouts SEC rules an brags about it....
| syntaxing wrote:
| I'm curious if it's $27K of 2017 Bitcoin or today's Bitcoin. If
| it's the latter it's $385K.
| moeris wrote:
| You mean former?
| blunte wrote:
| One would assume that SpaceX engineers would be smarter than the
| average person, but based on the details of this story he doesn't
| sound very bright at all.
| c3534l wrote:
| Smart people can be pretty stupid.
| frakkingcylons wrote:
| I'd also assume that they wouldn't have the free time for
| insider trading schemes.
| matz1 wrote:
| Just because one is smart in rocket engineering doesn't mean
| they also smart in other field.
|
| Nobody can be smart at everything.
| mannykannot wrote:
| One should not base one's opinion of SpaceX engineers on this
| one example.
| cma wrote:
| As another data point, Musk is chief engineer, and also
| involved in securities fraud in other roles ("going private
| $420").
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| Well intellect can be broad or narrow too.
|
| source: I can be very smart and incredibly stupid too
| paulpauper wrote:
| Smart, well-accomplished millionaires fell for Madoff scam
| inglor_cz wrote:
| To be a successful white collar criminal, you need to be
| _cunning_ more than smart.
|
| These are very different qualities.
| dylan604 wrote:
| And have a good attorney.
| polytely wrote:
| I've slowly come to the realisation that the majority of very
| smart people are only smart in the field they work in.
| [deleted]
| germinalphrase wrote:
| In the olden days, they called it hubris, and it was a sin
| against the gods.
| dehrmann wrote:
| And often surprisingly below average in everything else.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Maybe the majority of well paid people are paid for their
| behavioral predictability than ingenuities...
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| That's generally the case for everything in our lives,
| though. Part of what keeps civilization going is minimizing
| variance / maximizing predictability of people.
|
| In modern societies, we try to keep unpredictable people
| away from anything important. In the most extreme cases, we
| lock them up in prisons and mental hospitals. In less
| extreme cases, we gatekeep: for example, you have to go
| through a psychological evaluation to get your pilot's
| license, driver's license, to be allowed to own a firearm,
| or be employed in certain positions. Degree of such
| gatekeeping is usually proportional to the damage wrong
| behavior can cause.
|
| And then in general, we have laws and cultures and social
| customs that slowly grind us into shape, every day of our
| lives, making us ever so slightly more similar to each
| other with every interaction, so that we can predict each
| others' behaviors and cooperate effectively.
|
| (I bring this up sometimes in context of AI/ML, where I
| complain that modern ML is made of black boxes with
| unpredictable failure modes. The usual reply is, "but
| humans are black boxes too!". Well, they aren't completely
| opaque - thanks to shared hardware architecture and "theory
| of mind", and to the degree it's not enough, society
| ensures predictability is maximized.)
| teatree wrote:
| I had never thought about society this way. Thanks for
| this insight.
| mlyle wrote:
| > for example, you have to go through a psychological
| evaluation to get your pilot's license, driver's license
|
| Where? Wasn't required for me to fly or drive...
|
| > to be allowed to own a firearm,
|
| Not true even of a lot of restrictive jurisdictions.
| (even the UK).
|
| > or be employed in certain positions
|
| Sometimes this is true of being e.g. law enforcement or
| somewhere that requires a security clearance. But not
| very common.
| [deleted]
| lazyweb wrote:
| Greed often outweighs any smarts.
| superkuh wrote:
| If the SEC is going to start caring about insider trading they
| should definitely take a look at what the members of the US
| congress did at the start of the sars-cov-2 pandemic.
|
| What this looks like to me is just the SEC with it's well known
| hate for SpaceX looking to hurt them any way they can.
| koheripbal wrote:
| Covid-19 is not a corporation, so the notion of "insider
| trading of non-public corporate information" makes zero sense.
|
| Insider Trading isn't some vague catch-all for non-public
| information. It has a specific meaning that relates to publicly
| held corporations.
