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Blogging All the Way to Jail
Glyn writes "Time magazine is reporting on Josh Wolf the 'first blogger to be targeted by federal authorities for not cooperating with a grand jury.' Josh would have normally been protected from government coercion by California state shield laws but the prosecutors have argued its a federal matter, using quite shaky logic. Josh's blog is being updated by his mother, providing updates on what is happening. From the article: '"Not only does this logic seem silly," Wolf told TIME in June after receiving his final subpoena, "but if unchallenged it will have a deleterious effect on the state protections afforded to many journalists, both independent and those that are part of the established media." Judge William Alsup of Federal District Court rejected Wolf's arguments, and declared him in contempt of court. So he is now being held in a detention center in Dublin, Calif, where he could remain until next July.'"
I guess I know know what to think. On one hand, I agree with Josh in that if current laws say that unpublished work can remain confidential. I think that gets diminished a little when get selectively chooses to show clips of the video, but I probably agree with his side of the argument, at least in principal.
However, I see the flip side where a crime was committed (the burning of the police car) and the police have a right and duty to investigate the crime. At least from the Time write-up it wasn't like the police crashed his colo, forcible removed his servers, etc. It was a grand jury that subpoenaed him for the evidence. That's their job. Josh had the right to ignore the subpoena to which the Judge charged him with contempt.
I won't argue that saying it's a federal issue because SFPD gets federal funding is a little shady. Every government organization gets federal funding in some way so every government lawsuit should be transferred to federal court. The whole jurisdiction issue aside, it seems to me that things are working as they are suppose to. If you don't like how the laws are written, that's fine, then lobby to get them changed. But don't bitch and moan when the letter of the law is followed.
You can count on this: when all is said and done, this guy will not be compensated in any way for government's attack on his god-given right to freedom. He will be treated like a suspect even after he is found to be innocent. Makes you feel good about living under big government, doesn't it?
This is flatly outrageous. If every one of us gives a buck to this guy's legal fund, we could actually change federal policy. Even if the court rules that the feds acted properly, it's only a buck. Instead of a soda or a scratch ticket, try gambling on something important today.
-1 raving lunatic; +6 subGenius... Things even out...
Anyone who still believes that we retain those rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights is off his rocker. Something tells me the US is in need of a (peaceful) revolution in order to shake out the evils that are festering.
Without a free press, really, what are we basing this 'democracy' on?
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
"If you videotape a crime then you are obligated to report it. "
That cuts both ways, but as we've seen, NYPD among others has a habit of providing EDITED TAPES when supoeaed.
IF you want to hold The People to a standard, FIRST hold The Man to it.
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
Does voting work? Let's have a look...
The democratic process has allowed the US government to expand in power beyond their wildest dreams. The US government now holds the largest and most powerful world empire that has ever existed, with military bases in over 150 countries and economic power that can be leveraged in any direction for any purpose. Every congressman and senator is a multi-millionaire, driven around like kings at the taxpayer's expense, exploiting a government which is so deeply entangled in the economy that corruption is the rule, not the exception.
The big-time politician's salary exists only for show.
Most Americans have no idea there was a time when politicians were regular old joes and the president walked out of the white house and down the street alone, shaking hands and talking to anyone who bothered to greet him.
Yes, for the power elite, voting worked like an absolute charm.
(Sarcasm aside, I no longer belive it is possible for a strictly limited, constitutional government to exist for more than 25 years before it starts the downward spiral into oppression and corruption.)
Well I just read TFA and I didn't see a reference to his mother continuing to blog as the reason cited for this being a federal case. My understanding from reading TFA is that the footage that Josh shot was of G8 protestors lighting a police car on fire. Because the Fed Gov gives money to CA for "anti-terrorism" which is then used to fund things like police cars this is now a federal matter. Becasue we all know a guy who is politically active but doesn't agree with the current ruling party is just a half step away from Osama Bin Laden. Especially when he is prone to carryng a video camera with him everywhere he goes.
We have truly become a police state. In the name of anti-terrorism everything Americans know and love about the USA is quickly dieing.
It's been quoted a thousand times but I think in this context it bears repeating:
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Ben Franklin
1775
Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
The world is not this simple. It is not black or white. Analogy are fine for helping to describe something, or explain something, but not for judging whether something is right or wrong.
That is why we have judges in a court of law, because there are a number of ways of interpreting the law as well as criminal actions.
You comparison of a police car on fire, to the rape of a 12 year old girl are so different, that it disgusting of you to even try to compare them. It cheapens the whole debate. Might as well bring in Nazis concentration camps as well.
