Pirate Bay founder is being held in solitary confinement without a warrant | Hacker News Reader

Pirate Bay founder is being held in solitary confinement without a warrant

theinquirer.net

343 pointshseldon1555 comments

This is standard procedure. The alleged criminal is remanded typically up to 4 weeks at a time, and optionally isolated. This can go on for a bit if the alleged criminal is expected to flee, destroy evidence and that type of thing.

The headline and the article fail to stress why he's being imprisoned. It's unrelated to Pirate Bay, and has due to extensive intrusion into Danish government and police databases. Don't mistake this "cracker" type for some kind of brave fighter against restrictive copyright regime.

According to the article he's in solitary confinement.. "among violent criminals".

It's a procedure that exists, but it's nowhere near standard procedure in Denmark, as far as I know. The 4-week solitary remand is usually used for terrorism suspects, situations more like this one: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2012/04/29/Denmark-to...

Even violent criminals don't usually have such a procedure applied. If you got in a knife fight and stabbed someone, you might well be held pending trial, but not usually in solitary confinement. For non-violent offenses, being held pending trial at all is rare.

My guess is that the relationship to police databases got this filed under either "terrorism" or something that rhymes with it, and therefore it's being treated as a "national security" crime rather than an ordinary crime.

Actually, solitary confinement is pretty standard in Denmark. And for that reason, the UN has even raised concerns about it. Not that anything has happened in this regard.

Very odd that supposedly advanced Denmark would impose barbaric solitary confinement. How we as a species still get away with this tactic is beyond me.

Definitions of advanced and barbaric vary wildly.

In particular, what Denmark considers really barbaric are long sentences: 10, 20, 30+ years are quite unusual. Most sentences are less than 2 years, with a handful of severe sentences in the high single-digit range.

The list of things that are beyond me, and probably many member on this board can be quite long. A radical example is: who decided that planet Earth belonged to a bunch of corrupted politicians and executives and not the rest of us, preventing people to roam freely, and to freely decide where they can live, work, raise their family...

To argue against the line "it's only natural that the corrupt seize power" look no further than the various cases where decency and enlightenment prevailed.

Never give in — never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.

200,000 years of history

Even the worst violent offenders are heavily limited in the number of victims they can produce. Using a computer can affect many orders of magnitude beyond that so why exactly should "non-violent" prisoners be given more freedoms and better treatment?

Is this "less bad" than mugging someone?

  "He is accused of braking into the danish police systems, 
  including out driver license database that holds our 
  Civil Registration System number witch can easily be used 
  to identity fraud"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6897572

It's not about bad or less bad, it's about risk to people.

A violent criminal poses greater risk of harm, and thus is locked up. A non violent criminal can commit very many offences, and sometimes those offences cause great distress (fraud which removes a person's life savings, for example), and their access to the tools of their criminal trade should be restricted, but that doesn't usually require solitary confinement.

I would argue solitary is the only rationale option for non-violent crime like this - anything less requires the person to respect limitations on communication they can circumvent if they want.

There are sometimes legitimate concerns, but I think they tend to be overblown in the case of computer crime. Along the lines of the insane worries that Kevin Mitnick couldn't be granted access to a phone because he might hack teh USA by whistling into the phone, I think there is often a weird witchcraft-style reaction to computer crime, where the defendant is seen as some kind of nearly omnipotent wizard.

ummm.... I thought violent criminals are kept in solitary confinement because they are dangerous to their fellow inmates. A hacker may be able to cause more harm to more people IF he is outside and has a computer. He can't exactly destroy the lives of other inmates while he is in prison...

First of all, let's be clear that risk of fraud to an individual is often as harmful, if not more harmful, than risk of violence to an individual. Fraud that takes out a person's entire life savings, even if the victim doesn't commit suicide, typically does more lasting damage than, say, the average case of assault and battery. And that's not just true with identity theft. Stealing money alone can cause people to commit suicide as in Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme.

So then the question becomes which type of criminal is more likely to commit more crimes if not in solitary confinement. Obviously it depends on the specific kind of criminal but in general, I'd say perpetrators of fraud if they have Internet access and violent criminals if they don't have Internet access.

Let's assume that you're right, and fraud causes more harm ot individuals than a punch to the face.

A prisoner has little opportunity to commit fraud. They don't need to be put into solitary confinement to restrict their access to the Internet.

That's absolutely true. I was not commenting on whether or not they need solitary confinement. I was stating that the claim in your second paragraph--that violent criminals almost always pose more danger to society than non-violent criminals--is not true. It would seem several people strongly disagreed with me...

