Image source: indiatogether.org

To be clear, the Lokpal Bill (Ombudsman Bill) proposed by the lawmakers in India as a mechanism to fight corruption is a sham and is designed to encourage, rather than discourage corruption. In the lawmaker’s version of the Lokpal bill, the office of the ombudsperson is appointed by the government (at its own pleasure) and the office will serve only in an advisory capacity with no powers to actually pursue corruption charges in court. Furthermore, the jurisdiction of the office will be limited to politicians and not the civil servant and other officers who are responsible for running the government machinery; of course, the office will not have the authority to investigate the Prime Minister. Also, while the office of the ombudsperson do not have the authority to actually press charges against the politicians they deem corrupt, they do have the authority to penalize the citizens who make the corruption accusation (in the event that the office finds their target of investigation innocent). [source: India Against Corruption]

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that this bill is a toothless tiger which will only foster the moral bankruptcy and the rampant corruption that is the Indian government.

Now, we come to the Jan Lokpal bill that is being proposed by the India Against Corruption lobby. The Jan Lokpal bill proposes that the office of the ombudsperson be an independent institution much like the supreme court or the election commission. It is to be appointed by a selection committee consisting of judges, ‘meritorious’ citizens who have won awards like the Nobel prize, Magsasay award, the Election Commission, Auditor General, and others. The bill proposes that central vigilance commission (which investigates corruption by the civil servants and government offices and departments) and the division of the Central Bureau of Investigation be folded into the office of the ombudsperson, so that there is a single office that investigates the charges of corruption in all branches and levels of the government. The bill also proposes that the office be an investigatory body with authority for law enforcement which allows the office to pursue criminal charges against the individuals who the office finds guilty. The bill also sets a time limit of one year to complete the investigation and one year for filing charges against the accused if sufficient evidence is available. The bill also have provisions for whistle blower protection, and a provision to recover the money or value lost by the government from the individual who was found guilty of corruption (which resulted in the aforementioned loss). [source: India Against Corruption]

On the face of it, the Jan Lokpal bill looks like a great idea, but reflecting on it, I am disturbed by the assumptions made in the bill. My objections are a little different from the kind I have seen online. For example, here are objections by [Rohan], [Offstumped], and [Business Standard]. I have both practical and philosophical objections. I present one of each.

On a practical level, the bill says little to address the issue of “who watches the watchman”. How do you ensure that the integrity of the ombudsperson’s office is not compromised, and if it is compromised, then how do you recognize and then fix it? Given the level of corruption in India, this is a real concern. Until this issue is addressed sufficiently, I am not too comfortable throwing my support behind it.

On a philosophical level, I have deeper concerns. The office proposed by the Jan Lokpal bill is a meritocratic institution which monitors a the government, a democratic institution. To put it differently, the bill makes a democratic institution accountable not to the people who voted, but to a meritocratic institution which can potentially exert it’s influence on the outcomes of the governance. The risk here is that such a meritocratic institution could develop the attitude of “people don’t know what they want, but we know what’s good for the people”, and use it’s authority to enforce an agenda that might not be the will of the people.

While I grant you that the current “democracy” in the India is really plutocracy in disguise, simply making it answerable to a meritocracy cannot be a solution to the problem at hand.

IMHO, the solution to this problem of corruption can only come from democracy itself. Not because democracy is somehow sacred, but because the institution that is corrupt is supposed to be democratic in the first place. Initiatives like “I Paid A Bribe” is a great example of such efforts. Another example of involving the citizenry was proposed by India’s chief economic advisor Kaushik Babu in which he proposed decriminalizing bribe giving and keep bribe-taking a crime. This will provide an incentive for the bribe giver to not conceal the fact that the bribe was given and even co-operate to ensure that the bribe taker is caught.
I wish I had something more constructive to offer, but unfortunately I don’t.

UPDATE: Realitycheck provides credible objections to the Jan Lokpal bill..

Lincoln used it brilliantly in his Cooper Union speech that made him an instant political star. He was politically a nobody when he gave that speech, and he started with “The facts with which I shall deal this evening are mainly old and familiar; nor is there anything new in the general use I shall make of them.” He started by lowering expectations and making the contents of his speech sound like something anyone could have come up with. It couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, it is argued that this speech was responsible for his nomination and eventual victory in the presidential race.

George W. Bush was a master of dubitatio. He started off many of his public engagements as a knucklehead and sparking the meme “bushism“. But no one can argue the success of this rhetorical move because it make him ‘likable’, ‘relatable’, or in rhetorical terms virtuous, to his audience. Once he had his audience seeing him favourably, and trusting him to lead like they would have liked to, he (by definition) became an effective leader. Now, whether the leadership was merited, or  how this leadership was utilized, is an entirely different matter.

