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Can a Court Order You To Delete a Facebook Account?
First time accepted submitter jaymz666 writes "Can a court really order you to delete a Facebook account? When Asher initially appeared in court after the July 20 accident, the judge told her to delete her Facebook account, Kittinger said. Asher did not take it seriously, and was charged with contempt of court when the judge learned her Facebook page was still active. Seems like a big overreach."
They did this to Kevin Mitnick. He was initially forbidden to use any communications technology other than a landline telephone. Mitnick fought this decision in court, eventually winning a ruling in his favor, allowing him to access the Internet.
Seems like a similar type punishment. I bet it won't be hard for a good lawyer to change the ruling as it falls under unusual punishment. You could claim facebook is a requirement for getting a job (which in some fields it is), that it would put a undo burden on you, or even that there is no basis for the punishment and the judge is violating her freedom of speech.
The lady involved in this case is a horrible person, but her rights to let everyone know she's a horrible person should not be infringed.
I have seen no data on gun proliferation that indicates that allowing guns into the hands of law-abiding citizens increases murder rates. It does increase death in assaults and home-invasions.
In places like Detroit or Washington DC or Baltimore City where legal gun ownership is basically non-existent, the huge amount of gun proliferation results in an armed criminal element and a disarmed citizenry. This creates a power dynamic whereby criminals have much more control and can be abusive. In truth, a lot of murders seem to be between criminals--they wind up shooting each other in gang turf arguments. They're actually afraid to pull their guns on private citizens, because the gun crime charge is like 10 times worse than the armed robbery charge (you can get 20 years for using a gun as a prop to threaten someone, whereas you may get thrown in jail for 2 years if you rob someone at knife point).
In places like Texas and Florida, murder rate is lower; however 'justifiable homicide' happens more. Basically when someone gets attacked, they shoot back. This means more shootings happen between crazies and less between bullies who think they're malendrine gangster mafioso. The insecure, up-tight morons are a hell of a lot more insecure when people can shoot back; a gunshot draws attention and when everyone in the area has guns and is afraid mostly of being shot but feels like they can shoot you first, they all come looking for you. At least, the theory is strong enough that people believe it and are hesitant to pull out a gun. It's lose-lose: if you don't shoot someone, they might have a gun, and might shoot you (this is fucking hard to do--why would you pull your gun out if the other guy ALREADY has a gun pointed at you?!); if you do shoot them, someone might come looking to see if everyone's alright, and they might find you, and they might have guns.
On top of all that, we have this whole culture thing going on. Look at the death penalty deterrent. In Texas, it's not much of a deterrent because you'll probably be dead before you make it to the court if you're planning on killing someone. In South Dakota, it's not much of a deterrent for unknown reasons. In Wisconsin, also for unknown reasons, when they abolished capital punishment they had murder rates quadrupal in 2 years, and re-instated it to get the murder rates back down.
The same principle applies to gun ownership: local cultural factors will affect how people behave with guns. If they're all insecure hicks who think only of themselves, anything off their property is not their responsibility (no one comes to help you) and anyone on their property needs killin'; if they're more communal, guns simply make people feel empowered and they believe they have a social responsibility, and they use their guns to protect others when other (bad people) bring out their guns to harm innocents. There's a huge gradient between, there's crazy people, people who don't care, people who are paranoid, and people who are just inborn heroes.
I don't think any country can call itself "civilized" when it decides the best way to handle society is to put the common man into a power-disadvantaged lower class. There are bullies and there are victims, and if we make all the common people victims then the bullies get to be kings by abusing people. We should be teaching men and women to fight and to not be afraid, not to cower in fear and leave everyone else to die if they can save themselves from harm. Humans are weak and useless, individual humans have no survival traits; we need to function in groups to live.
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Because being put in jail for a crime doesn't violate your freedom of speech. Being forced to delete your facebook posts/account does.
If it was facebook who deleted her account, that would be ok with me. It's up to them to decide what kind of speech they want on their servers. But the government has no right to moderate speech unless it is causing a immediate and local danger (fire in a theater). This is the same with the video causing all that trouble in the middle east. Yes, the government could take it down, but doing so violates the core principle of this country.
