Woman charged with computer fraud due to scam CashApp account being in her name
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This is the goal ... They know they are at fault but admitting they made a mistake is damaging to careers.
In a lot of cases a carrot is dangled in front of people ... You can wast a lot of time (and money) fighting for your innocent, and take the risk your still going to get convicted.
Or you can take the plea deal, and it absolves us from our mistakes. And you save money because its cheaper then paying all those lawyers and court costs. And your innocent anyway, so that probations has no effect on you.
I forgot the source but the amount of prosecutions that are plea down is staggering. A lot of actual innocent people take plea's because its cheaper, then the alternative. And there have been plenty of people innocently convicted (even on shaky evidence), so most people take plea deals and they can move on with their lives.
This results in a culture where investigations are annoying. Where pressure is ramped up again and again to break people into taking plea deals. The biggest issue is, if you actually refuse to take a plea deal, then all resources are put against you to get a actual conviction, even if they know your innocent. "Why did you not just take the plea deal". Well, time to punish you for not taking it. Because repeat after me again, careers are on the line and losing cases hurt those future (potential political) careers.
Its the same why prosecutors fight tooth and nail, even if clear evidence is shows that a person was innocently convicted and spend X years in jail. It not about justice, its about protecting those careers.
The proof of innocents is heavily put on the other party, and it really hits hard on people who do not have the financial means.
I'd wager that 99% of the plea deals that occur in the world occur in the US. No other country uses it to the extent we do, and it's not even close. In many countries it's not an available option, or when it is and it's used, its use is heavily regulated and requires (meaningful) oversight by the judge on fairness, likelihood of conviction, etc.
And once you've accepted a plea deal it's not just a matter of making your plea - you also have to sign a whole raft of documents waiving a whole raft of rights, about appealing your conviction, about the right to present evidence in your defense in the future, or to witnesses, you have to sign a statement saying that even if you were to (attempt to) change your plea that it is your acknowledgment, "based on material facts" that the state is in possession of enough evidence to convict you.
That is incorrect. Japan has a 99% criminal justice conviction rate because of so many plea deals.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_justice_system_of_Jap...
The new system has been in place for less than ten years, only covers a very limited set of crimes and is much more modeled on cooperation than coercion. The Ramseyer and Rasmusen paper reported 99.9% convictions in 1994 (49,598 of 49,643), when the law did not allow plea bargains. The rate was already above 99% long before plea deals existed.
As in, just as unlikely.
To put it into a software developers context - which hopefully makes it easier to understand for some.
The law is legacy code that stretches back a few centuries (literally) that has been written by many many people with little in common, and has active users who must be consulted upon change.
Yeah, that’s working out brilliantly.
If the law cannot meaningfully accessed and practiced by the Poeple, it is not Law; it is Tyranny.
Fixing the system requires changing the incentives. Individuals would adjust accordingly.
Edit: It won't get fixed because ultimately the metrics trickle up to Joe Public, who is notoriously tough on crime. Lawyers had to fight popular sentiment to get rid of the death penalty in most states. Even today, between death and life imprisonment, the former is preferred by the general public.
This behaviour, by Joe Public, is a serious problem, in that it's an emotional response, not a logical one, and absolutely never based on informed debate
He cares about getting his immediate needs met.
He wants to be entertained without having to be forced to think.
He wants to see people that he's been conditioned to hate be punished.
He wants people he can look down on so he doesn't feel like he's at the bottom of the pile.
Source?
The woman defending the Death Penalty in that clip is Priti Patel, a Tory MP who was until recently in their Shadow Cabinet. You'd hope she can do better, but judging from her subsequent comments she still doesn't get it.
Now, in the UK most people with a life sentence will (after quite some time) be eligible for parole. Historically it was possible for politicians to block this, but of course the consequence is that if a particularly notorious criminal is scheduled to be paroled, politicians are under pressure to prevent that, while a criminal who didn't attract much public interest leaves on schedule - that's manifestly unfair and a European court told the Brits they can't do that, so eventually the UK's Supreme Court decided there needed to a specific rule, identify a category of people who won't be paroled, and the category they decided on was people who have been convicted of at least two separately conceived murders.
Several European countries have no life sentences. Breivik for example got 21 years, and since he's still an avowed Nazi who wants to kill more people, and will likely still be an avowed Nazi when his sentence ends, they will just hold him until he stops being a Nazi or he dies. No additional sentence needed.
[Edited: Priti left her Shadow role a few weeks ago]
Is it not just a case of "murderous lunatic remains locked in asylum after criminal sentence until cured" - which can very well be until his death?
I'm sure in his mind it makes sense. But everybody else disagrees and considers that, as you said, the murderous lunatic can't be released.
I wrote something before which didn't consider that you're modelling this as an illness. AIUI Breivik isn't mad. There's nothing wrong with him that we could cure, he's a Nazi, he genuinely believes that it's appropriate and even necessary for him to kill children that he thinks are genetically inferior.
He will die in prison not because we couldn't cure him, but because the rest of society are not Nazis and do not think we should identify some people as genetically inferior and kill them. Whether that is because it can't work (which it can't) or because its morally abhorrent doesn't matter.
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2026/08/06/most-america...
It's a bad poll and you shouldn't base anything on it.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/262929/opinion-of-us-cit...
The whole system is pretty broken.
Source: I work with a top defense lawyer in Chicago
This same DA has a reputation for assaulting prostitutes and just got sworn in as the parish judge. I guess playing fair would have hurt his career because my understanding is to be a judge out there you have to demonstrate crookedness.
But, my right to a jury trial was illegally taken from me and the judge simply said, "I think you're lying," without a shred of proof and gave me the maximum allowed 6 month jailtime and maximum fines for a misdemeanor charge given to me as a minor with no prior record. I immediately told my attorney I wanted to appeal due to a mistrial and her failure to make a valid motion to quash, and she looked at me, pointed at the judge, and furiously scolded me, saying, "Absolutely not. That is my boss and he will make my life hell if I allow you to appeal."
The other parish public defender, which they'd pulled from my case due to his desire to actually help me, was so upset that he went to the judge's quarters, screamed at him and then came to my cell to apologize profusely about me getting illegally railroaded. He was never able to fix my case.
His brother... was the DA. Now he is running to replace him as DA since his brother got sworn in as a judge. I'm going to reach out to him and try to get it removed from the system now.
Also, when I got arrested, the DA's dad, the town mayor, personally visited the home of the folks who were letting me stay in their garage so I could finish high school and tried to convince them to put me out on the street so that I would fail my classes and end back up in jail. The fucking mayor.
So many levels of fucked up to that case. Not to mention that the officer who arrested me is a known meth producer, distributor and user. I have personally witnessed her bring a smurf to the pharmacy to buy sudafed IN HER POLICE UNIT so that she could go cook meth while on duty.
And while in court for my own case for 0.156 grams of a material that was never found on my person or within reach of me, I watched a man who was friends with the judge get sentenced to a grand total of 20 days of community service after being found with two ounces of pot in his pockets and a bottle of whiskey while illegally hunting on someone else's land out of season without permits, operating a firearm while basically blackout drunk. It is literally who you know.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/oct/...
An innocent verdict would mean the defendant had proven beyond a reasonable doubt that they did not do the act and would put the state on the hook for all costs. A jury that hung between not guilty and innocent would be considered to be not guilty, no retrial. Reality works better when misdeeds carry costs for those who commit them.
"I'm sorry, it says you weren't found guilty; it doesn't say you were innocent."
Now extrapolate this to your friends or potential employers.
"Sure, LorenPechtel wasn't proven guilty of murdering 500 orphans as accused, but he never fully proved his innocence with a detailed and corroborated minute-by-minute log of his activities for the past 5 years. So maybe he did it!"
It's innocent until proven guilty. Not guilty until proven innocent. A third category would be abused to high heaven, and the courts already engage in far too much abuse.
The state has to appoint you one if you don't have one. And given that you have to invoke your exercise of your silence anyway, throw it in there. So something like, "I am invoking my right to silence and require an attorney." ought to do it. Having one ready can definitely be helpful. And while a DA is ideal, any lawyer should do, as they'll either be able to do enough work to get you out of there to find a good attorney, or get a real defense criminal attorney involved. If you do have a prior relationship, keep their card in your wallet and point them to that when you invoke your right to silence.
The state already showed that it believed that the crime was only worth a $1000 fine.
Maybe there should be a rule that whatever plea deal offered should be the maximum punishment possible if you're found guilty.
It wasn't going anywhere. When I finally got called up to voir dir I explained that I thought the real crime was sequestering 300 people for a day over $500. I suggested we collect $2 from each person in the jury pool (far less than we paid for parking that day) and cover the alleged damages and not only be done for the day, but have achieved some real measure of justice.
Lets just say the judge didn't agree and I got let out of voir dir.
let's start with the ones above $1,000 first, hm?
The criminals start with the ones below $1,000 and then progress above. If you start punishing it earlier, you won't have to deal with as many above $1,000 crimes in the first place.
Your claim makes for a good sound bite but its just not how it works. Subway evasion isn’t a gateway crime.
A person doesn’t steal a sandwich from 7-11, not get caught, then suddenly realize they can drain unsuspecting grandmas’ bank accounts by implementing a long con through masquerading as a long lost nephew through Facebook.
Look what happened with shoplifters.
Like fare hopping, first half of my life i thought how unfair that i have to drone away as a tool of society and pay like a shmuck meanwhile these freeloaders have happily escaped the matrix.
second half of life i realized being unwilling or unable to pay $2.50 for public transist is an issue between that person and their life situation. If that’s what they need, I support the subsidy.
The pair is accused of stealing around $3,200 worth of merchandise, primarily meat, seafood, and produce, from one or more Safeway locations across 14 separate incidents.
obviously if someone is a repeat offender then as they cross the threshold, chop-chop, straight to jail, charge them with the whole batch of crimes together.
it doesn't mean keep no records of crimes and don't respond at all.
Initially it's a report. Place, time, allegation, supporting evidence.
The question is how much (automated) detection ought to be allowed, what's the retention period, and so on.
Flock is a bad trade-off, but that doesn't mean there's no point in collecting data. If every datum is a semi-tangible report, then the sensitivity/specificity has quite a good change of being high (especially compared to dragnet surveillance with post-hoc data fishing).
I'd also be interested to know what the crime they were trying to get a lead on was. If it's another case of minor tagging then I can empathize more with the concerns about the prosecution, but if it's something more dire then frankly using judicial leverage strikes me as entirely appropriate.
If someone gets stabbed outside my house every day with no charges filed, yeah im going to say spending resources prosecuting a fist fight at a bar is a waste of resources.
If he's an accomplice, them charge him with that, and turn it into a classical prisoner's dilemma. Don't just make up bullshit charges, that's abuse of the justice system.
In this case the person did a little more than Jaywalking so they're on the hook for more. It's also possible to have information on a criminal act or conspiracy without being an accomplice.
I appreciate the extremely... principled morality of some here, but the law isn't an ethical framework, it's a practical one informed by ethical principles. It's also not a computer program, people are involved who make decisions based on a number of factors ranging from professional and selfless, to careerist and selfish. That's life.