The fact remains, both were masters of dubitatio, and they used it well.

Take any religious moral codex and it will emphasize of forgiving, and more about about forgiving even though one should not forget. This mantra worked well for, well, hundreds or even thousands of years, but now it seems to be coming under increasing attack. That attacks comes from the most unlikely source — the Internet!

Over the millenia, we (and by we, I mean human kind) have been able to forgive and let people start over mostly because we can forget. That is, we could forgive misdeeds because even though we remembered them at that time, we knew that our memory was fallible and so we would eventually forget the misdeeds. What’s the point of being unforgiving about something you don’t even remember? There is a lot of value in such forgiving because it makes you life a lot easier. It helps you be happy rather than be depressed by everything that has gone wrong because of someone else. In the end, if you did not forgive, then you will ending up hating a lot of people and not really know why! A tragic way to lead a life indeed.

Surprisingly, the Internet has changed all that because the Internet never forgets. So the traditional incentive to forgive (namely, that you will eventually forget it, so what’s the point in holding on to a grudge) is no longer there. Facebook, Google, Blogs, Twitter, message boards, discussion forums, all of them chronicle your life in a non-volatile fashion to enable you to recall everything about your life if you choose put your life up online. As it turns out, a lot of people put their life up online. So there you have it, now if you want to forgive, it would have to be true forgiveness, despite the fact that you will probably never forget.

How many people have such moral fortitute to be able to forgive despite not being able to forget?  Not many, I hazard to guess. In many ways,  forgetting may be viewed as our biological adaptation for a happier life. We have successfully invalidated that adaptation with the Internet. Now what?

The irony in this deal is that social networking, a mechanism created by technology to keep us happy by keeping us from becoming isolated has precipitated a side-effect that is now actively undermining the very some thing it strived to foster to begin with!

And I am not making all this up. This is not some high flying philosophical/spiritual rant with no material underpinning. Just take look at the news over the past year. Look at how many people we fired because of an indisrection that was years and years old and was discovered only recently thanks to Facebook. Consider the well-trained teachers who can now no longer teach because at some low point in their lives, they were forced to become an exotic dancer to pay their tuition and fees (Why? Because someone took her photograph during a bachlor party and put it up online). I can go on and on with more realistic (and potentially true) illustrations; but you get the point.

So now the question is, what are you prepared to truly forgive despite never forgeting. And this is not for any altruistic motive, but for a very selfish one. You happiness. Do you value your happiness enough to let someone else off the hook? Are you willing to forgive and never forget?

P.S.: Inspired by a post from Patrix and an NY Times article.

Here are links to various sections of the post, so that readers familiar with certain topics can skip them:

1. Definitions of P and NP
2. If P=NP, the good
3. If P=NP, the bad
4. If P=NP, the ugly (philosophical implications)
5. If P=NP, the irrelevant

Definitions of P and NP

First, let’s start with definitions. What is P and NP? These are terms from computer science that refer to difficulty of solving certain problems. At the risk of oversimplification, P refers to the class of problems that are ‘easy’ to solve (wikipedia has a more detailed explanation). Examples include addition, multiplication, finding shortest path from city A to city B, and so on. NP refers to the class of problems whose solutions are ‘easy’ to verify (but solving the problem need not be easy). For example, consider the game of Sudoku: while solving large Sudoku puzzles takes a lot of skill, given a filled-out Sudoku board, it is a fairly easy job to verify whether or not the board has been filled out correctly. This is an example of an NP problem (wikipedia article on NP). Note that all problems in P are also in NP.

Here I have to pause and emphasize that ‘easy’ in computer science doesn’t mean easy in the vernacular sense, or at times, even in practice. Please read the wikipedia articles on P and NP for a more detailed explanation.

The outstanding problem of our times in Computer Science is whether every problem in NP is also in P. That is, given a problem whose solution can be easily verified, can the solution be easily found as well? The Clay Mathematical Institute is even offering $1M to anyone who can solve it! Naturally, there have been several (unsuccessful) attempts, several views on the subject.