If you'd bothered reading the article before commenting, you'd know that he thinks the feds want video footage to identify activists not involved in the arson of the car.
yes, the operative words being 'he thinks'. But if he thinks that the feds haven't already got footage of every 'activist' at that G8 protest, he's a fool. What they seem to not have decent footage of is those activists setting fire to a car.
I still don't see his problem, unless he thinks arson is a legitimate political tool.
If the police car in question is federal property because some federal funds went towards its purchase, then it logically follows that the folks who allegedly set it on fire were burning their own property, because, as taxpayers, they own the federal government.
As the latter part of that argument doesn't hold water, neither should the former.
www.wavefront-av.com
If you are a journalist covering a riot, or any large social diturbance, you are going to see crimes. If you can be compelled to show criminals on the tape, then pretty soon no journalist will cover such things for fear of retribution from the rioters, who know that the guy taping them will have to hand his tape over to the feds. Not much longer, and there won't be any tapes of such things. If you took it to an extreme, we'd have a Tiananmen Square sort of deal, only for slightly different reasons.
BSD: The most efficient way of subsidizing the enemy.
You need to realize that simply holding a camera does not make you a journalist. People cannot be allowed to set fire to police cars! This was a disgusting act that must be punished severely. I do not see how this would be anything but a federal matter.
Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.
According to Josh there is no evidence of crime on the tape. Don't mistake the power of blogging for some amateurish attempt at mimicking the media. When our country was founded, by people who would be called terrorists today BTW, the people who got the word out were amateur journalists publishing pamphlets and newsletters. Whatever your political views today you would be a fool to suggest we take the power for regular Joes like you and me to publish news. If you take the time to put something together that is based on facts and current events and then publish then you are a journalist, plain and simple. And, especially for political speech, you should be able to enjoy the rights afforded journalism.
And as for your little girl, we'll talk about that when it happens.
Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
He's protecting activists' anonymity. Even if he were only protecting some punks who lit a car on fire (and I don't think he is), then he still shouldn't have to hand over his videos, or the next time he tries to go record video in a chaotic situation, those punks will light him on fire. No journalist, no matter how big or small, should be forced to be an agent of the police.
BSD: The most efficient way of subsidizing the enemy.
Once again :-
These people were taking part in a public demonstration. The whole point of which is to tell the world what your beliefs are. It is not Wolf who is outing these people, whether they are setting a car on fire or not, they have outed themselves.
They still shouldn't have to give up the tapes if they don't want to. If someone records a video and will be required to release it (and they don't want to), then they either won't record the video, or edit it and put out the edited version anonymously, or destroy it when they're done. An edited video would be better than nothing, which is very well what the public would get if you give a good incentive not to tape things of an instigative nature.
What if this guy had received a tape of a 12 year old girl getting raped, edited out the rapist, and then posted it onto his blog. Would people still be so adamant that he deserves some sort of media shield?
That would be child pornography, which would be quite covered under different laws.
I think that people are applying the "common sense" test instead of really thinking through the implications of media shield laws, especially in a world where everyone can be the media. It is "common sense" that he would have to give up a video of a little girl getting raped, but not "common sense" that he has to give up a video of a police car being destroyed.
I respectfully suggest that you yourself aren't thinking through the implications as far as you could. It seems to me that if the government requires any sort of recording to be given to the court, for whatever reason, no one will be willing to take such recordings. If Mr. Wolf is indeed pressed hard enough to relinquish his video, then videos like it will only be posted anonymously, and with less frequency. What good does that do anyone? It would be the same, only journalists willing to take such video will be forced to do their work while worrying that someone would find their identity. They would be moved to the fringes of legitimacy, and we would be a little closer to state run, or at least state-approved journalism.
Should the media never be forced to give up evidence of a crime, even in extreme cases like rape and murder?
They should not. Anything that the media is forced to give up will cease in short order, which does no good for the public.
BSD: The most efficient way of subsidizing the enemy.
Define journalist for us, then. Or would you prefer that the government defined it?
Remember long ago that the British government wanted to stifle our pamphleteering, which was aimed at destroying British loyalty. Our forefathers ensured that we would always have this right when they created the first amendment.
Josh Wolf's mother gets stabbed in the street and the attacker is caught on a video camera by someone who refuses to hand over the video tape.
What's Josh going to want to happen THEN?
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Or can you only be willing to stand up for your beliefs when there's no chance of repercussions?
James Madison was one of those people - I'm sure if you'd been around back when the father of the consitution was (anonymously) writing the federalist papers, you would have said to him "Can you only be willing to stand up for your beliefs when there's no chance of repercussions?"
