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Comment by hnnewguy | Hacker News Reader

>I've reported a crime

Your unverifiable anecdote doesn't hold much weight, I'm afraid. But do you really believe random-guy calling the FBI should warrant as much attention as multi-national financial institution reporting a potential crime?

People are complaining as if GS putting the FBI on people is rampant. As far as I'm aware it has happened this once (though I'm open to other tales) and an over-zealous investigator tried to make a name for himself and messed it up royally.

I agree, what they did to this poor fellow is disgraceful, but let's not pretend that the justice system doesn't have a habit of railroading people when they desire a suspect. That's the real tragedy.

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> But do you really believe random-guy calling the FBI should warrant as much attention as multi-national financial institution reporting a potential crime?

Well, yeah, if corporations are people with equal rights, that means that the law should treat them equally to other people.

Right, so just like with people the famous rich one with a big reputation is lent more initial credence than the anonymous one you've never heard of.

Or would you put just as much faith in Joe Programmer as you would in Steve Woz?

So you need to be the Steve Woz of crime victims before you should expect any law enforcement action whatsoever on a crime with an enormous paper trail?

If I wanted someone to design me a cheap disk controller - possibly not.

But in an account of a burglary - yes I would.

It seems you've accepted that justice favors those with high status over those with low status.

Perhaps you don't find that troubling. I do.

Huh? My parent is upset that Joe-Random has less clout. My point is Joe-Random has no credence, which has absolutely nothing to do with "high status". Woz has credence about disk controllers. Big banks have credence about finance and trading. That is as it should be. Joe-Random does not deserve equal clout on matters of disk controllers, finance, or trading.

Magnitude of crime is different. If somebody breaks into my car in San Francisco and steals a bag, I totally expect police to laugh at me if I ask if they plan to investigate it.

On the other hand if young female student is raped, her newborn daughter brutally murdered and house burned to the ground, I expect half the police to be on high alert and FBI to get involved.

GS report of theft of software that produces billions in profits falls somewhere between these two extremes. Police/FBI does not have resources to investigate all crimes equally so they have to prioritize. The same way as browse remote-execution exploit is fixed way faster than small UI glitch.

> Magnitude of crime is different.

The question wasn't "should a person reporting a potentially wide-ranging crime doing lots of damage and impacting potentially large number of victims be treated differently than a person reporting a crime with lesser impacts".

There is a difference between asking if the magnitude of the crime reported should result in a different response and what actually was asked, which was whether who is reporting the crime should result in a different response.

>Magnitude of crime is different. If somebody breaks into my car in San Francisco and steals a bag, I totally expect police to laugh at me if I ask if they plan to investigate it.

Except that I could provide a complete paper trail of where the money went (to a local scam artist) -- that's how the financial system works.

It would be analogous to providing and end-to-end video of a car being stolen to a previously unknown chop shop.

What the police actually did would be analogous to ignoring that video but then arresting a car thief on a GS executive's say-so.

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