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A Brief Primer on Criminal Statistics « Canada « Skeptic North - 0 views

  • Occurrences of crime are properly expressed as the number of incidences per 100,000 people. Total numbers are not informative on their own and it is very easy to manipulate an argument by cherry picking between a total number and a rate.  Beware of claims about crime that use raw incidence numbers. When a change in whole incidence numbers is observed, this might not have any bearing on crime levels at all, because levels of crime are dependent on population.
  • Whole Numbers versus Rates
  • Reliability Not every criminal statistic is equally reliable. Even though we have measures of incidences of crimes across types and subtypes, not every one of these statistics samples the actual incidence of these crimes in the same way. Indeed, very few measure the total incidences very reliably at all. The crime rates that you are most likely to encounter capture only crimes known and substantiated by police. These numbers are vulnerable to variances in how crimes become known and verified by police in the first place. Crimes very often go unreported or undiscovered. Some crimes are more likely to go unreported than others (such as sexual assaults and drug possession), and some crimes are more difficult to substantiate as having occurred than others.
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  • Complicating matters further is the fact that these reporting patterns vary over time and are reflected in observed trends.   So, when a change in the police reported crime rate is observed from year to year or across a span of time we may be observing a “real” change, we may be observing a change in how these crimes come to the attention of police, or we may be seeing a mixture of both.
  • Generally, the most reliable criminal statistic is the homicide rate – it’s very difficult, though not impossible, to miss a dead body. In fact, homicides in Canada are counted in the year that they become known to police and not in the year that they occurred.  Our most reliable number is very, very close, but not infallible.
  • Crimes known to the police nearly always under measure the true incidence of crime, so other measures are needed to better complete our understanding. The reported crimes measure is reported every year to Statistics Canada from data that makes up the Uniform Crime Reporting Survey. This is a very rich data set that measures police data very accurately but tells us nothing about unreported crime.
  • We do have some data on unreported crime available. Victims are interviewed (after self-identifying) via the General Social Survey. The survey is conducted every five years
  • This measure captures information in eight crime categories both reported, and not reported to police. It has its own set of interpretation problems and pathways to misuse. The survey relies on self-reporting, so the accuracy of the information will be open to errors due to faulty memories, willingness to report, recording errors etc.
  • From the last data set available, self-identified victims did not report 69% of violent victimizations (sexual assault, robbery and physical assault), 62% of household victimizations (break and enter, motor vehicle/parts theft, household property theft and vandalism), and 71% of personal property theft victimizations.
  • while people generally understand that crimes go unreported and unknown to police, they tend to be surprised and perhaps even shocked at the actual amounts that get unreported. These numbers sound scary. However, the most common reasons reported by victims of violent and household crime for not reporting were: believing the incident was not important enough (68%) believing the police couldn’t do anything about the incident (59%), and stating that the incident was dealt with in another way (42%).
  • Also, note that the survey indicated that 82% of violent incidents did not result in injuries to the victims. Do claims that we should do something about all this hidden crime make sense in light of what this crime looks like in the limited way we can understand it? How could you be reasonably certain that whatever intervention proposed would in fact reduce the actual amount of crime and not just reduce the amount that goes unreported?
  • Data is collected at all levels of the crime continuum with differing levels of accuracy and applicability. This is nicely reflected in the concept of “the crime funnel”. All criminal incidents that are ever committed are at the opening of the funnel. There is “loss” all along the way to the bottom where only a small sample of incidences become known with charges laid, prosecuted successfully and responded to by the justice system.  What goes into the top levels of the funnel affects what we can know at any other point later.
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Singapore M.D.: You CAN put a price on everything... - 0 views

  • The study aims to calculate the costs incurred as a consequence of crime, which includes "monetary loss in traditional terms" and "monetising the loss of life and trauma suffered by victims".Costs of crime prevention and enforcement will also be tallied. The study seeks to find out costs borne by private entities - such as security expenditure and insurance - as well as costs borne by public bodies such as proactive police patrols in anticipation of crime.The police also intend to calculate the costs incurred in response to crime - investigating cases, apprehending suspects as well as the costs expended by the State in prosecuting, convicting and incarcerating suspects.
  • While costs of crime prevention - such as installing alarm systems - and the State's response to crime could be measured, sociologist Paulin Straughan felt it might be "impossible" to measure the social costs of a spate of violence on a community. Social isolation and mistrust from these crimes would impact social capital on a community which would be difficult to estimate, she argued.However, the former Nominated Member of Parliament felt calculating the cost of crime would serve as "a reality check" for any society.
  • "We live in a world that is driven by economics," Associate Professor Straughan said. "We can't understand or appreciate unless it is documented in dollars and cents. So, this is one way of documenting it (crime) in dollars and cents to show you that every burglary cost you this (amount) … and highlight the importance of crime prevention."
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    As with healthcare and other valuable services, police work costs money; but as the cost is not borne by the user, the true cost is hidden and abuse occurs. Does this study by the SPF signal a desire on the part of the government to shift the cost of security from the public to the direct consumers? I certainly hope so. Now there will be people who will tell you that you cannot put a price on security (and health) - the truth is, you can: they just don't want to pay for it.

