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Alleged Owners of Mugshots.com Have Been Arrested For Extortion (lawandcrime.com)
Reader schwit1 writes: The alleged owners of Mugshots.com have been charged and arrested. These four men Sahar Sarid, Kishore Vidya Bhavnanie, Thomas Keesee, and David Usdan only removed a person's mugshot from the site if this individual paid a "de-publishing" fee, according to the California Attorney General on Wednesday. That's apparently considered extortion. On top of that, they also face charges of money laundering, and identity theft.
If you read a lot of articles about crime, then you're probably already familiar with the site (which is still up as of Friday afternoon). They take mugshots, slap the url multiple times on the image, and post it on the site alongside an excerpt from a news outlet that covered the person's arrest. According to the AG's office, the owners would only remove the mugshots if the person paid a fee, even if the charges were dismissed. This happened even if the suspect was only arrested because of "mistaken identity or law enforcement error." You can read the affidavit here.
If you read a lot of articles about crime, then you're probably already familiar with the site (which is still up as of Friday afternoon). They take mugshots, slap the url multiple times on the image, and post it on the site alongside an excerpt from a news outlet that covered the person's arrest. According to the AG's office, the owners would only remove the mugshots if the person paid a fee, even if the charges were dismissed. This happened even if the suspect was only arrested because of "mistaken identity or law enforcement error." You can read the affidavit here.
Frankly, arrest info shouldn't be published on the Internet at all, though it should be available to those who go in person to a courthouse. It's inexcusable that a cop's whim can ruin a person's reputation and career, even if all charges are later dismissed or judged as not guilty.
Going after the data pimps is a good first step. Next step should be arresting/suing sheriffs and police chiefs who post such info to the Internet so it can be sucked up by data miners.
Wouldn't it be funny if somebody hacked the site and put their mugshots up on it!
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
And seeing this I can (even more) understand why the ECJ has ruled about "right to be forgotten". I also understand even more now why laws like GDPR (and its predecessor EU directive) were needed. This kind of site would be illegal from the get go in any EU country.
That would make Google page rank to shoot so high, these guys will finally eclipse Rick Santorum.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I'm not against convictions being available, but tarnishing someone's reputation based on an arrest that may or may not be justified should be illegal. The records have to be available in a courthouse for the defendant to fight the case, but if the case is dropped or the defendant is found not-guilty, they should be destroyed entirely.
Making them available only in person is a barrier to casual searching -- if it's important enough to find out, it's important enough for you to take a trip to the courthouse.
Good thing someone on Twitter already found them
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
These people are scum, and the charge of extortion is good and valid. If this doesn't stick, I hope a class action lawsuit against these people follows in the civil courts.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
It's an important distinction, arrests mean nothing. Convictions mean you were found guilty, plead guilty or chose not to fight it (nolo contendere). The latter I think falls in the public right to know, and while I understand the intent behind forcing someone to a courthouse, I don't think that's reasonable.
But putting up arrest photos is just sleazy. Anyone can be arrested because some cop got a bug up his ass, it doesn't mean you were remotely guilty but posting it might have adverse effects on your life.
"Innocent until proven guilty" is a myth in the US.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Fits right into Facebook's business plan
An arrest is generally the accusation of a crime by a party. Presumably in most cases that means it's an arresting officer. This might be more or less slander rather than libel- but none-the-less. The people who should be targeted are the officers then who initiated the arrest. If that information is then published by the government in some public database there should then also be liability on the part of the government for committing libel unless it's made clear that it's an accusation. Did mugshot's make it clear that these were merely accusations or did they imply something else? They too maybe should be held liable for something if they published libel about people merely accused of rather than convicted of an offense.
I wasn't talking about conviction data (separate discussion), but only about arrest data prior to conviction.
There's a difference between arrest and guilt. Suppose I'm walking down the street and suddenly a police car pulls over and the officers arrest me. Suppose they're acting on a tip that a man fitting my description has been doing some unsavory things to kids in the area. Suddenly, my name is linked to those crimes and anyone searching for me would see that.
Now, let's say that - after a day - the police realize they have the wrong guy, apologize, and release me. I'm sure I'd still be rattled over the situation, but at least it would die down, right? Wrong. This site (and others like it) would still be proclaiming my arrest for this crime, still associating my name with the crime as if I were found guilty and not released with no charges pressed. Years later, people might see this link and judge me based on a case of mistaken identity. Even if it went to trial and I was acquitted, this site would still be blaring my link to the alleged crime as if it were a proven fact that I was guilty.
