Is opening and filming lost luggage a morally defensible act? | Hacker News Reader

Is opening and filming lost luggage a morally defensible act?

millieons.org

2 pointsfluxinflex5 comments

I question the morality of an activity that I personal find immoral and repulsive. Losing luggage can be quite dramatic and psychologically damaging depending on the contents. The thought of having that content paraded on YouTube would for anyone make for sleepless nights.

Professional open the bag before the auction and try to find identifyable documents or illegal materials. There should be no way to clearly identify a person over their lost luggage, otherwise they are not given into the auction. Furthermore some time has to pass, so there is no claim on the specific luggage item. Only then the luggage is truly lost and without identifiable owner.

I really don't see a moral problem with this. Allthough you have a point and this can be done immorally, if these measures weren't in place. Does this put your mind at ease? Or does something else needs to be done to ensure the privacy of the previous anonymous owners?

How much effort do they do to identify the owner? Let's imagine someone goes as a speaker to a conference in Japan. In the return trip they found:

A) A t-shit of the conference.

B) A photo of the whole family

C) A hentay magazine for a friend

With A you can reduce the number of persons from 7000000 to a few hundreds. With B you can go through the online photos of the conference and find the correct one. It's probably too much effort for the profesional opener, but it's easy for a bunch of morons playing the doxxing game in the YouTube chat. Is C illegal where you live? Is C illegal in the country where the airport is? If there is a big scandal, will the university/business care about the technical legality of C or just fire the owner of the bag?

This isn't unfortunately always the case. Luggage that is left with a baggage tag but the owners aren't informed because no one at the airport actually scans the tag.

The airport I know of has a hanger full of luggage (with baggage tags) that won't get picked up because the baggage tags don't get scanned. Bags don't get scanned since there isn't enough staff to do the scanning. So the owners are left to enquire at the airport and search in the hanger for their own luggage.

Generally you could just take any luggage from the conveyer belt and may get away with it. Which allows for a much targeted approach of stealing with the intend to shame or harm somebody, an immoral act, that is illegal.

My luggage was pillaged for valuables during a longer bus trip in Thailand, the criminals took a ride along in the luggage compartment of the bus. Luckily they only got my electric toothbrush and some shaving blades. Still...

Just have everything of value in your carry on and only check in things that can get lost. The bulk of lost luggage is simply this, stuff people don't value enough for the hassle to get it back, which is a pain with airlines. I have lost luggage on conferences and lost a really cool beany and umbrella because of it, I can't get anywhere anymore. No question, it sucks especially with airlines. The process of getting something back or compensation is very annoying on purpose.

Still I wouldn't assume that I could buy illegal or incriminating material from auctions of lost luggage or that such an transaction is generally immoral.

I'm afraight that if it is possible for one to identify the owner of auctioned lost luggage, one would be obliged to contact them about it. While using this for blackmail or shaming would not only be immoral, but also illegal in most cases.

The act of selling the luggage after some effort to find the owner, is not, I think.

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