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Supreme Court Rules Sex Offenders Can't Be Barred From Social Media (gizmodo.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: In a unanimous decision today, the Supreme Court struck down a North Carolina law that prevents sex offenders from posting on social media where children might be present, saying it "impermissibly restricts lawful speech." In doing so, the Supreme Court asserted what we all know to be true: Posting is essential to the survival of the republic. The court ruled that to "foreclose access to social media altogether is to prevent the user from engaging in the legitimate exercise of First Amendment rights." The court correctly noted that "one of the most important places to exchange views is cyberspace." The North Carolina law was ruled to be overly broad, barring "access to what for many are the principal sources for knowing current events, checking ads for employment, speaking and listening in the modern public square, and otherwise exploring the vast realms of human thought and knowledge."
Too... many... unanimous... decisions... head... exploding...
So I guess half of the people here are still able to post.
Looks like you boys will be back in the "swing" of things!
Okay, so I have the "KIK" app installed in my Android emulator. So how do you find kids to groom? Impossible. These pedophiles must be geniuses or something. Same thing with Facebook, for example. You can't search for people -- you have to already know them IRL.
Right now, some politicians are planning how best they can pass a new law that will do exactly the same, but be just different enough that it can be tied up in court for a few years before being struck down.
Sex offenders are perhaps the most reviled people in the US. Any law which causes them difficulty is an easy pass with overwhelming public support.
Plus slow internet and Microsoft laid off their QA department and Seattle stuff.
Leaving out how few people in this country actually use it at all.
Look for numerous unanimous decisions like this going forward. This guy is going to make SCOTUS great again with his consensus building activities. I bet he could talk Justice Alito into voting for installing a transgender bathroom in the building.
Makes one feel better about this country.
Pity so many people think have so much evil in their heart and the desire to blame it on someone that society considers an acceptable victim (sex offenders).
When you want to know someone's deepest, darkest, thoughts, ask them to describe their enemy.
Ask an innocent child to do this and they talk about someone stealing toys. Ask an alt-right person and they talk about other races secretly taking over the world.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Something narrower- say making it illegal for them to send direct or group messages to a minor, or to make friend requests/add them to groups would seem to be a reasonable law. Barring them altogether prevents them from interactions with adults. And then we get into the whole question of what counts as social media (would a website with a forum be social media? The comments page on a newspaper article? Again this could be very broad).
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Dodged a bullet with that decision...
Ken
In the US--pursuing child molesters is the last bastion of the bureaucratic tyrant. No right is beyond revoke and no punishment too severe to stand in the way of "protecting the children".
My local police (like many in the US) has a special web page showing convicted sex offenders.
There is no page showing convicted murderers; somehow the normal public record of that was enough...
What's wrong with this picture?...
As a formerly registered "sex offender" (I plead out because they found a nasty loophole in the law that forced me to make a shitty choice) I have turned a very attentive ear to these issues for a very long time. Ever since the 90s the internet has become an extension of the in-person world and "social media" has become a major component of participation in society at large. These laws that ban sex offenders from social media effectively ban them from society and participation in it, greatly increasing the risk of new crimes. Sex offender laws need to be clawed back. Registration needs to be completely discarded; it has no value when objectively examined over the 25+ years that it has existed and causes more harm than good across the board.
The best way to reform convicts that are not heavily mentally unbalanced (most offenders are one-time offenders and don't go on to have a long rap sheet, after all!) is to help them build social safety nets and positive relationships. To do something other than pursue those specific goals is to intentionally harm society at large.
Says the lifetime NAMBLA member.
Sex offenders on social media will make them easier to track.
You are welcome on my lawn.
They don't wanna get banned from the interwebs when they get eventually caught...
Think of the children!
Look for numerous unanimous decisions like this going forward. This guy is going to make SCOTUS great again with his consensus building activities. I bet he could talk Justice Alito into voting for installing a transgender bathroom in the building.
I rather think that Ruth Bader Ginsburg would hold her own in that discussion.
Too bad we can't ban him from Twitter.
We saved the bathwater, now we can't throw out the baby!
While I expect that it would've remained unanimous, if you read the entire PDF of the court's decision, he took no part in this one. Quoted from the court's decision [PDF]:
Thank you for giving me my rights, master, your permission is most valued to me
I'll bite. If it is so dangerous to let someone post on the internet, why is that person not still in jail?
Just asking for a friend, right?
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Asking for myself.
Were that true, all the stupid security theater laws would be repealed as they restrict freedom.
Somewhere around 1980 or 1995, sorry, bad memory, California did a weeding of the state sex offender list.
At the time they deleted a lot of old consensual homosexual conduct, but also a lot of other things that decades before were considered perversion, immoral, or criminal, but had since become 'ho-hum.' (Not, I am not describing a sex act, just something boring.).
On of the problems at the time time was the list was cluttered up people who were zero risk of doing anything to harm anyone (other that prudes sensabilities).
A single list for all sex crimes is just dumb.
I hope now the lists can be searched for details. (Again, not a part of anatomy...)
... is that is full of "offenders" that are no more than young guys that were caught having consensual sex with their younger girlfriends.
The list does not differentiate between a serial rapist and a just turned 18 year old kid who slept with his sexually active 15 year old girlfriend.
Okay, so I have the "KIK" app installed in my Android emulator. So how do you find kids to groom? Impossible. These pedophiles must be geniuses or something. Same thing with Facebook, for example. You can't search for people -- you have to already know them IRL.
It seems that team sports are the best environment for children to find an adult to groom them and visa versa.
I'm impressed! My complements to the fine faculty at whichever esteemed Troll University you attended.
I thought the terms of service for many social media sites state people under a certain age are not allowed to use those services.
Now for more calls against personal freedom, the rule of law. the justice system and the Constitution from our crybaby snowflake lefties.
Your tears are delicious, keep 'em comin'.
Republicans wouldn't have an issue with spending public money on someone's "lifestyle choice"? What about when they realize you need three extra bathrooms, one for trans men, one for trans women and one for gender non-conforming individuals?
At my University, they relabeled a couple of bathrooms as "anything goes" during the whole "bathroom bill" nonsense going on in the press. I suppose it was to make the LGTBQwhatever cabal happy. Now it might as well be the Korean DMZ. Nobody steps foot there. I asked around once and the consensus from females was that they avoided it like the plague. I figure it's just a matter of time until it becomes the favorite hook-up spot for the gays due to its seclusion. The last bathroom on campus that received that honor had all the doors removed from the stalls.
Don't tell that to the 1 million innocent Iraqis murdered for WMD lies
Nor the American Citizens interrogated for non-existent Terrorism links
Nor the "Free citizens" banned from living in low-cost housing due to a separate person's misuse of illegal drugs
Nor the victims of the Patriot Act nondisclosures
Nor the women who have lost birth control / abortion access
no, it looks like repigs are all about "Safety" and care nothing about freedom.