CYBER TROOPERS MAKE ARREST FOR SEXUAL SOLICITATION OF A MINOR - 8 views

started by kenneth yang on 18 Aug 09 no follow-up yet
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Valerie Plame, YES! Wikileaks, NO! - English pravda.ru - 0 views

  • n my recent article Ward Churchill: The Lie Lives On (Pravda.Ru, 11/29/2010), I discussed the following realities about America's legal "system": it is duplicitous and corrupt; it will go to any extremes to insulate from prosecution, and in many cases civil liability, persons whose crimes facilitate this duplicity and corruption; it has abdicated its responsibility to serve as a "check-and-balance" against the other two branches of government, and has instead been transformed into a weapon exploited by the wealthy, the corporations, and the politically connected to defend their criminality, conceal their corruption and promote their economic interests
  • it is now evident that Barack Obama, who entered the White House with optimistic messages of change and hope, is just as complicit in, and manipulative of, the legal "system's" duplicity and corruption as was his predecessor George W. Bush.
  • the Obama administration has refused to prosecute former Attorney General John Ashcroft for abusing the "material witness" statute; refused to prosecute Ashcroft's successor (and suspected perjurer) Alberto Gonzales for his role in the politically motivated firing of nine federal prosecutors; refused to prosecute Justice Department authors of the now infamous "torture memos," like John Yoo and Jay Bybee; and, more recently, refused to prosecute former CIA official Jose Rodriquez Jr. for destroying tapes that purportedly showed CIA agents torturing detainees.
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  • thanks to Wikileaks, the world has been enlightened to the fact that the Obama administration not only refused to prosecute these individuals itself, it also exerted pressure on the governments of Germany and Spain not to prosecute, or even indict, any of the torturers or war criminals from the Bush dictatorship.
  • we see many right-wing commentators demanding that Assange be hunted down, with some even calling for his murder, on the grounds that he may have endangered lives by releasing confidential government documents. Yet, for the right-wing, this apparently was not a concern when the late columnist Robert Novak "outed" CIA agent Valerie Plame after her husband Joseph Wilson authored an OP-ED piece in The New York Times criticizing the motivations for waging war against Iraq. Even though there was evidence of involvement within the highest echelons of the Bush dictatorship, only one person, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was indicted and convicted of "outing" Plame to Novak. And, despite the fact that this "outing" potentially endangered the lives of Plame's overseas contacts, Bush commuted Libby's thirty-month prison sentence, calling it "excessive."
  • Why the disparity? The answer is simple: The Plame "outing" served the interests of the military-industrial complex and helped to conceal the Bush dictatorship's lies, tortures and war crimes, while Wikileaks not only exposed such evils, but also revealed how Obama's administration, and Obama himself, are little more than "snake oil" merchants pontificating about government accountability while undermining it at every turn.
  • When the United States Constitution was being created, a conflict emerged between delegates who wanted a strong federal government (the Federalists) and those who wanted a weak federal government (the anti-Federalists). Although the Federalists won the day, one of the most distinguished anti-Federalists, George Mason, refused to sign the new Constitution, sacrificing in the process, some historians say, a revered place amongst America's founding fathers. Two of Mason's concerns were that the Constitution did not contain a Bill of Rights, and that the presidential pardon powers would allow corrupt presidents to pardon people who had committed crimes on presidential orders.
  • Mason's concerns about the abuse of the pardon powers were eventually proven right when Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon, when Ronald Reagan pardoned FBI agents convicted of authorizing illegal break-ins, and when George H.W. Bush pardoned six individuals involved in the Iran-Contra Affair.
  • Mason was also proven right after the Federalists realized that the States would not ratify the Constitution unless a Bill of Rights was added. But this was done begrudgingly, as demonstrated by America's second president, Federalist John Adams, who essentially destroyed the right to freedom of speech via the Alien and Sedition Acts, which made it a crime to say, write or publish anything critical of the United States government.
  • Most criminals break laws that others have created, and people who assist in exposing or apprehending them are usually lauded as heroes. But with the "espionage" acts, the criminals themselves have actually created laws to conceal their crimes, and exploit these laws to penalize people who expose them.
  • The problem with America's system of government is that it has become too easy, and too convenient, to simply stamp "classified" on documents that reveal acts of government corruption, cover-up, mendacity and malfeasance, or to withhold them "in the interest of national security." Given this web of secrecy, is it any wonder why so many Americans are still skeptical about the "official" versions of the John F. Kennedy or Martin Luther King Jr. assassinations, or the events surrounding the attacks of September 11, 2001?
  • I want to believe that the Wikileaks documents will change America for the better. But what undoubtedly will happen is a repetition of the past: those who expose government crimes and cover-ups will be prosecuted or branded as criminals; new laws will be passed to silence dissent; new Liebermans will arise to intimidate the corporate-controlled media; and new ways will be found to conceal the truth.
  • What Wikileaks has done is make people understand why so many Americans are politically apathetic and content to lose themselves in one or more of the addictions American culture offers, be it drugs, alcohol, the Internet, video games, celebrity gossip, text-messaging-in essence anything that serves to divert attention from the harshness of reality.
  • the evils committed by those in power can be suffocating, and the sense of powerlessness that erupts from being aware of these evils can be paralyzing, especially when accentuated by the knowledge that government evildoers almost always get away with their crimes
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BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | When can you speak ill of the dead? - 0 views

