U.S. Supreme Court: Public Anonymity No Right

Anonymous Arrestee writes "Today the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that anybody can be compelled at any time to identify themselves, if a police officer asks. People who refuse to identify themselves, even if they are not suspected of a crime, will be arrested. Sound Orwellian? The Supreme Court also said people who are suspected of another crime might not be subject to arrest for not revealing their name. On this latter point, someone will have to bring a separate case. And the SCOTUS is at liberty not to hear any case it doesn't like. The case is Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial District Court of Nevada [pdf]. Previous Slashdot story here."

Comments

"And the SCOTUS is at liberty not to hear any case

[mandalayx]

"And the SCOTUS is at liberty not to hear any case it doesn't like."

How does that make sense at all?

I think this law seems pretty shitty, but that line seemed a bit like flamebait to me.

"Sound Orwellian?"

Yes it does to me, but the commentary in the news article isn't necessary. Let me come to my own opinion, thanks.

PS - there is also a ruling on Intel v. AMD from today (see the SCOTUS website) but I wasn't able to sort through the legalese.

Re:Easy way out

[lewp]

Doh! Now we'll never catch Osama.

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

I browse at +1. ACs need not reply.

I call bullcrap. In fact, I bet you read this very post, but you are too proud to admit it.

Re:cowards hide anonymously

[Halfbaked Plan]

And that's the reason why. For voting.

Not so you can post nekkid pictures of your sister on Usenet.

Re:cowards hide anonymously

[sp0rk173]

The lack of skill with which you type belies the cogency of your wisdom.

Re:Easy way out

[lewp]

That's not offtopic, motherbitches!

Re:Identify only in Specific Cases

[mandalayx]

There's a damn good argument to be made that Slashdot is best served when the stories are inflammatory and riddled with falsehoods.

I agree completely. Interesting, since in a prior news post today, you completely disagreed with all of my comments :)

OFFTOPIC?Asymmetric Propaganda - Iraq Torture Vid

[rm3friskerFTN]

Would someone be so kind as to provide a MIRROR site or two for the video? Iraqi Torture Videos (sorry windows only)

hand amputation

finger chopping

beating with metal pipe

arm breaking with metal pipe
... presumably more videos exist but DOD refuses to release them

From the Wall Street Jounal Online Edition

The American Enterprise Institute held an unusual video screening [several days ago], and hardly anyone showed up. One who did was the New York Post's Deborah Orin:

The video only lasts four minutes or so--gruesome scenes of torture from the days when Saddam Hussein's thugs ruled Abu Ghraib prison. I couldn't bear to watch, so I walked out until it was over.

Some who stayed wished they hadn't. They told of savage scenes of decapitation, fingers chopped off one by one, tongues hacked out with a razor blade--all while victims shriek in pain and the thugs chant Saddam's praises.

Saddam's henchmen took the videos as newsreels to document their deeds in honor of their leader.

But these awful images didn't show up on American TV news.

In fact, just four or five reporters showed up for the screening at the American Enterprise Institute think tank, which says it got the video via the Pentagon. Fewer wrote about it.

We saw part of this video a few weeks back, and indeed it is every bit as horrific as Orin's fellow reporters describe. Our computer crashed about a third of the way through and we didn't have the stomach to start watching again after rebooting. So we can certainly understand why television news outlets would see it as unfit to air.

As Orin notes, this "raises a very complex problem in the War on Terror. It's worse than creating moral equivalence between Saddam's tortures and prisoner abuse by U.S. troops. It's that we do far more to highlight our own wrongdoings precisely because they are less appalling."

Part of the problem may be that the press hasn't quite figured out how to deal with such "asymmetric propaganda," [the internet changes everything ;-];-];-] as Orin calls it. Yet it doesn't seem that it would be that hard to provide context--to make sure that every story about American abuses at Abu Ghraib also included graphic descriptions of what went on there before Iraq's liberation.

[snip][snip][snip]

Re:Identify only in Specific Cases

[CGP314]

Grandparent: The job of the editors is to post stories which generate hits to the site. Slashdot plays the self serving FUD game just as well as your favorite evil mega-corp.

Parent: Most insightful comment I've seen posted here all day. There's a damn good argument to be made that Slashdot is best served when the stories are inflammatory and riddled with falsehoods.

It's something that's always bugged me about slashdot, and I used to not post to stories out of some kind of vague principle. I figured that I was generating content (thus money -- albeit a small about) for them without getting anything in return and I didn't like it. I did however work on projects like Wiktionary, and smaller wikis like the open guide to London because no one was making any money off my labor in that case.

But, eventually I did start posting to slashdot when I started my own website. I figured the publicity that I could get from this site for my blog far, far out weighed the amount of money my comment on slashdot was worth. So it's a good deal for everyone, I make self-serving links to my own sites and get many regular readers from slashdot, and slashdot gets my own little contribution to their content pile and thus their coffers.

Still though, it does annoy me that it is in their best interest to have stories that end in either inflammatory or inaccurate comments.

Re:Backwards reasoning...

[yerfatma]

That's smart.

You forgot to mod me up then. Guilty conscience?