Digital Footprint & The Justice System

Introduction

Physical violence and/or harming someone is never the solution in my opinion, the only time it is acceptable is if done in self-defense or in aid of someone else that needs to be defended.

Today I will be discussing the topic of Digital Footprints and the Judicial System across the world. I’ve been planning to discuss these two topics for some time now, but in light of the recent capturing of the alleged murderer of the CEO of America’s highest health insurance claim denial percentage company ¹²³, I’ve decided that it would be interesting to discuss it in relation to this event, especially since he was a programmer which is my field of study.

A person accused of a crime is innocent until proven guilty, unfortunately with the speed that the internet spreads news people do not follow this rule and assume automatic guilt, especially if famous persons and news publications spread the allegations. This can harm the reputation of a person forever even if they are actually fully innocent and were falsely accussed. Even worse, the person(s) that falsely accuse them never get any punishment in most cases.

Mistakes and perfection

To make mistakes is to be human. We all make mistakes, but the difference between good and bad people, in my opinion, is being aware of the effect that out decisions have on others and always trying to avoid causing any sort of negative effect on others.

There is a very big, fat, bold line that separates:

• Making an amendable mistake that most people would forgive you for
• Causing someone harm or taking their life.

The latter is in my opinion inexcusable. I’ve faced many moral dilemmas in my life, but I have always, without an ounce of a doubt, believed that physically harming someone is never the solution to a problem.

The only exception to this is self-defense when your life is being threatened directly with violence, or by coming to the aid of someone else that needs defense in such a scenario.

Digital Footprint

Firstly, this is the biggest public digital footprint I’ve ever seen of any accused persons in my long time on the internet. Let’s take a look at why this is crucial to this story and what the difference between a public and a private digital footprint is.

• A public digital footprint: Accessible to any persons on the internet without any protection hiding the data, such as Social Media information of public profiles (account description, account posts, account likes, etc.).
• A private digital footprint: Accessible only to companies with protected access to such information, for example Social Media companies having your location, device type, device size, device operating system and other tracking data that is kept behind encrypted infrastructure. This data is only given over to law enforcement if a strong enough order is issued by the judicial system to hand the information over. This information can not be accessed by any persons on the internet. Also in this category are emails, private messsages on social media and similar information.

The internet was very very quick to find any and all information on the public digital footprint of the accussed person for the murder as soon as the first news article revealed his name. Within minutes, persons on the internet found his Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, Github, Linkedin and other accounts. He had his full legal name on all of them, so this information was only a simple Google search away, this is about as clear cut digital footprint as they get and it is rarely this easy to track down someone’s digital footprint.

I believe it is absolutely ethically and morally wrong to spread the name of someone who is only accussed of a crime, therefore I will not be sharing you the name of the accusant nor any pictures that others have gathered from his public digital footprint.

Rememember, anything and everything you upload to the internet can never be deleted, especially if you are famous, everything you post will be publicly archived the second you post it. If the content is of interest to someone then it will be archived one way or another. Be careful with what you share.

Now, a question for you to think about: Is it morally and ethically okay to spread the name and other information of someone who was convicted of a crime by the jury, but was not found to be guilty beyond a reasonable doubt? Take a look at the list of wrongful convictions in the United States.

One advice I would give to anyone on the internet: Delete your accounts every few years, do not give people the chance to take things you said out of context and accuse you of anything wrongfully. But remember, if you delete your accounts on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Discord - Your messages WILL NOT BE DELETED, all your messages will remain under an anonymized account name. If you want your messages to be deleted you have to delete them one by one, either manually or by running one of many scripts available out there.

The Judicial System

Now, let’s talk about the judicial system. The American judicial system was allegedly (if he will be convicted or admit guilt) able to find the murderer of this case even though he left the state of the crime - proving that they have the resources to find any and all persons that commit crime, but only if they want to and deploy the resources necessary to achieve this feat. This brought up many furious people on the internet citing unsolved murder cases and other heinous crimes, where the person was not of a wealthy background and the cases remain unsolved to this very day.

In the age of technology that we live in now, with the help of phone signals, phone locations and other identifying information shared on the daily by almost every single person on the planet, tracking down people has become much easier for law enforcement, yet not deploying enough resources to capture individuals will never yield results, as the oldest rule in life goes - no effort, no results.

Now, the age old question that is questioned on the daily - does the judicial system truly bring justice? I believe that this is up to each individual to decide for themselves based on events and judgements that they have seen.

The American judicial system has faced scrutiny many times, here are some articles if you’d like to read up on the topic:

• America’s Criminal Justice System Is Rotten to the Core
• America’s Broken Criminal Legal System Contributes to Wealth Inequality
• The American Justice System Has Failed Us All
• As a New Term Begins, Where Does the Supreme Court Stand on Criminal Justice?