  • "It's a hostage to fortune to say nice things when someone dies. And reacting to this one was particularly tricky. For a long time he's been Wacko Jacko. So he wasn't someone who was unequivocally lauded."
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    Case It has been almost two months since Michael Jackson died. Some would call him "the King of Pop" and some would call him "Wacko Jacko". The latter term mostly derived due to his past child abuse cases, which he was never convicted and once acquitted. Problem The judgement of whether Michael Jackson was a good person is hard to reach a conclusion because we will always get both positive and negative accounts. Regardless of whether these accounts constitute misinformation, people (even those who have never met him) continue to talk about him because he was a celebrity (moreover one who had recently passed away). Given his recent death, negative comments (especially if they are misinformation) can really hurt those who love (i.e. family members) or adore (i.e. fans) him. However, positive comments can be misinformation too. Does his recent death make positive misinformation more acceptable? If he really did commit child abuse crimes (note: big assumption here), does that make positive misinformation towards him unjustified (especially to his victims)? Hence, the ethical problem here is the way people should go about talking about other people. Questions 1. We know the old saying, "don't speak ill of the dead". This is in conjunction with Kant's categorical imperative to respect other human beings. Adopting duty-based morality, should the negative comments about Michael Jackson (whether they constitute misinformation or not) be reduced or even stopped? 2. Adopting rights-based morality (specifically the right to free speech) should people be allowed to talk about whatever they want (including new media platform) in whatever way they want to? Should regulation by the authority be implemented? 3. Adopting similar duty-based morality to question one (specifically the virtue of not lying), should positive comments about Michael Jackson (whether they constitute misinformation or not) be increased or even exaggerated? 4. If Michael Jackson really did commit
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    4. If Michael Jackson really did commit child abuse crimes (note: big assumption here), due to the clash of duties (respect VS. not lying), should we talk about those crimes when we discuss about him in a public platform? Does just consequentialism come into play here?
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BBC News - Should victims have a say in sentencing criminals? - 0 views