But that's all a little beside the point - none of the people in the videos are being given a choice, its the blogger who's deciding....
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Okay, so maybe shield laws suck. Maybe not. But if the state of California has one, it has to abide by it. Playing jurisdictional games that make a mockery of the law to circumvent a shield law is entirely unacceptable. If you really want to change this, then you should convince the people of California that they need to repeal or modify their shield laws using the arguments you outlined above instead of posting them on Slashdot to justify the blatant falsehoods being perpetrated by a judge to circumvent them.
No, but police should not be allowed to sieze anything they want in an investigation, especially from someone who is not a suspect in said suspected crime. Siezing my car because it may have driven past the flaming police car is (or should be) illegal.
Excuse my speling.
Making The Bar Project
Thank you.
The number of people replying "Just show the tape, if it has no crimes" in this thread really bothers me. It bothers me because of the shortsightedness/lack of history awareness they show.
Operations such as cointelpro are almost certainly continuing to operate. People like Josh Wolf are the targets. The people most likely to be on his tapes are his friends, family & associates.
If he hands over these tapes, he can expect everyone on them to be harassed. Frankly, thank the gods for people like him - they stand between us & a far more opressive world.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Im not sure what your definition is, but here are a few definitions to keep you occipied.
FWIW this man is a journalist and by the most technical means ANYONE holding a camera recording footage to be reported to the general public is a journalist. Not just someone who gets a paycheck from a major news media company.
This is what is sad about our country these days, people assume that to do things, even simple things you must be registered and have some form of permission from some higher power. This is supposed to be a free country not free so long as its ok with mommy Administrative branch and daddy Judicial branch. Sadly thats what we are coming to.
"Don't mess with him, he taunts the happy fun ball."
It seems that the police have a warrent. I get the feeling that the police are not revealing everything they know (which is normal proceedure for an ongoing investigation). The judge must have been told something else to make him issue a warrent.
Here is something that bothers me: if he did not record anything illegal, which is his claim, why won't he testify before the grand jury? How can he try to hide behind a shield law if he did not record any crime? If he is telling the truth, it seems like his testimony would be a quick "No sir, I have never seen the defendants before at any time in my life." And if his video is not damaging to the defendants, why not release it? He has no sources to protect, which is a big reason they have shield laws in the first place.
Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.
you have all 3 branches of government.
It means you pay a lot of lip service to state's rights.
2 years and no mod points. Join reddit. Because openness is good.
So in choosing to protect his friends from being prosecuted for the crime of arson over choosing to protect the rest of us from being victims of an arson fire makes for a better civilization?
:-)
Whoops, you made a typo - let me correct it for you:
So in choosing to protect his friends from being harassed for peaceful participation in a protest, thus helping to protect the rest of us from being victims of similar harrassment make for a better civilization?
What an enlightened attitude.
Why, it is an enlighted attitude - we agree
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
that the feds partially own everything bought by any city or state agency who in any way receive any form of money from any federal agency, and that all of those things are under federal jurisdiction.
As your post so nicely points out, that is patently absurd.
Hopefully someone can stop this line of reasoning and have it declared illegal very quickly. Or else, the feds will be able to claim jurisdiction for practically anything, at any time, merely because they wish to, and the agency in question received some federal moneys at some point. So much for the Constitution.
Watching America become a friggin' police state is very troubling, and I'm not even American.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
That's supposed to be its function but Josh Wolf appears to be above the law and is not allowing the Grand Jury to do its job, claiming that he has a first amendment right to withhold evidence of a crime being committed.
No, you don't get it. It isn't about protecting friends and family from prosecution. It is about protecing friends and family from persecution.
Although it doesn't seem to support what most people think... basically anybody can be required to testify in front of a grand jury. In the courtroom, the first amendment doesn't give special rights to the press. And in a position that you might want to think about before replying, I agree. There should be no special legal benefits given to a citizen over another citizen based on their profession. I find it amazing that most people here are happy with giving special legal shelter to a "special class" of citizen.
Equality under the law should apply to all citizens.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
And if you happen to get footage of any uppity nigras sitting in the front of busses, it's your patriotic duty to hand it in to the FBI.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Anybody can fire up a blog and become the press -- and many people on the in public carry a digital camera or video recorder at all times as part of their cell phone. I think that rather than dispensing special rights to a "special class" that is becoming less and less distinguishable from the public, we should re-examine why and under what circumstances any citizen is compelled to give testimony.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
And when the rights of We, the People peaceably to assemble are abridged, then what do we do? Roll over and take it? Is that what the Founding Fathers would have done? Not just no, but Hell, no!
