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Comment by piperswe | Hacker News Reader

It’s wild that the primary way of validating an order was signed off by a judge is by looking at an easily forgeable signature.

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Forging a judges signature, by itself, will get you jail time. So will impersonating a police officer in most states[1]. By taking this method of locating the woman, the stalker basically guaranteed himself prison time; plenty of stalkers do some really scary stuff without getting sentenced to any time in prison.

1: It really varies; surprisingly enough it's not a felony in all states, and in at least one state, it's only a felony if there is intent to benefit from the authority granted.

That’s the thing with laws, they don’t prevent crime, they just enumerate it.

Any time I hear a politician say they are going to reduce a particular crime by passing a law, I wonder why existing laws aren’t enforced that likely already cover the behavior being targeted. I suppose that would mean planning, logistics, and execution - things politicians don’t know how to do.

Laws enumerate both punidhment and ways to do things. The latter can prevent crimes.

E.g. there is a law saying you cant serve alcohol to minors. That in and of itself doesnt prevent beyond threat of punishment if caught.

There is also a law saying you have to check ids. Procedures like that do have a preventitive effect.

> they don’t prevent crime, they just enumerate it.

This isn't always correct and is rather myopic.

Quite often laws will issue punishments for some behaviors, but also issue things like funding for programs that work on the roots of why particular crimes occur.

Now, laws that punish post ad hoc are always easier to measure and see, because it's much harder to prove that you prevented something that only had a probability of happening in the first place.

> Quite often laws will issue punishments for some behaviors, but also issue things like funding for programs that work on the roots of why particular crimes occur.

That still requires enforcement. The existence of a law does not imply existence of enforcement, much less wide-spread enforcement (see e.g. wage theft, auto breakins, petty theft, etc).

There is most definitely a section of society which is held in check by laws, and their outcome.

Those that do not fit the above, having no impulse control, or perhaps mental issues, then laws result in stuffing them away.

It's not perfect. Yet every human society does this, and has done this for millenia. Consider that.

Don’t you think it’s disingenuous to reduce “law breakers” to those people?

Two categories, with no statement that this was all categories. And, one of the two categories are not law breakers at all, merely held in check by fear of laws.

Note I was responding to someone who effectly said laws don't prevent crime, and citing ways they do. Understand the context. My statement was not a 200 page dissertation on "those who might break laws" and a deep dive into societal ethics, etc.

This story is about a dude who drove 30–40 hours to kill somebody and still had a quarter ounce of meth left in his Jeep when he got caught. He should serve some time.

Prevention is always better than cure. Some people are just not deterred by consequences, and by the time they face their consequences, the damage to the victim cannot be undone.

> Forging a judges signature, by itself, will get you jail time. So will impersonating a police officer in most states[1]. By taking this method of locating the woman, the stalker basically guaranteed himself prison time; plenty of stalkers do some really scary stuff without getting sentenced to any time in prison.

OK, and what if it was, say, the Saudi government doing it rather than a crazy stalker in the US?

well good thing emails can only be sent within the USA

You aren’t giving any credit to the fact that, worldwide, society largely operates lawfully, in no small part thanks to the penalties associated with breaking laws. These things often have a way of working themselves out.

I’m not saying that Verizon’s handling of this was anything other than grossly negligent, but let’s not pretend that the sole solution to, well, any problem involve…what? Asymmetric cryptography?

Something being illegal, even in another jurisdiction, is certainly a deterrent for a lot of people.

Exactly. Did you know bank safes are vulnerable to an easily fashioned homemade pipe bomb?

Oh well if there's jail time, surely people will be dissuaded and follow the law.

the issue with this is that something like this shouldn't be an option for systems that can be trivially accessed anonymously.

Like if the system can easily be used to exfiltrate information or perform criminal actions but you can do so anonymously without much effort or more generally doing so remotely in a jurisdiction where you can never be prosecuted, then that system is broken.

Systems that rely on a person not wanting to get caught breaking the rules only work when A the person cares and B the person is capable of being punished. If that invariant doesn't hold up then the system is broken.

Uhm, judging by the stalker’s rhetoric, I don’t think they were worried about going to jail.

> 1: It really varies; surprisingly enough it's not a felony in all states, and in at least one state, it's only a felony if there is intent to benefit from the authority granted.