A really easy way to avoid all of this is to stay out of the system, it's not as though he's in for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his starving child.
You are never going to be right about anything if you actually think what you posted makes any sense.
If you only counted cases that meet the legal definition of the crime of "wage theft," the figure would much lower.
If we've got a Lamborghini justice system, delivering amazing performance to people with a spare $250k and doing nothing for anyone else - some would say that's not the right price/performance trade off.
Ignoring smaller crimes just because they're under $1,000 isn't the answer. things can quickly spiral. How many times do you wake up to your car scratched window broken or whatever and would be ok ?
Yes, I'm trying to say it's a false dichotomy. There are plenty of other ways you could organise a justice system, many of which would lead to more just results.
For example - a fixed price system. 8 hours wages from the two parties to the dispute buys 30 minutes with one judge and two lawyers. More than enough time to deal with a minor matter like a scratched car. Or if you prefer a continental-style inquisitorial system, you can lose the lawyers and have 90 minutes with a judge. The fees mean judges and lawyers take home 5x the average salary.
That just isn't true. Not even remotely.
Your comment might be deeply offensive to people who have suffered in actual caste systems.
On the local train we were unable to take luggage into first class (a small number of seats blocked off by a plexiglass entrance), but folks were very accommodating of some clueless Americans just trying to go a few stops down the track.
The regional train was nice, but second class on the way back from our destination was just as comfortable.
Long story short, the claims of comfort and cleanliness between the classes didn't really seem apparent.
on regional and local trains i have to agree the difference is less apparent.
i guess the main benefit is that first class areas are going to be less packed. i am not sure but it may be the case that you are not even allowed to stand in first class if you have a second class ticket.
so if the train is crowded then that crowd won't be allowed in the first class area, and it is unlikely that you buy a first class ticket without a seat. but if the train is only lightly filled it probably makes no difference at all.
Let's face it, classism right now manifests as:
* poor folk use terrible public transit
* med income folk drive cars
* high income/wealth folk get driven around by robots or staff
At least with the classist train you cut down on emissions and public funds spent fixing roads. And I'd argue it's a bit less unequal than the status quo in 95% of the US.
Persuasive to what type of people?
What doesn't work is laws that aren't enforced. Either enforce them or repeal them.
So conclusion before evidence?
At least the founders had the foresight to codify innocent-until-proven-guilty.
But if the collected fares are paying for enhanced police brutality or other deleterious second-order system behavior, it's not so cut and dry.
The robber barons built libraries. Yes, it took some heat off of their reputation, but, they weren't idiots and neither were the people for whom they were driving wages down or driving prices up. They and municipal orgs of the time and other civic minded groups built libraries and schools because society is better off have more education. Capitalism, done right, actually can have good outcomes.
In a similar vein, healthcare makes people healthier as a general outcome. "Socialized medicine" (more properly understand of as healthcare as a publicly-provided good) enables a more healthy population -- business owners benefit because the people they can hire from are healthier, so more productive.
Public transportation in dense areas should be seen similarly. More efficient, lower pollution when expanded and widely available, easier to police, less of the nasties like PM2.5 from tires and asphalt, less road deaths, and so forth.
Elon Musk and the whole capital serving US government is not a good outcome.
There was a fun take on it on r/comics recently: https://www.reddit.com/r/comics/comments/1x4toay/the_day_all...
> business owners benefit because the people they can hire from are healthier, so more productive.
As we can see now - capitalism would prefer "stupid", way productive robots running 24/7 in a dark warehouses to a healthier, more productive population. Lighting savings are already cover most of difference (/s but only so slightly).
The plan is to let anyone on the subway, with no fares. It turns out that the violent, unstable people who make public spaces unwelcoming are disproportionately represented among those who cannot pay $2.50 for a fare. So they scare off regular transit riders who mode shift to something else. It's vastly more expensive and difficult to react to violence on the subway than to keep violent people out with a small fare, so it's financially and logistically impossible to actually keep it safe. Then your transit ridership tanks and people who hate funding transit can declare the whole thing a giant waste of money and any new funding dies politically because now there's no public ridership constituency left.
Nobody cares about the revenue gained from $2.50 fares. What matters is the tiny amount of resistance that offers to the small number of people who are largely responsible for making public transit unwelcoming.
Are you making a case that a violent person, who ignores the stringent laws of society against violence, will diligently follow the laws of society requiring $2.50 prior to riding public transport?
LOL
There is a cost benefit analysis that even serial offenders go through to pick a victim. If a transit system insists on fares, it is likely they are watching out for fare dodgers which increases the risk of getting caught even before the offender gets a chance to offend.
Are you making the case that a society unable to protect its denizens from violent offenders in broader society will be able to protect its denizens on public transport from those same violent offenders through the application of a $2.50 fare?
Hmm.
How many times have you heard of road rage incidents which deescalate as soon as one party realises that they are being recorded by a dashcam? People’s behavior under surveillance is different from their private behavior.
Surveillance doesn’t require fee collection.
Is violent crime in Target stores higher than it is in Costco locations because the latter charges an admission fee?
I would personally be surprised if violent attacks are differentiated in rate between the two.
Why is loitering an issue/crime? Should it be?
What does loitering mean? Why is it a problem?
So I'll only go as deep as a quick search for "loitering definition" -- the first hit aligns to what I hold as my personal understanding:
Loitering is the act of standing, lingering, or waiting around idly in a public or private place for an extended period without a clear, lawful, or obvious purpose.Why is loitering a problem?
Maybe someone at the transit center is there to enjoy the architecture without needing to go somewhere. We ask artists to design a beautiful space transit space, and then want to exclude someone that wants to just imbibe the vibe. Others may have some other purpose for that space. The spectrum of experience for 7 billion humans is unlikely to be fathomable to allow for enumeration as 'allowed activities'. "Loitering" is a silly, unserious, approach to managing criminality, as is a $2.50 fee. A $2.50 fee isn't going to stop anyone with criminal intent.
Either it is a public space or it isn't. If no harm is being caused, no reason to exclude anyone from public spaces.
Are you pretending to be a space alien unfamiliar with how crime works on Earth? OK, let me spell it out for you.
Various forms of crime require previous periods of observing the target. For example, if you want to rob a shop, you want to know how many employees are inside, whether most of the leave at a certain time for a lunch and leave one of them in the shop alone, whether they leave together at evening or again one of them stays behind and closes the shop. Similarly, if you want to assault a person, you wait until you find someone walking alone, and make sure that the rest of the group is not walking a few meters behind them. If you sell drugs, you need to stay on the street, waiting for the customers to approach you. etc.
On the other hand, there are almost no good reasons to stand for one hour in front of the shop, observing what goes on inside. There are almost no good reason for a group of adult men to stand in front of a school at evening. Etc.
I am not saying that anyone who stands at a weird place should be immediately arrested. But it makes sense for other people to be concerned about that, and call the cops, who will ID the people who stand there, and tell them to go away. Which they cannot do if standing there is perfectly legal. Hence, the "crime" of loitering.
Are you suggesting that society can reduce crime by charging a fee to be out in public and surveilling public spaces for fare evasion?
Brilliant!
I feel like you've argued from a false dichotomy -- we can't do X because of bad things, so we have to put up with Y and bad things.
It was all very vindicating
Have targeted low fares for the poor etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_public_transport
It exists, and it works. And the best bit: all the money spent on the whole administration around tickets, making tickets, enforcing laws, gates and so on can be spent on improving the system.
you mean all the money saved? The unspent money are only a factor in the year following the year when the non-spend started. After that, no one will remember that they used to spend to some big figure on all the things you listed and assume that the operating budget of the transport agency has always been the lower figure.
This is unfortunately not the way many systems in the US are funded. Many have to balance their fares with the service provided because they are reliant on external political factors for their public funding.
> You let people evade fares and then those people go onto stab people like Zarutska.
That has nothing to do with it. The guy that committed that murder wasn't going to be deterred by a ticket fee. But it is interesting that you should right away jump from the one to the other, effectively using the poor dead girl for your agenda. Crime and homelessness are complex problems some parts of which are easy to solve and some of which are much harder.
You can't simply jump from 'someone got murdered on public transport' to 'public transport can't be free'.
Arguing that modern fare gates lowered crime is a pretty terrible response to the comment to which you responded. It shows a real lack of articulation ("crime bad, crime down here, therefore I don't need to refute what you said").
The original poster said:
> The guy that committed that murder wasn't going to be deterred by a ticket fee.
I don't see how lower crime on BART due to fewer people hopping the turnstiles refutes that at all. (Huh, I just learned turnstiles is spelled with an I and not a Y. At least your comment led to me learning something.) It just seems defeatist, which is what the people looting this country want.
You're literally making up entire sentences, are you OK?
> The original poster said:
>> The guy that committed that murder wasn't going to be deterred by a ticket fee.
> I don't see how lower crime on BART...
Maybe you didn't read the link, but it's a 67% reduction in crimes against _riders_. Not property, not soliciting, but crimes against other humans.
The murderer in question was unemployed, homeless and aimlessly riding public transit. We (as a society) should have done a lot more for him, but (see stats above) it seems clear to me that making it easier to be in a confined space with the rest of society wasn't solving his problems and certainly didn't help her.
that's a strange argument.
I don't think $2.50 is what's preventing this from happening today.
Perhaps there's something broken about a society that has a significant homelessness issue. The free public transport isn't the problem, it's likely that society has a surplus of citizens that prevent economic progress and/or the deployment of solutions known to be effective against homelessness.
I wish we could get to a point where we default to “yes” and find solutions rather than making it easier to say “no.”
Having other places with a roof, some security and some public amenities should go a long way to avoid other services getting bogged down by homelessness.
an important factor in improving your life is integration in society. but that only works if you live among people already integrated, not if everyone around you is also not integrated.
the same reason why it's hard for people to escape poverty uf everyone around them is poor too.
If giving away free public services could be grifted to increase the bottom line of the ultra wealthy, we'd have a utopian society.
Aren't half of these wrong?
NIMBY-ism isn't particularly partisan. Find a suburb and it's probably full of NIMBY zoning rules regardless of which party has the majority there. This is one of the things which isn't red vs. blue, it's "got mine" vs. the people who don't get a vote because they can't afford to live there because they don't get a vote.
You also don't have to "solve housing the societal level" to keep the homeless from using the subway as a bedroom. That's the better way to do that, but you can also do things like build homeless shelters that resemble (and therefore have the density of) college dorms in places where the "neighbors" are auto salvage yards, warehouses, prisons, abandoned buildings or the like and are correspondingly less likely to object to putting them there. And then anyone you catch being disruptive on the subway gets a free one-way ticket to the shelter.
Effectively, to offer free public transport, you have to reduce the power of lobbyists and dark money in politics.
To promote solar power, you have reduce the power of lobbyists and dark money.
To promote anti-vaccine ideology, you have to reduce the power of lobbyists and dark money.
To promote a strictly equal society where every person is judged by their abilities and not ethnic history and skin color, you have to reduce the power of lobbyists and dark money.
