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posted by cmn32480 on Monday August 01 2016, @01:29AM   Printer-friendly
from the how-about-being-aware-of-your-surroundings-instead? dept.

An unexpected catch:

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/07/30/nyregion/in-pokemon-go-lawmakers-fear-unexpected-entrance-of-the-sexual-predator.html

In an informal investigation by Senators Jeffrey D. Klein and Diane J. Savino, staff members took a list of 100 registered sex offenders across New York City and compared it with locations where Pokémon Go players could collect virtual items or use other game features.

In 59 cases, those locations were within half a block of offenders' homes. The staff members, who played the game for two weeks, also found 57 Pokémon — which appear on players' phones as if they exist in the real world — near the offenders' homes, according to a report the senators released on Friday. Such overlap has been reported in other states, including California and North Carolina.

In New York, those discoveries prompted Mr. Klein, a Democrat who represents parts of the Bronx and Westchester County, and Ms. Savino, a Staten Island Democrat, to propose two pieces of legislation, scheduled to be introduced next week.

The first would prevent moderate or high-risk sex offenders from playing so-called augmented-reality games — like Pokémon Go — and the second would require the games' creators to cross-reference their virtual landscapes with lists of offenders' homes and remove any "in-game objective" within 100 feet of them.


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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by VLM on Monday August 01 2016, @12:44PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Monday August 01 2016, @12:44PM (#382591)

    Execute him if he's dangerous enough

    I used to be into that idea myself. Why we have a 100% effective justice system and why not kill those who deserve it. Then it turns out that despite the justice system's absolute best efforts, you add a layer of bottomless funding from anti-death penalty people and add some new science like DNA and stuff and at least 10% to 20% of people executed provably didn't do it. Its incredibly expensive to get the error rate below 1/3 or so, which sounds insane but its true.

    Now throwing people in a hole for half a century is not very humane especially since they get even less attention therefore less justice so lets assume 1/4 of people in the hole for a life sentence are innocent, but at least theoretically they could be set free in the future when they raise enough money to buy justice or are just plain ole lucky. And on a regular basis lots of innocent people are set free years, decades later. But its hard to right wrongs after the victim was killed byt the state.

    There is also the moral/ethical argument that sure I was in the army and all that and I'll pull the trigger on a killer. I wouldn't even feel bad. Like putting down a rabid dog, sure it would suck if it was my dog, and every dog is somebodies dog, but its rabid so its gotta go sry abt that. There's no way in hell I could pull the trigger on someone convicted in the USA and given the death penalty; damn, at least 1/4 of them are innocent, probably more. With my luck I'd be killing an innocent civilian. It takes a serial killer mentality to just blow away random innocent civilians, that I simply don't have. I support the theory of a death penalty, but in practice it amounts to killing great piles of innocent civilians. Its just not worth it. Its like carpet bombing the inner city; you'll kill a lot of dirtbags, but its just not worth the collateral damage.

    Its like the witch trials centuries ago. Kill witches? Sure, whatever, if you find a real one lets kill it. Real witches if they existed would totally suck. But the victims were 100% just unloved old women with property that needed stealing. Our justice system being a complete pile of shit is hardly a new problem.

    Now obviously the standards are infinitely lower for mere sex offenders. They're just on a list, have to wear a scarlet letter, etc. Would totally not fall out of my chair if someone claimed that upon further review, 50% of tried and convicted and punished sex offenders never did anything wrong. They just wanted the police to stop beating them, their family to not be bled financially dry, felt the odds of pleading to a lesser crime were better than going to trial, whatever.

    Yeah without investing $$$$$$$ in justice, good luck figuring out which half did it and which half is just getting railroaded. If it takes $10M per case to clear an innocent mans name on death row, times all convicted sex offenders, that's like the nations GDP or something. We can't afford our broken justice system. So we're just going to have to get used to the idea that half of offenders that are being punished never did anything.

    You can combine two threads to fascinating results.

    We can assume the people railroaded are pretty randomly distributed and its very rare life experience, so lightning striking twice almost never happens. Now that is suspiciously close, isn't it, that half the people never did anything, certainly not what they're being punished for, and half the people being punished never repeat.

    Here's a non-controversial analogy, probably. I've never falsified nuclear weapon component export paperwork (kryton switches, stuff like that). In fact that would be an impressive achievement seeing as I've not worked directly with hardware like that. But lets say an ex-girlfriend got real butthurt about me or a lower level coworker "needs" my job or someone got sick of me shitposting on SN or HN and I got framed and convicted of illegal arms exportation, to a nuclear degree, or whatever exact arms control violation that is. Seeing as I never done it never gonna do it not interested in doing it, the odds of my violating nuclear arms treaties again after I get out are about 0%, so I'll be part of the ex-con population of nuclear arms exporters that is NOT a repeat offender. Now does that tell you more about nuclear arms exporters (remember I'm not one, although convicted) or does it tell you more about our shitty excuse for a justice system?

    I'm just saying only a fool would think our justice system exceeds flipping a coin by very much, so that factor needs to be added in to repeat offender rates, given that maybe half of offenders never did anything and never will, the "real" repeat rate of "real" offenders must be darn close to 100%.

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