I believe that the main issue of the American judicial system in recent years is the separation of people into two groups - the Republican and Democratic political parties, and in my observations of numerous cases it seems that a lot of the people in power that are tasked with defending the law fail to do so, putting priority of their political party over justice, failing the most important part of any persons defending the law - to be objective in making decisions, evaluating situations, evidence, or information without allowing personal feelings, biases, or subjective opinions to influence the outcome. This can be seen in the overturning of Roe v. Wade, where the constitutional right to abortion, a right that the American women had since 1973 was overturned. Why does this occur? Because Supreme Justice nominees need the approval of the senate to get their seat, and similar for lower positions where judicial nominees need approval of other political bodies.

Taking things into your own hands

Before I begin this chapter, I’d like to tell a story. A girl accused a guy of raping her, causing the girl’s enraged brother to murder the accused rapist. The girl later on admitted that she made the story up because she disliked the guy for his academic success and his girlfriend. Here, the brother thought he was bringing justice by taking things “Into his own hands”, but in reality he was given wrongful information by a person he loved and trusted and in the process of doing so he took an innocent life. The justice system may not be perfect, but in most cases it is still better than any other options we have.

JUST BECAUSE YOU LOVE AND TRUST SOMEONE DOES NOT MEAN THAT THEY WOULD NEVER LIE TO YOU!

Now, back to the topic of this accused murderer. This was a case of a person thinking that they have to act to commit justice, because the justice system was failing to do so - in this case, failing to regulate insurance companies which wrongfully deny claims and failing to prevent insurance companies from becoming greedy for money and in the process of that costing people their health and in many instances letting people die by not allowing them needed healthcare.

Companies that are mandatory for a persons’ well-being should never ever be allowed to be greedy or for-profit in my opinion, they should operate with the number one mission being improving people’s lives and if the company should make a loss, the country should help cover it, if we can cover banks when they go under why should we not do the same for health insurance companies, if they truly helped people? That is my view on insurance companies.

I also believe that insurance should never ever be mandatory. If someone believes that a type of insurance has no reliable companies offering it, or that they would never receive fair value by paying for that insurance, such as house, car or health insurance, they should be allowed to live without ever paying for that insurance.

The other side of the coin

Remember the story about the false accusation? Now, let’s take a look at the other side. What if someone is guilty of something, but there is zero proof or evidence, or the case gets dismissed for some other reason? Although I believe that this occures less frequently than the false accusations, it is still important to mention that this does happen. How many people are out there pleading for justice to be brought upon those who did them wrong, but they will never see justice? Quite deep and sad to think about. There are also numerous cases where people are scared to report injustice to the police in fear of the person retaliating before the police or the judicial system brings “them to justice”. This is how many crimes go unreported and people continue living their lives with severe burdains in their heart.

What can I do if I believe my country’s justice system is failing the people?

There’s a couple options I can think of:

• If you dislike the justice system you live in, you can always consider moving to a country with a better justice system - although, better is a very subjective word.
• Advocate for changes, this can be done in many ways - writing your legal representatives an email (Your governor, senator, president, etc.), posting on social media expressing your feelings about the current judicial system, campaigning to change the judicial system, and many other options.
• Accept that this justice system will likely never change and just live with it. Although this option may seem disappointing, is it truly worth your time and energy if you can not make a big difference? Perhaps yes, perhaps no, it is up to you to determine this. Maybe you can grow a bigger movement and make bigger changes, although unlikely, it can happen.

Disappointed Law Graduates

Many people go into law school wishing to change the world for the better and bring justice to it.

One of my mother’s friends at university had become a higher-up judge in the Slovenian law system. I remember her telling me how disappointed she was with our law system. The more she tried to bring justice and defend the law, the more she realized that everything she hoped to achieve as a law student and change was impossible because of bureaucratic blocks in place and the refusal of people in power to truly make any change.

This is why I truly believe it is important to keep an open mind and listen to even the craziest-sounding opinions, also known as listening to the devil’s advocate. Even though you may heavily disagree with someone, it helps to see why they think the way they do and why they feel their opinion or side of the argument is correct.

Bureaucracy is a fatal flaw in capitalism. While it does a lot of good, it unfortunately blocks any big change that is often required to keep up with the ever-changing landscape of the world we live in. It takes a courageous person, willing to challenge bureaucratic limits, to truly make change.

Bending the Law

Now, the most important thing you will read today:

The law and the judicial system are only as powerful and morally right as the people that are tasked with defending it.

The most famous instances of bending the law and getting away with it arise in public figures - celebrities and politicians. They get away with things that normal people would never get away with, either through nepotistic connections that they have built up with their power and money, or other methods. This is also often known as sweeping things under the rug.

Sources

1. https://www.healthleadersmedia.com/payer/unitedhealthcare-denies-most-claims-any-major-health-insurer-data-show ↩︎

2. https://www.forbes.com/sites/amyfeldman/2024/12/05/unitedhealthcare-denies-more-claims-than-other-insurers—angering-patients-and-health-systems/ ↩︎

3. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/05/nyregion/delay-deny-defend-united-health-care-insurance-claims.html ↩︎