Slashdot Mirror
Innocence of Muslims Filmmaker Arrested, Jailed
sycodon writes "Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the man behind the film Innocence of Muslims, has been arrested and jailed in Los Angeles for probation violations. The situation is a win-win for the Obama administration, who can now appear to be punishing the man whose film sparked protests and riots around the world, but at the same time simply enforcing the law, as all evidence indeed suggests Nakoula violated the terms of his probation."
They should have done this weeks ago. It was clear he violated his probation from the beginning.
It's very important for Muslims across the world to understand that he was NOT arrested and jailed for the CONTENT of that movie, but because he continually provided false aliases to the judge and the police in violation of his probation.
I wonder if the protesters in Egypt will understand this...my guess is probably not.
The situation is a win-win for the Obama administration, who can now appear to be punishing the man whose film sparked protests and riots around the world.
This is outrageously ridiculous. Why would it be a "win-win" for the Obama administration to appear to be punishing someone for exercising his First Amendment right to free speech?
Because it is quite likely that this arrest is about censorship to appease jihadists.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
It didn't spark riots around the world. At least the ambassador in Libya was killed in a targeted attack by Al Qaeda. The ambassador was worried about his safety for weeks before his death. We know this because CNN reporters walked into the compound and looked around. Security was NOT good at this place.
I'll be so fucking glad when we kick Bush out of office....
Clearly, he's a dirtbag
It is not illegal to be a dirtbag.
"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all." -- H. L. Mencken
Hope they have enough on him to keep him locked up.
Is he really being locked up for violating his probation, or is that just a justification to arrest someone for saying something inconvenient? Supposedly he as arrested for making false statements to his probation officer. Is that something that a normal person would be jailed for?
So to you, the application of justice should be dependent on the political views someone espouses? The law should treat someone differently based on what he's said in public? How did you get from free speech to there?
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
Yes, he really is being jailed for his actual wrongdoings. You are not allowed to use aliases on probation. He used an alias and did something infamous with it.
Certainly, I imagine people do this all the time and are not caught, usually because it simply does not come to light, particularly since an alias has the effect of making it harder to tie a person to what they do under their alias. In this case, what he did is not the issue, it is that it was infamous enough for him to be caught violating his probation. It would be a very, very dumb Probation Officer who, when faced with his convict's publicly obvious non-compliance, did not enforce the conditions of Probation.
Remember, he's already a convicted criminal who is only free on probation on the guarantee of good behavior and specific provisions meant to ensure he remains on good behavior. He's not so much being thrown in jail as simply returned to jail.
Is this incredibly convenient for the Obama Administration? Hell, yes. Is it a matter of silencing him? Not at all.
His film killed no one. People reacting to the film may have. Most likely it wasn't over the film but an organized terrorist attack which had nothing to do with the film.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Last I heard, they still haven't got Hoffa.
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
The freedom of speech has always been limited by the exception of speech intended to solely cause harm or public backlash (ie - yelling 'Fire' in a crowded theater, calling in bomb threats). The US government is putting the case forward that the film was not an attempt to express a controversial viewpoint as much as something meant entirely to inflame and incense a volatile situation.
How this item made it onto Slashdot would probably be because the film was released online via YouTube, and the arrest of the filmmaker has clear online rights implications.
BULLSHIT
WTF?
You're actually comparing religious satire with deliberately and immediately causing mayhem and probable death?
How the hell is making fun of somebody who has been dead for more then a millennium not protected free speech?
Does free speech mean ANYTHING to you or the morons who modded you up?
I'm not comfortable equating the Muslim world to a crowded theater. They have moral agency and the ability to control themselves.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
I thought it was for the criminally bad acting and scripting of the movie. If you jail people for lying then we have to put all of Congress in jail.
Shouldn't be a problem. Islam is a religion of peace.
The only killing we have seen was from a terrorist attack on an embassy, not from a protest.
How many "protests" also involve quiet ambushes on secret safe-houses?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This guy is completely 100% irrelevant to anything that's happening in the Middle East. Go to youtube and in one minute you can find a dozen anti-Islam videos made by various random people. When certain extremist groups in the Middle East want to incite violence for their own political purposes, they will find a catalyst easily enough, just like with Mohammed cartoons etc, it doesn't matter what that catalyst is. The biggest issue here for me is that the administration is still talking about the stupid irrelevant film instead of the fact that the Libya attack was obviously a planned and successful Al Qaeda operation to assassinate a US ambassador and that we didn't do enough to prevent it. But that wouldn't look good, would it, so better to focus everybody's attention on a particular US citizen and make him take the blame. Shameful.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
I'm a firm believer in freedom of speech, but there is still such a thing as having some taste, and having some common sense. Clearly this guy has, at the very least, poor judgement, and perhaps poor impulse control, and while I'm not going to lay 100% of the blame on him for the violence in the Middle East due to his ill-advised (and poorly produced, from what I hear) video, he certainly is guilty of being the catalyst.