There are vested interests in every debate and saying we should aim for wholesale societal change for every low hanging result is a recipe for inaction (or at least, very delayed action)
Do you actually though? Or do you just have to do it in a way that they won't stop you?
There are at least three ways to do that. You can do it in a way that it actually doesn't cause trouble for them, you can do it in a way where they can't stop you (e.g. at a different level of government where they have less influence), or you can do it in a way where they can't see what you're trying to do until after it's already done.
"Reduce the influence of lobbyists and money" doesn't even mean anything. If you want something to happen or not happen, you're lobbying. If you spend time or resources trying to achieve your goals, that's money. What people mean is they want to reduce the influence of people they don't like. It's fully generic, you might as well say that in order to win you have to defeat your opponents.
The problem of persistent disorderly conduct by a small minority of highly disturbed people is either an unfathomably complex psychiatric issue, or a fairly straightforward carceral issue.
It's quite possible that these people would have turned out fine if they grew up provided a path to integrating into society that was less burdensome. It's possible you're right, too, but without controlling for confounding factors there's no way to know.
And that is because it is not polite to take up more than the minimum space needed. (Like using seats for your bag, or putting your feet on the seat across from you.)
As for why, two main categories of reasons. First, for the good of the person themselves. By making it illegal, the state then has the authority to compel some sort of action. For a first 'offence' this could simply be sleeping it off in the 'drunk tank' (or in a hospital bed if necessary). For repeat offences, an escalating scale of compulsory treatment. Basically if a person is regularly passing out in gutters, it's likely only a matter of time before they kill themselves, so being nudged, then coerced, then ultimately compelled into treatment would likely benefit them. Of course, this relies on avenues for treatment rather than simple punishment being available.
The other reason is for the rest of society. People do not want to walk down streets where people are passed out in gutters. They will either feel compelled to try to help - which can be, or at least feel, risky, given that intoxicated and/or mentally ill people can be unpredictable - or they may feel badly for not doing anything. Regardless, if it's a regular thing, it will encourage people to avoid the area where they're likely to encounter such things. That will impact local businesses, residences, etc., leading to an overall decline of environment and services for everyone.
Should everything that causes people to feel bad be illegal? Many people are scared by guns.
It's not an either-or. We can build more shelter to help homeless people, and at the same time we can dissuade them from using public transportation as de facto shelter.
After all, everybody's perfectly happy to keep homeless people out of their front yard or the local Starbucks. Nobody says "But we need to tolerate bums smoking weed in the middle of our coffee shop, unless we build enough shelter for all of them. ALL OF THEM."
So? Let it.
If people need shelter, it's a shame we are building a ballroom instead of shelter.
Congestion taxes are completely different from ticket fees.
Public transport in the state of Queensland, Australia charges a flat fare of 50 cents. They only reason they charge anything at all is because they want the trip data for route planning purposes.
The notion that transit agencies need to be funded via fares is nonsense to begin with, but it looks even wackier when one looks at how roads are funded.
To prevent this effect, you have to have a well educated population first. That’s actually an even more difficult problem to solve.
Sidewalks are free, but they are usually unpleasant or inaccessible. In places where that isn’t true, they absolutely get trashed by litter; some even spit on the sidewalk.
Libraries are seemingly free, but getting a library card often requires you to provide several forms of proof of address, including evidence of paying rent or property taxes. So they aren’t truly free.
I've visited libraries in a half dozen countries, where I'm not even a taxpayer. I just walked in.
Some services at the library might not be free, including book checkout or making photocopies.
But if you want to make that distinction, then walking around your neighborhood isn't free because in most place you need to wear clothes, and clothes aren't free.
FWIW, I've walked a lot of forest roads without a car or bike. And the biggest littering problem on our sidewalks, by weight, are the escooter riders who simply leave their machines parked in the middle of the sidewalk.
The problem isn't that the sidewalks are free to use, the problem is one of regulation and enforcement.
That's why libraries are both free and well-loved - they librarians regulate the free space.
Don't give endless free fair, give n free fair per day.
If you ride and pay your fare twice, then every ride after that, for the rest of the day, is free. That is very nice. So if you commute and you have a transfer, and you're taking 4 rides per day, then you're saving half of that in fares.
In the old days, you would pay a cash fare and the bus operator could issue a paper transfer ticket. The transfer would be good for a few hours. So your fare was basically per-trip. But the system couldn't track people paying cash fares like that, so there were no free rides without the transfer ticket. If you took two trips a day, like a normal commute, you'd pay at least two fares. Now, with pre-loaded cards or fares on the mobile app, you can track all that stuff, and reload when necessary.
For disabled people or whoever qualifies for "Reduced Fare", your fare costs half ($1.00 instead of $2.00) and so your daily maximum is only $2.00. A really good deal.
vienna has day tickets that cost as much as two single tickets but you can only buy them on a strip of 8 which you can use one day at a time over an unlimited period
Anyway, that is not how the fare system worked with paper transfers. There were no caps at all. You either paid full fare, or you showed a valid transfer. If you didn't have the transfer, then you paid again and again on any given day. The fare caps only came into use when the system was capable of tracking them, for example a unique preloaded or prepaid card.
Now I have limited experience with American public transit, so perhaps there were some "capped fare" systems in the 1980s or before, but I never saw one that worked that way.
i know the but ticket system from los angeles 25 years ago. you could use each strip only once because you had to hand them in. i think you got a second strip on the next bus so you could potentially make an unlimited chain. if people would throw them away then only because they got one they didn't use. you were also not allowed to use the strip for a return trip on the same route.
>Absolutely not.
I think that having it very cheap compared to quality and service delivered is the best of both worlds.
The main reason why we should charge money for transit is because it makes it easier to kick off people who ruin it for everyone else. It's not important that transit covers its costs, it's important because requiring payment filters out people who don't value it.
It fucking sucks to be on a train with a homeless guy shouting threats into the air, or with a bunch of teenagers blasting music and intimidating other passengers. Once on the way back from work once, there was a guy watching porn at full volume in a car with children at the other end. Sure, you can say "call the police!" but it's much harder to place cops everywhere (purely expensive) than it is to just send out some ticket inspectors (who generally justify their own salaries).
You're right about fares being a useful tool to filter for antisocial behaviour. After becoming a parent I became a lot less tolerant of horrible behaviour on trains and buses. Luckily I rarely encounter it here in the Netherlands (Ireland was worse, but still not atrocious, depending on the area)
MTA serves NYC. People who can't even afford the subway are definitely not driving over there.
Police, Prosecutors, and Judges all openly use their discretion. Each of them could have quashed the charge before it got to a jury. The jury is the last line of discretion. Police, prosecutors, and judges love to call it "jury nullification" but its the same power that police, prosecutors, and judges use multiple times a day.
The only crime I see is that police arrested an innocent person on false evidence, prosecutors charged someone based on false evidence, and a judge is actually allowing this case to proceed all based on evidence that everyone knows is false.
This should just be an established way to pay your fare.
If you think free public transit should exist, do the policy and outreach work, and make it happen.
Reserve civil disobedience for injustices that truly cannot be tolerated, even for a second. Or when the democratic process is not available to you.
As far as nuisance and violence on public transportation, that's a different problem that I agree it has to be dealt with. Apparently police don't do anything about it, they instead hunt for fare jumpers...
I regularly see how people are not paying the bus fare (here in Russia). And the only reason why they do not pay is because the punishment is light (fine of ~25 USD) and chance of being caught and actually prosecuted is close to zero. So paying does not make economical sense.
I am no fan of this rotten and illegitimate government or the fake and imitation justice system, but what do you think happens if every thug can just jump fare and get away with it, because if you had $1000 per month taken out of your paycheck every month, in sure you’d be singing a different tune.
At which point no one would need to pay a fare, and we'd all still save money trying to prosecute broke teenagers trying to move around a city?
No one is assuming it's magic free fairy dust.
We're making the argument that perhaps we should subsidize public transport in the same manner we do roads - aka, fucking tax people who have the money to cover the cost.
If we assume that movement is generally positive enough that we don't charge directly for access to roads, why do we assume the alternate for public transit?
Everyone fucking understands how roads get paid for - we spend an inordinate amount of taxpayer dollars on the infrastructure at all levels of government... city/county/state/federal.
And you might then go say something silly like "but muh gas tas!"
And you're right - we do generally tax gas sales to help cover roads, and this is directly a form of consumption tax on roads. Except... we tax gas at $0.33/gallon in my state. A gallon gets you ~20 miles. We charge $2.50 for a metro ticket with an average trip length of 5.7 miles (this includes both rail and bus).
If we taxed the metro trips at the same rate we taxed gas... each rider should be paying ~9 PENNIES. We can round up to a dime. Instead they're paying 25 times that amount.
---
So ultimately - I agree 100 percent. We should think more about how the public should indirectly pay for this. Instead of doing the absolutely batshit insane moral proselytizing that ends up with us ALSO indirectly paying for an entire damn legal process to prosecute broke people for skipping a $2.50 fare on the metro.
But damn if America isn't truly focused on "fuck those poor folks" in a lot of really odd (and usually self-harming) ways.
But it's not about some shitty private equitymoney extraction. And it's not lost money.
Public transit is already substandard to driving, and should be free. And it'd be a way to reduce congestion too. But no, it "loses money".
I think a better goal would be to not have to travel across the city for basic needs and services. Would reduce congestion even more.
Due to weird goverbnment statistics and unaccounted expats officially it's 1.1M to 1.6M of people, but actually there likely well over 2M people living there.
Public transport is pretty good there and it cost their budget $300M-$400M a year.
You are well beyond the zone of proximal development, the idea that challenging someone somewhat, but within their range of understanding will lead them to come to new understandings and realizations. This person represents a type of people (and not him personally) who lack such fundamental common understanding that you may as well ask that question of a cat.
That's not meant personal, it is a universal challenge and you asking that question is also an example of the very trap you fell into asking it. You lacked the understanding of what you were doing. Many peel fall for this, often even the most "educated" or "intelligent" ... which really should put the definition of "intelligence" itself into question since the "intelligent" keep repeating these types of rather simple mistakes.
> that you may as well ask that question of a cat
To be fair, given the previous armchair psychobabblists ive met, my money's on the cat compared to you.
So are roads.
In comparison, transit is about 99% subsidized (when capital expenses are included) and about 90% subsidized just for the operational budget.
It ignores all direct federal subsidies on roads.
It ignores the original moonshot-scale creation of the interstate highway system, which was obviously not based on user fees.
It ignores related health costs caused by dirty air.
It ignores the intangible but very high cost of turning cities into noisy, unpleasant, and dangerous places built for cars instead of humans.
It ignores the less tangible subsidies involving things like military to keep oil flowing.
It ignores current and especially future costs due to a rapidly changing climate.
...and probably many other things.
It doesn't.
> It ignores the original moonshot-scale creation of the interstate highway system, which was obviously not based on user fees.
That is correct, but the last Interstate freeway was finished 30 years ago.
> It ignores related health costs caused by dirty air.
So does transit.
> It ignores the intangible but very high cost of turning cities into noisy, unpleasant, and dangerous places built for cars instead of humans.