| justapassenger wrote:
| What known hate for SpaceX in SEC?
| edoceo wrote:
| Maybe they assume SEC hated Elon, and therefore SpaceX too?
| Either way, citation needed
| koheripbal wrote:
| > insider trading activity on the dark web peaked a few years
| ago, and fizzled out after 2018... Perpetrators have likely
| migrated to more secure encrypted channels instead.
|
| Does this mean they are no longer using TOR, or they are just
| operating a more low-key onion site?
|
| Are there even indexes of tor sites?
| jki275 wrote:
| I read the other day that DuckDuckGo indexes tor sites.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| dark.fail
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Hypothetical question: how would it work out in the long run, if
| there would be no such thing as illegal "insider trading"?
|
| Because I suspect the very few things that surface up, are only a
| very small tip of a very big iceberg anyway, with all the elite
| managers/politicians interacting in pretty much closed circles, I
| cannot imagining it is not happening on a large scale and only
| some small fish like this one get caught now and then.
|
| So, how could things work out, if this would just be legal?
| Devastating to the economy? Much more manipulation of the stock
| market? Or even less, as people are more aware of it?
|
| Also, I cannot imagine myself not doing it, if I would have
| valuable information, I also do not really understand it all,
| when it would be considered insider trading and when not - but I
| can imagine this is the case for many people. The term seems just
| not clear defined to me, so maybe it is then doing more bad than
| good?
| hervature wrote:
| I don't think that people are concerned about the trades but
| rather the perverse incentives it creates in the long term.
| Incentivizes bribes for officials on classified committees, it
| encourages employees to be more active in trading versus
| actually helping the company, investing would be pointless as
| the price would be set by insiders. By definition, any trade
| against an insider would be bad. It's tough to predict the
| effects on the economy but I think it's reasonable to say these
| behaviors are suboptimal for an economy. It's a valid question
| because even Nobel laureates in economics have advocated for
| removing insider trader laws. However, my opinion is that
| academics are short sighted by their assumptions of the world.
| Namely, they assume that the agents would still try to maximize
| the well being of the company. No model is sufficiently
| sophisticated to take into account what happens when people get
| on their brokers instead of dealing with issues as they arise.
| As an extreme example, after noticing your data center is in
| fire, you clear your stock position before calling 911.
|
| There's a couple of key components to insider trading. First,
| you must be an insider. That is, loosely, anyone who has a some
| duty of trust. This can include public officials who are
| supposed to be serving the public and deciding to profit in
| times of crises instead of doing their job. This was not always
| the case. Furthermore, there is some notion of gaining
| information via illicit means also makes you an insider. The
| other is trading on material non-public information. "Valuable
| information" is only half the equation. For this, I'm going to
| use Matt Levine's (I think that's where I got it) example of
| how grey it can get. If a CEO harasses you, you are perfectly
| free to take out a massive short before suing the company. If
| the CEO harasses an employee, depending on the seniority and
| location of the crime, it could and could not be considered
| insider trading. Anyway, this is why we have the courts.
| mancerayder wrote:
| It depends who is doing it. American politicians, both
| Republicans and Democrats, engage in it and it isn't defined as
| insider trading directly (it's grey). Pelosi's husband,
| Crowdstrike shares is one recent example.
| paulpauper wrote:
| Probably the majority of tips do not yield much profit. The
| problem takes cares of itself in that as the information
| becomes more public, the market adjusts accordingly.
| xt00 wrote:
| TLDR: the guy was selling tips on the "dark web" in 2017 about
| stocks going up or down totaling 27k in Bitcoin. Sounds like he
| was caught when he purchased some personal info of people and
| used that info to open new trading accounts.
| RedShift1 wrote:
| So the charge should include identity theft?
| minitoar wrote:
| "Officer, I didn't know these were stolen identities when I
| purchased them"
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| There is something wrong with risk vs reward in this story. A
| spaceX engineer ruins his life for 27k?
