

Pirate Bay Founder Released From Solitary Confinement  - cyphersanctus
http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-founder-released-from-solitary-confinement-121209/

======
cyphersanctus
Solitary confinement... What kind of justice system still considers this kind
of punishment a valid form of reformation. Heres an insightful article by The
NewYorker with regards to the ethical implications of solitary confinement:
[http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/30/090330fa_fact_...](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/30/090330fa_fact_gawande?currentPage=all)

~~~
droithomme
It's torture, there's no doubt about it. Especially when it goes on for more
than a few days, then the psychological damage can become becomes permanent.
In this case he was in there three months.

Many prisoners tortured this way become so psychologically fractured they can
no longer defend themselves in court, such as the case of Jose Padilla, kept
in solitary for years, and who went completely insane as a result.

Burning someone with hot irons leaves marks on the outside, but you can get
over it. The damage done from solitary confinement doesn't go away.

Another article on the practice -
[http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2011/03/2011371259...](http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2011/03/201137125936219469.html)

Interestingly, at the time that was written a year and a half ago they stated
"In Europe, solitary confinement has largely been abandoned, and it is widely
viewed as a form of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, in violation of
international human rights conventions".

And yet here is Sweden implementing this practice, recognized in Europe as
torture, for someone accused of copyright infringement. Certainly not a
violent crime.

~~~
georgeorwell
I believe it's also harder on you if you're mentally ill, and so because the
torture is likely to provoke or worsen mental illness, it becomes worse
torture the longer it continues. To be fair, most if not all tortures have
this quality.

The Ashley Smith case up in Canada is also terrible -
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashley_Smith_inquest> \- the girl killed
herself in solitary while guards watched as they were instructed not to
intervene. It would be nice if there were a point where prisoners were
guaranteed transfer to a psychiatric hospital for the criminally insane.

~~~
droithomme
Wow, thanks for that link, that is amazing. So a child is flinging crabapples
(which are tiny) at the mailman. Rather than ignore it or tell her to cut it
out, she is arrested and put in the system to teach her a lesson where she is
brutalized with progressive increasing severity, making her more and more
angry, and misbehave more and more, getting charged with trespassing and
creating a disturbance. Finally, with her never having committed anything that
most rational people would consider serious crimes, she turns 18 and they lock
her in adult prison in solitary confinement where she kills herself in
despair.

According to <http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/2009-2010/out_of_control/> the crab
apple flinging charge ended up resulting in a total of 4 years hard prison
time.

The methods used against this child by the Canadian authorities are quite
interesting. In this article we find that they would transfer her from place
to place wearing a black hood, CIA torture/Guatanamo Bay style, and drugged
with powerful sedatives administered without oversight of competent medical
authorities: [http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2012/10/31/ashley-
smith-...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2012/10/31/ashley-smith-
inquest-scope.html). From this it is clear her abuse was not something that
just happened at a single rogue facility.

If you beat your dog everyday and it finally bites you, is it a bad dog? Is
the dog mentally ill?

I see she was adopted and is obviously from her appearance an indigenous first
nations child. It's quite common for these children to be kidnapped from their
nations by the canadian government in order to be resocialized away from their
culture under the guise of protecting them and the premise that first nations
people are incapable of caring for their own children and exposure to their
own culture is a form of abuse. It's a racist and genocidal policy the goal of
which is to exterminate their ethnicity and culture. This has been called "The
Lost Generation".
[http://www.akha.org/content/missiondocuments/thelostgenerati...](http://www.akha.org/content/missiondocuments/thelostgeneration.pdf)

~~~
georgeorwell
Yeah, it's just tragic isn't it... the video is hard to watch.

I'd say it's a dog with a spiritual dis-ease that did something violent.

------
pathy
Torrentfreak isn't exactly an unbiased source in this case.

While has has been held under restrictions it is not like he has been totally
cut off from the world, he has still met some other people, gotten mail, been
able to buy snacks etc.

[http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/10pivx/pirate_ba...](http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/10pivx/pirate_bay_founder_remains_locked_up_without/c6fkuji)
Offers a pretty good overview of how the Swedish judicial system works.

The key reasons why he has been held in restrictive custody are as follows
(From the link above):

There is a risk the suspect destroys evidence or in other ways affect the
investigation.

There is risk that the person might flee or avoid a future trial.

~~~
droithomme
The source of claims he has been kept in solitary has been his mother Kristina
Svartholm since the prison officials have refused comment regarding his care.

On the particular issue of whether or not solitary confinement is now used in
Sweden, here is a newspaper in Sweden confirming they currently do use
solitary confinement for some prisoners in Sweden:

<http://www.thelocal.se/1927/20050822/>

This article quotes Jerzy Sarnecki, a Swedish expert in criminology who
teaches at Stockholm University. He states, "Solitary confinement worsens the
quality of criminal care. Long term isolation is powerfully destructive. When
you consider that many of those who are confined have psychological problems,
the effects can be devastating."

The article also quotes Christer Karlsson, Swedish and chairman of the help
organisation Criminals Return Into Society, saying solitary confinement "can
break prisoners down, physically and psychologically".

The article also notes that Swedish prisons have more hardened criminals as
prisoners than before. Thus perhaps one would argue that solitary confinement
for non-violent prisoners protects them from being harmed by the hardened
criminals. Perhaps the vast majority of prisoners in Sweden are dangerous
violent serial killers and rapists and thus it is more economical to put the
small number of harmless non-violent prisoners in solitary confinement to
protect them rather than put the violent offenders in solitary to protect
others from them. It has yet to be demonstrated that this is the case though,
that the majority of prisoners are violent and can not be managed. In
addition, it is known that solitary confinement is damaging and is a form of
torture, thus to force torture upon someone in order to protect them seems
counterproductive. Torture as therapy is not an established or recognized way
of protecting people, and runs counter to what is known about torture.

