Law & Law Enforcement

Unappreciated Ethics Hero: Facebook? Oh, Yes!

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Unlike more primitive methods of mind control, Facebook is painless!

I think perhaps we have not been giving Facebook its due, and now, as the social networking monster is still reeling from its botched IPO, is a good time to right that wrong. We’ve been looking so hard at Facebook’s privacy settings, dadta collection, layouts and pointless games that we’ve missed the most important feature of it—magic. Like Wonder Woman’s golden lasso, but  a really, really big one, Facebook magically persuades people to not only tell the truth about the rotten things they are doing (like going dancing or golfing after persuading an employer to pay them disability because they are permanently unable to work), will do (like planning, in advance of the hearing the evidence, to vote guilty on a jury) or did (we’re getting to that), but to tell it to millions of people, potentially, so that they get punished.  Facebook’s power to compel confessions causes users to post videos or photographs of themselves in the process of doing incriminating things, so they can be then used as evidence in court. You have to admit, this is a wonderful thing. I don’t know how Mark Zuckerberg and his pals figured out how to do it, or what book of spells they stumbled across at Harvard, but they have performed a boon for humanity, and we ought to stop giving them grief.

Take the case of Michael Ruse, a charming Brit standing trial, accused of helping a friend beat up his father using a baseball bat. Micheal’s trial was going well for him, until Facebook took over his mind, such as it is, and flooded it with virtue. Suddenly, he was sending out a the message to his friends—and everyone else, for it was a public message—that he thought he would “get away with it.” An anonymous observer of the post—it could have been Wonder Woman, come to think of it, or at least Linda Carter— printed it his incriminating words and brought them to the court’s attention.

Under the advice of his barrister, Ruse changed his plea to guilty. The judge was not impressed, telling Ruse, “You pleaded guilty part way through the trial only really because you were stupid enough to put on Facebook what amounted to a full confession.” Well, yes, but as usual, he’s not giving Facebook credit for its uncanny ability to compel the truth. (Ruse’s lawyer replied to the judge, “He needs help with regards to thinking skills.” Perhaps. )

Ruse was  sentenced to 46 weeks in jail, another example of justice through Facebook magic. But apparently Zuckerberg’s magic lasso isn’t finished with him yet, for after sentencing Ruse got back on his Facebook account and insulted the judge.

Thank you, Facebook!

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Pointer: Fark

Facts: Gawker

Graphic: Mind Control Blog

Ethics Alarms attempts to give proper attribution and credit to all sources of facts, analysis and other assistance that go into its blog posts. If you are aware of one I missed, or believe your own work was used in any way without proper attribution, please contact me, Jack Marshall, at  jamproethics@verizon.net.

Graduation Ethics: the Cheering Mom and the Jerk’s Advantage

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

Stipulated: for police to arrest proud South Carolina mother Shannon Cooper for loudly cheering during her daughter’s high school graduation over the weekend  was excessive, unreasonable, and stupid.  The graduation crowd  had been asked to hold their cheering until all students’ names had been called, and warned relatives of the graduates that they would be removed from the facility if they disobeyed the rule. As some parents inevitably do at every graduation, Cooper ignored the reasonable request, but this time, the defiant parent paid a steep price. Police charged her with disorderly conduct and placed her in a detention center.

Let me also make this clear, however: Cooper behaved like a selfish jerk. She is being showered with sympathy now, cast as Innocent Parent Abused For Being Proud of Her Baby, but that’s not who she is. She is the theater audience member who ignores the request to turn off her cell phone, and disrupts the actors and the audience when it rings, and the movie audience member who chats loudly during the show. She is the pet owner who doesn’t clean up after her Great Dane at the dog park. She is the able-bodied shopper who parks in  a handicapped parking space to run into the store “for just a minute.” She is the person who breaks into line, who brings 30 items to the “15 items only” checkout station, who takes more than her share of free food at events. She is, in short, the kind of person who doesn’t believe reasonable rules apply to her, and who constantly challenges the rest of us to “make a big deal” out of relatively minor demonstrations of contempt for everyone she comes into contact with. Continue reading →

Watch Out, John Malkovich…You Can’t Trust Siri!