Arrests should be withheld until charges are pressed. Once charges are pressed, they should be available at a local courthouse. If a defendant is found guilty, then the evidence should be made public.
I won't agree with b0s0z0ku's statement that a not-guilty verdict or dropped case should result in the records being destroyed. There's value to holding onto them if only to tell how often this sort of thing occurs. However, these cases should be released only in aggregate (e.g. "there were 27 dropped cases in Precinct A over the past year") not in detail. Other than that, they should be locked away and regarded as not existing if any future charge is presented or when evaluating a person.
In any event, an arrest mugshot should definitely not be posted worldwide for everyone to see and then left up long after the charges were dropped.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
"Innocent until proven guilty" is a myth in the US.
I guess it is a myth, but not the way you mean. People don't get what it means. No one would be arrested or prosecuted if police and prosecutors had to assume everyone was innocent. Innocent until proven guilty applies in very limited places. It also don't apply to the public. I can believe someone is guilty without proof. I can believe anything I want. You have the right to be presumed innocent during your criminal trial. That's it. The rest is all made up.
They allegedly committed extortion.
There is no "allegedly" about their ownership of the company.
I think there's value in the arrest record after the case is dropped or the defendant is found not guilty - but only as an aggregate statistic. If a precinct normally has 30 dropped cases a month and suddenly they spike to 50, something's up and procedures need to be examined. This can be useful but it shouldn't be able to be traced back to the specific person.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
We should create a public service company funded by donations and link every real identity, name and address with every other piece of random information.
There is no way to erase the signal. Only recourse left is to add noise and reduce the signal to noise ratio. In fact it would be a great business idea. For a fee I will link the subscriber's name and address to all kinds of information, some good, some bad, some ugly, some not. In the end anyone looking up the name will get so many links it would be impossible to sort out and find the dirt.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
True. And the defendant themselves should be able to request it by kept, or be given a notarized copy. It's nice to have evidence to sue the pants off a police department or individual cop if an arrest was unjustified.
Officers should be held to account for false arrests and libel committed during testimony. It's that simple. The problem that we have is all these government entities have people who are incentivized to "cooperate" (lie or otherwise mislead) with each other for the purpose of convicting people regardless of guilt. ie prosecutors and officers in particular. I've only had the opportunity to cross examine a parking meter lady in a case I took to trial over a parking ticket. I won both tickets. But it was clear how these government goons work. They know how the system works and they know they won't be held to account for lying on the stand. From a victims point of view even when there are multiple video cameras and shit is caught on tape there is only a 50/50 chance of winning when the law is on your side because of biased judges. It might not be illegal to cross the street but the judge is thinking "That's a busy street! We can't have people cross there!" and you get convicted despite the law clearly being on your side. I should know. I was in that situation. The charges were dropped- but if I wasn't in such a good negotiating position that wouldn't have happened. They were actually more or less fearing us because they knew they were going to have to defend themselves in court later when a lawsuit happened. The whole incident involved political speech and an officer harassing a group for filming. The arguments of the officer were clearly bull shit and we have evidence of the officer lying. The excuse for the interference in filming and arrest ("safety") did not match the officers actions or training. I can't reveal what action that was this officer took as the trial hasn't happened yet. But we've got a good case worthy of taking to court- which is super rare. Most lawyers don't want to take a civil case like this to court because the system is so one-sided and there isn't enough money in it. You have to have a really good case with a good chance of winning for it to be worthwhile.
I don't think officers should be open for libel for arresting a person. There should definitely be false arrest charges if it can be proven that the officers knowingly targeted an innocent person for some reason. However, if it's just a case of mistaken identity or not enough evidence, the officers were just doing their job. Police officers have the ability to do many things that normal citizens can't do because their job demands it.
Now the Mugshots website, on the other hand, could definitely be open to libel charges. They are insinuating that an individual is linked to a crime merely because that person was arrested. As I understand it, they didn't use terms like "allegedly" (which all decent news organizations will use to avoid slander/libel suits), but instead simply said "John Jackson/Robbery." By doing so, they are implying that John Jackson was found guilty of robbery when he wasn't. Even if charges were dropped, the site kept that link up and - even worse - charged people for the "privilege" of having this link to a crime they didn't commit removed.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Whoa, I just read my comment and I realize it was pretty stupid. Sorry, guys. I wish I could delete it.
If you have a right to be presumed innocent during the arrest too - as in, maybe police shouldn't ever draw their guns unless there's a very real threat.
An accusation is neither libel nor slander.
But no, an arrest is not an accusation. No charges are even filed until after you are brought in. The barrier to arrest is simply probably cause.