  • If someone does you wrong, should you have a say in their punishment?
  • Should victims have a say in sentencing criminals? That partly depends upon what you mean by "have a say". A weak form of involvement would have a judge listen to a statement from victims, but ensure the judge alone does the sentencing. A slightly stronger form would be when the impact on victims is considered as part of assessing the moral seriousness of the crime. The strongest form would be when victims have a direct say in the type of sentence. So which is the more just?
  • A utilitarian approach, which seeks people's greatest happiness and is associated with the British philosopher Jeremy Bentham, can provide one reason why victims should, in part, play judge. It can be called the therapeutic argument.
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  • However, this might backfire. Given the choice, many victims might desire longer sentences than the judiciary would allow. When that desire is not satisfied, their anguish might be exacerbated. The therapeutic argument has also been called the "Oprahisation" of sentencing.
  • The second, Kantian approach emphasises reason and rights.
  • It stresses the law should be rational, and that includes keeping careful tabs on the irrational feelings that are inevitably present during legal proceedings. This would be harder to do, the more the voice of victims is heard.
  • More seriously still, strong forms of victim sentencing would reflect the capabilities of the victim. A victim who could powerfully express their feelings might win a longer sentence. That would be irrational because it would suggest that a crime is more serious if the victim is more articulate.
  • Taking considerations of moral seriousness into account would fit within a third approach, the one that stresses the common good and virtue and is associated with Aristotle. Would you want to meet the person who did this to you? Understanding the moral seriousness of a crime is important because it helps the criminal to take responsibility for what they've done. Victim feelings are also a crucial component in so-called restorative justice, in which the criminal is confronted with their crime, perhaps by meeting the victim.
  • virtue ethics approach would be concerned with the moral state of the victim too. Victims may need to forgive those who have wronged them, in order that they might flourish in the future. An impersonal legal system, that does not allow victims a say, might actually help with that, as it ensures objectivity.
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China calls out US human rights abuses: laptop searches, 'Net porn - 0 views

  • The report makes no real attempt to provide context to a huge selection of news articles about bad things happening in the US, piled up one against each other in almost random fashion.
  • As the UK's Guardian paper noted, "While some of the data cited in the report is derived from official or authoritative sources, other sections are composed from a mishmash of online material. One figure on crime rates is attributed to '10 Facts About Crime in the United States that Will Blow Your Mind, Beforitsnews.com'." The opening emphasis on US crime is especially odd; crime rates in the US are the lowest they have been in decades; the drop-off has been so dramatic that books have been written in attempts to explain it.
  • But the report does provide an interesting perspective on the US, especially when it comes to technology, and it's not all off base. China points to US laptop border searches as a problem (and they are): According to figures released by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in September 2010, more than 6,600 travelers had been subject to electronic device searches between October 1, 2008 and June 2, 2010, nearly half of them American citizens. A report on The Wall Street Journal on September 7, 2010, said the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was sued over its policies that allegedly authorize the search and seizure of laptops, cellphones and other electronic devices without a reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing. The policies were claimed to leave no limit on how long the DHS can keep a traveler's devices or on the scope of private information that can be searched, copied, or detained. There is no provision for judicial approval or supervision. When Colombian journalist Hollman Morris sought a US student visa so he could take a fellowship for journalists at Harvard University, his application was denied on July 17, 2010, as he was ineligible under the "terrorist activities" section of the USA Patriot Act. An Arab American named Yasir Afifi, living in California, found the FBI attached an electronic GPS tracking device near the right rear wheel of his car.
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  • China also sees hypocrisy in American discussions of Internet freedom. China comes in regularly for criticism over its "Great Firewall," but it suggests that the US government also restricts the Internet. While advocating Internet freedom, the US in fact imposes fairly strict restriction on cyberspace. On June 24, 2010, the US Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs approved the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act, which will give the federal government "absolute power" to shut down the Internet under a declared national emergency. Handing government the power to control the Internet will only be the first step towards a greatly restricted Internet system, whereby individual IDs and government permission would be required to operate a website. The United States applies double standards on Internet freedom by requesting unrestricted "Internet freedom" in other countries, which becomes an important diplomatic tool for the United States to impose pressure and seek hegemony, and imposing strict restriction within its territory. An article on BBC on February 16, 2011 noted the US government wants to boost Internet freedom to give voices to citizens living in societies regarded as "closed" and questions those governments' control over information flow, although within its borders the US government tries to create a legal frame to fight the challenge posed by WikiLeaks. The US government might be sensitive to the impact of the free flow of electronic information on its territory for which it advocates, but it wants to practice diplomacy by other means, including the Internet, particularly the social networks. (The cyberspace bill never became law, and a revised version is still pending in Congress.)
  • Finally, there's pornography, which China bans. Pornographic content is rampant on the Internet and severely harms American children. Statistics show that seven in 10 children have accidentally accessed pornography on the Internet and one in three has done so intentionally. And the average age of exposure is 11 years old - some start at eight years old (The Washington Times, June 16, 2010). According to a survey commissioned by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, 20 percent of American teens have sent or posted nude or seminude pictures or videos of themselves. (www.co.jefferson.co.us, March 23, 2010). At least 500 profit-oriented nude chat websites were set up by teens in the United States, involving tens of thousands of pornographic pictures.
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    Upset over the US State Department's annual human rights report, China publishes a report of its own on various US ills. This year, it calls attention to America's border laptop searches, its attitude toward WikiLeaks, and the prevalence of online pornography. In case the report's purpose wasn't clear, China Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said this weekend, "We advise the US side to reflect on its own human rights issue, stop acting as a preacher of human rights as well as interfering in other countries' internal affairs by various means including issuing human rights reports."
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Free Speech under Siege - Robert Skidelsky - Project Syndicate - 0 views

