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_...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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-.... 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...
> And yet here is Sweden implementing this practice, recognized in Europe as torture, for someone accused of copyright infringement. Certainly not a violent crime.
Just think of all the money, power and influence behind intellectual property. It's a huge tool of wealth concentration. A few companies literally own almost all human culture: literature, music, movies, even science papers. For ever.
They're setting an example. It's like messing with the kings of old (and not that old). You'll end with your head on a spike, for everyone to see.
It's not a punishment, it's a form of pre-trial custody under restrictions (can't read news, can't have unmonitored communication with people outside) so you can't interfere with the criminal investigation.
I don't see how adjusting his testimony at trial interferes with the criminal investigation. Especially since they kept him in solitary for months, only to release him now, and still no charges are laid against him (just nebulous 'suspicions').
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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?
The risk in non-restrictive custody of destroying evidence or tampering with an investigation is something that applies to all prisoners.
The flight risk in non-restrictive custody is zero, there are plenty of inescapable non-solitary cells in prisons.
While these risks outside of prison may be justifications for non-restrictive custody, they are not justifications for restrictive custody, i.e. solitary confinement, which is a form of torture.
> 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.
I understand your points, however I am having really hard time imagining any single case where those two points do not hold up.
Example: a simple fender-bender. Why shouldnt we keep the one who caused it in solitary because a) he could destroy evidence (for example try to break into traffic control and delete all tapes that are related to this accident, or he could talk with bystanders and offer them cash for telling something else that what they seen, etc etc.), and b) perhaps with psychological problems he could ran away and flee to avoid prosecution even if its such a simple case.
Therefore, every single case falls under the points you made. No?
You are certainly right, every case can fall under those points.
However in this case there is an obvious flight risk, he has already fled the country once to avoid a prison sentence.
As for evidence destruction, I guess it can be argued that since the evidence is electronic and he hardly needs to be there in person to the destroy it he can instruct someone to do it for him.
I don't agree with solitary confinement in general but Torrentfreak has a way of spinning the story like he is some poor innocent lamb while he in reality is accused of a rather serious crime.
That's how the Swedish court system works, he has been accused (with the higher level of confidence if I remember correctly) and won't get formally charged until it is taken up in court. The system is a bit different compared to for example USA.
He was taken into custody while the investigation was being finished up.
Ah yes, that's ringing a bell (I think from the whole Assange debacle). Makes the reporting in torrentfreak guilty of some rather dishonest spin doesn't it?
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.
> 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.
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].
In my case at least, the support for these guys is because the treatment is so unethical. I don't believe mega upload or thepiratebay should be legal, but I want to see Kim dot com freed because I don't believe the FBI should have the power to arrest New Zealanders and take all their property. I want to see the pirate bay founders freed because I don't believe that solitary confinement is a valid punishment for copyright infringement.
I would be supportive of punishments befitting their crimes. As long as they are punished far in excess of their crimes, they are victims and deserve our sympathy and support.
> "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."
Your argument is that you and your friends are criminals, therefore everyone is. Your reasoning is faulty.
Many people used Megaupload for legitimate purposes. I used it to transfer large files containing content I owned to other people, for legitimate legal purposes. There are many services that do this. Megaupload had a very good workflow for this and was easy to use.
As far as copyright infringement, YouTube is probably the biggest violator in the world. It is riddled with material that was uploaded in violation of copyright law.
Google, YouTube's owner, responds to takedown requests. So did Megaupload.
not really. The majority of traffic on youtube is not pirated material. I agree though that I support his right to due process but not his innocence itself.
> I am still quite intrigued that technical people somehow support the likes of KimDotCom or this guy.
I think part of what makes this difficult for some people here to understand is that they do not do a good job of differentiating "support Dotcom" and "support Dotcom's right to due process". He may be guilty as hell, but if I think the justice system is being abused or circumvented, I am going to "support" that person. It doesn't matter how obviously guilty he is, he deserves the same protections and considerations that we give to any other accused.