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

NO, JOHN! SIRI’S A SPY!!!!!

Wired reports that IBM has banned Siri, iPhone’s voice-activated digital assistant, its headquarters network. Employees trying to use John Malkovich’s new friend will be foiled. Why? IBM CIO Jeanette Horan told MIT’s Technology Review that the company worries that conversations with Siri might be stored somewhere. And indeed they are. Siri relays everything she hears to an Apple data center in Maiden, North Carolina. What happens to it then is anybody’s guess. Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “The Ethics of Bloomberg’s Soft Drink Ban”

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Peter, who is a physician, a libertarian, and one of my oldest friends (we met in the 6th grade) from Arlington, Massachusetts, generously responded to my request for his professional expertise and philosophical perspective regarding the New York City soda ban.  Here is his thoughtful response, the Comment of the Day, on the post The Ethics of Bloomberg’s Soft Drink Ban: 

“It has become a reflex response to answer adverse circumstances with more regulation. To a lawyer, there is always a law, or regulation for any and every misstep in human behavior. Of course, we forget that we cannot predict the unintended consequences, not even to mention reviewing the effects of the laws we pass to determine if they are even having the INTENDED effect. Somehow, we believe that it is appropriate to pass laws to deny other people’s freedoms due to the “discomfort” of whiny types who have the connections and persistence to keep whining until they can get someone to pass a law. The consequence of such legislation’s continued passage, at ever more confiscatory levels of our liberties, is that we are legislating our way into a police state, and the widespread acceptance of the idea that it’s OK to deny personal liberty because it makes someone else “uncomfortable.” Again, as RR so aptly pointed out, “the government that is big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have.” And this goes for not just your personal assets, but your freedoms as well.

“That said, in this context, yes, drinking lots of sugary sodas will make you fat, smoking will kill you, too much alcohol will kill you, doing extreme sports can kill you, and so on. And as long as one’s decisions affect only himself, have at it. However, when you want me to pay, through my insurance premiums, and my taxes, for the consequences of your stupidity, you cede the sovereignty of your decision to others beside yourself. If you want to ride your motorcycle without a helmet, while drunk, sure, do it. Just don’t expect me to pay the costs of your head injury. Continue reading →

The Ethics of Bloomberg’s Soft Drink Ban

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

“It’s a serious problem.”

“Something needs to be done.”

“This is a public health issue.”

The media defenses of New York Mayor Bloomberg’s controversial decision to ban the sale of large soft drink servings in New York City, and Bloomberg’s defense as well, set up a classic utilitarian argument for a government intrusion into personal choice and lifestyle. It is, simply, that the ends justify the means, and as we all know, sometimes they do.

Sometimes, however, those means sacrifice too much: lives, dignity, fairness, liberty, fun. Sometimes employing those means require crossing lines that have not been crossed before, opening the door to more and greater sacrifices that even advocates of the particular measure would find objectionable and wrong. This leads to the slippery slope dilemma, and invokes absolutism. Some things must never be considered as just means, no matter what the ends being sought may be. Immanuel Kant’s philosophy of absolutism declared that it was always wrong to use human beings against their wills to solve problems, no matter how great the problems are. The Declaration of Independence holds that a human being’s rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness must never be breached by government. Continue reading →

Executing an Insane Killer: a Cynical Ethics Controversy

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

Let’s me get this straight: this is only a “macabre spectacle” if the guy strapped down to be poisoned isn’t crazy. Right?

In the case of Steven Staley, Texas has itself one of those periodic ethical/legal conundrums surrounding capital punishment that leave me feeling  cynical, puzzled, and worried that I am missing an important part of my compassion apparatus.

Staley’s problem, or his perhaps stroke of luck, is that he is a little more crazy now than he was when he committed the crimes that placed him on death row. In September 1989, Staley escaped from a Denver prison  and started robbing everything he encountered, looting nine businesses across four states. Finally he hit the Steak and Ale Restaurant in Tarrant County, Texas. Staley and his accomplices gathered the employees at gunpoint and forced the manager to hand over the contents of all the registers and the store safe. He then took the manager into the getaway car as a hostage, and executed him as Staley tried to elude the police. Continue reading →

Now Boarding the Trayvon Martin-Goerge Zimmerman Ethics Train Wreck…George Zimmerman!