So you're saying /. is wrong for posting this story on their arrest? I'm confused...
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
What is with the editorializing "That's apparently considered extortion." in the summary?
Yeah, that actually is extortion.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
This wouldn't be a problem if people didn't make judgements based off of arrest records. I'm not saying this wasn't a sleazy business, but it's only a problem because people put value on it.
Yes. It's technically wrong, though sweet, sweet karma. Though I have no problem with the arrest itself, and (hopefully) subsequent steep fines, jail time, and maybe permanent shutdown of the web site and similar dodgy sites.
Saying people need to click their heels together three times and turn widdershins before being granted the precious data...
Hyperbole much? You don't need permission, and it available. You too lazy to drive your fat ass to city hall?
Within 5 years of Mugshots.com's shut-down, expect Mugshots.gov...
Wrong, the media put value in it as click-bait.
Also, it's the prosecutors that post the arrest photos, not the police,
because its a career bullet-point for the prosecutor especially in a
high-profile knee-jerk public reaction kinda thing (think CP).
They should follow up and start charging domain squatters with extortion.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Does this mean Yelp owners will get arrested for their policies that solicit payment to hide bad reviews?
https://www.eastbayexpress.com...
I agree with this, but I'm not sure making information harder to get is the right approach here. The government, especially the police and the criminal justice system, LOVES to make information hard to get. Even when you have the right to the information and there's even an office/process to get it, they have all kinds of gimmicks to essentially deny access.
I think a better approach might be:
1) Make it illegal to sell arrest information -- it can only be obtained from the government, and the government logs all access to the data
2) Make it a civil violation to use arrest information alone to deny employment, housing or any other public accommodation -- $25,000 per violation ought to be enough of a penalty to both scare HR and other managers away, and enough to motivate lawyers to take these cases. Access of arrest data logged to a company or employees IP addresses is prima facie evidence of a violation, which will motivate IT to just block access outright.
or for bad analogies.
What about police agencies that place "arrested" individuals on their facebook page. They don't remove the "offenders" when they are found to be innocent. They should be subject to this same crime.
Or at least some karma at work.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
Frankly, arrest info shouldn't be published on the Internet at all, though it should be available to those who go in person to a courthouse.
Are you saying it ought to be legal for me to go to the courtroom and look up arrest info, but, having done so, it should be illegal for me to discuss it over the internet? I mean, you used the passive voice about 'shouldn't be published' but you haven't explained operationally what you intend.
What's more, this kind of blanket statement is way overbroad for dealing with creeps like these. Extortion/blackmail is a well defined crime that properly suits these jackasses without making huge policy changes.
If they maliciously arrest someone, there's plenty of more serious things to get the officer with.
If it's an honest accident, or done without malice, it's not libel/slander.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
If you're willing to wait 20 minutes for the clerk to sloooowly pull up each (paper) record, you could discuss it. The point is to make it onerous and expensive to pick up such info.
also some people use jail as there doctor for stuff that the ER does not do.
BS- This was MY post and I stand by it. Fuck the cops. They routinely drag people through the criminal court system when they have nothing but an itch up there power tripped asses. They should be held liable for that action where no crime is provable. Nobody should be arrested until there is evidence that a crime has actually been committed. It's that simple.
You have the right to be presumed innocent during your criminal trial. That's it.
If the public has been convinced of your guilt, how is a jury, made up of members of the public, to presume you innocent during a criminal trial?
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
It's funny because now they're gonna go to prison and get raped in the asshole.
I don't typically condone such things, but people like this have earned it.
I won't agree with b0s0z0ku's statement that a not-guilty verdict or dropped case should result in the records being destroyed. There's value to holding onto them if only to tell how often this sort of thing occurs. However, these cases should be released only in aggregate (e.g. "there were 27 dropped cases in Precinct A over the past year") not in detail. Other than that, they should be locked away and regarded as not existing if any future charge is presented or when evaluating a person.
The records of acquittal need to be retained to avoid double jeopardy.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Google is complicit in making these sites pop up in search results in the first place. Now that there is precedent for this, Google can finally be coerced into removing all pages with links to online mugshot websites from search results. Failure to comply could be construed as aiding and abetting criminal activity.
Grabs popcorn. Sleazy practices always go down in flames one way or another.
It absolutely is slander or libel. It actually depends on where you are whether or not there is a charge or when that charge is attached (at the time of arrest or later), but a complaint is an accusation of some crime is going to be attached either way, even if there isn't a specific crime attached to it yet. Generally an officer will be the one submitting the complaint. While an officer needs probable cause to conduct a search they still are generally the ones making the complaint. And its the prosecutors who get to decide whether or not to charge a person with the crime or switch the charge to something else. If there is no arrest you are simply being detained for investigation. Once arrested even if the investigation is on-going you have been accused of something. Otherwise there would be no arrest.
