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Comment by ToucanLoucan | Hacker News Reader

For technical people, this is incredibly old news.

For non-technical people, it isn't really news, because they already forgot about it after reading it. Maybe they'll be a little more monitored in their own typing for like... a day or two.

One of the hardest lessons to internalize, and keep internalized, as someone who works on and writes software, is the vast, vast, vast majority of the Public doesn't understand even the most basic shit about software. It just does stuff. Hopefully the stuff is good. That's it, beginning, middle, and end.

"Why would you think x would y" is a poor framing. They didn't think about x or y because they don't care. The phone works, that's the beginning and end of their interest in the subject.

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You're completely right. I've internalized this on the technical side, but I still find it puzzling politically. Surveillance has been a salient issue in U.S. politics for almost 100 years now, since the invention of the telephone. I would like to think that most people are at least vaguely aware of Watergate, the Patriot Act, and Snowden. Then again, I should probably stop assuming that people know basic history, given the current state of education.

Honestly the older I get and the more I learn about criminals, of all stripes really be they petty thieves all the way up to state actors behind the most atrocious crimes against humanity we know of, they are all a bit on the dumb side. The ones that get caught are, anyway. Like so very often the perpetrator of a given crime just did one incredibly bone-headed thing that brought the cops directly to their door.

I think in part it's selection bias? Like if you're smart enough to get by honestly, you're probably also smart enough to realize getting by honestly is just a way more comfortable way to live. The only reason you'd probably cross that line is because your principals, whatever they may be, conflict with those laws, or your life circumstances are so bad that you have no choice BUT to turn to crime.

And that cuts the other way too: if you're dumb enough to think you'd NEVER get caught for a burglary, for example, you'd probably be way more down to plan and execute one, failing to consider that most thieves aren't caught when they steal the shit, they're caught when they try and sell it later.

Those in power have an interest in making criminals seem dumber than they are. Those who get away with crimes aren't part of the calculus either.

Those in power are often dumb criminals themselves. The fact that the system will break its back for an excuse to not prosecute them doesn’t make them skilled operators.

> Honestly the older I get and the more I learn about criminals, of all stripes really be they petty thieves all the way up to state actors behind the most atrocious crimes against humanity we know of, they are all a bit on the dumb side. The ones that get caught are, anyway.

...but the last sentence if kind of important, right?

We only know about the criminals who got caught. Which probably means they did something dumb.

It's conceivable to me that there could be many—maybe even a majority—of criminals we don't know about because no one ever caught them. Maybe they committed fraud once, decided not to push their luck, and lived the rest of their life quietly. Maybe they killed someone and made it look like an accident, and no one ever suspected anything. How would we know?

You can look up crime clearance rates. It's a little depressing.

Here's an FBI chart for 2019 [1]

Though some countries like Japan and Germany have really good clearance rates for homicide. [2]

But more heartening, it seems like it doesn't really matter how many people the cops catch. Crime rates are still generally on a long downward trend (with some bumps along the way). [3]

[1] https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_clearance_rate

[3] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/types-violent-crime-rate-...

And even those are only the crimes we know about! I imagine a really smart criminal wouldn't let anyone know a crime had taken place.

I actually completely agree with that. I guess it depends how you want to slice that in terms of categorization.

Which is to say: If a criminal gets away with a crime and faces no punishment, not even public scorn, are they really a criminal? Or did they just work a situation, even of their making, to their advantage?

I don't particularly know where we should draw that line. But yes, my statement does deserve a big caveat there.

Zodiac killer was never caught and it seems he already died a few years back - it was established some time ago through some teen's DNA whose grandfather was ex-cop or something. Don't quote me on that but it's on the net somewhere and was there before AI slop happened.

Basically a lot more evil goes unpunished than most realize, because carma is a thing only when it's a thing - sometimes it just isn't.

> getting by honestly is just a way more comfortable

I think it's also much about self-esteem -- am I proud of myself? And criminals probably think highly of themselves when they succeed in their crimes.

It isn’t that black and white. I have relatives that are highly non-technical but still care a lot about privacy and data protection in their computer use. They hate having to deal with technical things and have very little technical understanding, but still ask me whether using X software in Y way might pose privacy issues or not.

TV is a human in the box. A phone is internet in the box. It's all implicitly local, because you clutch this internet in the box right in your hand. Synchronization sends data directly from one internet in the box to another internet in the box.

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