Woman allegedly impersonated prosecutor, dropped charges against herself
unionleader.com
unionleader.com
Off topic, but reading it I just noticed it sounds an awful lot like ありがとう (“arigatou” as in “domo arigatou Mr. Roboto”).
I think there’s an etymology lesson in this, although I’m not sure which way it goes, probably Portuguese -> Japanese via Nagasaki.
Ironically, "Japan" is from an old Chinese word for Japan that was then imported to Europe… by those dastardly misnomerists of countries, the Portuguese!
Just for some fun of even greater coincidences between Japan and a Romance language, there are two almost identical words in Japanese and Romanian that have no etymological relationship: "sat" / "里" ("sa to") meaning village in both languages; and "baba" / "婆" ("ba ba") a derogatory term for an old woman in both languages ("hag").
Different people would be arrested, show up to court, or enter the prison. Impossible for organizations downstream to detect or assume a switch had happened.
1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4339051
2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10173395 (warning, the linked article describes very disturbing behavior and specific instances)
I just realized that in Oct 28th, 2020. Thanks for that.
The origin of the phrase is in the classical detective story trope.
Which, if I'm not mistaken, itself doesn't derive from household staff taking the fall for their employers, but from them being omnipresent but, by strong social custom, ignored.
The thing is, it doesn't show up in murder mysteries themselves (except only as a fourth-wall breaking meta-reference to the trope).
It originates with murder mystery readers -- as the name of a trope.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-07-24/thailand-charges-agai...
(However, if you look at the incentives and deterrence, inflicting inefficient punishment like sending someone to prison for a long time, might still make sense.)
So there's a trade-off between handing out more of that punishment in fines to be paid to the victim or in economically inefficient activities like prison time.
As a related matter, I think corporal punishment deserves more consideration. Mostly because it's cheaper to administer than prison, and also avoids forcible socializing convicts only with each other as happens in prison.
(Of course, it's a punishment with a certain cruelty. Alas violence and injury are a common enough sight in overcrowded prisons, too.)
But restitution isn't punishment. Restitution helps reduce harm to the victim, and is a separate issue entirely to punishment.
I was more worried about issues like deterrence and restitution.
Punishment and deterrence are somewhat related, but not the same.
Justice isn't always about providing benefit to those harmed. It's also about providing a framework in which crime is avoided by all because they know there are repercussions they can't avoid.
When the expectation is that you're rich and you can get away with killing someone either through paying someone to take the fall or bribery, then that will happen more often. If the expectation is that everyone is equal under the law, that will happen less.
The US isn't perfect in this regard, but I think it's a lot better than what's being described here. If Ivanka Trump drove recklessly and killed someone, it would be a lot harder for it to play out the same way here. That's not to say she would necessarily face justice, just that it's a lot harder to get out of it, so there wouldn't necessarily be an expectation that it will go away. There's a huge difference in expecting to get away with something and knowing it's uncertain when the consequences are years in prison.
O.J. Simpson famously got off with 'not guilty' in the murder case, but lost the civil suit.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrongful_death_claim and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O._J._Simpson_murder_case#Civi...
This is somewhat inaccurate; while it is true that criminal cases can only be brought by the State, civil cases can be brought by the State or private parties.
Example 1: In countries that had little formal legal structures and rudimentary identification (e.g. India in the early 1800s), it was incredibly easy to be a criminal and just move from town to town while acquiring new identities. In other words, there was a huge upside to becoming a career criminal since it was both difficult to catch you (no forensic evidence) and even if you were caught, you could just reboot your life.
Example 2: He mentions a case where a gentleman was charged TWICE for crimes that were later found to have been committed by someone else who had only a passing resemblance.
I read this book before Twitter/Facebook became ubiquitous and every like, share, comment was public knowledge but even at the time, it was mind boggling how different "identity" was back then.
If you plead the 'benefit of the clergy', you were branded, so you didn't do it again.
I was watching a show on TV last night where they were minutely examining a newly discovered photo of Lincoln to see if it was really Lincoln or someone else. One analyst gave it an "85% probability it was Lincoln".
Keeping the carbon offset analogy, an indulgence in the Catholic sense would be more akin to first making sure you are carbon neutral (all parties are at peace and forgiven/reconciled), then you spend %10 of your salary to go beyond that and offset the carbon credits of the person you wronged.