Yeah, and cars ride without any humans inside. Nope. Freeways make cities liveable for humans, not bike bros.
> It ignores the less tangible subsidies involving things like military to keep oil flowing.
So does transit. It's a hidden subsidy for companies that can offload personnel costs onto the public.
Also, we're already in the process of switching to EVs. In a decade gas cars will be a minority of vehicles.
> It ignores current and especially future costs due to a rapidly changing climate.
Just wait until you find out how much transit and dense cities cost.
Examples:
A free Christmas party, where the cost of the convention center/catered dinner/wine on the table/entertainment was about $110/pp. Those costs were all paid in advance (you might be able to exceed catering, wine is probably fine but at a different rate.. but otherwise you're stuck with the bill/contract), but when tickets were free the no-show rate ("didn't cost me anything") was about 30%. We switched to $20/ticket, and yes there were grumbles about the company being cheap, but the no-shows fell to around 8%.
There's free sections of transit in our city (not the whole system). Most of the disruption and police call-outs happen in this section.. open drug use, screaming at/threatening other passengers or making them feel unsafe, making a home, thefts & pickpockets (does a thief buy a ticket? Perhaps if they spend 6 hours a day "working" and don't need the hassle of being checked for a ticket), even violent crime (stabbings, beatings, one gun situation). An unfortunate side effect of that is we have one of the worst riderships in part because people don't feel safe on transit, and when discussions of subsidies/improvement/expansion come up ridership is basically the only KPI. ("Oh only 12% of the city uses it, let's not further invest").
Why don’t you just write a check to your transit authority every year then?
Consider the extremes: - No one does anything. The cause fails. No one goes broke. Many people are modestly inconvenienced. - One average citizen donates everything to a worthy cause. No one else donates. The cause fails and the donor is broke. Many people are modestly inconvenienced. - Everyone donates a small fee to a worthy cause. The cause achieves its aim. Some people do not benefit, and are modestly inconvenienced.
The choice, when given these two extremes, is clearly to decide by some consensus whether the interests of many (who would otherwise be modestly inconvenienced) outweigh the interests of the few (who would be modestly financially inconvenienced).
But it assumes the cause is truly worthy, the money is handled faithfully, and the survey method is fair and accurate.
Do you mean like $500 may be the estimate of repair but living in a heavily graffitied neighborhood lowers property values? so net damage is way more?
Doesn't stop them from leading a gang over the phone, but that's better than recruiting new members in prison who are probably more violent than someone off the street.
2. Who gets them their immigrant visa?
3. Where do they live while waiting for it?
4. You do realize most countries require immigrant visa applicants not to be convicted felons in their home country?
Of course, "of the defendant's choosing" causes all sorts of moral hazard.
The state intends to take [part of] his life away, the state needs to pay for the process.
Part of that is the de facto extension of a right to jury trials for misdemeanor offenses in almost every American jurisdiction. If the defendant can force a jury trial for a misdemeanor, which is in fact quite costly for prosecutors, then the response is to raise the stakes with felony charges. Legislatures are aware of this dynamic and oblige prosecutors with more offenses and more punitive maximum penalties.
Countries like the UK and France don't have jury trials for minor offenses. (They're not as common for major offenses, either, but that's a different matter.) Sentences tend to be much shorter and it's a major reason their incarceration rate is so much lower.
I'm not against jury trials. For one thing it'd be better if juries were more local. 100+ years ago in major US cities it was more common for trials to take place within or closer to each neighborhood. Juries were often composed of people from the neighborhood. The consolidation of courts and trials in mega courthouses broke this community link; people from outside a neighborhood are systematically more harsh than they would be if judging their actual neighbors. Not because of favoritism, but because it's easier for them to appreciate the repercussions of an overly punitive system (broken families, destroyed career prospects, etc).
If you want community involvement in even minor crimes, misdemeanor jury trials can still be streamlined. You could do something similar to some European countries where a few lay judges sit alongside the professional judge, or something that used to be more common in the US where a single jury hears multiple cases each day (still a thing for indictments). But such trials would still have to dispense with alot of the procedural rigor to keep things moving along at a rapid clip.
I'm not quite understanding this. What is there to be gained by raising the stakes? Doesn't it make defendants even more determined to seek justice?
Suppose the threat is 10 years in Jail. You reckon there's a 1-in-a-million chance they can convict you since you're innocent and they have no evidence. The plea offer is $100 fine. That's a good deal, not taking it on principle is a stance I admire but it does not make good logical sense.
What the US needs is a strong incentive for prosecutors not to take cases they expect to lose. That wouldn't really fit with the rest of the US "justice" system though.
At least until the recent tough-on-crime regression almost everybody agreed the system is too harsh. Even conservatives were on board with lighter sentencing. But unsurprisingly that broad public support didn't persist for long because the structural incentives of the system push it toward greater dysfunction. Without structural changes lighter sentencing alone just makes it more profitable for criminals to roll the dice. The complexity of the system evolved with the harsher sentencing, but can't change back as easily as sentencing policies, so we fall back to the old equilibrium that slowly gets worse along every dimension--fairness, cost, deterrence, etc.
If it leaves you with a criminal conviction, I don't consider it to be "minor".
If the state wants to label me as a criminal, I should get a jury trial.
Is this actually true? The way the techspot article was laid out certainly implies that prosecutors knew about all the contradicting evidence, but they offered a plea deal. However, if you read the article carefully it doesn't mention any interaction with the prosecutors or that the contradicting evidence was presented to them.
Yes.
It's not that hard to imagine that the legal system is set up to protect the comfort and careers of the people who have to be in court every day, and not necessarily the 99% of people who are in there for a handful of days - total, across a lifetime - because they had a bad day or two, or were unlucky, or need help that society is as-yet unequipped to give them. It does not surprise me that the letter and spirit of the law have a tough time surviving the practical realities of being administered, day-in-and-day-out, by fallible and self-interested human beings.
I iamgine bullshit easy plea deals also get you nice numbers for a "tough of crime" image for political clout even if some of the most vile crimes get some of the lightest sentences imaginable
Chief public defender isn't, and in fact that position doesn't even exist.
So success in defending will never affect political careers.
There's probably arguments against the change, I dunno, I haven't thought about it. "You can't change things" isn't one of them.
Yes, I know the legal system doesn’t have anywhere near enough resources to take every case to trial. Don’t care. Give the system more resources or prosecute fewer people or some combination of the two.
And so the prosecution heaps on threats of years and years of prison time, or "take this little plea bargain". They still get their "conviction."
the app providers dont want to admit fraud is running over their platform. the justice department cant admit any mistakes either.
Its a problem which will only get worse as the economy declines. And as the economy declines, more places get breached because more criminality and at the same time less money to secure things.
I cant see this getting any better which is kind of terrifying.
One more reason i can think of is that if people get super afraid of these problems, then they might even start asking for mass surveilance to help prove their innocense in these kinds of things. Which again is an incentive / reasoning for higher government not to do anything about it, because it creates opportunities where current population sentiment is taking them away...
On an entirely different note. Just wow. I know a lot of people who don't "do online" finance anything. And this kind of stuff is terrifying, because they would not even know that someone else had setup an account using their PII.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/timothylee/2013/01/17/aaron-swa... [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20260227061241/https://www.forbe...
This mentality is called "prosecutor disease;"
I once said this to a former Atlanta-area DA (family-of-friend) and his first reaction was fake-revulsion; after I told him of my listenings-to-brothers' own lawfare, he conceded publishing conviction rates probably isn't good PR (but is how it works in their little Bar club).
DA then asked my friend "who is this blue collar guy?!" (when I wasn't around) – unfortunately, much of my insanity checks out...
----
>co-founder Aaron Swartz['s crimes]
Which was trying to free pay-walled, publicly-funded scientific journals; today, post-LLM-consumption, his alleged crimes seem so MickeyMouse (i.e: LLMs can reformulate all published text, across platforms, with minimal IP infringement claim).
What an incredible human. SO many young lives have been snuffed-out by Prosecutors' Disease. Wake up you inhumans.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/11/how-a...
Podcast eps about it (with the testers):
But everyone knee jerks into voting out the cool DA who drops victimless criminal prosecutions because they don’t like a fenty zombie screaming in the streets.
I happen to love my mostly low policed state for this exact reason. They’re almost never there to help you, and mostly just want to fuck you up!
I studied Masters in Criminology and I have to say that Justice is absent from the Criminal 'Justice' system.
We have the Reconstructionist South to thank for normalizing turning judges into form stamping Vogons and allowing prosecutors to routinely use a form of blackmail as a normal course of prosecution.
It was a very telling experience where doing things our constitution permits is considered a burden on law enforcement and prosecutors.
This is nuts. Is it possible US prosecutors give so few shits about justice?
Of what?
> Who approves the applications?
What's to "approve"?
> Who ensures the process is open?
Put it on a website and in the local paper. Applicants' names, their exam scores, their law school transcripts.
> It always comes down to winners of elections
Sure somewhere in the chain, at the end, there's an elected official. That's democracy.
But elected officials can be required by law to use meritocratic selection criteria to appoint people. Many countries used or still use exams to hire bureaucrats. It's a very old concept:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_service_entrance_examina...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_examination
> The USA isn’t a technocracy or meritocracy, for better or worse.
That's fine but a different argument from "it can't be done".
https://www.alanet.org/legal-management/2023/february/column...
> When looking at on-the-job performance, our internal data — based on thousands of reports from actual attorneys at some of the top law firms — tells us that GPA on average has a 2.2% predictive validity. Meaning that GPA, the thing that the LSAT is meant to predict, explains very little. When we look directly at the LSAT, we see an even smaller correlation of 0.9% on average.
Would you agree knowledge of the law is a better, if still imperfect, indicator of ability as a judge or prosecutor than being merely appealing to voters?
In any case, I think a competitive exam is better than law school grades. It allows for applicants who didn't do so well in law school but got better later.
So, I think an exam is a bad idea unless it's a pass/fail exam (ie no grades, you either understand the law or you do not) and there should be no meaningful time constraint when completing the exam. That's basically the system in most states today, except the training comes after someone without a law degree is elected.
There are state and federal oversight mechanisms with the power to remove bad judges.
If you believe this is preferable to a system where knowledge is established before appointing the person, then we're not going to have much common ground.
I'd invite you to read https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/oct/... for a look at Louisiana's justice of the peace system, whose justices only need a high-school diploma.
IMO a law degree is the absolute bare minimum for any kind of judicial or prosecutorial role. It's bad enough cops aren't expected to know the law. How can anyone justify a judge with fewer qualifications than a bootcamp grad in a software role?
Also, don't forget JPs mostly handle basic disputes, misdemeanors, and administrative tasks. You probably don't need a law degree to conduct a wedding ceremony or hear a shoplifting case.
Would it surprise you to find out in lots of places the coroner is an elected position open to high school grads?
Other levels of public office should be strictly by competence. Meaning by trials open for all citizens.
They were quite overpaid compared to other local government roles, and had very poor public visibility. WP says they were originally going to be called "sheriffs" but that was rejected as "too American". This does make it clear that it was an attempt to copy the US system, but I feel obliged to point out that the Scottish court system has had Sheriffs for longer than the US has existed.
