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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.'"
Do people in US Jail get access to the Internet? just wondering if there are any Blogs out there from people who are actually inside prison at the time of writing - in the UK you are not allowed internet access - however there are computers.
"The feds say they have jurisdiction over the case because the police car is partly U.S. government property since the S.F.P.D. receives federal anti-terrorism money."
This is like saying that since I am an American citizen, that there is some portion of the collective
"Amreican Dream/Resources" that is owned by ME, and I have the say , to be able to stop the government
from drilling in Alaska or anywhere, and selling MY portion of the public reosurces to anyone. Hmmmm.
the Feds, backed by their "own" courts consistently use the idea that if Federal money is involved, no matter how loosely, that this trumps state's rights. This is primarily used to force "unfunded/underfunded mandates" on the states.
I totally disagree with the tactics being used to force the video to be made available. At the same time I think its wrong to cover up a crime because of one's beliefs. If you videotape a crime then you are obligated to report it. There can be none of this "its okay for us but not them mentality" because we are all us and them at the same time.
He claims there is no crime on the tape, fine, then show it and be done with it. Get it to a public outlet. If there is a crime then he just publicity hounding and forcing an issue that should never had occured.
Hopefully the Feds will lose this attempt to secure the tape but at the same time hopefully he will turn it over to someone if it shows a crime being committed. Willful destruction of property should not be tolerated in any state, free or not. If you cannot protest without destroying someone else's property you need to be locked up as your not a productive part of society let alone doing your cause any good.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
This guy has evidence of a crime. Now, in this case it is a crime against the state so people are not terrible sympathetic. Not being sympathetic with the state is as American as guns and apple pie, but people are talking a guy being jailed for not exposing a crime against the state like it is some high moral battle.
What if the role was reversed? What if some pro-police blogger had a video up of protesters getting the shit kicked out of them by police? What if the Rodney King beating had been posted online with the identities of the police officers edited out on a blog? Would we still then be so adamant that a media shield is the best thing?
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?
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 like the idea of media shield laws to some extent. The press absolutely is an invaluable tool in the regulation of democracy. That said, there needs to be a coherent and consistent approach to such shield laws.
For those who believe that this man is being jailed unfairly, what do you propose the law be? Should the media never be forced to give up evidence of a crime, even in extreme cases like rape and murder? Should some crimes be protected by media shield laws and others not protected?
"I'll agree that (and I am not an american here) the damage to federal property argument does seem tenuous at best. But that seems rather beside the point."
That is EXACTLY the point, and I do live in the US. It is a State's rights issue that has been fought since the establishment of the union. The federal government gets its rights from the States. Changes to the Constitution, for example, must be ratified by the states before they become valid.
The ones who should be upset by tenuous funding connections to yank jurisdictions should be the States.
I would be interested to know when this filming occurred. If it was pre-9/11/2001 then there was no "anti-terrorism" federal funding going to cities. That was one of those "unfunded mandates" before 9/11.
B.
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
Give $10 bucks instead each month to the EFF or ACLU or whatever of your choice. Do it at the cost of watching 1 less crappy movie per month, and on the plus side it will give the MPAA just a little less funding to attack our liberties at the same time.
I know it's asking for more, but for people who actually go through the effort of giving and if their time is worth anything, the difference between a dollar and $10 should be negligible. OTOH, a convenient and fast micro-payment system of the web would help in this regard as well.
From TFA:
I'm wonder if I am a federal employee now if I ever got a government grant to help me through college?
Details of such a heinous thought crime can be found here.
In the past the US of A took a much stronger stand against such obscene human rights violations by the Chinese regime and other dictatorships, but it is very clear that the current regime in Washington has neither the intention nor moral standing to help oppressed and occupied peoples. You see, the dictators in Beijing are among Bush's "staunchest allies" in this bizarre "global war of terror" where the occupied and the oppressed are considered to be the "terrorists"!