Would be interesting if there were a climate change coin...
oh wait, https://earth-token.com/
:-(
They were meant to address a very real problem with catholic heaven/hell theology:
What if I belong in heaven, but somene I love, who I can't possibly imagine spending eternity without, belongs in hell?
Indulgences were originally meant to address this: the party that belonged in heaven could, through their sacrifice, guarantee a spot in heaven for their loved one. It was only later that the "sacrifice" become strictly monetary.
Are you saying it's true that indulgences can be obtained for others or that it's false that indulgences can be obtained for others?
In reality indulgences can be obtained for yourself, or for others, including those in Purgatory. They can't be obtained for people in Hell.
>It was only later that the "sacrifice" become strictly monetary.
Indulgences are not strictly monetary. The vast majority involve no money at all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indulgence#Plenary_indulgences
For a sin that has already been forgiven, an indulgence is associated payment you owe that if you didn't pay, you will spend more time in purgatory.
If this is an accurate reading, does it not dilute the meaning of "forgiven"? Does it not amount to a money-making racket at best, or, more probably, extortion?
The vast vast vast majority of indulgences have no money aspect at all. See the list of plenary (meaning all temporal punishment is removed) indulgences on Wikipedia[1], none of them involve money.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indulgence#Plenary_indulgences
“ Least of all is an indulgence the purchase of a pardon which secures the buyer's salvation or releases the soul of another from Purgatory. “
One might associate it with helping move an individual from a smaller circle to a larger circle of ethics: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Expanding_Circle
“ Singer discusses the relationship between biological capacity for altruism and morality. He argues that altruism, when directed to one's small circle of family, tribe or even nation, is not moral, but it becomes so when applied to wider circles. “
E.g. charity where you sacrifice your individual goods for the larger community is good for the soul.
Indulgences still exist, and you can still purchase them in the sense that you can make a donation to a priest to offer the sacrifice of the Mass for a specific intention (like the remittance of a portion of the temporal punishment for the sins of a friend or loved one), and the offering of the sacrifice has indulgences associated with it in addition.
This is not the only way to gain indulgences. There are many ways to gain them. Praying for the souls of the faithful departed on All Souls Day (in combination with the usual conditions, i.e. a) being in a state of grace, b) having the interior disposition of complete detachment from sin, even venial sin, c) having sacramentally confessed their sins, d) receiving the Holy Eucharist, and e) pray for the intentions of the Supreme Pontiff) on November 2nd allows for one to obtain a plenary indulgence (which remit ALL temporal punishment) either for oneself or for a person of your choosing.
Source? If you do it with a mortal sin I can understand it would be a second mortal sin. But it seems harsh to make a venial sin into a mortal sin from this.
I'm hesitant to say it's always a mortal sin, because it seems like it can happen in a lighthearted manner. For example if someone struggles with gluttony, that person might think "I know I shouldn't have a 2nd hamburger, but I'm weak and it would taste so good, I'll have it now and go to confession later". That doesn't seem like mortal sin territory to me.
the companionship you feel with the others on the journey with you, the feeling of losing yourself in something much bigger than you, the structured life with a clear definition of The Good (do these is this order to achieve digital/eternal reward)...this analogy works.
> By chance, a co-worker recognised him on July 10, 1997, forcing him to go into hiding. At that time, an appointment was already set for an interview with Hans Geisler, then Saxony's Minister of State for social affairs, health and family, on the occasion of Postel's appointment to a professorship and to the position of chief of medicine at Saxony's hospital for psychiatry and neurology at Arnsdorf near Dresden.
In another case, a former barber worked for 20 years as a doctor, eventually becoming chief physician in a children's hospital [1].
Back in the 2000s there was a case of a medical student who failed her final exams 3 times, and instead of leaving university as she had to, she just continued her studies without the possibility to take any exams. After a few years, she printed a fake license and a fake diploma and secured a job as an assistance doctor in the children's hospital of the Hamburg University Hospital, eventually becoming a respected colleague (she was, after all, actually trained to be a doctor). After a few years, she failed to hand in the original license and her fraud came to light [2].