The previously-super-illegal pervasive domestic surveillance programs sure don't help things, either. No cost is too high to stop "terror" at home and abroad, amirite? :(
I mean, I would like to know what percentage of people makes an informed decision when voting for a judge for example.
A lot of them run unopposed anyway. And if they don't, I have no idea how you would figure out what candidate you like best.
Heck, in the US even the big political positions seem to be largely void of 'ideas'. It's mostly attack ads paid for by shady sources through PACs. That's where the majority of the votes are flipped/won...
While there are definitely issues of pay disparity, there are a lot of criminal law firms employing "former prosecutors". In my conversations with one or two - the pay is better, but the disillusionment and need to railroad defendants got to them.
My guess is that it does not.
If "these problems" is the criminals getting away with their crimes? No.
Unfortunately, human nature is such that many peoples' actual priority is venting the intense angry they feel about the real-world crimes.
And for far too many people, harsh punishments inflicted on expendable whipping boys are an all-too-satisfying way of doing that.
It's outright fallacious to want higher convictions (or even just higher arrests), because crimes aren't even being investigated, right? The goal isn't some scalar "number of people convicted" but rather justice in every case. If cases aren't being investigated, that's a specific problem with a specific part of the system, which needs to be addressed specifically. It can't be fixed by tweaking the numbers further down the line, rather that just creates further corruption.
The way I see it, every time the public demands the justice system (prosecutors, police, etc) do their jobs better, the people in the system respond by doing anything but focusing on their jobs. Either raising the false positive rate ("hard on crime"), going on [possibly silent] strike (raising false negative rate), or even rioting to create disorder from whole cloth (then blaming it on the protestors). What is really needed is accountability in general, so that specific wrongs (either way) can be rectified.
Where can we see their tough-on-innocence statistics?
Is there any reasonable way to say "we don't know, he might be guilty, we just didn't reach 'beyond reasonable doubt '"?
He was probably guilty of the two counts of aggravated assault, but the prosecution never showed that it wasn't self defense, which is what Arizona required.
Think of it as "should you bring an umbrella to go outside today?" – the weather forecast has a probability, but your job is to turn that probability into a decision based on your risk tolerance. You can't bring a 30% umbrella for a 30% chance of rain.
The effect was the same as "not guilty", but there was an idea that allowing the jury to express doubt allowed them to avoid erring on the side of guilt. But it also confused people so they finally got rid of it.
Oh, you mean another innocent person? (Emphais mine)
One reason we're not doing that, I suspect, is that it's hard to figure out what such a reform would look like. What specific additional step could the police have taken to determine that she didn't operate this account, without access to her private knowledge that she's never been to Arkansas and doesn't have the type of phone that was used to create it?
You can get a rough idea of innocence by exoneration rates + years served. Above-link is just for that one project, which is one of the largest in this arena.
It would also be wise to assume that all exonerations only reflect a small minority of actually innocent people especially when you start factoring in 'crimes' like possession charges or debt (https://www.aclu.org/publications/pound-flesh-criminalizatio...)
I guess they could be gambling that she can't afford a good lawyer; many people can't.
Then the government provides a lawyer; you can't be without counsel even if you can't afford them.
https://www.annenbergclassroom.org/resource/right-assistance...
>Then the government provides a lawyer; you can't be without counsel even if you can't afford them.
I'd note that many (most?) state jurisdictions (the Federal judiciary has the Federal Defender's Service[0]) require a defendant to be "indigent"[1] before a lawyer is appointed, rather than requiring the defendant to hire a lawyer.
Also, in many jurisdictions, private lawyers are appointed by judges to take on the cases of "indigent" defendants. Often there's little in the way of vetting such lawyers, and the fees paid generally aren't very high -- resulting in subpar lawyers and representation.
Even in places (like NYC[2]) with a more robust public defender system, these lawyers are generally handling dozens of cases at once and don't have the resources of the prosecutor's office (investigators, budgets for forensic testing/analysis, etc.), leaving the defendants' side at a considerable disadvantage.
As such, it's not just saying "I can't afford a lawyer," and Perry Mason rushes to your rescue.
[0] https://www.uscourts.gov/topics/defender-services
[1] Different jurisdictions have different standards for determining if a defendant is "indigent." But many of those won't appoint a lawyer unless you're flat broke. Own a home? Take out a second mortgage. Have a job? You're not indigent. Etc, etc, etc.
[2] https://www.thecityreporter.nyc/2024/04/08/how-public-defend...
You need evidence from Cash App and likely other third parties like ISPs. You ideally would have an expert to testify about the limitations of the prosecution evidence.
Its the opposite nowadays. The current meta is to advertise yourself as light on crime. So you get to the point where Philadelphia has an open-air drug market filled with fentanyl, the DA was actually impeached for dereliction of duty by the Pennsylvania house of representatives, and Philadelphians STILL re-elected him with over 75% of the vote.
I'll applaud ignoring the open air drug market. It's a symptom, not a cause. The drug *war* is the biggest crime problem in the country.
Hamsterdam.
Bioshock -> Libertarians bad
Handmaid's Tale -> Christians bad
The Boys & Marvel -> Corporations and governments are all secret Nazis
Everything else -> Nazis bad
That's all you need, really
A symptom of what?
Am no expert on him, but as we're all talking about here, the legal system is really messed up. Yeah, there are a lot of terrible processes and laws that get in the way of justice, and a lot of the things his office did made a lot of sense.
Probably one of the biggest was the "Elimination of Cash Bail for Low-Level Offenses." The cash bail system for minor crimes really screws poor people, who can't make bail for things like shoplifting, and have to stay in jail until their pre-trial. (it's often something like $1000, which for middle-class people is not a big deal at all). But imagine a teen who had to stay out of school for a month or even two just because they stole something for $20 and his family can't put together $1k. The teen gets behind in class and stops trying, and this becomes the start of getting further and further behind in life. And a similar situation happens with poor working-class people for a minor crime, they can't pay bail, so they are in jail and can't work. They are often fired or just get into debt because they're not drawing a salary.
I don't know about anything about open drug markets, but think overall what the Philly DA seemed sensible (and just looked briefly and it seems like the crime statistics turned out well in Philly, but that could be from a number of things).
Search "Kensington, Philadelphia" on Youtube. Its pretty crazy.
But wondering if that is also just a city thing? LA has Skid Row and just looked it up online, many metros have a Skid-Row type area.
Not saying that lenient crime policies don't make them worse, but it also might just be a feature of cities?
But, agree that we as a country can strengthen to safety net, probably good for us as a whole.
That’s why I live hippie liberal voters!
https://arcourts.gov/professional-conduct
https://opinions.arcourts.gov/ark/cr/en/item/1868/index.do#!...
Rule 3.8. Special Responsibilities of a Prosecutor.
The prosecutor in a criminal case shall:
(a) refrain from prosecuting a charge that the prosecutor knows is not supported by probable cause;
...
COMMENT
[1] A prosecutor has the responsibility of a minister of justice and not simply that of an advocate. This responsibility carries with it specific obligations to see that the defendant is accorded procedural justice and that guilt is decided upon the basis of sufficient evidence. Precisely how far the prosecutor is required to go in this direction is a matter of debate and varies in different jurisdictions. Many jurisdictions have adopted the ABA Standards of Criminal Justice Relating to the Prosecution Function, which in turn are the product of prolonged and careful deliberation by lawyers experienced in both criminal prosecution and defense. Applicable law may require other measures by the prosecutor and knowing disregard of those obligations or a systematic abuse of prosecutorial discretion could constitute a violation of Rule 8.4.One complaint may not have a "they're disbarred". It could result in a slap on the wrist and a note in their file. Multiple ones that show a system of abuse of discretion would be a different story - that would be handled by the state bar itself.
There's a tendency for people to react to institutional problems like this by saying they'll just move over here to a blue state, or they'll monitor their accounts closer on reporting bureaus, or they'll just have a lawyer on retainer, etc, etc. If a legal system in a red state is this dysfunctional, you can't simply hide away in a blue state with better-run systems. The underlying problem - the social decay of much of the US and the broader world - needs to be directly engaged with and confronted.
Blue state systems are not better run.
Most definitely are.
I think we would need to quantify "better", but there aren't any states that are good.
These sorts of abuses or dysfunction are rampant in all states. I can't think of a single state that actually has a good system (properly staffed, no overreach, etc).
But they do tend to have better speedy trial definitions and such. Although it seems they are rolling back bail reform (which may have been too lenient, but they didn't find a middle solution). And it seems they still have ex parte protection from abuse orders, which are notoriously abused in divorce cases.
And if you don't believe me, consider what, "I'll just move, I'll just retain a lawyer, I'll just spend my precious time monitoring my data or hiring someone else to do it for me," as Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free cards says about the means of the people holding those views. (It's that they can, and intend to, buy their way out of a system stood up by people like them ostensibly to promote accountability and social order.)
You're right about "continuing to get worse", but our institutions have been failing for more than 20 years. I think it's more like that Hemingway quote about bankruptcy, “Gradually and then suddenly.” in turn, that always makes me think of an exponential growth curve... and I think America, if not the entire world, is headed towards the vertical. Ib other words, when it comes to how dysfunctional our institutions can get, I think we've just begun.
This happens a lot because at the individual level, it’s sort of in everyone’s best interest to take the deal. The prosecutor wants $2,000 and 0 jail time and it all goes away. If you don’t take the deal, even assuming you win in the end, it will probably cost you way more than $2,000 and however long the probation check ins take. You will recover neither your time, nor the money you spent on lawyers/transportation/days off/etc.
At the macro level it happens because prosecutors get judged on their conviction/case closure rate, because we implicitly assume they found the right person. Browbeating people into accepting token punishments that technically close out the case counts for the metrics voters actually watch.
If I might lean a little conspiratorial for a moment, it also behooves the prosecutors office to flood the defense attorneys with cases. People will vote to raise the prosecutors funding to deal with criminals, no one will vote to raise defense attorney funding. Last I saw the average prosecutors office gets something around double the funding the defense gets.
It got so bad in some city in Oregon there was (is, really), a near constitutional crisis because the city got trapped between the provisions of the 6th amendment. Defense attorneys were so flooded they said they couldn’t take any new cases. The 6th amendment says the accused has a right to counsel, which is an issue. It also says they have a right to a speedy trial. The city was going to have to allocate money to the defense and get them lawyers quick, or drop a bunch of cases.
That never happened, the judge basically just said “Nuh uh” and I believe threatened the defense office with sanctions if they didn’t just assign the cases to lawyers who were already saying they had more cases than they could imagine.
I’m a little shocked we haven’t seen a huge wave of successful “ineffective assistance of counsel” appeals. Pointing to a signed, public statement your lawyer was overworked before you even talked to them seems like a decent starting point.
Are there absolutely no provisions for an innocent person to claim all the expenses they had to incur ?
The absurd end of this spectrum is what happens when police damage a random persons property while chasing a suspect. They’re generally not liable for it, however most homeowners insurance won’t cover it.