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| I wonder if he hid other profits in other crypto accounts. Or
| perhaps he viewed this as testing the waters and building a
| reputation before he scaled up.
|
| It's possible that he just enjoyed the thrill of doing crimes
| and getting fun money. During the first crypto-mining boom, my
| friend in corporate IT caught multiple people trying to use
| office electricity and networks to mine Bitcoin with hidden
| hardware. One person even tried to hide their mining machine
| above the drop ceiling tiles. They couldn't have been making
| much money relative to their salary, but they liked the idea of
| being clever enough to get free money for themselves at the
| expense of someone else.
| danaliv wrote:
| People are motivated by way more than just money.
| paulpauper wrote:
| SpaceX is not Facebook, Goldman Sachs, or Google. There are
| probably no stock options or other nice perks. The salaries are
| probably not that great. Also, after taking into account taxes
| and other expenses, there is probably not that much left over,
| so $27k is a nice bonus.
| godelski wrote:
| From what I know you'd get the equivalent of a junior
| software engineer and with no benefits. So like
| $90k-$120k/yr. More if you're Sr, but again, this is total.
| And let's be real, $30k is still a good bonus even at a $200k
| take home. That's an extra 15% (possibly not even taxable
| given the nature).
| bagels wrote:
| This is simply not true. They offer both stock options and
| (private) rsu.
| ufmace wrote:
| I've always believed that most crimes are committed more
| because of the thrill of it, the desire to feel like you got
| something extra illicitly because you're more clever and
| ruthless than everyone else, etc, than because of a rational
| evaluation of the financial upside.
| rtpg wrote:
| > A criminal complaint by the Justice Department details a string
| of investments that Jones made in the spring of 2017, mostly
| through an unnamed conspirator's account, based on phony insider
| info provided by the undercover fed. That summer, the
| relationship would flip: Jones told the undercover agent on July
| 25 what an unnamed company's earnings would be, investing $5,000
| on his behalf. Two days later, the numbers came out. They were
| identical.
|
| You know what? I'm getting a bit tired of things that smell an
| awful lot like entrapment. Way too many things where you have a
| law enforcement official seemingly start an interaction, and the
| "actual crime" only happening later in the sequencing.
|
| I'm not going to shed too many tears at people getting arrested
| for like... fake insider trading or whatever. But there's a lot
| of stories of people getting put away for really nasty stuff
| where the details make it _extremely probable_ that the
| undercover agent was extremely important in moving things
| forward.
|
| I feel like there needs to be some stronger requirements before
| pulling off these kinds of schemes, instead of LEO seemingly
| trying to fill some quota by going out hunting for people to fall
| into these traps.
| exo-pla-net wrote:
| Entrapment is a subtle concept. Most people misunderstand it;
| police are legally permitted to do much more than most expect.
|
| This guide enumerates the misunderstandings about entrapment,
| and (if you're not already a lawyer) it will likely teach you
| something that could prove valuable:
| https://thecriminallawyer.tumblr.com/post/19810672629/12-i-w...
| DaniloDias wrote:
| You might find this cspan call about LEO press releases
| interesting.
|
| This is FBI Agents Association representative Rey Tariche
| responding to an observation that look like they're entrapping
| in order to justify their budget.
|
| https://noagendaassets.com/enc/1555616344.323_producermattca...
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Law enforcement agents only stepped in after the perpetrator
| had been committing crimes online for a long time. From the
| article:
|
| > As far back as 2016, the account with that moniker bought
| names, addresses, dates of birth, and Social Security numbers
| on the underground marketplaces that traffic in illicit online
| goods. He took that personal info to open banking accounts in
| the names of unwitting strangers, and used those accounts to
| make trades based on insider information he gleaned from others
|
| The reason they do things like sell fake information is that
| they need to engage with the person, who is already committing
| these crimes on their own, in some way that produces the least
| amount of additional criminal activity. Hence the fake info
| sale and then the purchase of real into, both of which the guy
| was advertising online before the agents engaged him.