Last year, a fake anesthesiologist was uncovered in Fritzlar. She had no formal training and had handed in a fake diploma to get the job [3]. No one noticed until last year, at which time she had already accidentally killed 4 people.
Given that there are several such cases each year, chances are very high that there are still some fake doctors practising here.
We also had the famous Captain of Köpenick [4], an ex-convict who in 1906 put on a uniform, rounded up a few soliders, occupied a city hall in Berlin, arrested several employees, had them transported to the main Berlin police station for interrogation, ordered to block all local telephone calls for an hour, confiscated 4000 marks and disappeared. It took 10 days to arrest him.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gert_Postel
[1] https://www.aerztezeitung.de/Panorama/Hochstapler-im-weissen...
[2] https://www.welt.de/welt_print/article1142757/Falsche-Kinder...
[3] https://www.fr.de/hessen/hessen-drei-falsche-aerzte-einem-ja...
We've recently had a similar case here in Lithuania, where doctor claimed to studied something in US. When they've called the university, they've said they don't even have such programme.
It's really surprising that someone with basically no knowledge of the subject could work for that length of time and not be discovered sooner.
>One has to wonder what legal frauds, asset grabs, and impersonations have transpired that were never discovered.
A lot. More than you'd expect. And by people and organizations you wouldn't expect.
However, most people are objectively terrible at performing fraud. The things that ultimately lead to people being caught are so simple.
I'm asking, uh, for a friend. :-)
Perhaps being just better than terrible is enough to not be found out because things are generally as they seem.
(And I can see the temptation.)
I think there are probably some very talented solo operators who did their homework and have contingency plans and have OPSEC down who are able to pull off some long running schemes that may never be uncovered, just knowing the points of failure in th processes I've seen, but the amount of specialized knowledge and discipline required is going to be comparable to what's required to succeed in almost any field. Except for the very few at the top of the chain that nobody knows about, most people are better off getting a real job instead.A lot of those people who engage in fraud do it and get caught because ths isn't what they wanted to do butout of necessity, greed, or shortsighted assumptions they opportunistically engaged in the scheme. The internet does enable, I believe, single individuals to commit long term fraud operations as effectively lone-wolf actors whose necessity to employ a service offered elsewhere can be effectively done anonymously, and these are the dedicated, professional, and sometimes sometimes ideologically engaged types whose choice to engage is a long-term project and the sheer amount of knowledge in divergent fields of expertise required makes me wonder that if it wouldn't be better served to actually run amnesty programs to get these people into the legitimate sector even as consultants if not corporate jobs because our retributive criminal justice system renders that basically impossible. A bug bounty for fraud, perhaps? Just a thought.
There was a story in WSJ like last week about how the Japanese red stamp / seal still survives and is a barrier to them adopting new technology for practical every day speeding up of tasks. And keeps things like faxes around unnecessarily.
Yet sometimes, these old checks are there to prevent maybe the worst case of bugs getting into the system. Maybe?
(Technical systems often need more stringent protections because "screw around and go to jail" isn't a threat that, say, Facebook can bring to bear).
Just ask the con artists at Prenda Law how lying to federal judges went:
No such thing as a perfect crime detection system either.
-- Balzac
In November, Hillsborough County prosecutors became suspicious when they heard from a state forensic examiner, who had been scheduled to perform a competency evaluation on Landon.
The examiner saw a notice in Landon’s court file that prosecutors had dropped charges; the examiner wanted to know if the examination should go forward.
How would it have been detected if there were no loose ends like this out there or anyone who cared enough about the case to prompt a double-check?
The loose ends aren't separable from her desired outcomes. They're integral. You can't "tie up the loose ends" while committing these acts of fraud.
"Hold on, why'd this case drop off the docket", says the DA. "I didn't file this", says the lawyer. "My ruling is due next week", says the judge.
Any one of those would be noticed and questions asked of the court clerk. And they all end in the same place.
> "Hold on, why'd this case drop off the docket", says the DA. "I didn't file this", says the lawyer. "My ruling is due next week", says the judge.
That's someone caring enough. The loose ends are entirely separable when discussing hypotheticals.
I suppose put it this way. Imagine a software developer slipped in smaller code changes and circumvented procedures like QA or code review because they though it was "just some minor thing" Would you find that OK?