  • Breaking the cultural code damages a person’s reputation, and perhaps one’s career. Britain’s Home Secretary Kenneth Clarke recently had to apologize for saying that some rapes were less serious than others, implying the need for legal discrimination. The parade of gaffes and subsequent groveling apologies has become a regular feature of public life. In his classic essay On Liberty, John Stuart Mill defended free speech on the ground that free inquiry was necessary to advance knowledge. Restrictions on certain areas of historical inquiry are based on the opposite premise: the truth is known, and it is impious to question it. This is absurd; every historian knows that there is no such thing as final historical truth.
  • It is not the task of history to defend public order or morals, but to establish what happened. Legally protected history ensures that historians will play safe. To be sure, living by Mill’s principle often requires protecting the rights of unsavory characters. David Irving writes mendacious history, but his prosecution and imprisonment in Austria for “Holocaust denial” would have horrified Mill.
  • the pressure for “political correctness” rests on the argument that the truth is unknowable. Statements about the human condition are essentially matters of opinion.  Because a statement of opinion by some individuals is almost certain to offend others, and since such statements make no contribution to the discovery of truth, their degree of offensiveness becomes the sole criterion for judging their admissibility. Hence the taboo on certain words, phrases, and arguments that imply that certain individuals, groups, or practices are superior or inferior, normal or abnormal; hence the search for ever more neutral ways to label social phenomena, thereby draining language of its vigor and interest.
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  • A classic example is the way that “family” has replaced “marriage” in public discourse, with the implication that all “lifestyles” are equally valuable, despite the fact that most people persist in wanting to get married. It has become taboo to describe homosexuality as a “perversion,” though this was precisely the word used in the 1960’s by the radical philosopher Herbert Marcuse (who was praising homosexuality as an expression of dissent). In today’s atmosphere of what Marcuse would call “repressive tolerance,” such language would be considered “stigmatizing.”
  • The sociological imperative behind the spread of “political correctness” is the fact that we no longer live in patriarchal, hierarchical, mono-cultural societies, which exhibit general, if unreflective, agreement on basic values. The pathetic efforts to inculcate a common sense of “Britishness” or “Dutchness” in multi-cultural societies, however well-intentioned, attest to the breakdown of a common identity.
  • The defense of free speech is made no easier by the abuses of the popular press. We need free media to expose abuses of power. But investigative journalism becomes discredited when it is suborned to “expose” the private lives of the famous when no issue of public interest is involved. Entertaining gossip has mutated into an assault on privacy, with newspapers claiming that any attempt to keep them out of people’s bedrooms is an assault on free speech. You know that a doctrine is in trouble when not even those claiming to defend it understand what it means. By that standard, the classic doctrine of free speech is in crisis. We had better sort it out quickly – legally, morally, and culturally – if we are to retain a proper sense of what it means to live in a free society.
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    Yet freedom of speech in the West is under strain. Traditionally, British law imposed two main limitations on the "right to free speech." The first prohibited the use of words or expressions likely to disrupt public order; the second was the law against libel. There are good grounds for both - to preserve the peace, and to protect individuals' reputations from lies. Most free societies accept such limits as reasonable. But the law has recently become more restrictive. "Incitement to religious and racial hatred" and "incitement to hatred on the basis of sexual orientation" are now illegal in most European countries, independent of any threat to public order. The law has shifted from proscribing language likely to cause violence to prohibiting language intended to give offense. A blatant example of this is the law against Holocaust denial. To deny or minimize the Holocaust is a crime in 15 European countries and Israel. It may be argued that the Holocaust was a crime so uniquely abhorrent as to qualify as a special case. But special cases have a habit of multiplying.
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Hacktivists as Gadflies - NYTimes.com - 0 views

