So stupid.
But in the US, parole officers see their role to add additional punishment through threats and inserting petty and vindictive 'rules' into the lives of released prisoners in order to reinforce their authority and express the displeasure of the authorities. There are countless examples of people being returned to prison for trivial and even made up violations of parole - remember private prison is big business in America with lots of money to be made from returning people to prison (and sending them there in the first place).
Other countries see parole officers tasked with helping ex-prisoners return to society and keeping them out of trouble through support and assistance. Often parole officers are social workers or psychologists specializing in dealing with ex-offenders. A return to prison is seen as a failure of the parole officer rather than of the prisoner.
Less than 10% of U.S. prisoners are in privately-managed prisons, and it's a very recent phenomenon (the number was negligible in the 1990's).
For profit-prisons are an opportunistic reaction to the pettiness and vindictiveness of the prison culture that grew out of the "tough on crime" movements of the 1980's and 1990's. They aren't responsible for the culture.
While this is true, they have a profit-motive to support it, which means that there is now a contingent of lobbyists throwing money around to keep things the way that they are (or even worse, force them in an even more extreme direction).
Are you sure about that ? 2,000 incarcerated children would disagree.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/mar/07/juvenille-judge...
w0rmer got caught because he forgot to strip exif data from the bottom of one of his leaks. He had his girlfriend take her tits out with a sign saying, "You got pwned by w0rmer" and that was that.
I couldn't disagree more that he deserves to be punished. He doxxed some police officers because of police brutality. Stop fearing 'hacking', and start realizing it's one of the few things where citizens are on equal grounding with our government. He didn't cause any damage, besides making some police officers feel uncomfortable... Yet probably not as uncomfortable as their victims.
Each and every one of these idiot hackers willing to risk their livelihood and families for a little civil disobedience should be celebrated for the martyrs they are.
Reading TFA, it seems he's now unwilling to risk his livelihood and family now that he knows the consequences.
He _did_ risk his family and livelihood, and he was without them for a time. Now he's not. I see no shame in that.
What do you mean by productive outlet for his talent? Maybe he didn't want to help VCs make a few more million a year, or contribute to those systems at all.
I support hacktivists, and if you don't, that's your right. But I hope you realize how much FLOSS, and thus also Silicon Valley, are tied to this immature, 'unproductive' culture. For example, Sam Hocevar, the same one that you know for running the debian project, was the former president of the trolling group named 'Gay Nigger Association of America.'
The spirit of hacking is doing things just because you can. If we only used computer skills to do productive things, where would we be today?
I am just trying to say, I think this is necessary for computing culture to be as prolific as it is, and I think it's hilarious and awesome.
Given the conditions, this guy has been extremely lucky to land a job.
You act as if there are no degrees of punishment. I could equally say that someone "sneaking" an orange across the border should face crucifixion, and defend this opinion with "well it's against the law, so deal with the consequences." Acting as if the "consequences" are some of natural law (and inarguable) isn't really facing the reality of the situation (they are created for humans, by humans, and therefore imperfect).
> Part of parole is continued punishment and to see if the person is serious about being a good citizen or not.
At the same time, do you want the parole officer acting like the kid in class that tries to trip you as you walk past their desk? If you get mad at the kid that trips you are you "not serious enough" about your education?
Something like "If you want to send less than one page of code, you can have your wife send it by email, but if it's more than one page then print it out and send it through mail".