We all know there are bad or stupid rules out there. But honesty's not a rule, it's more of a moral principle. Gray areas for sure, but when dishonesty becomes a habit, or makes one lose trust, or actually breaks a rule meant to prevent an issue, it's a problem.
.
> I am not always honest,
I work with regulated professionals. Honesty is a big deal. Dishonesty is seen as a fundamental personal flaw. Healthcare professionals who've been dishonest struggle to show remediation.
It's really weird to me that I need to explain that forging someone else's name on documents is a bad idea.
Not actually counting all the bolts after replacing the window on the plane; not checking in with the supervisor before administering that drug; not double checking that the name on the ID matches the name on the passenger list...
And signing something off with someone else’s supervisor code goes well beyond cutting corners on a process, though - that’s falsifying records. At that point you’re subverting the process.
Sure, some approval processes are BS, but... generally, any time you’re in a role where you need a supervisor to sign off on stuff, you do not know enough about what matters to your business to tell the difference between BS and critical safety or security guarantees.
even at places that carded, they wanted to serve you, so the ID had to only provide enough plausible deniability to the bouncer or bartender to credibly claim they were duped into serving you. i'm sure some bartenders secretly got a kick out of the cat and mouse game.
One time they did check, and my friend lied and said he didn't have his ID with him. Then the delivery guy who was probably only a couple years older than us just asked to see his actual underage ID to prove he wasn't a cop and handed us the beer anyway.
The liquor enforcement folks (usually not cops, AFAIK) could easily hire someone under 21 to attempt to purchase alcohol. In fact, I'm pretty sure that in some places they do exactly this.
1. To ensure safety, there will be an adult (undercover cop) nearby. (This could be around the corner, or someplace sneaky, but usually they just pose as another customer.) They probably will maintain pretty close proximity to their underage undercover though.
2. They probably won't give you a fake ID, because it makes it harder to get any sort of definitive enforcement to stick. They aren't trying to catch people that are easily tricked by fake ID's so much as they are trying to catch people that are either knowingly selling booze to underage people or not making any attempt to verify.
So if someone presents a fake ID, even one that's sorta but not totally obvious, that's unlikely to be a sting operation.
3. I believe they typically will actually present ID when asked. Again this helps get charges to stick.
Police spokesperson Sgt. Riley Harwood said that during such sting operations, the underage decoys are not made to look older with different clothes or make-up, and they’re not taught any strategies of deception. “There are no tricks,” he said, explaining if a decoy is asked for a driver’s license or ID, they hand over a valid card that shows they’re under 21 years old. “There’s no math that needs to be done,” Harwood said of the obvious differences between underage and over-21 IDs. “People just need to do their jobs.”
If the cashier asked for his i.d., the guy would silently hand them card that said something like, "Congratulations, you did not fail the underage liquor sales test", and then leave.
After the 4th or 5th time of the same person trying the same purchase most of the employees learned who he was. I think law enforcement did eventually switch to a different decoy towards the end of my time at the job.
The "serving alcohol to minors" laws are strict liability in some states, for this reason.
I both want to play and suspect that it would go really really badly.
Whatever else you are applying to the situation is entirely in your mind and does not apply to facts of the case.
Dead men can’t speak. Stand your ground is an affirmative defense. Or in other words, when in Florida carry a big stick and don’t be afraid to use it.
Honest question, are you saying the prosecution should have ignored years of case law and argued on purely circumstantial evidence? (Because Martin’s girlfriend was a baaaaaaaad witness. Like beyond bad. Like I would have been ashamed to have her as my star witness. Why would the one person who could hear the struggle of the fight have an attitude, on the stand, towards the prosecutor fighting for her bf?!?!!)
One of them initiated the violence or the reason for justified violence, and that person (the aggressor) is in the wrong, generally speaking.
> Dead men can’t speak. Stand your ground is an affirmative defense.
Its an affirmative defense to charges of assault, yes. This is why it applies to Martin even if everything Zimmerman said is true.
> Honest question, are you saying the prosecution should have ignored years of case law and argued on purely circumstantial evidence?