  Fraud that takes out a person's entire life savings, even 
  if the victim doesn't commit suicide, typically does more 
  lasting damage than, say, the average case of assault and 
  battery.

I disagree with you in every possible way, and I think you've just decided, off the top of your head, to make that up because you think it sounds good. You might be able to google some statistics, but I'm not drinking your kool-aid.

Assault resulting in serious injury is categorically worse than fraud or identity theft, and far more common.

> I disagree with you in every possible way, and I think you've just decided, off the top of your head, to make that up because you think it sounds good.

That tone was completely uncalled for, and assuming you were the one who downvoted me, downvoting me for disagreeing was equally uncalled for. This isn't reddit.

> You might be able to google some statistics, but I'm not drinking your kool-aid.

If you're going on gut feel rather than providing any statistics to the contrary, don't criticize me for going on gut feel.

> Assault resulting in serious injury is categorically worse than fraud or identity theft

I agree that assault resulting in long-term or permanent injury is generally worse than monetary fraud and perhaps partial identity theft (using one's information to commit an isolated instance of fraud). However, it's certainly not "categorically worse" than all forms of fraud or identity theft. Even breaking someone's legs (one of the worst forms of [non-sexual] assault) generally ruins a person's life less than full identity theft and, by definition, less than stealing so much from someone that they are driven to suicide.

> and far more common

If you mean some class of assault is more common than some class of fraud or identity theft, I don't know if you're right or wrong, but that has no bearing on the rate at which a particular criminal will commit repeat offenses.

If on the other hand you meant that assault in which there's serious injury is the most common kind of assault, we'd have to consult Google but that seems highly improbable.

So all authorities have to do to extinguish any "copyright freedom fighter" is to invent charges against them. Then apparently everyone will be A-OK with throwing them in solitary.

I think it's unlikely. But I also think authorities are sometimes corrupt. The only reason we know anything about this case is because they told us things. We're quick to believe them. Why?

Or we could turn this around: all a criminal has to do to win support from the technorati is to help people pirate movies before committing a different crime. Then apparently everyone will find them to be terribly persecuted.

No, if he broke into other people's property (and not merely for the challenge of cracking a safe, i.e. malicious intent) then I hope to see him stand for his crimes.

I'm only suggesting that we shouldn't be so quick to take the word of the authorities. Many powerful people would be delighted to see the creators of TPB suffer punishment, justified or not. We should reserve judgement until hearing evidence.

In this world where the USA government throws billions of dollars to spy its own citizens and foreigners it wouldn't be one bit surprising if we discover media companies are spending millions of dollars trying to create false accusations to bring its enemies down (it would explain Assange trial too)

Maybe. But no private company has charged Svartholm Warg with anything in this case. He is only being charged by the Danish authorities. And Danish authorities are not exactly known for their ruthlessness.

Money can make people do things they are 'not known for', and I'm talking about completely made-up crimes because for them it's way smarter:

1) Avoid tarnishing the public view of their media company where PR is very important.

2) Supporters seem conflicted ("is about other thing!").

3) The penalty of those crimes is not controversial (in this case: security information theft)

4) Therefore it doesn't cause a big media fuzz

5) Legislation about the crimes he is being charged with are not likely to change in the future so no new laws with retroactive repercussions will set him free.

6) It still inflicts fear upon similar enemies, because he's still know as "the pirate bay guy who is in jail" not the "the cracker who stole confidential data who is in jail"

Fear to defend one's stature or business is often the bullshit used to compartmentalize the means to reach an end that "protects" something, in spite of costs to others. That seems to fit the definition of concrete, areligous "evil." It's shitty, but many decision-makers are fine with expedience if it can't come back to them.

People that control content licenses and distribution aren't all stupid. The lobbyists and industry groups do the dirty work to "defend" their client's interests. Perhaps the Pirate Party and TPB should invest in covert dirty tricks people like Rove. Such people are not valued for their ostensible vestigial allegiance to a political persuasion but are willing to accomplish feats force and cries for mercy could never begin to hope to achieve. Otherwise, TPB and similar are sitting ducks in a war they don't understand how to fight... Politics and greed.

Well, that logic works for any group of people and any possible crime. "All authorities have to do to extinguish 'pro life groups' is invent mail fraud charges against them".

crimes are usually measured in damage to society. In monetary value. And if we learned anything from former transportation or Drug cases and copyright cases, a copied music has far greater monetary impact to society than a life.