Arrest information is publicly available and in many places it's free on the internet. I happen to know one place that will only let you scrub the arrest after 3 years, and you have to apply and pay the $150 application fee.... that's unless it resulted in a guilty conviction. Then they won't let you scrub it.
Of course you can pay $150 to scrub it from the public record but before that happens they'll sell the record to lexisnexus who will keep it forever and sell it whenever they feel.
"YO DAWG I heard you like extorting people over mugshots so we took your mugshot and put it on mugshot.com so you can extort yourself for putting your mugshot up on mugshot.com while you put your mughshot up on mugshot.com so you can extort yourself for
STACK OVERFLOW
CORE DUMPED
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
But all suspects are considered guilty, otherwise they wouldn't be suspects.
Person with an actual sex crime conviction here. Please feel free to terminate yourself at any time. Your inability to think is gene pool cancer.
Arrests do mean something though, because they influence the public's opinion. Lots of arrests means a better chance of the sheriff being re-elected, whether or not there is a conviction in court. They post these records and photos precisely so that the general public thinks that law enforcement is being effective.
Ignore him. He's the usual B0Z0 of /.
Nothing but a clown.
There is a good reason why arrest records should be made public. And it has nothing to do with the person who is arrested. It's actually a means of public oversight over the state.
Imagine a state where arrests were kept secret. The police would be free to arrest and detain people without public knowledge, as long as they were eventually released (i.e. not charged). If they did this in a discriminatory manner, there would be no public record and possibly no recourse.
They are insinuating that an individual is linked to a crime merely because that person was arrested. As I understand it, they didn't use terms like "allegedly" (which all decent news organizations will use to avoid slander/libel suits), but instead simply said "John Jackson/Robbery." By doing so, they are implying that John Jackson was found guilty of robbery when he wasn't.
They don't need to use "allegedly" about the arrest, they could just say "name/cause of arrest" or whatever that field is called on the arrest form and let people do all the implying and insinuating themselves. If they stuck strictly to doing that it'd be very hard to convict them of libel/slander as truth is a valid defense, even when you tell only a tiny bit of it that puts the person in a very bad light.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
arrest of course is not the same as guilt. ... arrest is a fact. Hard item of data. It happened, there was specified person arrested .... .... ... validity of reasons for arrest ... that is for judge to deliberate ...
and
and such fact was published
Now
Frivolous arrests should be punished ... including punitive damages ... :-)
On the other hand, there will be always that one portion of weed ready to be found and make arrest valid
That's not how suspicion works.
you'll be sending formal letters every 2 weeks to tell some creditor or another that you didn't borrow money from them. And you better stay on top of it or they'll kill your credit unless you pay them.
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Actually alot of police departments post every mugshot they take along with name, dob and charge.. and some even do it LIVE...
From personal experience I know both Portland, OR and Boise,ID post everything and they can't be alone... these guys have been doing it for years.
I had a bailbondsman client in Boise that I use to scrape arrest and warrant data for mass mailings every month back in '02 and '03
This is actually much more complex that it seems at first glance. Why are arrests public because nothing is more dangerous than secret arrests, disappearing people, so they have to be public, very public, to protect the individual being arrested. News service report the arrest and they no longer delete the stories as they did in days of yore by virtue of the fact looking up old newspapers was a laborious task and of course nobody really recorded TV news.
Now this stuff stays published for life. The biggest onus for false arrest should be on the police and they should be required to publish an apology and pay restitution. The state should not be allowed to get away with false arresting anyone, they should be required to undo all harm caused and penalties should be applied, dependent upon how egregious the false arrest is.
Where the individuals went wrong was being selective about removing data, that selectiveness was based around the harm they knew they were causing and greed. They set out to cause harm and extort money in order to minimise that harm, they set out to harass people to extort them into paying them to stop that harassment. They would have been safe if they had not filtered, if they had not been aware of the harm they were purposefully causing and if they had to demonstrated intent to cause harm and charge fees to stop causing harm. Somewhat similar to a protection racket and probably subject to similar Rico style charges https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... the charges could mount quite alarmingly for them due to the organised nature of their activity.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Not a good idea. Sometimes the arrest record is important for specific jobs.