No, they should have relied on the facts not in dispute, which is that Zimmerman followed a person home, that person was unknown to him and had every right to be there, and Zimmerman acted contrary to the wishes of the 911 operator when he exited the safety of his vehicle to pursue a teenager down the path. For this reason, Martin's alleged reaction to attack Zimmerman was an act of self-defense by a cornered juvenile.
> Because Martin’s girlfriend was a baaaaaaaad witness. Like beyond bad. Like I would have been ashamed to have her as my star witness. Why would the one person who could hear the struggle of the fight have an attitude, on the stand, towards the prosecutor fighting for her bf?!?!!
Yes, she was a bad witness because she lacked the signs of class and education that would have made her likely to arise sympathy in the hearts of the audience. and Martin was a bad victim because he was a young, healthy, skinny black kid.
None of that changes the part where an adult male followed a kid home and provoked an assault.
Especially if the "assassination" attempt involved in the game requires getting into environments you shouldn't be, getting close to someone in an unusual way, I could see this ending in tears even if the water pistol was never visible.
http://www.caralevine.com/this-is-not-a-gun-1 https://static1.squarespace.com/static/53d691ede4b0326a80e05...
TIL that that's a thing!
https://telstarlogistics.typepad.com/telstarlogistics/2006/0...
Which also goes for the situation we're discussing. I've never heard of an attack like this and I doubt it is frequently attempted or succeeds.
I apparently was involved with some project on github, got flooded with emails with read me changes.
It never ocured to me how available such things are.
This was a regular narrative from the days of phone phreaking and toll fraud, etc.
Just speaking the correct lingo of a lineman or an operator or a toll office supervisor could allow one to navigate through all the depths of the telephone system. Not just to receive services without charge, but to actually build and teardown circuits, set up test numbers (ANACs), conference calls, etc.
It's incredible to think that a few lines of Twiml, or a Twilio function, can create something like an ANAC which was a rare, valuable, and jealously guarded secret 30 years ago ...
I think the frauds that appear to be legal but do not actually involve courts are where more harm is. These are the scams asking people to pay fines or else.
There's a lot of fraud, waste,a abuse, or other chicanery in the courts and luckily in my experience they're never simply kept hidden without anyone noticing. The problem is always redressability. So much of the system requires discretionary rulings but the laws that dictate how we handle misconduct is heavily skewed in favor of the state if they ar a party and fails to take into account the urgency in resolving these cases that very often it becomes obvious that there's fraud, yes, but there's no redressability, and therefore there's no real punishment.
A particularly egregious case of falsifying evidence and using prtextual reasons to elicit false testimony and racially-based jury selections is the US v. Flowers case in the Supreme Court last term. There's a podcast on it, but the decision itself is... excoriating to say the least as to how far and how egregious the conduct was to try to execute an innocent man. It's discovered all right, but there's no punishment. So courts can and do definitely figure out fraud pretty readily, but when it comes to doing anything about it, victims not on the side of the state frequently find it cold comfort.
At least in the State of WA, I think prosecutors have qualified immunity and can be sued or charged for Brady violations.
I think one of the biggest 'frauds' is the churn in the lower courts. It often seems like judges, clerks, public defenders, and prosecutors are pretending they are doing something helpful or important while the repeat defendants think of the whole situation as a joke.
I get a kick out of seeing judges sternly reprimanding attorneys or defendants for being 10 minutes late to the start of a cattle call hearing while they must know the entire enterprise is meaningless kabuki theater.
The two cases mentioned above: https://digitalcommons.pace.edu/ cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1635&context=lawfaculty
It sounds to me like they are using security-by-obscurity, as well as easily forgeable proofs such as "signatures" or drivers licenses (they're only as secure as your ability to spot a forgery). Hence why anyone who is knowledgable and determined enough, can easily crack the system.
If you want to prevent such problems, you could either go really old-school. Require the person filing documents to show up in person, and be personally identified and recognized by someone in-house. Or go really new-school and only accept biometrics or digital paperwork that has been filed using a secure account accessible only by that person.
Using an in-between approach, like a signed paperwork that has been given to you by someone you don't recognize, is the worst possible solution.
I used to work as a criminal defense attorney, and the job regularly required that I obtain subpoenas from the court in order to mandate a witness's appearance at court. My state courts have a template that subpoenas must follow, wherein you would include the case number, attorney name, witness name, and other basic details.