You think that's surprising? Wait til you hear that in 35 states, a police officer can claim that a detainee, in custody, even handcuffed at the time, can 'consent' to intercourse with the officer. (That's even before you get to the lesser issue of why a police officer is having intercourse at work...)

Seems like the government's fault. In every other area of even marginal importance we have better and more advanced authentication systems. Yet governments the world over continue to use signatures.

I mean something as simple as a piece of paper with a password that lets you find an authentication info in the court website. An email. Or even an automated phone or email address that lets you authenticate online

The problem is that there are tens of thousands of counties with more judges and cops and each county has an IT department and are you telling me that there is any way to get them all to agree to some standard procedure that they are going to have to figure out, and then pay for? The only way to accomplish this would be to centralize it at least by state, like a DMV for courts.

You don't need a standard procedure followed all over the world. You just need some authentication procedure that's better than an easily forgable signature. I gave a few examples of the top of my head in the parent.

This is why I would rather have profit hungry corporations manage things than governments. Because with government there's always a legion of people rushing to excuse and explain away even the most serious examples of ineptitude and mismanagement.

Would you accept it if Facebook or Google let people login to user accounts via signed letter? So why is a signature enough for a search warrant?

A signature is not an acceptable method of authentication in 2023 for important documents. I don't see how that's not obvious.

What does having local governments have to do with huge monolithic corporations? If google was in charge of our physical security then a) it would be a de facto government b) it wouldn't care about individuals at all. Google doesn't let you log in with a signature not because they care about your security, but because it wouldn't be profitable. The problem is that when it becomes more profitable to sell your data to Corp B, who then has as a client Stalker Creep A, then they will do that. Making motivation money instead of public good is a strange way to achieve either of those goals.

How would google lose money if stalkers broke into my Gmail? No it's because in every other area besides government we have standards of security because government is the only place where people tolerate, accept and even defend massive security lapses

There's a large group of the population that has an ideological frenzy to defend government no matter what so they're able to get away with terrible lapses like this

Not sure I understand. You brought up a claim that for profit companies are better to manage people's physical and legal security needs than the courts themselves and law enforcement. That would de facto make them government -- so we are both defending government, just different forms. You think an undemocratic, for profit motivation would work to fulfill public good, and I disagree.

> No it's because in every other area besides government we have standards of security

I guess you never heard of NIST?

I suppose private companies never get hacked and have all their customer's data stolen?

You're getting lost in words not touching substance. I can distill it to this - If private contractors did warrants we'd be better off because there are no ideologically driven zealots who will defend and excuse it if they had weak security like a signature and nothing else. Thus they would be forced to have a basic workable security system. This can be extrapolated to every other area

The problem is that when you say private interests should take over the duties of a entire branch of government, you are literally telling people you want an undemocratic system motivated by money above all else in charge of the public good.

If you mean something else, then you should find a better way to articulate it. People defending against what you are literally calling for is not 'ideological zealotry', it is pushing back against extremism.

If you think the current system is motivated by the public good our values are so different there's no point talking. This is the system that gave rise to the corporations and abuses some claim to hate.

But if you agree it's not a system motivated by the public good and want me to join you in pretending it is and helping it grow while it doesn't serve the public good, our values are still too different.

I think the start is fix the system first to make it about the public good. Once we fix it then we can grow it and give it all the unlimited power and influence you want. But we can't do that because a large segment of the population has an ideology that prevents legitimate criticism of the government and will defend any aspect of it

But fascism is the new in thing right?

I cannot see how the other poster, observing how corporations work and are treated with kid gloves in the US, could possibly think anything corporations would do here would be better than the system we have in any way.

All that would happen is this...

People in government would be bribed/funded by said groups in private corporations to look past the grift/corruption said private company did. If private company A did too much wrong, then private company B would pop up in its place with all the same actors. Because these are private companies there would be no public records requirements like are on elected officials at this time.

All of the other posters complaints are based around the electorate not being involved in local elections. Why do they suddenly think it's going to get magically better when a company is involved. You're just abstracting the apathy to another degree.

This isn’t even close to true. Sure, for legal documents. But any cursory check of this document would’ve led right back to the judge in the court who supposedly signed it and a quick “hey did you actually sign this” would have rendered a very specific and correct answer.

Otherwise, the government uses all sorts of modern authentication mechanisms when dealing with sensitive materials.

Unfortunately any information in the government can be accessed with the right legal document.

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