Great! So it is a problem for computer scientists, why should you care? To answer that question, let us look at the consequences for both P =NP and P != NP. [Back to top]

If P=NP, the good

If P=NP, then you could live in a potential utopia. Why? Because may challenging problems in science and technology are in NP and being able to solve them “efficiently” will pave way for things like a very quick understanding of our genome and protein folding. It will enable postal and courier services to schedule and route our packages is the most efficient way possible to minimize their costs and potentially passing the saving on to us. This can enable huge franchise stores like Walmart, Bestbuy, McDonalds, and other’s to manage their logistics so efficiently that 99c for a burger and $500 for a laptop could seem like price gouging! And these are just two examples of many, many more! Great, right! So we’d ideally want P to be equal to NP, right? [Back to top]

If P = NP, the bad

Well, there’s a dark side to this as well. See, as it turns out many of the “secure” encryptions in use today make use of a problem that is known to be in NP but no efficient solution for it exists. This problem is that of factorization. Given the candidate factors for a given number, it is easy to verify if they multiply to given you that number. If for large numbers, it is currently very difficult to find factors. If P = NP, then it is only a matter of time before factorization becomes easy, and all your credit card data, your usernames and passwords, your back account details, practically everything you thought was secure is available to anyone! Cryptography as we know it is dead! Of course, I am sure other methods of cryptography will be invented, but until then, our secrets are all sitting ducks! [Back to top]

If P =NP, the ugly

Unfortunately, that’s the least of the our problems if P =NP! Can you think of anything that is easy to verify but difficult to solve? How about golf? How about Tiger Wood’s ability to play those amazing shots when everyone else around him, despite their best training and skill, can’t seem to match his genius? While we all can verify that Tiger Wood’s golfing shots are masterly, verify few of us can really accomplish the same thing. That is, we can verify if someone is a genius very efficiently, but we can’t be geniuses ourselves very efficiently or quickly. So philosophically speaking, if P was equal to NP, then if we can appreciate a genius, then we can become one! That would reduce a genius to an average person and elevate and average person to a genius! That leaves little to wonder about creativity. Anyone who can appreciate Joe Satriani could become a master guitarists “easily”! How dull would that world be!

Here’s another ‘issue’: How may of you can come up with a new proof for the Pythagoras’ Theorem? How many of you can verify that a given proof for the Pythagoras’ Theorem is correct? See, as it turns out, verifying a proof, even for many complex claims and assertions, is much easier than actually coming with a proof. So ‘theorem proving‘, as it is called, is in NP, and proof verification is in P. But if P were equal to NP, we all could be mathematicians, physicists, and scientists and prove everything (that can proven within a reasonable amount to space, say a few hundred pages). In fact, we could even write a computer program to prove everything about the world. Not only would all of us eventually be out of a job because computer and robots would be able to do everything, even our lives would be boring and depressing because there are no intellectual pursuits left. Computers have solved everything we care about. That would make the entire universe a very dull place, philosophically speaking.

So I am really looking forward to the claim that P is not equal to NP actually being true! [Back to top]

If P=NP, the irrelevant

Ok, maybe I am being a little hyperbolic over this, because there are still many problems that are not only difficult to solve, they are even difficult to verify. Lets take chess as an example.

Given a Chess board in the middle of a game, and it was black’s move. If I told you that “bishop to C6″ is the best move to make, would you be able to verify it quickly? Maybe if it was near the ending, but in the middle of the game, it is very difficult to verify it! Why? Because Chess is even more difficult than NP. So rest assured, even if P=NP, it will still be a while before a computer beats humanity at chess.

But it does bring up an interesting question. Are there multiple levels of creativity? Is there one kind of creativity that allows us to recognize geniuses when we see them because we, as non-geniuses, can verify their creativity quickly (the kind of creativity that is in NP), and another kind of creativity that we cannot even verify efficiently? What does that even mean? Should we just have to take the creative person’s word for it that what he/she produces is, in fact, creative, and that they are indeed geniuses?

I would love your opinions on it.
[Back to top]

source: http://s242.photobucket.com/home/skullard

While most agree that blackmail — the act of threatening to disclose true, but damaging, (potentially secret) information about a party unless payment is made (to earn silence) — is a criminal act, it poses two interesting paradoxes in the theory of criminal justice.

The paradoxes are as follows:

• The first paradox is that “two rights make a wrong”; blackmail renders two otherwise perfectly legal actions illegal when performed in conjunction with each other. To use the example (albeit slightly modified) from Blackmail and Extortion – The Paradox Of Blackmail: “For example, if I threaten to expose a businessman’s income-tax evasion unless he gives me [sic] X amount of money, I have committed blackmail. I have a legal right to expose and to threaten to expose the tax evasion, and I have a legal right to request for [sic] X amount of money, but if I combine these rights I have committed blackmail. If both ends and means are otherwise legal, why is it blackmail to combine these legal ends and means?”
• The second paradox, persisting with the example above, is: while it is consider blackmail for me to threaten to expose a businessman’s income-tax evasion unless he gives me X amount of money, it is perfectly legitimate for the businessman to voluntarily give me X amount of money (despite I not asking him and not even suggesting that I have knowledge and proof of this tax evasion) to not expose his income-tax evasion; it does not constitute blackmail.