Once the template is completed, you take the original along with a certain number of copies to the court clerk for filing. All the clerks would do is make sure that the case number on the subpoena corresponds to a case that actually exists in the system, and that the names of the plaintiff(s)/defendant(s) are accurate.
The clerks never asked me any questions about my role in the case (e.g., whether I was a party to the case, an attorney, or a staff member of the law firm representing a party), nor did they ever ask me to provide any sort of identification. I just give the clerk the papers, they look at the papers, they stamp the original and copies, and then they return the copies to me (which are to be served on the witness and/or opposing counsel).
I don't think there's a ton of value someone could get out of obtaining a fake subpoena (other than perhaps issuing your own self a subpoena as an excuse to get out of work, or maybe just to screw with someone), but it was always pretty astonishing to me that anyone off the street can just dump some papers in front of a court clerk and receive a legal order mandating someone's appearance in court--no questions asked.
That would make a great plot for George on Seinfeld.
What trial? Uh, well, it's over a case with, um, an Architect, Art Vandelay, who, um, was was contracted to, uh, redesign the Lincoln Tunnel with a system of magnets so the cars would all go through at the same speed, but, uh his idea, you see, was stolen by a Mr. Pennypacker, a wealthy industrialist.
It's really a case of the century. Um. So, I actually have to go now.
(Proceeds to go home and eat a block of cheese the size of a car battery.)
A subpoena can also order the production of documents (in many cases including business records about other people, such as log files). That could be pretty consequential if the private information turned over was very sensitive.
When I was working at EFF I filed some comments on an international law enforcement cooperation plan where one thing that bothered me a lot was that, if you formalize the idea that jurisdiction A has to directly enforce orders/process/formal law enforcement requests from jurisdiction B, people in jurisdiction A will have even less idea how to authenticate them, and there will be even less likelihood of a remedy in case of a deliberately fraudulent request. The domestic status quo (as you point out) is typically pretty low authentication, but at least there's a likelihood of some significant punishment for people who commit fraud on a court (judges really dislike that). Now imagine if you could do this without even being in the country where you're committing the fraud! :-(
I think, generally, a subpoena issued as a request for production of documents would likely be vetted by an attorney; however, I could see how a small business owner (for example) may be likely to accept an official-looking subpoena at face value and seek to comply out of fear without first consulting a lawyer.
She would have gotten away it, too, if it weren't for that meddling forensic examiner!
A prisoner was wrongly released after a fax was received from a grocery store stating that the Kentucky Supreme Court had demanded his release
http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/24/65#subj7.1
https://web.archive.org/web/20070426034707/http://www.cnn.co...
There are numerous examples in news reports.
"Who are you?" is the most expensive question in information technology. No matter how you get it wrong, you're fucked.
You may want to be nice to the foreign visitors otherwise and comply with the foreign laws, but that's it.
Exactly. If you're operating in the EU, you are bound by the EU laws. But "operating" doesn't mean you have to sell something:
> The GDPR applies to US businesses, regardless of their size in terms of revenue or staff, if at least one of the following two conditions are met:
> 1. The company offers good or services (even in the absence of commercial transactions) to EU/EEA residents.
> 2. The company monitors the behavior of users inside the EU/EEA.
So yes, if the news website in this thread tracks me without my consent, they are violating my rights and the EU laws. I am not sure how realistic enforcing this law actually is, though, unless they have a EU branch (what you described as jurisdiction).
Source: https://termly.io/resources/articles/gdpr-in-the-us/
> Although such a website would likely track the user behavior of EU/EEA citizens, as the website would attract native speakers of several European languages, the GDPR does not apply here because:
> the service does not target EU/EEA residents, and
> the tracked user behavior is not occurring within the EU/EEA.
Show a basic level of respect for your users' privacy whether or not it's not a legal requirement.
Do you have a compliant privacy policy, data retention policy, breach notification policy? Have you named a data privacy officer? Do you have a written process for erasure requests?
You’re probably right that the ads are a problem but ain’t nobody getting GDPR compliance for free.