Dubya's inaugural address (2005) now reads like a sad mockery of the Freedoms the USA used to claim to be representing:
The six million Tibetans living in the world largest concentration camp they once knew as their homeland meanwhile haven't even got a clue that the "world's most powerful man and the leader of the Free World" ever uttered those words. Even possessing a copy of the UN's Human Rights Declaration is enough to get a Tibetan slammed into the Chinese prison camps...
Should invading one's peaceful neighbours be opposed, or rewarded with trade deals?
My understanding from reading TFA is that the footage that Josh shot was of G8 protestors lighting a police car on fire.
Slight correction, the feds are arguing the footable MIGHT show G8 protesters lighting the car. Josh says there is no such thing on his video. So the federal judge ruled its a federal case, because federal agents speculate that its possible it may show something which if streched as far as possible could be seen as a federal case even though those who have seen the video say it shows no such thing.
That seems a VERY low threshold for over-riding the states jurisdiction.
"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
In that case they still have footage that allows them to identify a bunch of protesters for later, targeted, COINTELPRO-style activities.
Is the government trying to silence this guy? Have they confiscated his footage without leaving him a copy? Are they trying to change the story he's reporting? Are they locking him up for his political views?
No, no, no and no. In fact, it's exactly the opposite. The courts have ask him to produce video footage of a crime that he witnessed and he has refused. That's exactly the same as lying in court and it carries a penalty of jail time. This has absolutely nothing to do with the First Amendment so it's no wonder the judge wasn't impressed. He's trying to make the claim that all you have to do to be able to lie in court is start up the video camera on your cell phone and become an instant journalist. That's the implication of claiming that anyone that puts up a webpage falls under the shield laws. So maybe the law needs to be rewritten to better define what a journal is, or perhaps it's already clear, I haven't checked. However, all I can say to Josh is "what did you expect, you lied in court? The First Amendment allows you to peacefully criticize the government, it in no way allows you to withhold the details of a crime."
Several incumbent Congress folks were voted out of office yesterday.
No. These were primaries. They don't get "voted out" until the November elections. Lieberman for example will now run as an independant, so don't cout him out yet. Not sure what his chances are, but he WAS one of the few moderates out there that has bi-partisan support.
Most primaries actually have very low voter turnout, so it's fairly easy for this kind of thing to happen.
Give $10 bucks instead each month to the EFF or ACLU or whatever
One of the reasons the government has successfully eliminated many rights which we thought were guaranteed by the Constitution, is that there has been no focus of opposition.
The ACLU should have focussed our attention on the violations as they happened. But the ACLU is very partisan. For example, it opposed the recall of Governor Gray Davis, a Democrat, in California, on completely spurious grounds. It should keep out of party politics. People who care deeply about the Bill of Rights can be found among Republicans as well as among Democrats, and we need all such people. The ACLU drove them away, by this and many other campaigns.
By all means support the EFF, by the way, though I'm not sure it's as relevant to this particular case as a properly-functioning ACLU would have been.
I do not see how this would be anything but a federal matter.
Did you read the summary of the argument for Federal jurisdiction? It is apparently based on the fact that the SFPD receives Federal anti-terrorism funding. This is absurd. Though I find the act of burning police cars repugnant and I loathe most of these nonsensical protestors more than anything, I can't abide the abuse of jurisdiction just to browbeat a guy into giving the Feds a video that somebody says might contain footage of a crime being committed.
I don't know what the qualifications for being a "journalist" are, but if the state has laws that shield journalists, why not let the state court decide whether the guy is a journalist rather than relying on a complete legal fiction and an "ends-justify-the-means" attitude towards jurisdiction?
I'll tell you what: Watch a news channel like BBC news 24 once in a while. Notice that sometimes people's faces are obscured e.g. if they are secret agents or witnesses to an organised crime or protesters against the government. Yet the BBC still claims to be journalists! Surely if they were real journalists like you would prefer, they would forward the details of all protesters to the governments concerned so they could be sent to the appropriate gulag / reeducation camp / guantanemo bay. No doubt if they broke their word on confidentiality of sources this would not affect their ability to report at all.
