
UK Hacker Won't Be Extradited to the US Because American Prisons Are 'Medieval' - kushti
https://gizmodo.com/british-hacker-wont-be-extradited-to-the-us-because-ame-1822721269
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tyingq
Hard to disagree with the headline. Our prisons are made for punishment.
Everything from 2 meals a day to charging prisoner's families for basic crap
like soap, basic health care, toothpaste, toilet paper, letters, phone calls,
to decades of solitary confinement. And that's what's legal and on the books.
Off the books is a whole new level of barbarism, not the least of which is the
prison gang system, sexual assault, etc, and there's no denying that we
ignore, enable, and allow that to exist. We know how to grind out bitter,
desperate, and unemployable re-offenders like no other country can.

I welcome more public activism from countries in extradition decisions that
raise awareness about our shit system. Voters in the US don't care so much
about this issue, so the PR helps. We are so focused on eye for an eye that we
forget the real outcomes of this set up.

Edit: An honest, non-sensationalist example regarding toilet paper and
sanitary pads for female prisoners in New York. _" no access to clean
underwear, feminine products, and toilet paper, forcing some of them to 'bleed
through their clothes'"_ [https://www.attn.com/stories/4148/female-prisoners-
toilet-pa...](https://www.attn.com/stories/4148/female-prisoners-toilet-paper-
feminine-products) As a US citizen, I'm completely embarrassed about this kind
of thing, and this example isn't the worst of it by a long shot.

~~~
iforgotpassword
I feel like the US system is focused on punishment of the criminals instead of
protecting the public from these criminals. Locking them away should be a
necessary evil since we have no better (more humane) solution, not an active
punishment because it makes some people feel better or superior.

~~~
heliodor
No better solution? I disagree.

Without getting creative, how about repeating the Australia experiment, for
starters? That turned out pretty well for the world.

The US has a lot of land. Take some of it that few people want (Alaska,
Rockies, Arizona, Dakotas, etc) and let convicts run their own society there
in physical isolation.

One of the purposes of our justice system is to remove the offenders from
amongst society. Separation does not require caging!

~~~
hulahoof
Sure it's easy a few hundred years later to look back and say that it was a
great idea, but what amounts to a multi-generation exile was probably a bit
overkill for many (not all) of the prisoners.

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dTal
>Authorities have yet to spell out precisely what damage Love is accused of
doing to American computer systems aside from saying that he stole the
“personal information of users.”

Dollars to doughnuts this is another Gary McKinnon type situation - e.g. a
trivial perl script that found embarassingly weak username/password combos.
They haven't told us what he did because it reveal horrifyingly weak security
and shift the conversation into "how was this even allowed to happen" instead
of "bad man hacked us".

As always, no quarter is given by embarassed people in high places.

~~~
throwaway76025
Do you think the accusations against McKinnon are rubbish?

Under alleged crime:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_McKinnon](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_McKinnon)

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Feniks
With Brexit the UK will likely drop the human rights treaties currently
enforced by Strassbourg.

This isn't just a US problem by the way. There have been court cases involving
extradition to Belgium.

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JSeymourATL
> “The way that mental health is dealt with in America is not in any way
> therapeutic,”

True.

~~~
tyingq
Amen. The dismantaling of our US state run mental health institutions in the
80s and 90s (despite their warts) created many bad outcomes. Speaking as the
son of a good nurse that worked these places prior to the purge.

