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Comment by kunle | Hacker News Reader

"I was still under the false belief that all varieties of law enforcement are designed to protect the public from harm. It was a sign of my privilege, and of my naive faith in the system."

> Systems are designed first, to benefit their creators, and subsequently their controllers, and then everyone else. Unless you designed the system, you should assume it's not designed to benefit you by default.

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The author was caught installing a remote administration tool on someone else’s computers and using that RAT to take surreptitious photos of the computers’ users which he then posted online for personal gain.

Seems to me that the legal system was working as designed here, protecting the public from this individual’s actions.

It’s strange that he’s getting a free pass in the HN comments for hijacking computers, stealing candid photos, then publishing those online. It seems the author is the only person in this story who didn’t get violated. He’s not the hero.

except - his software didn't have any remote administrative capabilities. - all photographers take pictures in public and then post them for profit, there is nothing new about that whatsoever. - There were no disclaimers on the computers in Apple's store that would prevent him from installing such software. Matter of fact, they are available for people to use and test in any way they see fit.

He's getting a free pass because he broke 0 laws. Zero.

If what you’re saying is true (which I highly doubt, given that he was tampering with computer equipment that didn’t belong to him), then the laws need to change so that we can prosecute people like this. I absolutely do not want to live in a society where people can install malware on computers in public spaces to spy on me. I don’t care if it’s for advertising or some self-serving “art” project.

Apple consented to his usage of the computers within the store...they actually put them there for the purpose of being used.

I'm sorry that photography offends you. Wait till you see what those new fanged house door bells are doing!

Yeah, maybe folks have a problem with that, but the artist certainly only highlighted already creepy-ish things that we accept all the time (companies tracking us, and the lack of an expectation of privacy in public places).

> Seems to me that the legal system was working as designed here, protecting the public from this individual’s actions.

The legal system was deployed to protect Apple, not the public. That the public benefited was just a coincidence.

OP here. This person gets it.

Hi, OP here. Just wanted to add one point of technical clarification: it wasn't a RAT, it was a C++ app that used the QuickTime SDK to connect to the camera, OpenCV to run face detection, and curl to regularly send the results to a hacked-together PHP script that uploaded them to Tumblr. It sat in the dock while it was running, with a silver Apple logo as the icon.

> with a silver Apple logo as the icon

This is somewhat concerning, to be honest, since it seems like you're impersonating Apple/system software.

As always: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...

Try using that excuse next time sometime finds a bug in your code

I wouldn't, because that would be a basic misunderstanding the quote.

What properties must a system have for the quote to be applicable then?

Did you read the article? It’s about large scale systems like bureaucracies, rather then some piece of code.

My question still stands. How many people must be involved in the system design for you to consider it 'large scale'?

I don't understand it either. What's that quote supposed to mean? Systems can and do have unintended consequences, surely.

It's really recommended that anybody not getting it to read the article. You won't get a good TLDR.

But yeah, systems can not have unintended consequences because systems do not have intentions. It's people who have intentions, and those are not additive properties. (And, well, you can't simply add additive properties into system ones either.)

No, it still applies. What types of bug fixes and features get prioritized? Are certain features gated? Are there use cases considered too niche to support?

Nothing exists in a vacuum. The "system" isn't just the code — it's also the organization that writes and supports the software.

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