Yes, and it's a fallacy to imagine you'll never end up there if you don't ever do anything wrong. The proportion of totally innocent people in prison is all but negligible. Hard to believe but true.
Yes, and it's a fallacy to imagine you'll never end up there if you don't ever do anything wrong. The proportion of totally innocent people in prison is all but negligible. Hard to believe but true.
While true that some people do end up in that situation, I think the probability of the average hner ending up in that situation is basically zero. The people who are overrepresented in being harassed by police tend to be underrepresented in technology circles.
This guy just went to federal prison on a 25-year sentence: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=Syonyk
https://www.idoc.idaho.gov/content/prisons/resident-client-s...
Some of his blog posts in the past several months also highlight the dismal state of prison tech, which I suppose is on-point for this thread:
https://www.sevarg.net/
Yeah brb accidentally sexually assaulting a minor under 16, could happen to anyone.
It's actually much worse when you find out the girl was only 9 years old
https://www.ktvb.com/article/news/crime/nampa-church-volunte...
The only person who suggested that was yourself.
> I think the probability of the average hner ending up in that situation is basically zero.
You were proven incorrect. There’s no need to move goal posts, it’s not that serious, just accept it and move on.
You have reading comprehension difficulties.
From the post I was replying to: “and it's a fallacy to imagine you'll never end up there if you don't ever do anything wrong”
“IF YOU DON’T EVER DO ANYTHING WRONG”
But you are right, interacting with this sort of person on the internet is probably a waste of my own time.
I bet you think Ulbricht did something wrong too.
Anyone thumbing their nose at the feds or sticking their dick in a 16yo knows what the risks are.
Now, that's not to say I wouldn't welcome with open arms the "errors" of the legal system (or tax system, or municipal code enforcement, or pretty much anything else where government really screws people by messing up) being concentrated upon the demographics that make up places like HN. After all, the ignorance of said demographics do the bulk of the heavy lifting when it comes to providing the political will to perpetuate unjust systems, for they themselves rarely find themselves targeted by them and when they do they can usually pay the problem away. But I do agree with the person you're replying to, the demographics that make up HN find themselves subject to the kind of law enforcement scrutiny that puts you in prison less than the population average.
Well, he did facilitate drug trade. I wouldn't call that "not doing anything wrong".
Whether you believe it's morally right or wrong, that doesn't matter - he did violate several high profile laws.
it was a plea deal, he even didn't fight it, there was likely much larger mess going on (who knows what).
That's not a federal prison
A lot of immigrants read HN, and immigrants are getting plenty harassed these days.
https://youtu.be/cuIRvn89988
I'm a white guy working in science and tech, and I only avoided jail by sheer luck (believe it or not, one day my 4-month-old baby vomited at the nanny’s, and if it had happened a few hours earlier I would have been the one arrested by the police).
Context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37650402
I know several HNers who went through the same situation. By my calculations, the risk is about 1 in 3,000 among young parents.
tl;dr: I'll NEVER be alone with a baby under 12 months. Everyone I know who learns about this issue ends up thinking the same.
I was in a relationship, and they were cheating on me, but I did not know that at the time. They also were not sober, which I only found out after the fact. I went to their mom's place to get my things that were there and try to talk to her if possible, and the situation became untenable because of them being unreasonable. I decided to go, and wanted the cat to be in the house while I packed the car. I was a bit more concerned with this issue than might have been reasonable, but didn't use force or anything I can't explain. I needed to recover a legally owned firearm from the property, but didn't want to inflame the situation. I was just concerned for the cat. I told them I would call the authorities if they weren't going to try to resolve the situation without me doing so. I placed the cat inside the door and made a move to go back to our old shared room, as we both stayed with her mom occasionally. They flipped out and hit me with a ceramic dog bowl in the face, nearly knocking one of my teeth out. I was so confused. I knew they didn't want me there, but I wasn't seeking to stay. I wanted to get my things and go, and I wanted the cat to not have to be in a carrier in the heat, because that is cruel and not safe for the animal. I insisted that I call the authorities at this point, and they did too.
The police arrested me, and charge stacked me with multiple felony charges. The case was dropped a year and a half later, mere days before my jury trial was set to begin. My public defender tried to get me to take their deal: 20 years suspended sentence, 10 years time served. I dodged a bullet.
I made a bad call by dating this person, and I had no idea how bad it was until that day. I'm sure I was culpable by being there and allowing this to happen. I could have walked away. I didn't mean to be party to this situation, and I don't like violence or conflict, but it has been normalized in my life due to circumstances prior to the relationship, so I didn't see the warning signs beforehand. I am single now, and am working on myself. I have been given a second chance, and wish my ex well. I don't hold any ill will. It's just not worth it.
I think that these cases are common, or at least ones like it are more common than you think. The authorities have to deal with the situation in front of them, and I don't think folks understand how charge stacking works, or the plea bargain system. I had to tell my lawyer to do their job because I wasn't taking a deal, and that is only because I know enough to know better. Most folks aren't as blameless as I was, and I know I wasn't entirely so, but I did know I didn't break the law in any way, even if I would have done things differently.