When government - Executive, Legislative and Judicial - ignore the Constitution, then they lose the authority to govern. It's that simple.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
I would argue that the STATE authorities might have cause to get a warrant...but, not the feds. As far as I can tell, no crime was committed here to a federal agent, nor federal property. The larger question here is, the feds really stretching facts to try to make a state case a federal case. They are trying to usurp the states rights in this case. There should be no federal jurisdiction in this case...at least from what I can tell.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Under new "laws" (decrees) being drafted by Bush minions they can simply declare him a enemy combatant, torture him and the find him guilty in a secret military tribunal.
They weren't burning their own property. They were burning our property. We have rules about who gets to burn police cars, and where, and when, and how. Personally, I fucking hate it when someone decides that the rules apply to everybody except them. They want to change our rules, let them discuss it with the rest of us, so that we can all agree on the changes. If they're not going to do that, then as far as I'm concerned, they've separated themselves from the rest of us, and no longer have any claim on our joint assets and privileges. The sooner our executive agents throw the book at these asshats, the better.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Um, there is one little tiny point you missed. This is being processed as a Federal Case because the State has laws in place to protect him from this type of lawsuit. The police car is registered to the State - not the Federal - Government. The incident occured on a public road - not Federal Land. The type of crime - arson - is State - not Federal. The Federal Government has no jurisdiction. What they are using is an extremely far fetched claim of partial ownership of the police car, based on the fact that DHS gave the City govt a Block Grant.
The problem is that Block Grants are just that Grants - they don't impart any degree of ownership. If the US Govt isn't listed on the car's title as a joint owner, and the value of the part ownership isn't listed in the DHS accounting books, they don't own it & don't have standing for jurisdiction in this case. The issue isn't that somebody is trying to get him to fork over his tapes, it's that the people who are doing it don't have the legal standing in a sane world to do it. California put into place a law specifically to avoid intimidating the press like this, by making it a Federal case under extremely dubious context, the Federal Government is sidestepping that law and vastly overstepping it's jurusdiction.
I should say that I was orginally from the UK but I'm now in the US. I have noticed a difference in the way each country percieves it's government which probably stems from the way they were set up. In the UK we generally do not trust the government, until recently UK residents were classed as subjects not citizens. The UK government was also carved out of a monarchy which is naturally a system of subjection. The UK police in particular are not to be trusted. In the USA however, at least in theory, the government was formed by the people and I think generally US residents tend to trust their government whatever they do.
If the government turns against the people, then thats a whole other issue entirely, and as the Constitution and other founding documents state, we the people must take appropriate action up to and including violence, if needed, to ensure that Freedom is upheld.
But having read those documents many times, it dosent seem to indicate that the Founding Fathers felt that violence should be the first and only course of action. Thats not the spirit of the Constitution. Violence should never be the first or only course of action. First line of defense is to PEACEFULLY state what needs to be stated, send a message, be that in some form of mass demonstration or whatever. See the Declaration of Independence where it explains that the Founding Fathers and their colleages spent years trying to peacefully change things in England. They Petitioned for Redress. Thats not read "rioted and destroyed property".
From Declaration of IndependenceThats not read "rioted and destroyed property". Can you provide any proof that their destroying that police car helped their cause at all? Of course not, because it didnt. Its not always necessary to create havoc, destruction, and mayhem, in order to get the job done.
Further, in this case, they were rioting about the G8 summit. What the hell does that have to do with the United States (aside from being a part of the meeting), and the Constitution? It doesnt, and thus the whole ideaology that they were taking part in a legitimate uprising against a tyrannical government is bunk. "I'm really pissed off that several world leaders are getting together to discuss the bullshit in the world!" Get a life. That dosent give anyone the right to destroy property, whether they think they are justified or not.
I agree that the media deserves protection from prying eyes and overzealous prosecutors, and the right to maintain the confidentiality of their sources. Otherwise, how else would we have found out about the NSA wiretap programs, and such? I know it could be argued that in both cases, someone commited a crime (burning a car vs. sharing "state secrets"). But I guess I see both scenario's differently. In one case, someone burned a car because they thought they were justified (and common sense leans toward the idea that theres no sensible reason for doing so) but in the other case, someone blew the whistle and exposed a deep violation of Constitutional rights, and thats a just cause. And since it's been exposed, its now in available to the people to do something about it.
So no, I dont suggest we roll over and take anything, ever. We pick our battles wiseley, and do things that make sense.
If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. --James Madison