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Peoria Mayor Sends Police To Track Down Twitter Parodist
New submitter rotorbudd (1242864) writes with an article at Reason about Jim Ardis, mayor of Peoria, Illinois, who ordered police to track down whoever was responsible for a parody Twitter account mocking him."Guess the good Mayor has never heard of the Streisand Effect. 'The original Twitter account had a total of 50 followers. The new account has over 200.'"
In Canada you can parody anyone. For example Justin Turdeau instead of Justin Trudeau (leader Liberal party Canada). It's funny and you can't get sued never mind have the police come after you. It's called freedom of speech.
Hasn't Peoria been a cultural touchstone for humorless reactionary behavior since whenever "Will it play in Peoria?" was coined?
Also, can they not afford enough legal advice to tell them that basically every step of this plan is practically a textbook case of 'How to incur legal exposure in absurdly obvious ways'?
Total abuse of power.
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does not include freedom after speech
So basically if a Jackboot^W LEO asks for account info on anyone without a warrant or even reasonable evidence that a crime has even been committed, Twitter will just hand over your private details to them without question.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
Governor makes parodies of you. And people on Slashdot were just talking about how much more free the US is than Russia. Looks like we can't even criticize our govt anymore.
Freedom of speech is not freedom to impersonate or defame. From this article;
The @Peoriamayor account began in late February or early March with a photo of Ardis and a bio that stated he enjoyed serving the city and included his city email address.
The content of tweets, or entries on the account, ranged from ambiguous to offensive, with repeat references to sex and drugs — and comparisons of Ardis to Toronto Mayor Rob Ford as Ford’s drug use while in office became public.
By about March 10, the bio of the Twitter account was changed to indicate it was a parody account.
As for indicating it is a parody account, how many people read the whole bio of a twitter poster?
. . . then impersonating a public official is not going to either. The Supreme Court basically ruled that you can outright lie about serving in the military because that is your first amendment right.
Now if someone is trying to lie about being a public official to get into a restricted area or hell, lying about being a veteran to get a free lunch at Denny's on Memorial Day, that might be a crime, but this guy defrauded nobody.
The best case scenario for the mayor is a civil lawsuit for libel, but it is so blatantly obviously a parody account that it would just be a waste of everyone's money. But why use your own money to sue someone when you can send the police to unconstitutionally harass them?
Don't get me wrong, the US is not perfect, but it is one of the few western democracies that does not have hate speech laws or a state secret's act.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H...
Is it even legal for a judge to sign a warrant for such bullshit?
> The original Twitter account had a total of 50 followers. The new account has over 200.
People almost care!
You misspelled "Republican", which is Ardis's political affiliation.
Who's going to tell the judge no? Who's going to enforce it?
Sometimes a judge will be so egregiously corrupt that the higher courts will discipline them, but it's quite infrequent, and I've never heard of it happening when he was acting to support the local politicos. (And even then the "discipline" is generally trivial in comparison to the offense.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
"Nevertheless, police raided this home and intend to charge whoever was responsible for the account for false impersonation of a public official."
I have a hotspot up (as per EFF https://www.eff.org/), at this time 3 people are using it, I may have hassles over it but I've got the time.
Who's going to tell the judge no? Who's going to enforce it?
Sometimes a judge will be so egregiously corrupt that the higher courts will discipline them, but it's quite infrequent, and I've never heard of it happening when he was acting to support the local politicos. (And even then the "discipline" is generally trivial in comparison to the offense.)
I'm curious - can you site one instance in which you "heard of" a judge not being disciplined because "he was acting to support the local politicos". It seems unlikely you actually have such knowledge. My guess is that you are generalizing, or guessing, or just wildly speculating.
I imagine the "site" would be a bar, jawboning with his buddies.
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
Isn't that considered fruit from the poisonous tree?
Hmmmmm... Could this be where your obsession with sockpuppets comes from?
And here's more evidence to support my theory that whatever you accuse others of doing to you always turns out to be something you started doing first.
The Internet never forgets, AlexAndy. The Internet never forgets.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
You've already demonstrated that you have absolutely zero comprehension of any sort of humour, much less parody. With this in mind, I created the TFHF account basically because I was pretty sure that merely learning of this account's existence would make you froth at the mouth, and because you've been due a good stiff dose of my mockery and derision for weeks on end.
That account's made a grand total of 9 posts + 1 journal entry.
In the same timespan you've trolled/crapflooded me something like, what, 500-600 times or more? Not to mention HUNDREDS of your trolls before that?
And *you've* got the gall to complain about *me*? That's pretty funny.
Yes indeedy, I created the account purely to mock you. Or, to put it in terms you might recall from your forays into 4chan: YHBT.
Just *knowing* that this account exists so very obviously pisses you off, Sparky, and I can't begin to tell you how completely I enjoy just *knowing* that this is the case.
Have a nice day!
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
What evidence would you expect to find?
You are right, that I don't have anything in the way of good evidence. I have only the evidence of judges making decisions the are flagrantly illegal, and which are to the benefit of local politicians. And since I'm not a lawyer, my idea of "flagrantly illegal" doesn't carry much weight.
So lets just consider the MS anti-trust case, where the first judge found against MS, was quoted by a journalist as saying things that weren't complimentary to MS *after he had pronounced judgement* and was then removed from the case and replaced by a different judge who gave MS only nominal penalties, which were actually even to their advantage.
I'm sure it was purely coincidence that between the first judge's ruling and the appointment of the second judge, MS began making large political donations.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
...addresses this issue
Unless this is another one of them there parody things.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Ah, okay, you answered my question. You were talking out of your ass. You claimed "Sometimes a judge will be so egregiously corrupt that the higher courts will discipline them, but it's quite infrequent, and I've never heard of it happening when he was acting to support the local politicos."
Yet you can't cite even a single instance. Thanks for clearing that up.