Original headline/title was "Once you’ve dehumanized drug offenders, it’s easy to steal their identities". Just got changed to "Government Set Up a Fake Facebook Page in This Woman’s Name"
We changed the URL because HN prefers original sources, and the original story was the Buzzfeed piece. On the other hand, neither article is an obvious fit for HN, so I'm not sure what the right call is. Suggestions are welcome but may not be acted on until morning here.
I think Radley's piece was a great fit. It was about identity theft, which itself is usually on-topic, and also about government activity rubbing up against the norms and policies of an online social network, which is usually on-topic.
Here's the thesis (and spirit) that makes Radley's piece more HN relevant, to me:
It shouldn’t be all that surprising, then, when drug enforcement officials subsequently treat drug offenders as something less than human. If you aren’t fully human, you have no identity to steal.