~~~
pathy
I wouldn't call his mother an unbiased source either to be honest but you have
very valid points otherwise.

Solidarity confinement is not something I wish upon anyone but it is not like
he is in total separation from everyone, he has had access to both "fan" mail
and visits from his mother and lawyers.

Torture is indeed not therapy and should of course not be used. As for the
less serious crime, If memory serves there are different types of prisons in
Sweden and there is a great degree of separation between minor and very
serious crime but don't quote me on that - I am not entirely up to date on the
penal system in my home country.

That said, He obviously is a flight risk and that must be taken into account
when discussing the issue.

~~~
droithomme
Do you have a source regarding the fan mail and visits from his mother other
than the sources that you have stated you will not accept because you believe
there is bias?

Here is a Swedish press report covering her attempts early on to see her son,
which were denied.

[http://www.dn.se/nyheter/sverige/misstankt-for-
dataintrang-f...](http://www.dn.se/nyheter/sverige/misstankt-for-dataintrang-
far-inte-traffa-sin-mamma)

This article covers more on her getting the run around.

[http://debatt.svt.se/2012/09/18/hanteringen-av-gottfrid-
har-...](http://debatt.svt.se/2012/09/18/hanteringen-av-gottfrid-har-fatt-mig-
att-tappa-fortroendet-for-ud/)

She has since reported that she saw was permitted to see him once, on
September 18.

On November 10th she reported she was allowed to see him one hour a week, but
some weeks it is cancelled because the guard that must listen to the
conversation is unavailable.

> "I am allowed to visit him for an hour every week but this week the police
> men that must go with me to listen to our conversations didn’t have time to
> do so,” says Kristina.

> “This has happened before. Of course the uncertainty this creates makes his
> time in isolation more difficult. This is of course also obvious both to the
> police and to the prosecutor.”

[http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-founder-arrested-again-
on...](http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-founder-arrested-again-on-suspicion-
of-new-hacking-fraud-offenses-121110/)

The source here is torrentfreak and his mother, which you have suggested are
lying and misrepresenting the situation. Strangely, there are no other sources
I can find detailing how often and for how long she is allowed to visit. Given
the widespread international interest in Sweden's abuse of human rights here,
it is quite odd that there is a near blackout of reliable news on the case
from the Swedish press. Since you live there perhaps you have some insights
into why this would be so?

Do you agree that she was seeing him at most 1 hr a week, or do you have
reason to believe it was more often?

Do you assert that someone held in solitary with the exception of a 1 hr visit
each week is not really being held in solitary?

------
stanfordkid
While I do believe his confinement is somewhat unethical ... I am still quite
intrigued that technical people somehow support the likes of KimDotCom or this
guy.

I've never used megaupload or piratebay for anything other than ripping off
companies of content they own and have right to hold a monopoly over. Every
person I know does the same thing.

While I greatly appreciate and have benefitted from some of what they do I
think the justice system is doing the right thing in giving these guys hell. I
agree that it is inevitable that the monopolies will need to change their
model but I see no problem w/ suing and fining the living hell out of people
that try to bring them down illegally. A strong justice system that upholds
the law is above and beyond the most important thing -- despite the inevitable
inefficiencies it often introduces to a rapidly changing society.

~~~
tripzilch
> I've never used megaupload or piratebay for anything other than ripping off
> companies of content they own and have right to hold a monopoly over. Every
> person I know does the same thing.

Everyone, really?

Myself and many people I know actually do (also) use those services for
legitimate purposes. In fact, when TPB got blocked by the larger ISPs in NL,
the first times I was bothered by that was when I was linked to their blog
(blocked) and when I was linked to a legal torrent of someone distributing
some large data files (forget what) via TPB.

Another case in point, a significant part of MU's 25 petabyte that is being
held, isn't infringing either.

I'm not saying these services aren't being used for illegitimate purposes,
they obviously are. I just find it surprising that you, or anyone you know,
has only ever used them for anything _but_ such purposes.

 _edit:_ while I'm here, I might as well point out that characterizing the
confinement as "somewhat unethical" is kind of an understatement IMO.

~~~
joering2
But I am pretty sure you agree with the fact that majority of their
traffic/links are directing to copyrighted material that they have no right to
distribute anyways?

I am not against TPB. I think in most part they benefited good productions. If
a movie is real good, enough people will still go to see it in the big screen
and buy a br/dvd (production studios are limited with ways to trick people -
did you notice how a trailer can be made of all good parts, 10 minutes worth,
and then be a crappy movie afterwards?). I know plenty of people that love it
because it saves them money on crappy movies (I am not sure if you can get
refund for a movie ticket when you say "this movie sucks -- I want my money
back!").

Said that, just because any company or business is doing something right while
doing other evil things, LE will still go after them anyways. Simply put, you
cannot setup a charity organization that feeds homeless, while selling drugs
on the side, and ask LE to leave you alone, because some people love to donate
for a good cause [charity].