|
| This isn't entrapment. He was advertising illegal services by
| his own choosing. The police didn't make him do these crimes on
| the dark web (before they even got involved). They simply
| engaged with him as another one of his dark web customers to
| build a case.
| Judgmentality wrote:
| > The police didn't make him do these crimes on the dark web
| (before they even got involved).
|
| I tend to always assume the police are lying in the United
| States. How do we know they weren't doing this longer than
| they say?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction
| slim wrote:
| in some countries entrapment is explicitly and strictly
| forbidden. like if law enforcement has an infiltrated agent,
| it's a risk that could void the case
| martin8412 wrote:
| And in some countries entrapment isn't even a thing. You
| broke the law, you'll get punished regardless if coerced by a
| cop or not.
| varispeed wrote:
| With good enough manipulation techniques you can make
| anyone do anything, so basically services can send LEO to
| groom undesirable citizen into committing a crime and then
| lock them up legally. It's just slightly more sophisticated
| than Soviets did.
| martin8412 wrote:
| Yea, you can absolutely do that. The country I'm speaking
| about is Denmark.
|
| The police can also break down your door without a
| warrant and use anything they find against you. Them
| having entered illegally may have consequences for their
| unemployment(though it won't), but the evidence is still
| admissible in court.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Like where, North Korea?
|
| Did you spend even 5 minutes thinking about what you just
| said?
|
| Civilians rely on cops for instructions and directions.
| Furthermore a cop can order around civilians under threat
| of force.
|
| If a cop forces you to commit a crime and then jails you,
| they can extort you for money corruption will be through
| the roof.
|
| Thats what we have in Russia, the security services are
| superbly corrupt and regularly extort people. At least
| there they are breaking the law while doing so. You are
| suggesting we make it legal here.
| josefx wrote:
| > I'm getting a bit tired of things that smell an awful lot
| like entrapment
|
| In most countries "entrapment" requires that the suspect is
| unwilling, unlikely or under no suspicion of committing a
| crime. The guy they caught was actively looking for buyers and
| had been selling information on a purpose build board before he
| was kicked out of it for selling bad info.
| tzs wrote:
| Most countries don't even have an entrapment defense [1].
| They regulate police overreach by other mechanisms.
|
| [1] https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/46710181.pdf
| Daho0n wrote:
| No it doesn't require suspects to be those things "in most
| countries". The suspect has to do so by their own volition
| and not after prodding by a cop. If a cop asks if you want to
| buy some drugs and you say yes then the cop can be punished,
| not you, no matter if you might be suspected of wanting to
| buy drugs. This sneaky entrapment is a very American thing
| and won't be accepted by most courts. Just like US cops
| pretending to be prostitutes and then arresting the client.
| That's entrapment in "most countries".
| wonderwonder wrote:
| In the US cops can actually have sex with prostitutes and
| then arrest them for prostitution afterwards. The justice
| system is broken.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Can you provide any citations for your claim?
|
| I'm reviewing the few countries listed in the Wikipedia
| page on entrapment (
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entrapment ) but I don't
| see how this would trigger any of the exclusions listed.
|
| The criminal in question was advertising his services
| across the dark web. Officers simply bought his product and
| sold him something he was advertising himself as buying.
|
| They didn't go out and encourage him to do these things. He
| was doing them and the agents engaged as customers so they
| could unveil his identity.
| evgen wrote:
| He wasn't 'prodded', he was given an opportunity to do
| something he was already doing and any suggestion that this
| is entrapment is only made by people who have no idea what
| that word actually means. This sort of investigative
| technique would be perfectly valid in most countries and I
| think you really have no idea what you are talking about.
| Daho0n wrote:
| Stop being so snarky and read the comment again please.
| What I were replying to were a comment stating that "the
| suspect is unwilling, unlikely or under no suspicion of
| committing a crime" for it to be entrapment, which is
| false in most places no matter what happens in the case
| from the article. It's unrelated.
