Quote:
Originally Posted by HansTWN
It is wasteful to go after any minor crime. The cost of the investigation always exceeds the value of the items. Shoplifting is a good example. But, for society as a whole, it is much more wasteful to just let such crimes go unchecked. It is the fear of getting caught that is the most important tool.
And, in the case you mentioned, you would tell the police the names of all those that had possible physical access to your PC.
I am also surprised that you leave strangers, like repairmen, unsupervised and all you worry about is that they copy files from your devices, which apparently are not even password-protected?
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Yeah, right. Let's pretend my name shows up on some file on an file-sharing site five years from now. I'm supposed to come up with a list of every person who was ever in my home or near my computer and e-reader in the last five years, and then the police should divert their attention and manpower from drug rings and murderers and terrorists and somehow investigate all those people and get search warrants to obtain from them the names of all the people who might have had access to their computer or e-reader in the last five years, and all the people who those people might have encountered ... And of course most likely this investigation would spread across state lines, so we'd have to get the FBI involved, and it could easily extend to many countries, so we'd need to get international authorities involved ...
It's absurd. Completely absurd.
And the point is that even if I protect my files, not everyone does. And those people who don't should NOT be held responsible for their failure to do so if those files are used nefariously by other people. It's just WRONG to blame the victim. How can you not see that?