I remember an early GoFundMe from a lady that went to work and a guy broke into her house and had a shootout with the police. She came home to being homeless (house got condemned because plumbing, gas, etc is bullet-riddled), and it’s a really disconcerting story to hear. I don’t recall if the city settled to quiet the story down or not.
I completely agree about the realpolitik reasons though. Ultimately we need out of touch voters to realize that unaccountable government can easily turn its sights on them, as well. The real difficulty is trying to make people respect numerically low odds without falling for feel-good nonsense about "those people".
> municipalities paying the full cost of policing
Since we're talking realpolitik, this will never happen. In a first principles sense, it won't because it's unpredictable at the locality level (how do you set tax rates for FY27 without knowing what you'll pay out for this?). In a realpolitik sense, it won't because a) people don't like their taxes going up and would rather bank on it not happening to them, and b) the police will throw a shit fit and refuse to work when they realize they have to consider property damage while doing their jobs, and that the public will be _pissed_ if they crash a cruiser into a parked car while LARPing John Rambo.
> Ultimately we need out of touch voters to realize that unaccountable government can easily turn its sights on them, as well.
Good luck and godspeed. The latest stats say 56% of US adults read at or below a 6th grade level, so say it slow and in monosyllabic words lol
Also a reminder that in order for a plea to be valid the defendant has to agree/swear on the record that they weren't coerced in anyway way into making the deal (because you can't waive your Constitutional right to trial under coercion). The threat of prosecution/a very harsh sentenced being reduced sure seems like coercion and that plea deals are constitutionally invalid by default.
The story sounds like CashApp didn't do proper KYC, so they should be held liable. Also I very much doubt that someone built up a sophisticated operation just for 1 victim, so there must be others. Why doesn't the police connect the dots?
They don't care. My iPhone was stolen. Through a circuitous route, I was able to get the details of the eBay seller, someone who lived near me, and whose listing pages couldn't have been more blatant if it had a neon sign on it: 100+ laptops, mostly Macs, "no chargers, no accessories", often activation locked. Same with phones.
So I went to my PD, with the buyer information, the seller, all of this. Their response:
"Well, he probably didn't steal it himself."
Huh, "Isn't it still a crime to knowingly sell stolen property?"
"..."
"..."
Nothing done. As of a year later he was still steadily adding multiple phones and laptops a week to his listings.
If you are part of a system and have power in it, you believe the system is good. You believe that everyone else in that system is also good. That's why you have prosecutors and judges just believing the police automatically. Nobody wants to be in a job that ruins innocent people's lives, so everyone must be guilty or the cognitive dissonance will run you out (if the others in power don't first).
The OP was asking about if justice is important. It is not (according to Silvergate). Conviction rate is important and prosecution offers deals that essentially cannot be refused in exchange for a guilty plea.
Then you sue all the law enforcement officers and local officials who are attempting to lay the blame for this on someone they should know is likely innocent. Make all of the financial liability for this lazy investigation come directly from the pockets of the cops and prosecutors until they have nothing left to their names and then extract every thin dime that you can from the city that hired or elected these clods so that the whole city is bankrupted.
Money is obviously the only thing that talks in this society. Make all these assholes pay with everything that they have managed to accumulate in their lives and kick their asses to the curbs after pointing at a dumpster and telling them that they can likely find some cardboard suitable for beggar signage. They'll need to supply their own writing tools though.
I'm too lazy to create and verify a cashapp account, but so far as what I can find online they do SSN/name check + id check + selfie (liveliness) check. What more do you want?
Someone made a fake account -> we need "Whatever is needed" to make creating fake accounts harder is exactly the wrong way of thinking about it. It's the same kneejerk reaction that got us PATRIOT act and TSA after 9/11.
https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/optimal-amount-of-fra...
Or if you're more swayed by social justice, all these onerous checks also makes it harder for "unbanked"/"underbanked" people access to the financial system, which has real harms for them.
Absolutely shameful to defend a b$ company that doesn’t not have adequate protections to prevent this from happening. Imagine this happening to you or your own - whisked away and locked up for a month for the crime of losing your wallet and getting your identity stolen.
You know what's worse than sitting in jail for a few days? Dying or losing a loved one from 9/11. So you better get used to more federal agents scanning your communications and more TSA groping you at the airport. No cost is too great to prevent losing a loved one to terrorist attacks!
/s
Additionally, your argument is to do what, exactly? Apply zero pressure to the company which aids and abets fraud to the detriment of innocence because you find “social justice” and restrictions distasteful? Accessing money should be laborious and should require various verification forms (even if I disagree that photographing IDs and selfies are actual forms of verification), because as we see here laxness has resulted in an innocent person’s life being upended.
You haven't read the article. The stakes are much higher than "a few days in jail" which isn't nearly as small of a problem as you make it out to be either.
> Dying or losing a loved one from 9/11.
Why do you have to repeat this nonsensical 9/11 strawman of an analogy which has nothing to do with the case in question? Nobody asked for government "scanning of your communications". What you failed to notice is the refusal of CashApp to provide information about the fraudulent account because the victim couldn't prove owning it while she was being investigated for owning it.
CashApp stonewalled the victim and prevented proper investigation before charges were formally filed and the prosecutor got involved, after that it was to late and the mess that followed resulted in great expenses, turmoil and further risks for the victim.
And, even then, you might lie to the agent or maybe strike up a deal or something so… even that wouldn’t work.
The ideal number of fraud is not zero, if it was zero we would either be living in a dystopian novel or not using the service at all.
This statement is obvious to anyone who has any experience dealing with fraud, but shocking if you haven’t thought much about it.
It’s actually impossible to completely prevent fraud on a platform because there are so many variations of fraud that can’t be prevented up front.
They could demand in-person DNA samples to open an account and there would still be some fraud.
Wait till you realize how 911 aka "swatting" works.
>The company itself must be responsible.
So in the swatting case should we blame Verizon for allowing the call to be placed in the first place?
I suppose I should have spelled it out, given that so many people didn't get it.
It would be like declaring that the optimal number of vehicle deaths is zero, but then not realizing that the only way to achieve that is to make sure nobody can drive. When faced with the realities, everyone backs off and acknowledges that some risk is necessary
You come across as one borrowing patio11’s coat. He's a great blogger. You aren't.
You got it backwards in your rush to squeeze your ad hominem attack in there.
The optimal target for fraud can be zero. It's okay to aim for zero.
The optimal amount of fraud cannot be zero, because the cost to get to zero goes asymptotic to infinity as it approaches zero. Therefore the optimal amount of fraud cannot be zero.
> You come across as one borrowing patio11’s coat. He's a great blogger. You aren't.
Please don't sling ad hominem attacks like this.
I don't know why you're trying to compare me to someone else. These concepts did not originate with patio11. Is your only exposure to these concepts through one HN user's blog posts?
You are so determined for me to be wrong that you've tied yourself in a knot.
This is not an ad hominem, it is a direct criticism of your attitude.
The optimal—defined by MW as “most desirable or satisfactory”—amount of fraud is zero. The optimal target—synonymous with amount in this context—of vehicle deaths is also zero. The realistic value for either statistic is non-zero. You even said “when faced with the realities”.
You’re the only one not getting what is basic logic and definitions. Or more accurately, you are getting it, but you’re refusing to accept that your imprecise language was incorrect. You misused optimal when you meant realistic.
CashApp failed to investigate and provide vital information to victim while she was being investigated - they did that too late only after they were compelled to do so by the court and lawyers, creating a very hard situation for the victim and allowing the fraudsters to cover their tracks.
They obviously failed to do that here.
Almost everyone's info of the above kind is available on the dark web, as the original article about this case explained. That situation is the result of everyone collecting KYC information while also being too incompetent to properly guard it.
> + selfie (liveliness) check
I don't know what this is, but it protected nothing and it's apparently useless.
Then, after the fraud CashApp protected the fraudster by stonewalling the victim and the lack of exculpatory evidence led to the filing of formal charges.
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Sometimes these paywalls are variable, triggering sometimes and not others.
That's not a pay wall, it's a sign-in wall.
I’ve seen this phrase maybe 10 times in the last week on this site. Is this some new hacker news trend to pull out this old cliché on everything now?
> There was also a discrepancy involving the phone used to create the account. Cash App's records showed an iPhone running iOS 16.1.1, an operating system dating back to 2022. Smith, however, provided evidence that her iPhone 13 mini was running the much newer iOS 26.5.2.
Arkansas is one of the least educated states in the US and one of the poorest. So, yea, there are a lot of systemic issues there.
We don't have juries because they are smarter or more fair or more just on average than a judge. We have juries entirely due to the concept of jury nullification. It's a formalization of the concept the founders sometimes expressed where "Yes I did it, but that doesn't mean I should go to jail" is an intended outcome. It's explicitly that Justice isn't the same as "follow the letter of the law".
Who says that's the case? US courts are overloaded and public defenders are massively overloaded.
Most people can't afford to hire a good lawyer, and a (let's say) 10% chance of years in prison isn't worth gambling versus a plea deal to them. Prosecutors know this, file massive scary charges, and motivate people to settle regardless of innocence or guilt.
The plea deal offer kind of says it all, if this reaches the court it will either very quickly be thrown out or they may drop it because it's not worth the time.
The detectives screwed up by doing a piss poor investigation and identifying the wrong suspect (who is a victim herself in this crime).
The prosecutor cares more about whether they can sell the flawed case to an Arkansas jury or use the low plea bargain cost against the high legal defense cost.
Many other countries have proper multi-year colleges specifically for the field of policing, and rigorous physical and mental health tests required to get the job. In those countries the police is more educated and more competent than the vast majority of the population.
The problem is that in most countries (except the US), it is an extremely badly paid job, so it only attracts people who get something else from it: power.
Which countries are you thinking of?
I only know of Finland and Norway (and in some states of Germany) where this is true.
Requiring only public information and a SSN that has probably leaked hundreds of times and can be accessed by any number of random people in public and private administration just shouldn't count as even an attempt to verify identity.
I mean, that is why they exist, to replace names, or perhaps more accurately act as a surrogate key for names. The government specifically said don't use the SSN as a secret, and businesses did so anyway.
If Cash App had run some sort of bank-level verification, I doubt a garden-variety scammer could've "stolen her identity" like this. But, since Cash App is not a bank... they don't need all those pesky safeguards, do they?
Clearly this is evidence that they can't be trusted as a bank, and should have those licenses revoked.
Bull fucking shit you signed up for a bank account, clanker
I have a gmail address that I secured back in 2004 which is fairly short in length. Multiple people other than myself have used that email to sign up for all sorts of things which never bothered to confirm that the user actually owned the account before happily signing them up. AWS accounts, hotel sites, innumerable soccer and fantasy-football related sites, etc.
Every time I would try to reach out to the service to tell them that I had never signed up for an account as the email holder, they would give me the same non-answer: "Well if you own the email account, just reset your password and then delete it!" Nope. Not doing that. It was their negligence that allowed the account to be created under my email in the first place. I am not going to acknowledge ownership of the account to cover their fuck-up.