These two paradoxes have been a thorn in the side of jurisprudence for many decades and are yet to be resolved to everyone’s satisfaction. In fact, these paradoxes have inspired a significant minority of scholars and libertarians to advocate for decriminalizing blackmail! Seeing how Wikipedia does not have an article on this issue (yeah, it surprised me too!), I decided to write something up in lieu of it. Let’s take a closer look at each paradox.

Paradox 1: Two rights make a wrong

The crux of the issue is the following. If the threat to commit an act (like murder) is dangerous enough to be criminalized, then the action itself must be more dangerous, and therefore be a crime. However, if an act in itself is not dangerous enough to be criminalized, then it makes little sense to criminalize the threat to commit that act. Paradoxically, blackmail  is criminalized despite the fact that it constitutes a threat to commit an act that is otherwise perfectly legal!

The many justifications for criminalizing blackmail include: it is immoral; it encourages disclosure of incriminating evidence, thus deterring crime; it helps minimize the “victims” from resorting to “self help”, like killing or harming the blackmailer, or even suicide; and so on. Unfortunately, none of these arguments really resolve the paradox. They merely explain how criminalizing blackmail is a good thing, but don’t really explain the nature of blackmail itself and why it should be an exception (and hence trigger the paradox).

It is easy to see why blackmail involving incriminating evidence is criminalized. First, if the blackmailer is withholding the evidence, and worse, profiting from it, then he/she has failed in their moral and civic duty. Second, withhold such information is obstructing justice. Third, profiting from something that presents a danger to public safety is morally reprehensible. But what about blackmail involving embarrassing information that has been obtained lawfully and where the blackmailer is within his/her legal rights to disclose it to public?

Here, it is helpful to examine the relationship between the parties to see how blackmail is different from all other legal threats. Again, to quote from Blackmail and Extortion – The Paradox Of Blackmail:

Consider first informational blackmail. Here the blackmailer threatens to tell others damaging information about the blackmail victim unless the victim heeds the blackmailer’s request, usually a request for money. The blackmailer obtains what he wants by using extra leverage. But that leverage belongs more to a third person than to the blackmailer. The blackmail victim pays the blackmailer to avoid involving third parties; he pays to avoid being harmed by persons other than the blackmailer. … In effect, the blackmailer attempts to gain an advantage in return for suppressing someone else’s actual or potential interest. The blackmailer is negotiating for his own gain with someone else’s leverage or bargaining chips.

Ken Levy from Harvard Law School offers the following arguments in [39 Conn. L. Rev. 1051] to resolve the paradox (while maintaining blackmail as a criminal activity):

Levy argues that while the correlation between the legality of the action and the legality of the threat of the action is strong, it is by no means is a causal relationship. That is, there is no reason to believe that legal threatened action entails a legal threat. Consequently, the paradox is simply an artefact of our bias and not the law itself. But that still does not explain why blackmail should be illegal.

Levy goes on to argue that the reason for this is that right to life, physical well-being, emotional well-being family, liberty, and property constitute what are called “legally protected” interests, and it is in the interest of the people and society that criminal law protect people against any harm inflicted to these interests. This is why acts like homicide, kidnapping, rape, assault, harassment (among many others) and even threats to commit such acts are deemed criminal. So where does that leave blackmail? Blackmail threatens a person’s reputation, and reputation is not a legally protected interest (although we are protected against disclosure of untrue, but reputation damaging, information). In fact, right to reputation and right to free speech are often in conflict, and we as a society happen to value right to free speech higher than right to reputation. Consequently, right to free speech becomes legally protected, but right to reputation is not. So, isn’t that an argument for decriminalizing blackmail?

To this, Levy argues that although right to reputation has been trumped by right to free speech in set of legally protected interests, the former, nevertheless, embodies the “spirit” of legally protected interests and individuals do treat reputation as an enshrined right, and in fact, this is precisely the reason why blackmail does succeed! Therefore, it follows that in all cases where right to reputation does not compete with or imping upon the right to free speech, any threat to the right of reputation should be considered on par with threats to other legally protected interests. Hence, blackmail should be criminalized even though its constituent actions in isolation should remain legal. This, Levy argues, resolves the first paradox. Levy concludes “well as a novel positive justification for criminalizing blackmail threats. Once again, blackmail threats should be
criminal for the same reason that menacing, harassment, and stalking are: they involve the reasonable likelihood, not to mention intent, of putting the target into a state of especially great fear and anxiety. And we as a society have decided that-like life, physical well-being, family, liberty, and property-emotional well-being is a supremely valued interest and therefore should be protected from deliberately inflicted injury when no competing moral or institutional interests, such as freedom of speech, would themselves be compromised.”

