Even our legal system recognizes it as slave labor. The thirteenth amendment specifically says: "neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

> and not straight up forced labour?

Well you’re making the assumption that prisoners are forced to do this work rather than opting to in order to make a little money for snacks and/or make a case for good behavior when they come before the parole board.

They can say no. These Prisons incentivize inmates to opt in by claiming that prisoners develop employable marketable skills and that the work leaves a a good mark on their record. It can also pay out cents to a few dollars an hour (or nothing at all)

It’s not quite slave labor but it probably should be compensated better at the minimum.

> These people are imprisoned, and I'm assuming forced to do this work

This is an incorrect assumption, at least in my state. It’s a job that they can apply for and opt in to do.

The debate is about their hourly wage.

There is a possibility of forced penal labor, as I understand it, but it’s mostly things like being forced to do cleaning duties, road cleanup, etc.

I'm not justifying slave labor. I'm pointing out that they should be paid more. They'll gladly make the plates and be happy doing it. Getting outside means the world to them. Don't hate them for making the plates, hate the system for putting them into slave labor, but at the same time show some compassion for those who are trying to live and be, normal productive members of society (even if it is at shotgun point).

My point is, it's not the employee and where that employee makes the product, it's the company that abuses that employee to make the product for you.

So no, not justifying slave labor, but I am justifying using prison labor (at minimum wage) to give them a chance at rehabilitation and/or restitution.

>Prisons should not be allowed to be a profit center.

That ship sailed post American Civil-War. We've made it part of our culture. Every prison charges their inmates to be there. Per Diems. It used to be tax payers but... they found out they could double dip.

Yes, it's unfair to force a human being into labor. Paid or unpaid. It should be voluntary. Community Service as a punishment is different. That's a do labor or else do time so you're trading labor for hours/time. Paid in trust. I have issue with do time and do labor as a form of punishment without reward.

Most inmates are incarcerated due to circumstance. They lacked the ability to better their lives and required monies to live, so they resorted to crime. Given a chance, many inmates get degrees behind bars, learn skills, write books, practice art.

It's technically optional in most institutions, but not practically optional. For instance, a lot of labor can reduce your sentence, can give you better housing and can enable you to afford things on commissary you might need (e.g. phone time, hygiene products etc).

Those programs you’re referring to in your quote are work within the prison itself:

> Institution work assignments include employment in areas like food service or the warehouse, or work as an inmate orderly, plumber, painter, or groundskeeper.

Meaning some prisoners work in the kitchen preparing food for other inmates, others are on clean up duty, and so on. You could argue that nobody in prison should have to participate in anything inside their community and that’s a valid debate to be had.

In my state, the jobs that provide things outside of prison are applied for.

Two answers:

1. Why should they be restricted to ludicrously low wages? If they're producing something of value, they should be compensated. Not only is it morally wrong to, you know, enslave people, on a more practical level it would be very helpful for people who are leaving prison after serving their sentence to actually have some money saved up, so they have better opportunities, to avoid recidivism.

2. The reason they can sit on their ass and consume what they produce is that they effectively become wards of the state. They're still human beings, and if we have decided to incarcerate them, we become responsible for them, and they still have rights as human beings.

A humble job is fine; I'm not saying they should be sitting in an aeron chair bullshitting on Slack for 8 hours a day. But slavery for pennies on the hour is wrong.

Often it is.

Often it is not.

Often, they too are a victim of our judicial system, and we can't just ignore them due to the peers we locked them in with.

Not really? I mean, when you compare the number of people who have committed a "horrific violent" crime to the total number of people caught up in the US prison system, I expect it's not "often".

Weed, though. In some states, now legal.

This. When I moved from Ontario, Canada (where they charge a yearly fee for them), to CA, I was all excited to get a vanity plate - until I saw they also charge a yearly fee..

In the most ironic twist of all - Ontario did away with license plate renewals a few years ago, and now, I would actually consider a vanity plate..

I've always wondered if a regular plate was better for avoiding speeding tickets - a vanity plate is much easier to validate, IMHO.

I guess you could get the tax payers to pay for it.

Exactly. If you find an unlocked warehouse, even if you are supposed to pick up something of yours, and instead of directly complaining you also ransack everything, you’re going to catch some heat.

> I think you are missing some nuance here. They found a vulnerability where they could just increment an "id" and get access to another user's information.

That's not nuance; the information was publically available on the internet without any security. Even search engines had indexed it before it was patched.

> They then went ahead and scraped as much as they could.

They told the press instead of releasing it.

> AT&T did not leak the information, Andrew did!

So AT&T dumping it all onto the open internet without any security isn't culpable, but the person who let the press know that their information was available to everyone is. That's quite an interesting take.

I'm struggling to see the nuance... You just repeated back what I already said, but added that you dislike the person personally, which is absolutely fine, but we're talking about miscarriages of justice not running a popularity contest. If you feel like they committed other crimes (which they likely did per Wikipedia), that is unrelated to THIS supposed crime.

> Was the vulnerability extremely basic? Yes.

There was no vulnerability. You just needed to request a record from a public web-server, which the server happily provided with no extra steps.

Let me ask this: When you request e.g. google.com, and they return a HTTP response, why is that not a "vulnerability?" Because we'd both agree it objectively is not. So then, why, when AT&T provides a URL with information they're meant to keep private but available to the public, and you then request it, that is suddenly a "vulnerability?"

Here is the actual URL you needed to call:

https://dcp2.att.com/OEPNDClient/openPage?IMEI=0&ICCID=<consecutive id>

You just needed to take any iPad's ICC ID and +1 for the next customer's record. So what is the "vulnerability?" Being able to count consecutively?

"The guy who did it sucked" is generally not a good justification.

It's an easy trap to fall into (we all want consequences for shitty people), but it's also a blurry line to hold.

"First they came…"