I cannot believe that in 2026 companies can get away with not confirming your email address. So damn annoying…and apparently something that can get YOU into legal jeopardy. Could we use this case as class-action precedent to sue a few large companies and get them to change?
Someone opened a Venmo account using my gmail and immediately started moving thousands of dollars in small transactions, and my only options were to a) take ownership of the thousands of dollars of small transactions that were now associated with my unverified email or b) get my email banned???? Eventually I got an email saying the Venmo was disabled due to suspicious activity, hope that doesn't bite me in the ass in the future.
What if I wanted to sign up for Venmo in the future? Why do I need to create another email address to use their product in the future when they didn't even verify it in the first place? How are they allowed to run their billon dollar business like this?
Identity theft is a failing of other people that is your problem to solve.
This very nearly burned me when buying my home - having been an AT&T customer in the PNW for nearly two decades, "I" apparently decided to hit up a Walmart on the outskirts of El Paso, sign up for a Verizon service, run up two months of international calls and bail out.
Despite a police report, my utility statements, AT&T bills, etc. (all of which were, to be blunt, none of VZWs business), VZW stood by it initially, "On review of your documentation, we remain satisfied that this debt belongs to you based on the documents used to open your account".
I asked to see them, since they were, in VZW's own words, "mine". "We can't, for customer privacy reasons." Oh, so "mine when the bill needs paid, may not be mine for privacy purposes".
We constantly face the consequences of businesses failing to secure the information which they (and in some cases legislation) requires us to give them. And when it (inevitably) is lost, then you're offered "free credit monitoring"...
The CRAs compete for breach business, because it's absolutely a profitable enterprise for them:
If you've ever signed up for one of these "free credit monitoring for a year" following a breach?
When you do, you typically do so by signing up for the highest tier (sometimes $30 or even $50 a month) product with a redemption code for one year free. You have to enter a credit card to do so, and to no-one's surprise, if you don't cancel in time, it automatically converts to a paid subscription "for your convenience".
There are many consumer protection farces in the US, but right up there has to be the notion that "identity theft" is the consumer's responsibility/obligation to prevent or resolve, not the entity that actually had the data stolen. You're considered liable until you prove innocence, even though you did nothing wrong.
I think I currently have two overlapping ones going.
Compare that to say a large part of the EU where people have an identity card with a chip, which has a PIN. It allows institutions to read the chip, and that chip cannot be easily faked (PKI). The photo is on the card and on the chip, so they have to match.
Also, more importantly, all of these financial apps popping up is because the normal banking system is too slow moving for the modern requirements, something the EU has also solved with the SWIFT system.
Computer fraud, unlawful use of a communication device, and (identity) theft describe what Cash App helped facilitate rather than anything she did.
I wonder what happens if I start allowing people to send me personal information, auto-accept everything as the truth, and start sending their money around the world...
In Germany every adult has to have an ID card. You cannot not have one. As a consequence requiring one for voting is practically unproblematic.
In the US the situation is fundamentally different plus there is a history of heinous racial targeted disenfranchisement of voters to consider that is in the extremely recent past and alive and well.
It's like seething over criminal justice system (police, court, prisons), what if govt turns authoritarian? Criminal justice system will become a tool of oppression.
Sure criminal justice system can be and have been a tool of oppression, but no sane society would forgo criminal justice under this fear.
"I would never defend <company/common practice>. But this article is such egregious ragebait that I must speak out. It's a very sad outcome. But it's also clearly <her fault/impossible to legislate a fix/evidence that the system is working>."
Irony notice. This comment contains irony.
As mentioned in other comments, plea deals are basically unconstitutional.
I was scared just reading the article.
As for being subject to prosecution for crimes that you didn't commit, you can either live in a jurisdiction where the justice system works more effectively, or else be rich and have a good lawyer.
Also opening a Cash App account yourself (even if you don't use it) is weak protection because they allow multiple accounts.
So if there as a defense I don't know what it is. Hope that identity fraud done with your info doesn't happen in a state with aggressive yet lazy/careless law enforcement.
All you need to charge someone is to show by a preponderance of the evidence that the elements of the offense were committed. Account being in your name and used in the crime meets that criteria. The problem is that many times a "thorough investigation" was not performed. There's nothing in law requiring a thorough investigation, but it's usually included in department regulations. You can file a complaint, but they won't do anything about it. There is no accountability anywhere in the system. The judges who are supposed to be neutral are severely biased due to the structure of the system and lack of training.
Occasionally the system just ruins someone's life even though they're innocent, and the rest of us have to watch it so we learn just how thin ice we're all on. This woman didn't do anything and she's still getting wrung through the system, the rest of you better watch out
Gotta feed a sheep to the wolves every now and then so the other sheep learn to behave :/
The actual crime is classic fraud and it's directed at the banks and financiers. By inventing "identify theft", the financial sector shifts responsibility and financial consequences from themselves to the uninvolved, innocent, and frequently totally unaware individuals that fraudsters represent themselves to be.
With this system in place, instead of then requiring that banks spend the resources to verify who they believe they're doing business with (or else risk being defrauded), we have "credit monitoring" and "identity security" services and individuals being held financially and criminally liable for crimes they're often so uninvolved in they _literally don't know they happened_.
I hope she wins, sues the state, sues the individuals, sues everyone, and retires on a private island.
You can't keep your PII safe because government and financial institutions have it, have already lost it repeatedly, and keep exposing it. You can't prevent these types of accounts from being opened because credit blocks and monitoring don't come into play with them. You can't monitor it yourself because the accounts don't show up on credit reports and there's no way for you to find out they exist.
The victim in this case was randomly selected. It could have been any person in the country, because literally every single one of us has had the minimum info needed to create a Cash App (et. al) account leaked at least once. Some people commenting here have probably had accounts opened in their names and never knew about it, only because the police weren't as malicious as the guys handling this case, or didn't feel like bothering to investigate at all.
And that brings $50,000 bail and days spend in jail before trial? Should just be a civic matter at worst.
>It turned out that the account had been created using Smith's Social Security number and date of birth. But Smith, who describes herself as not tech-savvy, said she had never used Cash App. The situation sounds like one that should have been resolved quickly. But Smith says she is still being asked to prove her innocence in an ongoing criminal case. One stumbling block was that Cash App refused to hand over details of the account to Smith because she couldn't prove she was the owner. She eventually received the data through discovery in her case.
Surely some details about her are the same as in the account profile, and not just the name, else they wouldn't prosecute her for an app account that bears no relation to her. Do they prosecute people just for something happening on the same name and surname as them?
If the account had others details about here to fool people, like her photo or SSN or address, she should have got access to the account, without having to demand it via discovery.
Did you read the quote you quoted? Your quote says the account was created with her social and date of birth.
Did you read what I wrote? Did I say it wasn't created with her SSN? I'm saying "if it was created with her SSN, then the service should have given her access.
We use the "if X" in my parts to mean "since X was the case, then....". And it seems it's valid in US English too:
Even if the speaker has just read a report explicitly stating that X did Y, using "if" is perfectly possible. The important distinction is that "if" does not necessarily indicate doubt about whether the Y occurred. In this context, it can have two interpretations:
Conditional justification: "If X did Y, then so and so is justified" The speaker is explaining what makes some reaction justifiable, without necessarily questioning the report.
Uncertainty about the facts: "Assuming X really did Y, then so and so was justified." Here, the speaker is reserving judgment about whether the report is accurate.
Both interpretations are available to a native English speaker.
Even if she can (which is probably the case), she wants to go through discovery so there is a paper trail of going through a process. If she does this by any other means she depends on them to have the records of that process to prove she didn't have access to the account at the time. By going through discovery there is a trail of when she transferred access to her name and so it is on them to prove she had access to the account before that date.
The case, as per TFA, was the opposite: she wanted to get access and couldn't, and she finally managed through discovery.
You describe what she "should have preferred" (in order to have the trail), I was talking about the actual case.
She's been accused of a crime. Yes, she was arrested and had to bail out. This is normal process. How else does anyone propose this work?
Every part of this would be fine if the companies allowing fraudulent parties to use their platforms were prosecuted for mail fraud, or interstate commerce fraud. Put the executive in jail. It's really this simple. The moment executives have repercussions they change their actions. Make cashapp prove they did their due diligence.
This means nothing in reality. These days half the USA has their personal information stolen in a data breach every week.
Again in the article the defense is saying the prosecution is demanding the lady prove her innocence, which is something cops love to do.
And because this is a technical crime the fact there is almost no evidence isn't going to save you in a court of law, especially in the 4th least educated state. It's not about the law any longer, but the stories the lawyers weave.
This may be enough to open an investigation and start gathering more evidence, but doesn't satisfy probable cause. The cops and court screwed up.
A database match is not enough to confirm that this specific person (may have) committed the crime.
It would be like sending a ransom note asking the money be sent to Joe Smith, 123 Fake St. That doesn't really tell you anything about Joe Smith's connection to the crime. It's completely incidental.
But as to basic situation, the fundamental problem is that there is no expectation of justice at the end of this.
There isn't really a way around the police (and judges who approve warrants etc) just doing their thing and you having to comply. But if it turns out they were wrong, then they should always be on the hook for all the damage they've caused - the same as every other member of society. In this case, every day the victim was held in jail, her costs of having to hire attorneys and private investigators to represent her, plus simply the distress of having this hanging over her head while being threatened with years in prison.
The article implies this has already been going on for six months. While this isn't a long time as far as the legal system goes (remember, day job), it's an eternity for someone on the receiving end of it. That should be well north of a million dollars for disrupting someone's life that long (especially over a frivolity!) - putting aside any abuse suffered in jail, direct reimbursement for expenses, etc. I want to say it should be more, but $5500/day seems in the correct neighborhood (a daily rate should be much higher for days you're actually in jail, but lower on days you're "free" but are still under attack).
This would create a strong disincentive for incompetent (or in this case, constructively malicious) action by police/prosecutors, as well as demonstrating to all citizens that the justice system actually tries to get correct answers rather than harming innocent people and then merely wiping their hands of it.
The payment for wrong prosecution would create a back pressure on the justice system which is currently only possible via media reporting, something generally only accessible to the powerful or otherwise sympathetic defendant. We'd need a category of dismissal which is "innocent", where a judge determines not only is the person "not guilty", but that actually, with proper investigation and application of thought, the prosecution could have determined innocence beforehand themselves. This should come with the payment and automatic complete expungement of all records, and an entry in the local newspaper of the declared innocence of the defendant.
Then the last piece of the puzzle would be outlawing police and prosecutor unions, and firing police and prosecutors who have poor records of sending "innocent" cases to trial. This would serve to create a pressure towards correct prosecution.
But the difficulty then becomes addressing the perverse incentive of "innocent" vs "not guilty" (I don't love your terms but I'm just reusing them), where a local judge is incentivized to declare merely "not guilty" to save the city money. While things are always going to come down to the frailty of human judgement, it seems like this might be a setup to "change things" while the status quo doesn't actually change.