|
| If a cop asks me if I want to buy drugs and I say yes,
| they most definitely have no case whatsoever here in
| Denmark even though I were willing to buy. Luckily we
| don't have these insane laws that cause police to get
| people in a bad place and then punish them for it.
| Supermancho wrote:
| > If a cop asks me if I want to buy drugs and I say yes,
| they most definitely have no case whatsoever here in
| Denmark
|
| USA, circa 1993: I was in a car with a couple friends
| going to a neighborhood simply called "Temple", where
| meth labs were prevalent and you could procure any sort
| of drugs you wanted, if you knew where to park. Cops were
| everywhere and they stopped us, as we tried to turn
| around. "What are you white kids doing in Temple?" Before
| our driver could answer, a friend stuck his body between
| the front seats and yelled "we are here to buy drugs but
| you guys fucked it up!" - The cop did not laugh, but they
| let us go on our way.
| jtms wrote:
| So were you there to buy drugs?
| evgen wrote:
| > If a cop asks me if I want to buy drugs and I say yes,
| they most definitely have no case whatsoever here in
| Denmark even though I were willing to buy.
|
| That is also exactly how it works in the US. Intention
| and action, both are required.
|
| If a cop asks you if you want to buy drugs, you say yes,
| he pulls out a baggie of white powder he claims is an
| 8-ball and then you hand over a wad of cash you are going
| to jail as soon as you accept the baggie in exchange for
| the cash. It was not a crime until you paid for the
| 'drugs'. The cop is giving you the opportunity to commit
| the crime, but the choice to do so is entirely made by
| you. That is not entrapment.
|
| The key factor in most cases is if the actions of the
| police officer would have coerced a normally law-abiding
| citizen into breaking the law. An easy test for
| entrapment (but by no means a conclusive one) is if you
| swap out the cop with a criminal would the same
| transaction have occurred -- if you are ready to buy
| drugs from the cop it is likely that you would have
| bought them from a street dealer as well. Who was on the
| other side of the transaction didn't matter to you.
| vulcan01 wrote:
| > If a cop asks if you want to buy some drugs and you say
| yes then the cop can be punished, not you, no matter if you
| might be suspected of wanting to buy drugs.
|
| In this engineer's case, this is more like the engineer
| being a well-known drug dealer and the cop asking if the
| engineer can sell the cop drugs, then the engineer
| (willingly!) giving the cop some drugs and the cop then
| arresting the engineer. You have it backwards here.
| Rule35 wrote:
| No. That's not right.
|
| Just think about it a bit - if a cop asking you to commit a
| crime tainted the investigation then bad-guys could prove
| they weren't police by telling you to commit a crime. "Hey,
| buy some drugs from me." "Well, he _must_ be legit, there
| 's no way a cop could say that!"
|
| Also, "this sneaky entrapment is a very American thing and
| won't be accepted by most courts." You're both lacking for
| world perspective, and an understanding of the purpose of
| law. If Country X made this illegal, I as a resident of
| Country X would be upset, not happy, because it would make
| my legal system worthless. So even if the law were this
| silly, somewhere, it would change right away by
| overwhelming citizen demand.
|
| You know, we the people elect those who write the laws. The
| laws aren't something done to us, they're our tool for
| making the world work.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| Hahahahaha I remember when I thought that's how the world
| worked.
| Daho0n wrote:
| It's a very American thing sadly. In most countries this would
| not be accepted by a court.
| paulpauper wrote:
| American justice , the puritan way
| varispeed wrote:
| So in a nutshell, the LE was stroking man's temptation and it
| turns out he had low enough threshold to follow through. It's
| almost like a thought crime. Why something like this is legal
| in the US?