For one story I followed, I met someone on the sidewalk of a highway overpass so no one would know he talked to the paper (thus my posting as an AC). I have learned things from sources that even months of FOIA requests could not have gotten me. I realize that you need to protect your sources, but there are no sources in this case. It is not like someone confessed on the video or that the video even implicates anyone as being guilty (if you believe him). I know that my friends in the government would run like hell if I revealed a single source, but they wouldn't care if I obeyed an order that did not reveal any sources at all.
Another element of this is that the horrible criminals who torched a police car were presumably doing it in plain sight of strangers. I do not see why they have an expectation of privacy.
I thought the idea behind the 5th amendment was that if people are pressured to say they are guilty them you'll having innocent people saying that they're guilty even when they're not. Of course, because prosecuters can offer "deals" then this happens anyway.
An interesting question is whether it's OK to pressure someone to say that someone else is guilty. Presumably people shouldn't have much incentive to protect other people so this shouldn't even be an issue but that cuts both ways because if you do apply pressure then you're very likely to get false accusations.
In this case, however, it's not the testimony itself that is in question but instead the video tape. Personally, I'm not seeing why the police couldn't just get a search warrant to seize the tape if they have reason to believe it is relevent to their case. I mean, if someone had a bloody knife that someone else had used to commit a crime then it would seem the police could get a search warrant to get the knife to use as evidence.
All of which is entirely immaterial to the GP's point, which is simple:
If you can't get people to vote, how can you possibly get them to rebel?
If you don't get that, consider this: Let's say you started a massive campaign aimed at all those disenfranchised voters that you somehow think will revolt given the opportunity. Your message is simple: "vote my party in, and we'll change the way the system works". Now, all you need is > 50% of the voting public in each district to respond. What do you think the odds are of winning? I'd say pretty low, wouldn't you? And yet you somehow think you can mobilize these people to revolt? Yeah... right.
The reason the existing system doesn't change is simple: for the most part, a given citizen a) doesn't see anything wrong with the way things are, so they vote for the incumbent. b) They do see something wrong but blame it on the incumbant party and believe "the other guys" will fix things (in all probably, swayed by one or two key issues which are, in reality, not that important... you know, gay marriage, flag burning, etc). Or c) they don't actually give a damn... not because they're disenfranchised, but because they genuinely don't care.
Its too bad you had to post AC (I totally understand why though), as I almost didn't read your comment (ACs start at -1 for me..)
At anyrate, the problem becomes that the government could compel you to had over ANY tape on which they THINK a crime might have been recorded. As a journalist, I think you can see why that could be a problem. Its not only protection of sources, its protection of what the journalist investigated. Think of a case where the government finds you have a tape you're doing to use in your investigation; they could demand you hand it over (and likely a copy won't do... they'll want the original, because a copy may have been edited by you) and you never see that tape again.
If the actions were in plain site (which it seems they were) they should be able to find someone that saw it and is willing to testify, should they not? No one was around except the protesters?
I never said the people in this particular case had a privacy right or need to be protected; its the tactics used by the government which have implications in other cases which is the problem.
Anyone who witnesses a crime and does nothing is not a citizen, and is not entitled to treatment as a citizen.
Have you ever seen anyone speeding and not called it in? If you saw a 90 year old man in horrible pain attempt to stop the pain through suicide would you physically force him to continue to suffer?
Who is to say what is a crime even, let alone what is "evil" or unethical? Is the crime of burning a police car any less ethical than the crime of intentionally keeping an entire nation on the brink or starvation for your own personal profit? No one who is not a police officer has any obligation to try to stop crimes that they don't object to or just don't feel like doing. Even police officers have the right to renounce their position instead of enforcing unjust laws. Our entire nation and way of life was based upon standing up and refusing to obey unjust laws.
If evil doers know that the press is watching and that the information gathered will be used to stop them, they may think twice before acting.
Yes, but if those doing good know that anyone watching or participating can be compelled to provide information about their activities to corrupt and abusive authorities, then they two may reconsider doing good. That is why we have due process and enumerated rights. Vandals burning a car are nowhere near the threat to freedom and the citizenry that a corrupt government is, which is why the law is designed to protect us from an authoritarian government even if it means a few vandals get away.