> Is it worth the risk of ruining someone's life in order to save the lives of others?
I don't see any lives saved here, only a life ruined.
So sure, let's do this on a 'case-by-case' basis. This is the case we're looking at.
I don't see any lives saved here, only a life ruined.
So sure, let's do this on a 'case-by-case' basis. This is the case we're looking at.
No, on a case-by-case basis does not mean 'let's protect people we identify or sympathize with' that's your words, not mine. It means: when looking at these cases we look at each of them individually and try to decide whether or not the good outweighed the bad, it does not say anything about the gender, the attractiveness, the skin color, the weight or the general disposition of the person involved.
You added those things, for no apparent reason.
Applying principles is a way to force ourselves to either make unbiased (or less biased) decisions, or to acknowledge and codify them (e.g. "my principle is that black people = 3/5"). Of course, acknowledging and codifying them makes their horribleness pretty obvious...
I note that: if the case had been reversed and the operative had been a female and the victim a male I would not see the case in any different light.
If the person had been black (which I have no idea about, they might be for all I know) or white, or any other skin color it would not make me feel any different.
If they had been ugly or pretty it would not make a difference (again, I don't know what she looks like).
And finally, if they were assholes in general or sweet personalities I'd not make any difference about it.
What would make a difference is whether or not there was any actual suspicion about this person and whether or not this person was charged with some crime, which is what the case-by-case referred to.
The rest you simply made up.
Absent some grave danger that we are currently not aware of I really see absolutely no reason why a government operative would engage in a multi-year exclusive partner-level relationship involving sex with another person under false pretenses.
On the scale of Bad Things Cops Have Done In The Last Six Years, pretending to be someone's boyfriend seems pretty insignificant. Cops in America will shoot a black teenager just for walking down the street (literally). That's the loss of someone's entire life, not just six years of it. In fact, police frequently kill innocent people of all races due to misunderstandings or with stray bullets. It is unfortunate, but we all understand that it happens.
It is possible that you would be equally eloquent in your deridement of police procedures if those stories were on the homepage of hackernews. But I doubt it.
That's a pretty bad thing to do to another person but that subtlety may be lost on you.
> On the scale of Bad Things Cops Have Done In The Last Six Years, pretending to be someone's boyfriend seems pretty insignificant.
That's the subject of this thread, it's not as simple as pretending to be someone's boyfriend, it is pretending to be someone's boyfriend for 6 whole years. That is not something trivial, that is a very bad abuse of government power if the person you do this to is not engaging in a crime proportionate to that measure. Note that without government assistance he would not have been able to pull this off.
> Cops in America will shoot a black teenager just for walking down the street (literally).
Yes, and it is an extremely bad thing that this should happen. And I think that there is a lot wrong with American society that such excesses are not dealt with swiftly and very forcefully because the general message appears to be that this is ok. See also: driving while black and a whole pile of evidence that seem to indicate that America, while on the outside seen as inclusive and a place where everybody is equal is underneath that veneer a terribly racist society where being born black is equal to a much higher percentage chance of being murdered by the police or jailed for a significant portion of your life. But that is not the subject of this thread.
> In fact, police frequently kill innocent people of all races due to misunderstandings or with stray bullets. It is unfortunate, but we all understand that it happens.
It is not just 'unfortunate', it is an extremely bad thing and the lack of police restraint in the USA is something that has never ceased to amaze me and I'm really happy I don't live there. Police should be respected, not feared and the color of your skin should not be a major factor in whether or not you're going to end up with a police bullet in your back (or 16 of them, to refer to one recently in the news case).
> It is possible that you would be equally eloquent in your deridement of police procedures if those stories were on the homepage of hackernews. But I doubt it.
That's your problem, not mine. If you followed my comment threads over the years you'd know that I'm a pretty outspoken fellow when it comes to issues like these. If such a thread were to gain enough votes on HN (even though strictly speaking not HN material) and if I were to notice it (I really don't read every thread and the homepage scrolls by pretty quickly) then I'm sure you'd find me just about as incensed as I'm now if not a whole lot worse.
Your projections of what I would or would not do are entirely your own.
Your comment reminds me of those comments that we shouldn't do 'x' because there is still world hunger. Yes, all those things you listed are bad and we should do something about them. But we should also do something about this particular case because it is bad all by itself and we don't have to limit our attempts to improve to the world to the very worst things.
"driving while black" is not a real thing. Here's the study that debunked it:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07418820500088952
The phrase/meme of "driving while black" came about because in the 1990s black drivers were highly overrepresented among those pulled over for speeding in New Jersey. But on inspection it turned out they were only overrepresented among people pulled over because they were equally overrepresented among people who were speeding.
(this was checked using hidden speed cameras to see how much people speed when cops aren't around - those who commissioned the study expected to find a bias and were surprised at the result.)
More here: http://zombiemeditations.com/2015/05/02/profiling/
It's not one officer, it was a group of officers who lied to women, created lives with those women, had children by those women.