Slashdot Mirror

It doesn't matter what they consider themselves. It matters what they are.

This document from the ACLU sets out some examples of "traditional public spaces" where the 1st applies. Note that there are many exceptions, including schools, colleges and national parks. So it's not at all clear that Twitter would be considered a "traditional public space", and in fact it seems pretty unlikely if private spaces like colleges and government owned ones like national parks are not.

Please do something about the usurpation of the Yakima City Council: https://www.aclu-wa.org/cases/...

Thanx

Please do something about the usurpation of the Yakima City Council: https://www.aclu-wa.org/cases/...

We need help. The city of Yakima, WA has been commandeered by a drug cartel and human trafficking (infants, kids) operation. See the following links:
https://aclu-wa.org/news/court...
-The ACLU "lawsuit" was a scam.
https://www.yakimawa.gov/counc...
-The four people in the back row are the "new" city council members. They should be rotting in prison right now.

This is all part of a much more general issue: restriction and even legal prosecution of "pre-crime activities".

- You get DRM-encumbered products, because manufacturers are afraid you might copy the product. Copying is an action that has many uses; piracy is only one of many possibilities.

- The DMCA prohibits circumvention of protective measures, because...why? The circumvention isn't the problem, nor are most of the reasons you might circumvent something. It's all about the relatively rare edge cases that might be illegal. Consider hacking into your car's computer, for example: there are lots of reasons to do this, from curiousity to performing minor repairs yourself.

This mentality goes a lot farther than media and computers:

- Consider sexting: Why, exactly, is it illegal to send sexy pictures of a 17 year old?. Doing so may be naive, and there are potential crimes, but the vast majority of cases are boyfriend/girlfriend exchanges. Again: it's the crimes that should be prohibited, not the behavior that might lead to them.

Once you start looking:

- Why should it be illegal to fly drones near a wildfire? Interfering with firefighting efforts is the problem, but if there are no aircraft involved, where's the problem?

- Why should it be illegal to modify your router, as long as you don't cause interference with other devices?

- Why should it be illegal to do drugs, as long as you only affect yourself?

- Why should it be illegal to host a poker tournament in your home?

- Why should it be illegal to drive without wearing your seatbelt?

- Why should there be a minimum drinking age?

Not too long ago, I came home from work, grabbed a beer, and took a lazy evening's walk through the woods near my house. In the US, that would be illegal, because...why, exactly?

And on, and on...law after law that isn't about restricting actual harmful behavior, but rather restricting innocent activities that have the merest potential for harm.

Ah, if *most* jurisdictions have provisions, that means it's not a problem? For example, feel free to peruse the relevant WA state legal code and point out the relevant provision (spoiler: the ACLU doesn't seem to think it exists). In any case, 18 US code 2251, a law against child porn is a federal law and - while I believe it only covers inter-state or foreign transmission - contains no such provisions. Fortunately, minors are definitely never in a different state from their SOs, and if they somehow were, would never request or send naughty pictures, right? Not that I know of any cases of the feds prosecuting such a case of private communications between consenting teens, but if they did the law would appear to be on their side.

While states certainly have some de facto control over what cases they will prosecute, in many cases they have certainly attempted to convict sexting teens as child pornographers, and sometimes they have succeeded. The situation does seem less outrageous than I believed it to be, especially after the first few cases to make the news generated enough outrage at this travesty, but it's still far from perfect.

http://www.cnet.com/news/polic... - 17 and 16 year old in Florida prosecuted, found guilty, conviction upheld on appeal.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/2... - 15 year old arrested on felony charge (apparently got put on no-cell-phone-or-unsupervised-Internet probation, charges probably dropped afterward)
http://www.foxnews.com/story/2... - 7 teens charged with felonies, at least 6 plea bargained to misdemeanors (better than it could have been, still very wrong)
http://laist.com/2013/05/17/re... - Key quote: "... anyone who sends obscene images of persons under the age of 18, whether it’s of themselves or someone else, are violating child pornography laws,” San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Dept.
https://www.washingtonpost.com... - Cops photographing a 17-year-old's junk to try and enter the pictures as evidence. They eventually backed down, after massive public ridicule, on the plan to have him given an injection to make him erect before photographing him *again*.
http://pilotonline.com/news/go... - Provisions, you say? Nope, can't even downgrade it to a misdemeanor, gotta stay a felony!

Sorry for doing the research...

Call the ACLU, sue the Police department, and then sue the ATM company. This is what the ACLU exists for, they will be happy to help you. They even helped another photographer in your town recently.

Posting the phone number for the ATM company on your blog is a waste of time. Call the ACLU and they will help unleash a can of whoop-ass.

Only if they have a warrant. At least, I think that's what I last heard with the GPS tracking police debacle. Somehow these twats think they can get around that, though.

The government has decided that anybody is basically allowed to do anything they like to students. You have no protection against search&seizure, [...] and no first [...] ammendment rights.

Not true. Students unfortunately don't share all the constitutional protections that the rest of us have, but (1) students can't be searched without reasonable grounds to believe they're violating the law or school codes, (2) students can't be prohibited from distributing their own newsletters. Here are some examples of the student rights my state's ACLU has defended, and this page has some information about students' first amendment rights in particular.

The government has decided that anybody is basically allowed to do anything they like to students. You have no protection against search&seizure, [...] and no first [...] ammendment rights.

Not true. Students unfortunately don't share all the constitutional protections that the rest of us have, but (1) students can't be searched without reasonable grounds to believe they're violating the law or school codes, (2) students can't be prohibited from distributing their own newsletters. Here are some examples of the student rights my state's ACLU has defended, and this page has some information about students' first amendment rights in particular.

There is a huge amount of information on the net about the increasing corporatization of America. From the WTO protests (and presidential primary demonstrations), to activism around Biotechnology, copyright extensions, trademark and trade secrets litigation, patents on software, and on DNA.

I think that this will be the predominant political issue in the coming decade or two (and I think John McCain's showing in the republican presidential primary was in large part an effect of his stance on campaign finance reform, which is closely tied to all of these issues.)

This would be very strange. The ACLU has a report on Police misbehavior in the WTO protests in Seattle where they found that exactly what the activists claimed had happened was what happened, and the claims about mistreatment in Philly right now are of the same nature.

While I believe that, for the most part, there is far too much litigation going on in the US, there are times when suing is most certainly a reasonable and proper course of action.

In 1997, Mark Iversen sued the Kent School District because they failed to protect him from the harrasment he experienced as a high school student because he was perceived as being gay. In 1998, the school district settled the suit for $40,000. I wonder how many submitters of stories of "High School Hell" would be justified in filing a similar lawsuit.

While I have never experienced the same horrors many here have described, as both a geek and a gay man, I understand where a lot of these stories are coming from. Kids can be terribly cruel, I don't think anybody denies this. What is worse, however, are actions of parents and teachers that ACCEPT AND EVEN ENCOURAGE HARASSMENT.

I cannot condone what the boys in Colorado did--violence is never an acceptable solution. But if violence is not a solution, neither is standing idly by and watching kids get picked on, beat up, harrassed, and humiliated. If we, as a culture, want to stop this sort of thing from happening time and time again, perhaps we would be better off letting people wear trench coats and play video games and concentrate instead on stopping verbal and physical abuse in schools and in homes. Perhaps instead of persecuting people who dare to be different, it would be in our interests to hire educators who refuse to be complacent in the face of bigotry.