People look at idiots spewing hate as a bad thing. I look at it as a nice big poster that helps me separate out the idiots from the people worth spending my time with. In any case get a double dose of information. For example, with that anti-muslim video you learn that there are a few people in america who are douche bags and you learn that there are many many more 'muslims' in the middle east who are out of control, immoral, violent, murders just looking for excuses to bring their hate to the rest of the world. In the case of this ladies facebook post, you learn she is immature, immoral, and non-repentant. Basically, she's a horrible person. So if I was ever to meet her, I'd know to stay clear.
I can't disagree with the logic, but something still stinks about how deeply into one's personal life and activities a judge can go.
Hypothetical extreme example: If you met a girl at a bar, went to bed with her, only to discover later (via arrest) that she was jailbait, and a judge demanded that you get a castration in order to avoid 10-15 years in prison, would you do it? Many (I daresay most) would, while others would not.
Thing is, it's not that it gets you out of jail faster - it's that the punishment itself is unusual, which is constitutionally out-of-bounds. In other words, the judge had no constitutional right or authority to order (let alone enforce) such a thing as punishment.
One other bit: I submit that local judges, far more than state/federal ones, are more prone to viciousness, petty abuses, and vindictiveness - especially in more rural areas, where there is no competition and/or chance of losing one's job to a misconduct charge. If there's going to be judicial abuse, odds are good that it'll happen on the lower levels far easier than the upper ones.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Really, that's the argument you are going to with, a fallacy of accident. It is reasonable to assume that someone who commits a crime is punished and that punishment labels them as a criminal. However, the law has shown that there are limits to punishment if they cause a undo burden on a person. These typically come in the form of unusual or extreme punishments.
For example, it is customary and reasonable to suspend a drivers license for habitual speeders and people with DUIs. But, if that suspension would cost them their livelihoods, it is also typically considered unreasonable to not give them a permit to drive to and from work. This prevents undo burden on the criminal and allows them the chance to actually become a healthy member of society given that they can work within that framework and follow the rule of law.
Likewise it would have been reasonable for the judge to order this lady to not post on facebook content relating to the crime or trial. It is unusual, and creates a undo burden to take away her access entirely and permanently (not to mention unconstitutionally depriving her of her speech) simple because he didn't like what she had to say. Therefore I would argue it is indeed unusual punishment, it puts a burden on her for a crime that is wholly and completely different than almost every other drunk driver (in fact I can't think of another case).
I've mostly suggested streamlining the appeals process, eliminating some of the duplication of effort, and restricting the death penalty to the 'worst offenders'. We're not just talking 1st degree murder. My general standard is '3 or more killed, or deliberate torture in addition to the murder'. You don't try to sentence a 60 year old doctor who killed his wife by poison after catching her cheating to death. You go for the under 25 year old gangbanger 'executioner' who killed 6 people with his bare hands with that sentence. The second isn't containable in a minimum security prison, the first is.
The reason the death penalty is flat out wrong is quite simple. It isn't just that you are being hypocritical about the morality of killing, it is also that you are murdering innocent people.
In any group of convicted murderers, there are going to be some people who are innocent. That's just a fact. People (juries) make mistakes. So some number of people you put to death are going to be innocent. It might be one in a hundred or one in ten thousand, but they are going to be there regardless of your degree of diligence. And when 15 years later, when new evidence comes to light as it seems to with alarmingly frequency, you can't just let them out of jail with an apology.
Whenever I talk to pro-death penalty people, I ask them if they would still support the death penalty if they or one of their loved ones was one of those one in a thousand cases where an innocent person was wrongly convicted, I have yet to hear a convincing 'yes'. Are you so strong in your belief of the value of capitol punishment that you would be willing to die to support it? Would you stand outside the prison when your child was executed with a sign that says, 'Fry the bastard', when you knew they were only guilty of not having a good alibi and a good lawyer?
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!