I'd also still question why there really needs to be two separate categories. Most of the harm in this case is coming from elective overzealous actions by the police. If they had to pay for damages they caused to any "not guilty", then they'd work to reduce those damages (no extradition, lower/no bail, etc). For the case that I was on, the damages would seemingly be limited to one night at the police station, and attorney fees. And most of the cost of the attorney was only necessary due to the prosecution insisting on bringing a case it knew it wouldn't win. So if the defendant is truly "not guilty" (as we the jury quickly found), then why should the defendant be on the hook for those costs-as-punishment ?
Go after all these network of other accounts and cashapp must be held liable. They didn't do proper identity verification... And, these police seems incapable of finding real criminal. They are fool to assume people will use their own account to scam others.
A commenter on the article suggests Block needs to do more to verify the account identity-- what are they supposed to do? The scammers have as much or more information than Block does about a person... in part because stealing that "verification" information is primary what powers these scammers in the first place.
If companies did managed to find some morsel of verifiable PII that the scammers don't have (what-- pictures of your butt? they've already got everything else!)-- they'll have not long after companies begin demanding it.
Go read up on literally any subject outside your narrow bubble of tech culture.
Few millions should be fine so they really think through their procedures.
This is equivalent of swatting her. They should pay and at least few people who did actual crime of negligence should go to jail.
This basically says I can act in bad faith to incriminate anyone if I have access to a somewhat "reputable" SaaS.
I hope some black hat group targets these prosecutors identities and create accounts for them so they experience that firsthand to understand how ridiculous this is.
Fortunately, this stuff will never change because we're too busy fighting amongst ourselves how much foreign labor we should import to keep people too poor to fight these cases in the first place.
Most importantly here, the CPS has a "Test" https://www.cps.gov.uk/publication/code-crown-prosecutors#se... to tell them whether they should prosecute people. This is going to weed out a whole lot of the worst examples you'll see in the US.
You may remember Horizon not so long back, which was a gross misscarriage of justice in which large numbers of people who effectively worked for the Post Office were accused of crimes, in some cases jailed and even in a few cases committed suicide. Horizon is exceptional because, since mail was historically very important, the Post Office actually did have the same power as a Crown Prosecutor. Those cases were still sometimes really the fault of the CPS (not least because the CPS has a legal right to just seize control of, and then terminate a prosecution if they believe it would be prudent to do so) but are exceptional because most organisations could not have done this even if they wanted to try it.
Where did you get the idea that what you're saying is accurate about the US?
In the US most prosecutors are not elected, they are also civil servants and career lawyers. Their boss, a County or State Attorney, typically is elected, but they rarely prosecute cases.
I've also never elected a garbage man, crossing guard, or a receptionist in my life, but I've only been voting for almost 30 years now. Maybe it'll come up soon.
The ultimate boss at the CPS is just a lawyer, his boss is the Attorney General for England and Wales and the Attorney General (although also usually a lawyer) is a politician, typically an elected politician. But that's quite a lot more distance between your criminal case and somebody trying to get re-elected.
Sounds exactly like how things work with Attorney Generals for the states and the feds, as well as with many county attorneys in the US, especially the larger ones.
The large, large majority of cases in the US are prosecuted by career lawyers, not elected officials.
> Americans elect far too many of these roles
This varies a lot by state, btw.
Sure, in the same way that Australia is exactly like Greenland.
Even in relatively populous New York the org chart distance between your criminal prosecutor and an elected politician is significantly smaller than in England. Somewhere smaller there's an excellent chance that an elected politician has direct influence over the choice to prosecute you and that's unavoidably corrupting.
Is it as bad as the mistake of leaving the Pardon Power with an elected politician? No. That was unconscionable back when the the "First Black President" was a white guy named Bill and he used it to pardon crooked friends and family, and of course it's still unconscionable today when people just straight up pay Donald to get out of jail. But elected prosecutors is still pretty bad.
> This varies a lot by state, btw.
Almost everything does. On a good day that's an opportunity to learn what works and all improve. But those good days are fewer and further between than ever.
And it is an important freedom. If the state is declining to prosecute its own, citizens should be able to.
In my view the biggest problem is the credulity of the courts, who are inclined to believe evidence from corporate officers by default, and often refuse efforts to challenge it. The late Ross Anderson documented many cases from the 1990s onwards of people being convicted on bullshit technical evidence.
Maybe the CPS would have seen through it if they had conducted the prosecutions, but I don't think that's obviously true.
This is an important defence - every Post Office defendant could have chosen (or rather, their lawyers knowing the law could have done so) to flag their case for this process and force the CPS to decide what to do and as you say it's conceivable that in the most egregious cases that would have stopped it †
There are definitely flaws in this system, I just have more confidence in it than I do for the American system. I didn't know Ross Anderson was dead. He did some really good work.
† We know it wouldn't have always worked because there are Horizon casees where the CPS are the listed prosecutor. Jurors weren't the only people who gullibly accepted that the Computer is infallible, but at least the CPS were not employees of the executives who knew this was bullshit and have largely escaped any consequences.
Relatedly, after Peter Tatchell failed to arrest Robert Mugabe the government changed the law so that prosecutions for breaches of international law could only be brought by the government.
Anyway, I agree that I'd rather face a criminal charge here than in America.
The CPS does not track what happens to prosecutions it has taken control of. Conveniently they're just CPS cases once that happens, and so the question "What happened to them?" is magically a manual discernment and not amenable to FOIA.
We can ask, and so we have, how many they took control of. The answer is typically in the range of few dozen but not a hundred per year. Since these then disappear into their normal case system they could be prosecuted exactly like any other CPS case, they could be dismissed immediately as erroneous, or any of the usual dispositions for a criminal case, and the CPS won't tell us (if we're to believe them, it doesn't know)
We know a lot of private prosecutions are by the RSPCA, since they have funding to prosecute animal abuse and money is always tight. But presumably in the typical case the CPS is either never told or if it is explicitly told by either party it chooses to do nothing and allow the prosecution to happen. So those cases would not be on the list where the CPS took control.
You may not be able to find out what happens to taken-over cases in general, but are you aware of any case where the CPS took over a prosecution and the original prosecutor simply doesn't know what happened in the end?
From the sound of the things you're thinking about what I'd expect is that the defendant tells the CPS, the CPS seize this case and then they have it dismissed. If you weren't looking for evidence it will be pretty easy in almost any case to decide you do not have sufficient evidence for reasonable prospect of conviction, but in such cases you can probably also make out a position that there is no public interest in such a prosecution - for example because it would be embarrassing.
Otherwise the prosecutor can stand up in court and say you were "uncooperative" and resisted, even obstructed attempts to investigate the crime, and if your lawyer tries to frame this as you exercising your right, the judge will not permit this because you didn't utter the magical incantations.
I'm not a lawyer, but I always associated (perhaps wrongly) common law with common sense. I don't see much of the latter here.
People indicate how there is no privacy there but if things like this get out of hand and start happening for the masses wouldn’t one prefer a place like china where these things simply don’t happen because the system knows everything about every one? What am I missing ?
IANAL - might any such care to comment?
A related angle is trying to get such laws passed, to discourage similar cases in the future.
Who is going to sponsor such a law? The same representatives that are paid by the lobbyists of the corporations the laws are targeting?
Considering the endless vistas of billboards advertising lawyers for personal injury lawsuits and such in my part of Michigan - I feel pretty sure that >50% of our legislators are enrolled in those lawyers' "gratitude programs".
In this case, it may not matter that she has the truth on her side. The prosecution already took it far enough to offer her a plea deal. All they technically have to prove is that some piece of a digital trail, like having the phone number in the past, is proof that she is guilty of the crime involved here. Her home mailing address, current phone, devices, lack of travel, no associated facebook accounts, none of it mattered to the point she was arrested, extradited and is now being offered a plea deal for something she didn't do.
It's made more complicated by the fact that a prosecution doesn't really care what is true or not. They are not about to devote resources to finding out if the case they are prosecuting is based on accurate evidence. They have to rely on the police report to do this. And good luck with an Arkansas cop understanding how the scamming world operates. He put down his donut long enough to run a search in LexisNexus to link a phone number. And that is enough for a felony conviction in our corrupt court system.
And this was with her being the target of a scammer! Imagine if the Gov't itself was after you and wanted to sort of coerce and frame you for a crime. Or even just use your accounts against you.
The whole system is corrupt and needs to be rebuilt from the ground up. Starting with the entire concept of IDENTITY.
Her next lawsuit needs to be CashApp and their grotesque negligence on that front.
For the land of the free and home of the brave ... it's incredible what you let happen.
But the idea that they needed to stay with the Sony owned music label and not move to an independent one is kind of silly.
He just wouldn’t be a part of the zeitgeist in the same way. There’s an argument that a lot of what we’re experiencing now is a backlash against how well it worked. “the machine” is defending itself.
Can you imagine the president of the US using the term “Woke”, without RATM, and RATM without Sony behind them? They didn’t coin it obviously, but certainly gave it a huge boost.
It’s like a startup, the same product with a better distribution mechanic often wins.
And don't me wrong, I'm certain there are millions of good people in the USA. But the assholes are in the ascendancy. Obviously.
Stand up, or get flushed down the shitter.
Again, you're being presented with this article because it is an exceptional occurrence. If it wasn't, we wouldn't be discussing it.
And don't me wrong, I'm certain there are millions of good people in the USA. But the assholes are in the ascendancy. Obviously.
Stand up, or get flushed down the shitter.
It took an hour to get past the AI who kept hanging up on me. I’m more concerned after reading the article.
I don't know enough about it to say if it would prevent the opening of a CashApp account.
The other problem is that there isn't just one credit system, there are 3 major ones for general consumer credit, and other specialty ones (Innovis, etc; I had a list somewhere but can't seem to find it; AI might be a friend here).
Because then nobody could keep using them like they're a password, and would have to find actually secure ways of identifying people.
Even SSN is not private - you need to share it with enough people that it is safe to assume bad people have it.
Connecting an ID to a individual person is very hard. It is even harder when that person is not physically there.
It really would be great if judges could (and would) issue sanctions and/or personal fines against people who are so clearly operating in bad faith.
Accepting plea bargains, even when innocent, to avoid the huge expense of defending yourself is the norm.
The numbers are damning. It's simply not possible that police & district attorneys are good enough at their jobs to identify the correct perpetrator with >97% accuracy. Or 100% accuracy in Santa Cruz County.
You are arrested for a crime you didn't commit. The prosecution charges you with a serious crime with punishment of years in prison. Your lawyer can't guarantee you'll be found not guilty and you'll be in jail for a least a year until the trial because you can't make bail. The DA then offers a plea bargain to a lessor crime with several months in prison.
Lots of innocent people would, and do, plead guilty to the lessor crime.
If you cannot afford a lawyer, and the prosecution offers you a choice:
a) Go to trial. Lose your job. Get life altering debt. Spend a year or more stressfully fighting. Have your movements controlled, maybe be imprisoned. And THEN maybe you get proven innocent. Then there's a risk you get found guilty and face severe consequences.
b) Say you are guilty. Promise to pay a couple grand. You go home to your family tonight. Keep your nose clean and we'll seal the record in three years.
Tons of people would choose the latter.
I'm confident you are in a bubble with very little exposure to how the majority of people live.