Besides, most websites need to update their privacy policy to be accessed in California anyway. The Californian privacy protection rules aren't as strict as the GDPR, but they are very similar. I don't really buy the "it's expensive to comply" argument a lot of American companies seem to use because of this.
The companies want to collect and trade your personal information to the highest bidder, the GDPR got in their way and now these companies are acting out.
On one hand:
It's not exactly a stretch to imagine her boyfriend doing it on her behalf or something similar. A middling defense lawyer should be able to create enough doubt (barring some unreported facts that are damning for the defense). If the government's processes are so broken that this could happen as they say it did then she deserves to walk free for giving them the free audit. If she's really such a bad person they'll catch her again for something else.
On the other hand:
Hillsboro county is the second worst jurisdiction in NH in which to be accused of committing a crime against the government (Cheshire county is hands down the best any day). It's going to be almost impossible for a jury to not have at least a few people who take the view "I don't care if she did it, there's a reasonable chance she did and someone must pay for this". This is assuming it goes to jury trail (only a moron would go for a bench trial when the crime is against "the system" though).
This suggests that there is either no authentication (insane), or any display of the authenticated sender is being ignored by people just looking at the claimed sender in the headings of papers (disappointing, a failure of the court processes at the human level, and probably a UX shortcoming.)
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/florida-killers-arent-fir...
For those of you who missed it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junior_Salesman
Original context:
The Kobayashi Maru refers to a no-win scenario given to the command-track students of Starfleet Academy. They aren't told it's a no-win situation, the goal is to make sure they can keep calm and see how they cope with the situation.
In the scenario, they're in command of a starship and have to rescue another ship, named the Kobayashi Maru, but in doing so they fall into a trap that results in both ships being destroyed and all crew killed.
TOS-era Captain Kirk was the first to win the no-win scenario. He did so by cheating: reprogramming the computer.
Kobayashi Maru + the word "interview" makes it a double reference :)
Especially now with virtual systems. It’s a pretty amazing hack if you can pull it off.
And also, couldn’t be that hard to hide your tracks so it’s not clear if it was you or someone who supports you.
You could see this being done by activists or others.
It's legitimate in the same way that '451: we want to load up our site with so much javascript your computer catches fire and burns your house down, but that's illegal in your jurisdiction so this site is Unavailable for Legal Reasons' is.
To me 451 is like 404 (nothing here) and 410 (was something here but now there isn't) - it's a further progression/specificity to 'was/sort of is something here but it's not presently available for legal reasons'.
Common obvious one is DMCA takedown notices, but it might also be an injunction, or even accidentally published while still under embargo - or deliberately to prime SEO (not advice) - or NDA, etc.
Project Guttenberg in Germany (and The Pirate Bay in the USA, I think) would be 451.
It’s not something to be proud of, but it is something I am sympathetic about. Modern laws (not just GDPR) are long and the language is often hard to understand.
I believe that laws must be simple enough to comprehend, or else they will not be comprehended and thus will be violated even by people who want to follow them — the phrase would be better if it was “ignorance of the law cannot be an excuse”, because that works both ways.
It's an approximate and somewhat mythical value, popularised by Ray Bradbury's novel. Actual ignition point varies bu 100+ °F. Experience this past year with sourdough baking --- on parchment paper at 290°C (550°F) --- shows that though the paper browns, it does not combust. (Possibly affected by thermal mass / moisture of bread loaf.)
https://slate.com/technology/2012/06/ray-bradbury-death-does...
</pedant>
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_451_(disambiguation...
however, a lot of "small", local news organisations are actually owned by huge (multi-national) corporations. they might work hard to preserve that small appearance, but do have a reason to fear the GDPR.
Because as you said yourself, they're part of a large organization that DOES do business with Europe, but that part of the business doesn't get any money from Europe, so there is no reason for that part of the business to go to the effort of complying.
you said "local news organizations", and i was simply pointing out if that is what they truly were, they wouldn't have to comply. so i think we agree?
While it's never been tested, there is a good chance the USA would cooperate with an extraterritorial prosecution, and so it's easier to just avoid it altogether by blocking Europeans.
It would be a great service to everyone if the EU could clarify which type of sites do not have to comply. Otherwise, you can hardly blame organizations that it would be cheaper to block EU traffic than even just to pay a lawyer to try to figure out of GDPR is applicable.