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    "Consider the case of Andrew Auernheimer, better known as "Weev." When Weev discovered in 2010 that AT&T had left private information about its customers vulnerable on the Internet, he and a colleague wrote a script to access it. Technically, he did not "hack" anything; he merely executed a simple version of what Google Web crawlers do every second of every day - sequentially walk through public URLs and extract the content. When he got the information (the e-mail addresses of 114,000 iPad users, including Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Rahm Emanuel, then the White House chief of staff), Weev did not try to profit from it; he notified the blog Gawker of the security hole. For this service Weev might have asked for free dinners for life, but instead he was recently sentenced to 41 months in prison and ordered to pay a fine of more than $73,000 in damages to AT&T to cover the cost of notifying its customers of its own security failure. When the federal judge Susan Wigenton sentenced Weev on March 18, she described him with prose that could have been lifted from the prosecutor Meletus in Plato's "Apology." "You consider yourself a hero of sorts," she said, and noted that Weev's "special skills" in computer coding called for a more draconian sentence. I was reminded of a line from an essay written in 1986 by a hacker called the Mentor: "My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me for." When offered the chance to speak, Weev, like Socrates, did not back down: "I don't come here today to ask for forgiveness. I'm here to tell this court, if it has any foresight at all, that it should be thinking about what it can do to make amends to me for the harm and the violence that has been inflicted upon my life." He then went on to heap scorn upon the law being used to put him away - the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the same law that prosecutors used to go after the 26-year-old Internet activist Aaron Swart

Warning over 'surveillance state' - 9 views

started by Paul Melissa on 08 Sep 09 no follow-up yet
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Our ever-changing English | Alison Flood | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk - 0 views

  • Perhaps the Daily Mail should take a leaf out of Jonathan Swift's book and instead of blaming changes in English on "a tidal wave of mindless Americanisms", start calling those damned poets to book.
  • We've been whining on about the deterioration in English for years and years and years, and perhaps we need to get over ourselves. Looking at Swift's 300-year-old plea to keep things the same I'm minded to think that, actually, part of the glory of English, from Shakespeare's insults to Bombaugh's txt speak to the ever-expanding dictionaries of today, is its constantly changing nature, its adaptability, its responsiveness.
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    Our ever-changing English I get grumpy about crimes against language. But we Brits have been lamenting declining standards of English for centuries
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Rationally Speaking: On Utilitarianism and Consequentialism - 0 views