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Except that's not what happened, there was no entrapment, and
| the US has a very similar legal system to other Western
| nations.
| [deleted]
| Sebb767 wrote:
| As far as I know, entrapment in the US is very specific and
| only counts of you do a criminal activity because someone is a
| police officer.
|
| I.e. If a police officer talks you into selling drugs you're
| totally on the hook unless he said something along the lines of
| "I'm from the police, it's fine / you must".
| ceejayoz wrote:
| No. Entrapment in the US means they push you into doing
| something you weren't inclined to do.
|
| A cop saying "I'm a cop and you have to smash this window or
| someone will die!" is indeed a form of it, but there are
| others.
|
| An undercover cop who pushes and prods and begs you to get
| them some pot until you give in is entrapment, even if they
| never reveal they're a cop.
| rcxdude wrote:
| > An undercover cop who pushes and prods and begs you to
| get them some pot until you give in is entrapment
|
| Only if they are actually coercing you (e.g. by physically
| threatening you). Asking really nicely or being annoying
| doesn't count.
| kleton wrote:
| There was a shooting by two "isis" members at a Draw the
| Prophet (Muhammad) event in Garland Texas in 2015. It came out
| later that their undercover FBI handler had organized and
| encouraged this attack.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| Treason
| kleton wrote:
| You'd think that, but when the security guard who got shot
| sued the federal government, US District Court Judge Karen
| Gren Scholer dismissed the lawsuit and wrote: "The Court
| finds that the conduct alleged by Plaintiff fall[s] within
| the scope of the discretionary authority conferred on the
| FBI by the Undercover Guidelines and the [DIOG (Domestic
| Investigations and Operations Guide)]."
| brandmeyer wrote:
| Remember the Ammon Bundy incident and trial? This was the case
| where a group of right-wing tax protesters took over a chunk of
| Federal land in Oregon. A big part of their subsequent
| acquittal was the reveal that nine of the occupiers were
| actually FBI informants.
|
| Of course, Bundy went on to do other crazy stunts later on. But
| given the information available to the jury at the time, they
| decided that the government had gone too far in the Oregon
| case.
| redis_mlc wrote:
| This is more typical than you'd expect. Once you hear about
| LEO involvement in high-profile cases, you start seeing it
| everywhere.
| xwolfi wrote:
| It's very american for me these things where your behaviour and
| moral character seem to be more important than the impact of
| your crime.
|
| I m not sure I d pursue a guy who traded nothing on fake intel
| damaging no one, even if there was a potential in his
| character. We have to accept people arent perfect and we may
| only be able to punish crimes after they happen and damage
| people.
|
| In France I was taught that the only goal of the justice system
| is to repair tort created to a victim, not cleanse society of
| evil thoughts.
| Nbox9 wrote:
| In the southern US public schools I was taught there were
| three goals of criminal punishment. I provide the list as a
| data point, and not representative of my personal views. The
| list is provided in no particular order.
|
| 1. To deter future crimes. If something is punished heavily
| people will be more reluctant to do it.
|
| 2. To reform the criminal. Time spent in jail might provide
| people with the opportunity to 'turn their life around'. This
| time spent will prevent the criminal from doing any future
| crimes in the outside world both while in jail and after
| their release.
|
| 3. To provide justice to the victims. If something was stolen
| then it must be returned. Knowing a murderer is caught/safe
| will provide some relief to the victims. Justice is important
| to a civil society.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > If something is punished heavily people will be more
| reluctant to do it.
|
| That's not exactly right. Effective deterrence has more to
| do with the _certainty_ of punishment than the _severity_
| of punishment.
|
| > To provide justice to the victims.
|
| Agree 100% here. The justice system is a tool of the
| people, and if the people believe it is ineffective they
| are far more likely to take matters into their own hands.
| In a civil society we definitely don't want that.
|
| In the US we definitely have trouble with #2 however. Maybe
| some of our puritan roots. Punishment is more important
| than rehabilitation. And we stack the deck against ex-cons
| and make it very difficult for them to successfully return
| to society and be a productive member.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| "1. To deter future crimes. If something is punished
| heavily people will be more reluctant to do it."
|
| We know this doesnt work, we have been running this
| experiment in imperial britain for hundreds of years - in
| 1700 you would be hanged for stealing groceries. Executions
| were a public holiday, so everyone could see and be
| impressed.