And I definitely don't blame organisations blocking EU traffic; it's at least an honest admission they won't protect your privacy. (Although it may not be a decision of the site itself, I'll get to that in a second.)
Recital 23 is spot on though. Can a New Hampshire-based local news site be said to offer goods or services to members of the Union? It sure sounds like you could say "no" in good faith (which is a defence, IANAL etc).
Can the same be said for either a huge multi-national, or trackers and ad-flinging networks a local site might use? Probably not...
If you are not in Europe, the main thing that determines whether or not GDPR applies to your site is Article 3 of the GDPR, "Territorial Scope", and the corresponding Recitals.
A big factor there is whether you are offering goods or services in the Union, irrespective of whether or not users have to pay. Mere accessibility from the Union isn't enough to show you are offering things in the Union. What matters is whether or not the site "envisages offering services to data subjects in one or more Member States in the Union".
There are several things that can show you are envisaging offering in the Union. Having localized versions of your site in languages that are used in the Union but not in your own country, accepting payment in Euros or the national currencies of Union members, targeting Europeans with ads for your site, and many others.
If you aren't doing those things, it gets more subjective. If your site should be of no interest to Europeans, and you don't expect to make any money from whatever Europeans happen to somehow end up on it, it is simplest to do a geoip block on Europe. That should conclusively establish that you do not envisage offering services to people in the Union.
In practice, if you don't have high visibility (i.e are small enough, which probably means 90% of websites) and don't have any presence in the EU then just ignore GDPR because no-one is going to go after a website on another continent because it tracks visitors and sometimes people from the EU visit it.
In practice, you need a consultant and maybe a lawyer to help with the paperwork and that's assuming all the processes are basically in compliance.
One issue not addressed is scale. Law doesn't scale. A prosecutor with more than 500 cases will have difficulty staying on top of them all; if you had to deal with Google or Twitter numbers (tens or hundreds of thousands) you wouldn't notice if a case disappeared off your docket.
Does it work for anyone?
Side note : why are some sites still not GDPR complient ?
Points for effort.
Apparently empathy of all things is useful to soldiers ironically because being able to understand how others would react to movements and attacks gives a big edge in predicting them. You don't have to sympathize with the targets but it can help prevent being caught off guard by incorrect assumptions. In law knowing how the subjects would react helps predict and mitigate perverse incentives and loopholes or lure them into doing what you really wanted in the first place.
Besides, the news can be found elsewhere (all news can nowadays), and the GP isn't much worse (I dunno, maybe even better off?) because of that blocking. At the same time we are here indirectly discussing tracking, and this is not the only thread about it.
Edited for typos.
For one, it probably doesn't take much smarts to fill out the paperwork or trick the system. The system is full of people who don't know their job and have no real incentive to (can be difficult to fire government employees).
For example, I am involved with a case in which a state trooper made 4 or 5 mistakes, including mis-citing a statute so badly that the court system shows it as invalid and he lacked probable cause to write the citation under the statute that he tried to cite, and thus we were subjected to unjust restrictions for weeks. The trooper even lied to the judge. I filed a complaint and the subsequent investigation confirmed his mistakes, yet he still has a job... after lying to a judge in court to cover up his mistakes... Did I mention that the judge in the case was replaced because he was arrested on multiple charges (gambling with campaign funds, perjury, etc). The courthouse will not give us replies to many of our requests, such as our petition under the pertainate judicial rule to dismiss the case. They can't even issue a correctly formed subpoena duces tecum.
So yeah, I feel disillusioned with the effectiveness and legitimacy of the system. Our lives are ruled by morons. I'm considering contacting a civil rights lawyer so this stuff doesn't happen to others in the future.
Second, intelligence is often the most overstated component to success according to many studies on the topic.
Not to mention that it does not matter what the severity of the offense is. The same protections of the law and adherence to rule of law is necessary at all levels to ensure the integrity of the system and the protection of the people's rights. If you contend that a traffic violation doesn't merit the same attention and protections by the system, then I would contend that the traffic violation would be a de minimus infraction and doesn't merit any attention at all - better a legitimate outcome that some half-ass fuckery that violates the rights of the citizenry.