  • Utilitarianism and consequentialism are different, yet closely related philosophical positions. Utilitarians are usually consequentialists, and the two views mesh in many areas, but each rests on a different claim
  • Utilitarianism's starting point is that we all attempt to seek happiness and avoid pain, and therefore our moral focus ought to center on maximizing happiness (or, human flourishing generally) and minimizing pain for the greatest number of people. This is both about what our goals should be and how to achieve them.
  • Consequentialism asserts that determining the greatest good for the greatest number of people (the utilitarian goal) is a matter of measuring outcome, and so decisions about what is moral should depend on the potential or realized costs and benefits of a moral belief or action.
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  • first question we can reasonably ask is whether all moral systems are indeed focused on benefiting human happiness and decreasing pain.
  • Jeremy Bentham, the founder of utilitarianism, wrote the following in his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation: “When a man attempts to combat the principle of utility, it is with reasons drawn, without his being aware of it, from that very principle itself.”
  • Michael Sandel discusses this line of thought in his excellent book, Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?, and sums up Bentham’s argument as such: “All moral quarrels, properly understood, are [for Bentham] disagreements about how to apply the utilitarian principle of maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain, not about the principle itself.”
  • But Bentham’s definition of utilitarianism is perhaps too broad: are fundamentalist Christians or Muslims really utilitarians, just with different ideas about how to facilitate human flourishing?
  • one wonders whether this makes the word so all-encompassing in meaning as to render it useless.
  • Yet, even if pain and happiness are the objects of moral concern, so what? As philosopher Simon Blackburn recently pointed out, “Every moral philosopher knows that moral philosophy is functionally about reducing suffering and increasing human flourishing.” But is that the central and sole focus of all moral philosophies? Don’t moral systems vary in their core focuses?
  • Consider the observation that religious belief makes humans happier, on average
  • Secularists would rightly resist the idea that religious belief is moral if it makes people happier. They would reject the very idea because deep down, they value truth – a value that is non-negotiable.Utilitarians would assert that truth is just another utility, for people can only value truth if they take it to be beneficial to human happiness and flourishing.
  • . We might all agree that morality is “functionally about reducing suffering and increasing human flourishing,” as Blackburn says, but how do we achieve that? Consequentialism posits that we can get there by weighing the consequences of beliefs and actions as they relate to human happiness and pain. Sam Harris recently wrote: “It is true that many people believe that ‘there are non-consequentialist ways of approaching morality,’ but I think that they are wrong. In my experience, when you scratch the surface on any deontologist, you find a consequentialist just waiting to get out. For instance, I think that Kant's Categorical Imperative only qualifies as a rational standard of morality given the assumption that it will be generally beneficial (as J.S. Mill pointed out at the beginning of Utilitarianism). Ditto for religious morality.”
  • we might wonder about the elasticity of words, in this case consequentialism. Do fundamentalist Christians and Muslims count as consequentialists? Is consequentialism so empty of content that to be a consequentialist one need only think he or she is benefiting humanity in some way?
  • Harris’ argument is that one cannot adhere to a certain conception of morality without believing it is beneficial to society
  • This still seems somewhat obvious to me as a general statement about morality, but is it really the point of consequentialism? Not really. Consequentialism is much more focused than that. Consider the issue of corporal punishment in schools. Harris has stated that we would be forced to admit that corporal punishment is moral if studies showed that “subjecting children to ‘pain, violence, and public humiliation’ leads to ‘healthy emotional development and good behavior’ (i.e., it conduces to their general well-being and to the well-being of society). If it did, well then yes, I would admit that it was moral. In fact, it would appear moral to more or less everyone.” Harris is being rhetorical – he does not believe corporal punishment is moral – but the point stands.
  • An immediate pitfall of this approach is that it does not qualify corporal punishment as the best way to raise emotionally healthy children who behave well.
  • The virtue ethicists inside us would argue that we ought not to foster a society in which people beat and humiliate children, never mind the consequences. There is also a reasonable and powerful argument based on personal freedom. Don’t children have the right to be free from violence in the public classroom? Don’t children have the right not to suffer intentional harm without consent? Isn’t that part of their “moral well-being”?
  • If consequences were really at the heart of all our moral deliberations, we might live in a very different society.
  • what if economies based on slavery lead to an increase in general happiness and flourishing for their respective societies? Would we admit slavery was moral? I hope not, because we value certain ideas about human rights and freedom. Or, what if the death penalty truly deterred crime? And what if we knew everyone we killed was guilty as charged, meaning no need for The Innocence Project? I would still object, on the grounds that it is morally wrong for us to kill people, even if they have committed the crime of which they are accused. Certain things hold, no matter the consequences.
  • We all do care about increasing human happiness and flourishing, and decreasing pain and suffering, and we all do care about the consequences of our beliefs and actions. But we focus on those criteria to differing degrees, and we have differing conceptions of how to achieve the respective goals – making us perhaps utilitarians and consequentialists in part, but not in whole.
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    Is everyone a utilitarian and/or consequentialist, whether or not they know it? That is what some people - from Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill to Sam Harris - would have you believe. But there are good reasons to be skeptical of such claims.
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Review: What Rawls Hath Wrought | The National Interest - 0 views

  • Almost never used in English before the 1940s, “human rights” were mentioned in the New York Times five times as often in 1977 as in any prior year of the newspaper’s history. By the nineties, human rights had become central to the thinking not only of liberals but also of neoconservatives, who urged military intervention and regime change in the faith that these freedoms would blossom once tyranny was toppled. From being almost peripheral, the human-rights agenda found itself at the heart of politics and international relations.
  • In fact, it has become entrenched in extremis: nowadays, anyone who is skeptical about human rights is angrily challenged
  • The contemporary human-rights movement is demonstrably not the product of a revulsion against the worst crimes of Nazism. For one thing, the Holocaust did not figure in the deliberations that led up to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the UN in 1948.
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  • Contrary to received history, the rise of human rights had very little to do with the worst crime against humanity ever committed.
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If suspect Jared Lee Loughner has schizophrenia, would that make him more likely to go ... - 0 views

