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Comment by TruthElixirX | Hacker News Reader

I am not arguing whether or not it is prosecutable, I am arguing whether or not it is fucking stupid.

Criminalizing knowledge is bullshit. Why should the burden of ratting people out be placed on this dude? It is such bullshit.

Should it be illegal to tell people how to make meth? What about making alcohol? Should it have been illegal to teach people to make liquor in 1919? What about December 31st 11:59 PM 1918?

This whole thing is fucking stupid and the feds have way more interesting things to do than harass people for telling people how to cheat tests.

Its the same line of thought as suing gun manufacturers for murders or alcohol companies for drunk driving. It removes responsibility from the individual.

Not to mention this was a fucking manufactured crime. Glad every serious crime has been solved so we can bust a dude for teaching people to pass lie detector tests, which are unscientific pieces of garbage to begin with.

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>Not to mention this was a fucking manufactured crime.

Absolutely.

Dixon was obviously entrapped. That is to say, the feds threw a bunch of shills at him, who said basically, "teach me how to beat the machine so I can do something wrong". Dixon fell for it, pleaded guilty, and now is awaiting sentencing.

The interesting question is, what did Dixon do that caused the feds to go to such lengths to railroad him?

"entrapment" is such a diluted phrase these days. What entrapment really means is that a law enforcement officer encouraged someone to do something that they wouldn't have done otherwise. If an undercover cop asks a drug dealer for drugs, this is not entrapment.

Entrapment would be like if an undercover officer put a gun to someone's head and told them to steal something, then arrested them for stealing. Or if an undercover officer became the leader of a peaceful activist movement, and then started preaching that they should get violent; then arrested all of the protesters that got violent.

It gets a little sticky in some cases, like the Portland bomber case. The undercover FBI agents kept asking him if he really wanted to do it. Looking at it one way you could say that they were discouraging him from doing it. On the other hand, he thought that they were terrorists, so even if he found himself in over his head, he would be unlikely to feel like he could back out at any time. Saying, "You can back out at any time," could just as easily be a ruse to test his resolve.

There is a difference between imparting knowledge and aiding the commission of a crime. Do you think the guy that plans a bank robbery, telling the grunts how to get in and get out, is guilty of a crime? Well that's just knowledge after all...

Again, the knowledge here isn't criminalized. What's criminalized is helping someone commit a crime. That makes you an accomplice. You cross that line from passing knowledge to participating and helping when you give knowledge knowing that the person intends to use it to commit a crime.

Knowledge isn't treated any differently than other kinds of help. E.g. Selling a gun isn't illegal. Selling a gun to someone who says he's going to murder his wife with it is illegal.

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