That's very loaded language. He's not "guilty" of anything - at least in the context of the Islamic hissy-fit business. He is a catalyst, like that teacher who sparked an armed and angry lynch mob in Sudan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudanese_teddy_bear_blasphemy_case
Granted, his actions were provocative, while the teacher's were not. While his actions were inadvisable, 100% of the blame lies with the angry nutjobs and the rabble rousers. If we apportion any blame at all to this guy then we may as well issue mitigation points to anyone taking offence. If some guy in the street says that my mother is a scabby whore, should he share the blame if I were to then pull out a knife and cut out his liver? He's a factor in what happened, but what he did is rendered academic by my crazy response. Staying with that example, if I reacted so badly, is it possible that this reaction is based on more than just this single incident? There's way more happening here than just a bunch of cavemen getting worked up over a video.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
If you jail people for lying then we have to put all of Congress in jail.
You say that, but I'm sure that there are downsides as well.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
How would you like it if you posted a video on Youtube, or a post on Facebook that was very offensive. It offended your community, neighboring county (or country,) so instead of outright saying "we don't accept this free speech" you were arrested for an unpaid parking ticket or any other minor offense? Sort of a big fucking deal.
A big fucking deal? How about a stupid fucking analogy? The terms of his 5-year probation strictly said that he was not to use a computer without approval, and that he was not to use an alias without approval. He did both, and nearly immediately after he was released. That means he violated his probation, and that means he gets sent back to the pokey. That's not an "unpaid parking ticket or any other minor offense". The judge gave him specific terms, specific actions that he no longer had the privilege of doing, and he responded by saying FU and doing those things anyway. This is not a rights issue, this is a minor non-issue about some asshole who can't bother to live his life without committing a crime and now he gets to go back to jail. This happens every day across the country. The only reason we are hearing about it in this case is because now it is happening to a man who was in the headlines recently for pissing off a large chunk of the world. That's not what he's being arrested for, that's just the reason why his arrest is news.
So, here's the real question - should this long-term criminal get a free pass for violating his probation because of the video he produced? Does that video and the subsequent response and coverage of it warrant a Get Out Of Jail Free card?
The Daily Beast reported that Nakoula was arrested by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department in 1997 after being pulled over and found to be in possession of ephedrine, hydroiodic acid, and $45,000 in cash; he was charged with intent to manufacture methamphetamine. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced in 1997 to one year in Los Angeles County Jail and three years probation. According to the Los Angeles County District Attorney, he violated probation in 2002 and was re-sentenced to another year in county jail.
In 2010, Nakoula pleaded no contest to federal charges of bank fraud in California. Nakoula had opened bank accounts using fake names and stolen Social Security numbers, including one belonging to a 6-year-old child, and deposited checks from those accounts to withdraw at ATMs. The prosecutor described the scheme as check kiting, "You try to get the money out of the bank before the bank realizes they are drawn from a fraudulent account. There basically is no money," she said. Nakoula’s June 2010 sentencing transcript shows that after being arrested, he testified against an alleged ring leader of the fraud scheme, in exchange for a lighter sentence. He was sentenced to 21 months in federal prison, followed by five years probation (supervised release), and ordered to pay $794,701 in restitution. He was sent to prison, then to a halfway house, and was released from custody in June 2011. A few weeks later, he began working on Innocence of Muslims. Conditions of Nakoula's probation include not using aliases and not using the Internet without prior approval from his probation officer.
Please explain again the "chilling effects" that this arrest is going to have on my rights, and why this idiot deserves to get a free pass.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
I can understand that, given the amount of publicity both nationally and worldwide, the government really had little choice but to enforce the probation terms once it came out who the filmmaker really was and that he must have violated the terms to go on YouTube to upload it.
But when is someone going to point out that probation terms like these are absurd on their face? The Internet is a basic part of modern life. Everyone uses it, and even someone who tries to avoid it might well find themselves violating the terms by accident. (For instance, is using a GPS device counted as using the Internet? From a technical standpoint, that's often what is happening.) Probation terms ordering people to stay away from computers might have made some sense back in the days of Kevin Mitnick and Captain Crunch, but they are utter nonsense in 2012. You might as well make a probation term telling someone they can't watch TV or read a newspaper.
The US Administration decided it was politically expedient to have this man in jail for his "political crime". The technical method of achieving this goal, as they are only allowed to wield their power according to the "letter of the law", they hired a detective to dig up the dirt on him and "find a law" which which to charge him.
I'd like to see your proof for that claim.
He was interviewed by probation officers shortly after it became public that he was behind the movie. He was interviewed by probation officers, not the FBI. They evidently determined that he had in fact violated his probation, which is actually publicly demonstrable since he used an alias on the casting call for the movie that you can find online. That's a violation itself. Posting the casting call online is another violation. Uploading the video to Youtube is another violation. Posting comments on Youtube is another. As soon as I found information about this guy in the days after the riots started and saw that his probation terms included not using a computer I immediately wondered why he wasn't in jail already. I'm glad they eventually got to it.
Had his film not caused the diplomatic incident, he probably would have flown under the radar and not been noticed by the authorities, and thus still be a free man.
That's correct. It doesn't need to be a diplomatic incident though, he could have posted a comedy video that got viewed by 100 million people and he still would have popped up on someone's radar. Like his probation officer's.
Personally, I don't think the government actually wanted to jail this guy. They have to though, or risk other people asking why they have to stand up before the man for a probation violation when this idiot got off free. This would be equal justice under the law.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black