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Two Activists Who Secretly Recorded Planned Parenthood Face 15 Felony Charges (npr.org)
mi writes: California prosecutors on Tuesday charged two activists who made undercover videos of themselves interacting with officials of a taxpayer-supported organization with 15 felonies, saying they invaded privacy by filming without consent. State Attorney General Xavier Becerra, a longtime Congressional Democrat who took over the investigation in January, said in a statement that the state "will not tolerate the criminal recording of conversations." Didn't we just determine that filming officials is not merely a right, but a First Amendment right? The "taxpayer-supported organization" is Planned Parenthood, and the charges were pressed against David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt. Daleiden has called the charges "bogus," claiming that Planned Parenthood "has violated the law by selling fetal tissue -- an allegation that has been investigated by more than a dozen states, none of which found evidence supporting Daleiden's claim," reports NPR. "Daleiden claimed the video showed evidence that Planned Parenthood was selling that tissue, which would be illegal. Planned Parenthood said the footage was misleadingly edited and that the organization donates tissue following legal guidelines and with permitted reimbursements for expenses, which investigations have corroborated."
I really don't understand how anyone can conflate someone who works at Planned Parenthood with a police officer. They are not employees of the Government or any form of government body.
Just because they receive some government funding doesn't mean their status changes. They aren't acting on government orders and should the government withdraw their funding they would attempt to source it elsewhere.
Anyone who is trying to argue that these people are government officials has an agenda they are pushing.
> Didn't we just determine that filming officials is not merely a right, but a First Amendment right?
The two links in this question refer to filming police officers, who are employed by their jurisdiction to enforce laws. Planned Parenthood is a 501(c)(3), a nonprofit corporation, so aren't their officials by definition not public employees? What is similar in this case, other than the recording of others, that makes it comparable to filming of public employees performing public duties?
Perhaps if they changed the name to "Accidental Parenthood" or (more accurately) "Forced Parenthood" it would make you knee-jerk conservatives happier. I absolutely do not understand this OBSESSION with fetuses, followed by the most callous treatment imaginable for the rest of their lives that conservatives espouse. If you're so goddam Christian, how about you fund Meals On Wheels for all those veterans you're so enamored of chest-thumping about? How about you fund some inner-city schools instead of starving their funding so you can promote corporate/religious/magnet schools in wealthy neighborhoods? How about walking some the walk you're so fond of talking the talk about?
/stands by for the inevitable deluge of hypocrisy.
Sorry, clown. California is a two-party consent wiretapping state, period.
Obviously, privacy of police officers is less equal than that of Planned Parenthood officials.
Of course it is. The police force work for, and are public employees of, the city/counties/state of California. They are by far more subject to public scrutiny. Moreover, they are granted special powers in very limited and unique circumstances, which is why they should always feel like they're under the public's microscope.
Oh, and by the way, the right to film someone is not the same-- either legally or in common understanding-- as the right to record audio of their conversations. There is an expectation that anyone in a public area as well as the police, who typically work in public areas, can have their image recorded. This is why we have public security cameras. However, in california if you're recording you must provide notices for people walking about saying that for example, a tv show is being recorded here, or this place is mic'd etc.
Are PP's employees "entirely different" from policemen?
Absolutely. They are private citizens, not public servants. What they are NOT is "entirely different" from the rest of the population in the state who are protected from being wiretapped without being first informed and conceding or without a warrant.
Also, you should be aware that Planned Parenthood is not funded with tax money like a charter school is. Planned Parenthood is re-embursed by medicaid just like any other health care organization. And the total amount of reimbursement for abortion-related services comes to exactly zero dollars.
Seriously, pull your fucking head out of your fucking ass.
Yes, the privacy of police officers while on the job being paid by the public is less than the privacy of two people not employed by the public.
Your privacy is also greater, as is an off-duty police officer's.
CA is a two-party consent state so it has never been legal in CA to record surreptitiously where the other party expects the conversation to be private.
The exceptions may be federal employees on duty at the time of recording under federal jurisdiction but this doesn't apply here, PP is a private organization and the employees are private entities.
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| Are PP's employees "entirely different" from policemen?
Yes.
Your doctor talking to you is different than a policeman's official actions in *public*. It is similar to you talking with your lawyer. Besides, the defendants in the current issue also fraudulently misrepresented themselves which aids proving ill intent. Regarding policemen, the equivalent would be fraudulently misrepresenting oneself as a psychologist for law-enforcement officers and engaging in private conversations in private, taping them, and then publicizing them to shame policemen and the police department as a collective.
What do school vouchers have to do with anything? There is a Constitutional argument there because there is a long-established constitutional restriction particular to religion.
> After eight years of being racist, dissent is patriotic once again.
