The first case of digital public guilty verdict?

A teenage girl killed herself after being bullied online. A newspaper wrote about it, but didn't mention the names of the presumed guilty -adult- individuals. Later, anonyomoys people tracked these individuals down and published their details online.
This case -that was overlooked by many of us- can and should have profound implications for our justice system. Only a few of the questions that quickly come to mind are:

1. What's the role of the courts when regular citizens take decisions that were previously relegated to the courts?
   
2. What's the value of police investigations if they cannot find the people guilty of crimes but a "common internet jury" can?
   
3. When should this public jury/investigation panel be called into action?
   
4. How can anybody stop it from springing into action by itself and publishing online private individual's details?
   
5. What if the information collected by this "public commitee" is wrong and the innocent are accused?
6. How and when would the publicly accused know that their information is being posted online, and wht they're being accused of?
7. When will the first death penalty be applied to a regular citizen by strangers on the streets and how could this be avoided?
   

And you thought crowdsourcing would never get to the justice and investigative professions...

Subscribe to my RSS feed or learn more at Trendirama.com.

Virginia Tech killings. A bigger storm ahead

This post here was written on Monday night. Approximately 12 hours later, a young man killed more than 30 people. He felt victimised, and unfairly treated. He took revenge because he couldn't get what he wanted, the way he wanted, from others and the world.
He clearly reacted like a psychologically sick person.
The good news: the youth of today are more prepared than ever before in technical subjects (this piece of good news is just to soft up what is coming...)
The bad news: most young people today have had a very poor human relations education, and they're ill prepared to deal with the tough challenges facing them.

Expect more of this kind of tragedies in the future.
We are fuelling an incredibly dangerous fire. We don't give our children enough attention, but at the same time we teach them that "they're special". We inflate their egos since a young age. We bribe them. We can't beat them, we can't show them limits clearly. (not that I defend beating people up) We don't really know them. We don't understand them. We don't know who they are, because finding out is too hard. In many instances, like parents, we don't know who we are ourselves. How can we help someone else to know who they are?

And worst of all, when they go out on a killing spree, we make sure we publish it in all kinds of media, with all sorts of details. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that those frustrated paranoid teenagers that see all the "glory" and airtime that his man gets, may well choose to have a similar goodbye, knowing that after it all, they'll be famous...even for a few hours. They'll be somebody...someone will care for them.
Because that's what is really missing from their lives. Love, attention, understanding.

However, the killings in the future will be different in one crucial aspect: they'll be bigger. Expect to see more group killings, in which two or more of these people work together for bigger "glory". Expect to see explosives. Expect to see more meticulous and detailed operations documented before the killings.

It is natural: tough privatized high school system with high fees + absence of love from parents + continuous bombardment from the media with advertising that makes them feel ugly/fat/inadequate + video games + complex world + rising unemployment + easy access to weapons = paranoia, violence, suicide

Liked this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed or learn more interesting stuff, at Trendirama.com. You can also write there!