This is not to say other folks don't deserve punishment, or leniency. I can only speak for myself. I made a mistake, but I didn't deserve to be a felon over it. I didn't even break the law, though I didn't handle the situation well at all. It was a learning experience, to be sure. Until you've had to try to bond out on felony charges, I think you should not assume how probable these things are. It could happen to anyone.
Be good to each other.
> I was so confused. I knew they didn't want me there, but I wasn't seeking to stay. I wanted to get my things and go, and I wanted the cat to not have to be in a carrier in the heat, because that is cruel and not safe for the animal. I insisted that I call the authorities at this point, and they did too.
If you read between the lines here, you will realize that the person she was cheating on me with was also there, and was in their bedroom. That other person was plying her with narcotics, just like they had with the last person they were with before they were with my ex. Their ex had died of an overdose, and they didn’t call 911 because they had supplied the fatal dose. I knew that they were also a felon, but my ex had assured me that they weren’t together anymore when it originally came up. All I knew for sure was the other person was capricious with human life and suffering, and they were already a felon for dealing.
When I got hit with the dog bowl, the other person came out of the back room, so I couldn’t even bring up that I needed to get my legal firearm, because I didn’t want them to know it was in the house, and I didn’t want to get the business end of my own implement. I was further assaulted by the other person. The entire time I was just asking for them to stop and for everyone to calm down and to stop hitting me. I now realize that my ex didn’t want me to call the authorities because the other person had active warrants, and they were strung out and didn’t want to lose their supplier.
I had no idea they were seeing the other person behind my back the whole time until later, but I knew enough to know that the situation was rapidly deteriorating. I called 911 as I tried to keep the other person from literally slapping my dangling tooth out of my mouth, as they grabbed my hair. I did attempt to restrain them from hurting me with one hand while holding my phone with the other while on a speakerphone call with a 911 dispatcher.
The police didn’t let me press charges. I was determined to be the aggressor due to being concussed when I was interrogated and being careless with my speech. They interpreted my words as a confession of wrongdoing, and I was never Mirandized/read my rights, then or at any time. I was taken to jail and photographed and fingerprinted.
If I didn’t have cash in my wallet, I wouldn’t have been able to pay to use the phone or the internet tablet to call or email my family, so that they could bond me out. My folks had to put a $5K bond down just to get me out, and that was after a day and a half sleeping on the floor in an overcrowded pod with pre-trial detention folks and those already convicted pooled together in one big room.
Everyone in jail was chill, ironically. I found some books in the hallway and moved them along with me to the pod. I traded some books with another inmate who had a small stack of them. Another guy gave me some instant coffee, which you had to pay for from your commissary fund. I was lucky to bond out. If I hadn’t, I would have had to stay in jail for the entire ~1.5 years pre-trial, even though I was never found guilty; I never went to court at all after entering my plea, as the case was dropped before trial. My public defender didn’t even call to tell me; I had to email them to confirm. The entire process left me feeling like mere grist for the mills of justice.
Always get a lawyer. Ask to be read your rights, then ask for a lawyer. Don’t say anything else, because it will be misconstrued if there is any possibility of fault. The authorities are there to bring charges and convict folks. Justice is a heading, but not a goal. Closing cases and getting convictions is their job. This is true even of public defenders, as they get paid by the same government that pays the prosecutor to convict you.
Never go to trial without a lawyer, as anyone who represents themselves has a fool for a client. On that point, get a private attorney if you can at all. Public defenders who don’t try to make you take a deal are few and far between, and my charges would likely have not been dropped if not for my ex’s mom calling the prosecutor and my lawyer and telling them to drop it or she would embarrass everyone in open court for making a mountain out of a molehill. My ex and their mom never even knew that the case was coming up. My public defender didn’t even reach out to them.
The entire system looks functional on the surface, but it’s so broken it’s nearly unbelievable if I didn’t experience it for myself.
So sorry to hear this happened to you; thanks for sharing and glad to hear everything turned out ok. Ive heard of similar situations where a friend ended up in a house that was the scene of a crime but was charged with multiple felonies even though he was there after the crime had occurred and was the one to call the cops. Most people just don’t understand cops; most of them are trying to minimize the work they need to do and as soon as they have established a narrative they will just go with it. Especially for lower class neighborhoods and especially when dealing with people who have “priors”, regardless of how minor they might be.
Most people’s experience of the law is through television/movies and its just so inaccurate.
> The entire system looks functional on the surface, but it’s so broken it’s nearly unbelievable
That's what I got from watching Deviant Ollam and a couple of the popular YouTube lawyers.
The justice system mostly serves those with money, and if you're working class the biggest predictor of whether you'll go to jail is how much time you spend in the radiation of this broken system. Don't stay close, don't stay long. Always have a lawyer ahead of time, don't talk to cops.
Ollam has a friend in prison now and she got beat very badly when she first went in. For a non violent crime of basically security research
Deviant Ollam is an inspiration. He can work a room like few can, and he seems genuinely kind and happy despite it all. That’s someone who I can learn from.
It’s been a long time coming, but I’m becoming radicalized by the idea of becoming a lawyer myself. The only way forward is through.
My friend in tech went to federal prison for years (weed)
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