Dissent wasn't the problem. """dissent""" which accused Obama of not being a native-born American despite conclusive evidence was clearly a proxy for bigotry as it is about identity not ideas or policy. Secret Muslim sharia sympathizer (despite droning thousands of terrorists to death and whacking Osama) too is pretty much bigotry and not policy dissent.
Because it's a lot cheaper to simply pass laws that prohibit actions that one doesn't want, than it is to force one's self to engage in actions that theoretically should be required but cannot be enforced.
It's also because people are inherently selfish.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Undercover videos are apparently fine when they record evidence of animal abuse.
http://www.mercyforanimals.org/investigations
http://thefederalist.com/2017/03/29/california-is-fine-with-undercover-sting-videos-that-expose-animal-cruelty/
But an undercover video related to abortion gets a different standard.
I am foursquare opposed to double standards under the law. If Mercy for Animals isn't charged for surreptitious recording, then this verdict should be overturned.
P.S. The NPR article makes the claim that the video was misleadingly edited. If so, then sue those guys for slander; lying by misleading editing is still lying. Don't selectively enforce a recording law because you are actually upset about something else.
P.P.S. "...an allegation that has been investigated by more than a dozen states, none of which found evidence supporting Daleiden's claim." If we are going to hammer people with 15 felony charges for collecting evidence, I'm not surprised there's no evidence. Also, I'm always suspicious of claims like that... "don't evaluate their video evidence on its own merits, discount it because nobody else has similar evidence from other locations" makes no sense. Again, if the video really was misleadingly edited in a deceptive way, nail them for that.
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
> I absolutely do not understand this OBSESSION with fetuses, followed by the most callous treatment imaginable for the rest of their lives that conservatives espouse.
The problem is that you are believing their words.
Of course, the position is completely nonsensical and hypocritical if one imagines the goal is devotion to needs of health and life of fetuses.
The explanation which is consistent, however, is the recognition that Forced Accidental Parenthood is awful, and that's the entire point of it: because the true goal is to punish, perhaps for a lifetime, poor young women who had sex and further inflict this punishment on their spawn to hurt the mothers even more and use as a fearful example to others.
I can't tell if you're misinformed, stupid, or trolling, but just in case..
Planned Parenthood is not "directly funded out of the taxpayers pockets". There is no line item for Planned Parenthood in the budget. Planned Parenthood, like any other health care provider, is reimbursed by medicaid for services. Like any hospital or doctor. They are not reimbursed for abortions.
While I agree that the "activists" violated California's privacy laws, this is not much different from what PETA routinely does while secretly filming farmers. To my knowledge, this has never resulted in PETA being prosecuted. To the contrary, the video has been used as evidence in legal filings and lawsuits to stop cruelty and abuse against animals.
You do not have the right to film the police all the time, anywhere. Only when they are in a public place, performing their duties.
This is all about the expectation of privacy. Planned Parenthood might be, to a small degree, publicly funded, but they are still a private organization. In their own offices, they have an expectation of privacy, unless they knowingly give it up> You cannot knowingly give it up if you being secretly recorded.
Some states (and, IIRC, federal law) require the consent of only one party to record. California is not one of them. Some states that require all-party consent treat it as a civil offense - you can sue someone who records you without permission. California is not one of them. Some states treat it as a misdemeanor - you can go to jail for it. California is not one of them.
California has made audio recordings, when there is a reasonable expectation of privacy, without permission from all parties, a felony. 14 people secretly recorded, 14 charges (plus on for conspiracy).
These yahoos chose California from the perception (not especially accurate) that it is the most eeeeeevillllll librul state, and thus, most likely to get them footage they could edit into something that will get them a lot of money.
They choose poorly. Now they get to pay the price.
I'm not a Christian and I don't define life as starting at the instant of fertilization, but doesn't life start at some time that has to be specified by law, a definition that is meaningful in cases like the murder of a pregnant woman? Since have put a lot of effort into legally defining death as cessation of brain activity, why not use the start of brain activity as the definition of humanity in secular law?
I absolutely do not understand this OBSESSION with fetuses, [...]
Sure, let me help you out.
Before the late 1970s, the obsession with fetuses was an entirely Roman Catholic thing. At the time of Roe v Wade, most evangelical Protestants in the US were fine with legal access to abortion at least for health reasons.
In the fallout from Watergate, conservatives got into bed with fundamentalists, taking over both the Republican Party and the evangelical church. The previous wedge issue, segregation, was no longer viable, so to get Catholics onside, abortion was chosen as the new wedge issue.
This is all quite recent history. The "traditional doctrine" that fetuses have the same moral value as a child is younger than the Happy Meal.
If this is news to you, look at what's now happening with contraception. In 20 years time, people may find it hard to believe that most American evangelical Protestants were fine with contraception at the turn of the 21st century.