|
| It worked so well that while thiefs were being hanged,
| pickpockets cleared out wallets of the oblivious crowd
| watching.
|
| Extra history has an excellent series that lends serious
| perspective on the subject: https://youtu.be/XvMQY_y4qx8
| Rule35 wrote:
| There's a difference between 'fails at the extremes' and
| 'never worked a little'.
|
| In a society where life is cheap and legal advancement is
| painful and opportunities are rare, you'll have the
| situation you mention. If the law is always fatal but
| rarely applied, why consider it at all?
|
| In a comfortable society that has free food for everyone,
| a wider range of punishments actually does tend to
| control crime. In my country Murder can get you
| (effective) life, and selling marijuana on the street
| can't. You can buy joints easily but hitmen remain
| scarce.
| tryonenow wrote:
| The fact that crime still exists doesn't mean that
| public, extreme, and/or gruesome punishment doesn't act
| like a deterrent which reduces the frequency of crime.
| I'm not saying that inhumane punishments it necessarily
| justified, but this argument is fallacious.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| The crime was 20x worse and more common back when we had
| death penalty.
|
| Comvined with the fact that most EU countries have much
| lower crime rate than US and have no death penalty, it
| shoupd be clear that death penalty is totally ineffective
| at reducing crime. There is literally no place on earth
| where you can demonstrate "we introduced death penalty
| and crime has fallen" by any significant amount. We do,
| however, have ironclad proof that rehabilitation makes a
| difference. We have proof that quality of investigators
| that make sure the perpetrator is caught for sure makes a
| difference.
|
| Recently in UK our inconpetent government has reduced the
| amount of police resources avaliable to investigate
| crime. More crimes are unsolved, crime rates increase
| because criminals are unounished, and they are hoping to
| compensate with tougher sentences. And that iduotic
| because we know it doesnt work, it never did
| tryonenow wrote:
| >Comvined with the fact that most EU countries have much
| lower crime rate than US and have no death penalty
|
| Comparing US to EU is not valid in this context because
| we have different demographics and culture surrounding
| most criminality in the US. And deterrents have different
| levels of effectiveness depending on the individuals and
| cultures onto which they are introduced.
|
| > And that iduotic because we know it doesnt work, it
| never did
|
| I would question statistics on the subject given that,
| presuming "tougher" means more likely and longer
| imprisonment, literally reduces crime by removing
| criminals from society. There is an enormous confounding
| factor in that policing has been reduced, so it's going
| to be very difficult to tease out how much more (or less)
| crime would have increased without stiffer penalties.
|
| Again this is not a value judgement, just pointing out
| that the fact that crime exists does not mean that
| deterrents don't work. That said, I presume the kind of
| person willing to commit a crime with punishment in range
| of the death penalty is probably not likely to be the
| kind of person who responds to deterrent - but I wonder
| how likely such a person can possibly be "rehabilitated".
| rfrey wrote:
| But the argument that it _does_ deter is also weakened.
| It 's unfalsifiable if the response to "we removed the
| death penalty and crime did not increase" is "maybe crime
| would have started falling, and removing the death
| penalty prevented that". (I know that's not what you
| said, but it's an extension of the argument you
| describe.)
| _jal wrote:
| I tend to agree, in many cases.
|
| But when evaluating claims of entrapment, it is really
| important to pay attention to narrative manipulation. Where you
| start the story, for instance, matters a lot. If there are
| people undercover, there are going to be colorable ways to
| paint just about anything as entrapment.
|
| That said, it does happen, and it is both horrifying and
| counterproductive.
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/fbi-is-manufacturing-terrori...
| williesleg wrote:
| Dark is racist.
| mylons wrote:
| what does the person's job have anything to do with this?
| vasco wrote:
| Higher click-through rate title.
| mylons wrote:
| indeed -- also hilarious that pointing out the clickbait gets
| downvotes.
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