You think the charges are invented? Why?

It shouldn't matter whether these specific charges are made-up or not. At this point they're unproven allegations, and it's up to a court to decide whether they're valid or not.

It's important to realize that anytime you give the police power over people still facing trial, you give them that same power over anyone they can fabricate spurious charges against. That's why it's important to have things like warrants and pre-trial court orders, so that there's some accountability when the police detain someone over unproven allegations.

Yes. And there has been. He was extradited by a Swedish court. And he was put in solidarity by a Danish court before his trial begins. Or is that not a close to warrant/pre-trial court orders?

I'll confess I'm not intimately familiar with the details of this case, and I'm speaking in generalities.

But still - it doesn't matter whether the charges are invented or not, or even what those charges are. What matters is that a judge (not the police) ruled that he should be held until his trial.

Is extremely wrong that a system trying to impose justice put its suspects under psychological abuse before trial, making them hate society, and therefore increasing the possibility of actually becoming criminals.

Has he been proven guilty?

nope.

Standard procedure or not, regardless of their crimes: Being held in isolation without even access to books and things like that, if we go by the article, is utterly atrocious for a civilised country to inflict on anyone.

It's not like we don't know that isolation and boredom are destructive to people's mental states. This seems like cruelty without a reasonable purpose behind it, hurting someone for the joy of hurting them.

He's no "cracker" type. Actually, he's just a hacker, and a guy who tried to fight "the man". I'm afraid modern man has morphed into castrated, hypocrites? They do what they are told. They actually like Facebook, and think Mark is a genius. I guess I'm from a different generation?

You obviously have no clue who anakata is. He's definitely the cracker type and was infamous long before The Pirate Bay.

Solitary confinement is torture. So, cracking or not, a bizarre response to a non-violent crime.

Yeah, this seems like this could be totally unrelated to TPB.

It has nothing to do with TPB. He is accused of braking into the danish police systems, including out driver license database that holds our Civil Registration System number witch can easily be used to identity fraud. And this is just one of the accusations.

Among doesn't mean along.

He was already in prison in Sweden, but was extradited last month and is in police custody, but apparently being denied visitations from family and his lawyer requires a special order which the police have not gotten. It's trumped-up stuff and not due legal process, but at the same time it's not like he's being held in a secret location after being thrown in an unmarked van. Here's hoping his rights are respected more thoroughly soon.

http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-founder-held-in-solitary-...

Admit it. You hit the upvote button before reading the article because of the headline. I know I did, and now I want my upvote back.

I had completely forgotten about the hacking charges and his extradition from Malaysia. After watching the pirate bay documentary, I am fairly certain that somebody with his level of "enthusiasm" for his cause could have easily perpetrated the crimes he is accused of.

It's best to punish people after judicial review. Has he been able to call witnesses on his behalf? No. Has he been able to cross-examine the government's witnesses against him? No. That's the problem.

I have no idea how the legal system in Denmark works, but it seems unfair to punish him in the short-term without judicial review, and in the long-term without a trial by his peers.

Cambodia, not Malaysia.

Can someone who knows Danish law explain what it means to be held "without a warrant" in Denmark?

Generally if you are suspected of comitting a sufficiently serious crime -- where the prison term would be 18 months and above -- you can be remanded if there's a suspicion you are going to interfere with the investigation or flee.

The prosecutor requests the remandment, and a judge has to approve within a short period after the arrest (or release the suspect).

Isolation here can be requested if there's a suspicion the alleged criminal can interfere with the investigation, warn others, destroy evidence etc. by communicating.

You can try Google translate on http://www.themis.dk/searchinclude/Lovsamling/Retsplejeloven... if you want to know more.

This can in theory go on for 6 months, if the alleged crime would be penalized with less than 6 years in prison, or a 1 year if 6 or more, if the court approves the increase every 4 weeks.

As a Danish person I was also confused about that when I first read it. I think it's a misuse of the word "warrant", and more has to do with whether or not they've charged him (I think).

If you're going to torture somebody because they're a troublesome inmate that needs punishing, that's one debate and I can imagine some arguments for that.

If you're going to torture somebody who hasn't even been found guilty yet, that's a different story.

thepiratebay.sx seems down at the moment.

Edit: moved to thepiratebay.pe

It has nothing to do with this. He is not arrested in Denmark because of TPB.

Anyone sufficiently paranoid must consider the possibility that it has something to do with TPB, and the charges are just made up.

domain seized...moved to thepiratebay.pe

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