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There is a subtle detail being missed here. The murder of a pregnant woman is certainly not at the woman's consent. That's the difference. An abortion is the woman's choice. A murder is not. Glad I could clear that up for you.
You completely missed his point, so hard in fact I suspect it was a deliberate choice to misunderstand what he was saying. What he was saying was that a fetus, unborn child, or hell, a fully born child (or adult), must be legally and/or morally recognized as a human by some definition as some point in time, and at that point it should be afforded legal protection as a human being. In point of fact, under federal law, an unborn child is recognized as a human if it is the victim of a violent crime. "The woman's choice" is completely irrelevant to the question, for the same reason a woman can't simply choose to kill a 6 month old, because everyone recognizes that a 6 month old is a human person, and one person cannot choose to kill another just because they feel like it.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
As one of the handful of Christians on Slashdot, hopefully I can provide a reasonable, rational counterargument to the string of assumptions about "Pro-Lifers"...
1. Yes, there are crazies. We have them. The left has their SJWs, and the right has the weekly Pro-Life protesters whose concern ends on delivery day. Yes, I know. Extremism on *any* cause is invariably going to make a mess of the initial concern. Moreover, it's not helpful that the extremists tend to make the headlines, while the majority of people who adhere to a cause tend to be willing to avoid making waves despite agreement with the core principle. If, for the sake of argument, we could ignore the third standard deviation for a few minutes, I'd appreciate it.
2. As has been discussed elsewhere in the thread, the core question involved here is this: "At what point is it 'human'?". Is it at birth, and not a minute before? Is it 'human' the day before? Is it third trimester (i.e. where the fetus can generally survive outside the womb)? Is it when it can feel pain, when there's a heartbeat, detectable brainwave patterns, when RNA recombinates, when the zygote attaches to the uteran wall, or when the egg is fertilized? Right now, the legal limit is 'birth', but I submit that there's at least some validity to the notion that a child should be legally protected as much on the day before its birth as the day after. Disregarding the rhetoric and talking points, the core question at hand is where the line should be drawn.
3. Many Christians *do* provide help and care to mothers amidst crisis pregnancies. CareNet is a network of crisis pregnancy centers that are completely donor supported and provide assistance for women amidst crisis pregnancies both before and after their birth. Diapers and formula are freely given to those who need it. Most have a skeleton crew of paid staff with the majority being volunteers, all of whom go through formal training, medical services are being provided by licensed medical doctors, and they're hella quick to dismiss anyone who treats those who come for care with anything but dignity and respect. There are lots of Christians who are looking to solve the problem, rather than legislate it into a criminal act.
4. Yes, chauvinists are still a thing. However, pursuant to point #2, there's some middle ground between "it's not worth protecting until after birth" and "women belong barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen".
Yes, we can do better, and I (and many like me) am working on it. However, I have a completely sincere question: The elected officials who say dumb things and the protesters who clearly haven't done a lick of critical thinking get a whole lot of airtime, for free, and it echoes far and long. What should those who are trying to address the matter in the right way supposed to do? Put a camera in the face of every woman who walks in? Facebook Live every time a pro-life individual calls out a wreckless protester? Burn people at the stake if they say mean things to someone amidst a crisis pregnancy? Or, on the other hand, not act in accordance to a held set of beliefs, even if it's in a way that does not impose upon others? If doing the wrong thing gets publicity and doing the right thing doesn't, the narrative is going to be swayed as a result. I'm perfectly content helping out in the shadows and not claiming any sort of credit for it (happy to give any credit to God to whom it's due), but I honestly wish it were possible to realistically counterbalance the "Pro-Lifers are hypocritical jerks" narrative without publicity whoring and am completely open to suggestions in that respect.
On the topic at hand, if they took the videos in a state which requires both parties consent to recordings, then yes, they should have acted in accordance with the law. The situation they're in now is what it means to be a martyr, and if they did what they did because they believed in it enough to break the law, then this is the consequence and I while I wish them the best in court (due process is everyone's right), if the court does not rule in their favor, then that is the nature of martyrdom.
Thanks for reading.
and so is that Fred shmuck. Adding apostrophes to his name and the name of some crap book he wrote won't distract from that fact.
For 5 thousand years of recorded history if we left anything that really mattered (food production, health care, education, transportation) to the unorganized masses of people it either didn't get done, got done really badly or only got done for the really rich. Everytime people banded together and agreed that there was a minimum that should be done by and for people motherfucking shit got done. That got us to the moon. It cured diseases that plagued us for centuries. It's why we've never had a repeat of the dust bowl/Great Depression.
Said it before, say it again: Don't leave the free market in charge of anything more important than a Twinkie. And keep an eye on 'em while they're making that Twinkie or they'll fill it with sawdust.
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