Paradox 2: Blackmailer-initiated vs. blackmailee-initiated

Here, if A offers to conceal B’s embarrassing, but true, information in exchange for money, then A is committing a crime (blackmail). But if B voluntarily offers money to A in exchange for A’s secrecy, it is a legitimate transaction. What is the difference between the two transactions that makes the first one a crime and not the second one?

Interestingly, the libertarian philosophy sees no distinction between the two transactions because they both take place between consenting adults and are the same transaction except for the party that initiates that transaction. The libertarians often cite the legitimacy of the second type of transaction to argue for the legalization of blackmail. On the other end of the spectrum, Marxists also see no difference between the two transactions, and often cite the illegitimacy of the first type of transaction to argue for criminalizing blackamilee-initiated transactions. The Liberal, on the other hand, has the hardest task of all: to argue for criminalizing the first transaction as being a crime while simultaneously making a compelling case to keep the second transaction legal.

Kathyrn H. Christopher argues for the Liberal case in her paper “Toward a resolution of blackmail’s second paradox” that appeared in Arizona State Law Journal, 37(4), 1127-1152, 2005. Christopher provides the following example:

Acceptance of money, pursuant to an unsolicited offer, not to commit a criminal act is lawful. For example, suppose that Lilli (a robberee), who is very rich and extremely averse to being robbed or threatened with harm, offers everyone she meets $1000 if they agree not to rob her. The recipients of Lilli’s offer neither insinuated they would rob her nor had any intention of robbing her—Lilli’s offer is entirely unsolicited. The recipients even inform Lilli of their lack of inclination to rob her. But Lilli is not to be denied, reiterates the offer, and the recipients finally accept. Have the recipients committed a crime by accepting Lilli’s money? Presumably not. They neither (impliedly or expressly) threatened Lilli, nor defrauded her, nor accepted money under false pretences. Thus, the recipients commit no crime by accepting Lilli’s money in return for agreeing not to rob her or threaten her with harm.

If accepting money, pursuant to an entirely unsolicited offer, not to commit a criminal act against the offeror is not a crime, then a fortiori accepting money (under the same circumstances) not to commit a lawful act must also not be a crime. If only one of the two were to be criminalized, it would be accepting money not to commit a criminal act. …one has the right to commit lawful acts. Thus, one should also have the right to accept money for foregoing the right to do that which one has a right to do.

Consequently, it should be legal for A to offer money to B so that B exercises B’s right to keep some (non-incriminating, but embarrassing) information about A secret.

Christopher then strengthens her argument with another example. Suppose blackmailee-initiated transaction was also criminalized, then

Case 1: Suppose that Blackmailer utters the following conventional blackmail threat to Blackmailee: “If you do not pay me $2000, then I will reveal your embarrassing secret.” Blackmailer accepts the $2000 payment from Blackmailee.
Outcome: Blackmailer is criminally liable for one count of blackmail.
Case 2: Suppose that Blackmailee 2 makes an unsolicited offer to pay $500 to Blackmailer 2 in return for Blackmailer 2 concealing Blackmailee 2’s secret. Blackmailer 2 rejects the offer. Blackmailer 2 counteroffers by uttering the conventional blackmail proposal (the same proposal as uttered by Blackmailer 1 above). Blackmailee 2 rejects the proposal and counteroffers $1000. Blackmailer 2 accepts these terms. Blackmailee 2 pays the money to Blackmailer 2 who accepts the payment.
Outcome: Blackmailer 2 is criminally liable for two counts of blackmail (or one count of blackmail and one count of the new crime of accepting money pursuant to a blackmailee’s offer of money).

Despite Blackmailer 2 obtaining one-half of the money that lackmailer obtained, Blackmailer 2 is, in a sense, twice as criminally liable as Blackmailer. Both Blackmailer and Blackmailer 2 commit the traditional offense of blackmail by uttering the threat. But unlike Blackmailer, Blackmailer 2 also commits a second count of blackmail

This is just plain absurd! Therefore, Christopher argues, that blackmailee-initiated transactions should remain legitimate. Thus resolving the second paradox.

Disclaimer: This post merely summaries other individuals’ research and is not the authors original intellectual property. All sources have been cited where appropriate. If there has been a misappropriation or negligence to cite some sources, I apologize and assure you that it was completely accidental. If you do notice something of this nature, please contact me and I will remedy the issue.

Here is the first video of the 12 [link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBdfcR-8hEY]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBdfcR-8hEY