Unabomber Property Up For Creepy Online Auction

coondoggie writes "Ok this is kind of creepy. The US Marshalls Office today said it will hold an online auction of the personal effects of the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski. The auction will run until June 2 and will include personal documents, such as driver's licenses, birth certificates, deeds, checks, academic transcripts, photos, and his handwritten codes; typewriters; tools; clothing; watches; several hundred books; and more than 20,000 pages of written documents, including the original handwritten and typewritten versions of the 'Unabom Manifesto.'"

Re:In your face

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I'm certain that watching the state sneeringly auction off his personal effects on the internet from his cage for the amusement of the crowd will serve as a devastating rebuke to his thesis that technology inevitably tightens its grip on the individual and drives them to ever shallower and more inauthentic attempts at activity.

I find the guy's terrorist activities deeply distasteful, and he certainly deserves to rot in jail for them; but as a theorist of the sociology of technological advance, he is actually pretty underrated...

Psychological Experiments

[waterford0069]

What's sad about this is that Kaczynski was the subject of what I'll argue were some pretty wicked and unethical psychological experiments when he was in school - long before he ever became a danger to the world. Some have suggested that these experiments pushed him over the edge.

Re:None of those things are private

[UnknowingFool]

None of the items mentioned can be considered private records. Driver's licenses, birth certificates, deeds, and academic transcripts are publicly accessible anyway, even before they become evidence in a criminal trial.

Birth certificates and academic transcripts are considered private. Except for immediate families of the person but I can assure you that you cannot get these records of individuals from the state. That was part of the BS of the whole Birther controversy with Birthers complaining that somehow Hawaii was making an exception for Obama when it is clear in all states that birth certificates are not public records.

The other items became public information or government property once they were entered into evidence in the court proceedings against him, unless Kaczynski's attorney won a court order to have the evidence sealed or to have the items returned to him - which he didn't.

The existence of property held by the state does not automatically make a piece of property eligible for public viewing. In the many cases, all the state did was to list the property as in their possession as required by law; the state did not list the contents (or make it available to the public) especially if the piece of evidence was not used at trial.