  • Shortly after Jared Lee Loughner had been identified as the alleged shooter of Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, online sleuths turned up pages of rambling text and videos he had created. A wave of amateur diagnoses soon followed, most of which concluded that Loughner was not so much a political extremist as a man suffering from "paranoid schizophrenia."
  • For many, the investigation will stop there. No need to explore personal motives, out-of-control grievances or distorted political anger. The mere mention of mental illness is explanation enough. This presumed link between psychiatric disorders and violence has become so entrenched in the public consciousness that the entire weight of the medical evidence is unable to shift it. Severe mental illness, on its own, is not an explanation for violence, but don't expect to hear that from the media in the coming weeks.
  • Seena Fazel is an Oxford University psychiatrist who has led the most extensive scientific studies to date of the links between violence and two of the most serious psychiatric diagnoses—schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, either of which can lead to delusions, hallucinations, or some other loss of contact with reality. Rather than looking at individual cases, or even single studies, Fazel's team analyzed all the scientific findings they could find. As a result, they can say with confidence that psychiatric diagnoses tell us next to nothing about someone's propensity or motive for violence.
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  • The fact that mental illness is so often used to explain violent acts despite the evidence to the contrary almost certainly flows from how such cases are handled in the media. Numerous studies show that crimes by people with psychiatric problems are over-reported, usually with gross inaccuracies that give a false impression of risk. With this constant misrepresentation, it's not surprising that the public sees mental illness as an easy explanation for heartbreaking events. We haven't yet learned all the details of the tragic shooting in Arizona, but I suspect mental illness will be falsely accused many times over.

"Can a robot commit a war crime?" - 1 views

started by Paul Melissa on 15 Oct 09 no follow-up yet
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Genetic Sequencing Will Have to Wait: Links Between Genes and Behavior Still Largely Un... - 0 views

  • A recent article in The New York Times reported that over 100 studies show a relationship between genes and criminality but that the environment plays a key role in the effects of this relationship: “Kevin Beaver, an associate professor at Florida State University’s College of Criminology and Criminal Justice, said genetics may account for, say, half of a person’s aggressive behavior, but that 50 percent comprises hundreds or thousands of genes that express themselves differently depending on the environment. He has tried to measure which circumstances — having delinquent friends, living in a disadvantaged neighborhood — influence whether a predisposition to violence surfaces. After studying twins and siblings, he came up with an astonishing result: In boys not exposed to the risk factors, genetics played no role in any of their violent behavior. The positive environment had prevented the genetic switches — to use Mr. Pinker’s word — that affect aggression from being turned on. In boys with eight or more risk factors, however, genes explained 80 percent of their violence. Their switches had been flipped.”
  • “This idea that if something is genetic it’s deterministic is a misconception that we have to get over because saying that genes are involved in depression does not necessarily mean that someone who has certain genetic variants is doomed to become depressed, it just means that under certain circumstances, he or she may have to do certain things to help alleviate it, but it’s not unchangeable. You can change your brain, you can change your brain in many different ways and genetics is just one of many of these ways.”
  • In fact, environment plays the same crucial role for criminality as it does for obesity and depression. In an interview I did for a story in The Michigan Daily on depression research, Dr. Margit Burmeister, a professor of human genetics and a researcher in the Molecular and Biological Neuroscience Institute at the University of Michigan, explained the dangers the public oversimplifying the link between genetics and depression:
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Harvard professor spots Web search bias - Business - The Boston Globe - 0 views

  • Sweeney said she has no idea why Google searches seem to single out black-sounding names. There could be myriad issues at play, some associated with the software, some with the people searching Google. For example, the more often searchers click on a particular ad, the more frequently it is displayed subsequently. “Since we don’t know the reason for it,” she said, “it’s hard to say what you need to do.”
  • But Danny Sullivan, editor of SearchEngineLand.com, an online trade publication that tracks the Internet search and advertising business, said Sweeney’s research has stirred a tempest in a teapot. “It looks like this fairly isolated thing that involves one advertiser.” He also said that the results could be caused by black Google users clicking on those ads as much as white users. “It could be that black people themselves could be causing the stuff that causes the negative copy to be selected more,” said Sullivan. “If most of the searches for black names are done by black people . . . is that racially biased?”
  • On the other hand, Sullivan said Sweeney has uncovered a problem with online searching — the casual display of information that might put someone in a bad light. Rather than focusing on potential instances of racism, he said, search services such as Google might want to put more restrictions on displaying negative information about anyone, black or white.

Top Internet Threats: Censorship to Warrantless Surveillance - 4 views

started by Meenatchi on 08 Sep 09 no follow-up yet

Planned Parenthood vs American Coalition of Life Activists - 5 views

started by jaime yeo on 02 Sep 09 no follow-up yet
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