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Well, why not?

It’s been running over him again and again since the beginning; he might as well buy a ticket!

Not so fast, George!

This epic ethics train wreck, which has already engulfed the news media, civil rights activists, defense attorneys, prosecutors, bloggers, pundits, members of Congress, Barney Frank, Spike Lee, the Congressional Black Caucus, President Obama, Martin’s mother, and maybe even you, just picked up George Zimmerman.

Zimmerman just had his bail revoked because he and his wife misled the court at the bail hearing, claiming they had minimal financial resources when in fact a fund for Zimmerman’s defense had already raked in $135,000. As a result, the original bail was set at a minimum level. Now Zimmerman has to turn himself in to authorities again, and whether he can get bail a second time is in doubt.

Lying to a judge is always stupid and wrong, but this instance is spectacularly so. Zimmerman’s account of what happened on the fateful night that he shot Trayvon Martin is likely to be a key aspect of his defense on second degree murder charges, and having the fact that he already lied to the court once in the case isn’t going to help his credibility with the jury. It doesn’t make him a murderer, of  course. It does make him less convincing when he denies that he is a murderer.

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Facts: Associated Press

Graphic: Now Public

Ethics Alarms attempts to give proper attribution and credit to all sources of facts, analysis and other assistance that go into its blog posts. If you are aware of one I missed, or believe your own work was used in any way without proper attribution, please contact me, Jack Marshall, at  jamproethics@verizon.net.

Ethics Hero Emeritus: Harry Philo (1925-2012)

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Harry Philo: Champion, Lawyer, Inspiration

A great man died last week, and yet unless you are member of his family or law firm, a trial lawyer, or one of the many people he helped over his long career, you probably never heard of him. There is barely a trace of Harry Philo on the Internet; Wikipedia has no page devoted to him, and a Google search turns up next to nothing. (It shows over 22 million links for a search on Kendall Jenner, who is Kim Kardashian’s little sister). Yet Harry Philo was a great man, and one of the things that was great about him was that he didn’t waste a lot of time seeking glory for himself. Continue reading →

How To Make A Wanetta Gibson

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Reader Fred Davison sent me this video of two teenage girls being interviewed by a Florida TV reporter regarding their theft of a 9 year-old Girl Scout’s proceeds from the sale of cookies. If it went viral in 2009, I missed it; if it didn’t, it should have. And although the crime is old news, it is an enduring warning, and a current cause for alarm:

Those who wonder how a young girl like Wanetta Gibson could have casually fingered an innocent boy with who she had been necking in a school corridor and sent him to jail for rape can get some of their answers from the two frightening creatures shown in the video. They have no comprehension of right and wrong. Their parents obviously couldn’t imbue them with any values, and their teachers, if they mentioned ethics at all, did it so fleetingly, ineptly or incoherently that it made no impression at all. They obviously have never been influenced by any church, religion or moral code. They lack empathy, respect for others, regard for fairness or justice, and most of all, shame. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: The “Lady in Red”

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Now that the John Edwards trial is over—it ended with an acquittal on one charge and deadlocked jurors on the rest—it’s time to heap some deserved contempt on the so-called “Lady in Red,” the alternate juror whose courtroom demeanor became such a distraction that it prompted the judge to send all the alternate jurors home. From the Washington Post:

“She walked in flipping her hair, smiling broadly at [Edwards], batting her long eyelashes, cocking her head playfully. She was just an alternate juror, but suddenly she was the most watched person in the cramped federal courtroom. Commentators had dubbed her the “Lady in Red” after she bopped into the courtroom last week in a revealing, off-the-shoulder red top. Others just called her the “flirty one,” interpreting her vivacity as some kind of courtship dance, though no one can say for sure whether that was her intent.” Continue reading →