Check this example - on page 34, non-conviction is presented in a Vulaerable Sector records check, which is meant for those taking care of those who are vulnerable due to special circumstances (disability, age, etc.) In this case, the arrest record gets disclosed if there's more than one offence, where said offence matches the schedule of relevant offenses (e.g. sexual offences for all vulnerable persons, theft/fraud for adult vulnerable persons), and the victims meet the definition of a vulnerable person.
Of course, this arrest record is only important to a small pool of job types. Everything else should be happy enough with just the criminal record rather than the arrest record.
They're lucky they were arrested. I'm surprised they're still breathing.
Is that copyright infringement?
The absence of privacy is so ingrained into American law that it is the only government handing out mugshots and arrest records. A few other countries have mandated some convictions as public knowledge (technically all are, since criminal courts tend to be public); such as child rape and homosexuality, similar to the USA.
Lemme guess; they went shopping after they committed a crime?
How does that compare to Yelp: Where the record is censored until one pays a 'de-censoring' fee? I'm glad that individuals got priority but I think Yelp is committing extortion too.
That's bullshit. A CONVICTION should be an issue for certain job types. Being arrested should mean precisely dick. Otherwise, we don't have a society where one is innocent until proven guilty, and that's not a society I'd like to live in.
Damn, I must have blacked out again, I can't believe I wrote this stupid shit again!
A HR manager will just rule out anyone applying for work that has any police history. Why not, there are plenty of other applicants. And the cops would not be arresting people for no reason, even if they could not get enough evidence to convict.
Welcome to the real world.
Do they have to pay themselves to remove their own mugshots?
- Sig
I'm glad that Slashdot is slowly coming around to the idea that the right to be forgotten is a good one.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
extortionists like these should be tortured and killed
If the public has been convinced of your guilt, how is a jury, made up of members of the public, to presume you innocent during a criminal trial?
The jury must judge on the evidence. At the moment the trial starts, they have heard zero evidence against you, so according to the evidence they heard, you are innocent. As the trial proceeds and evidence is heard, both against you and for you, that will change.
What they are not allowed to do is to judge you based on anything that isn't presented as evidence in court.
I'm glad that Slashdot is slowly coming around to the idea that the right to be forgotten is a good one.
On the contrary, the users of Slashdot have understood well the dangers of never being forgotten online for quite some time now. Indeed, long before the implications of this problem were widely understood by the general public, we talked about them. However, the issue was never whether it was good or bad to have that information out there but what, practically speaking, could be done about it. The conventional wisdom and consensus conclusion has been that nothing can be done once the information is out there and that attempts to force the issue either spread the information farther and faster, aka the "Streisand effect", or have no effect at all.
I recall a case of a privately-run prison in the US that was paid a certain amount from the government for each prisoner it held. To increase profits, the prison paid a kickback to a local judge every time he sentenced somebody to serve prison time. I can imagine something similar happening with this kind of website, but with kickbacks being paid to police officers.
For example, officer 1 arrests 100 people, but only 3 pay to get their details removed from the website, so he gets a small kickback. In contrast, officer 2 arrests only 20 people but 15 of them pay to get their details removed from the website, so he gets a larger kickback. The higher extortion rate of officer 2 might be due to demographic profiling, perhaps assisted by AI.
The successful use of demographic profiling and AI suggests that there may not necessarily be a noticeable spike in arrest rates to warn about such corruption.
In Louisville Kentucky they have
free monthly newspapers (that they have literally EVERYWHERE) featuring the mugshots of everyone, with stats!
I was working down there for 3 months, and we used to take them around, and get them autographed:)
You'd hear people bragging about making the paper!
http://www.wave3.com/story/317...
MUGSHOTS: APRIL 2018 ROUNDUP
Apr 4, 2018 10:22 AM
See who's been arrested this month in WAVE Country and read about the crimes they're accused of committing. An arrest is not a presumption of guilt. (Click each mugshot for more.)
Given the prevalence of false accusations in divorce cases and 'arrest the man' policies in domestic violence situations (even where he's the victim) even that use of the arrest record is flawed, wrong and should not be happening.
This is actually much more complex that it seems at first glance. Why are arrests public because nothing is more dangerous than secret arrests, disappearing people, so they have to be public, very public, to protect the individual being arrested.
I think paying a small fee for a record check at a local courthouse or being able to call a precinct and ask was 'so and so' arrested is public enough. We don't need Slammer magazines at the gas station shaming people for tabloid entertainment or the local news site pushing them all online so thousands of locals can browse looking for coworkers. The arrest itself, being made excessively public, is enough to ruin someone regardless if it is BS or not. I've gotten arrested for absoultely stupid shit before and the cop just threw whatever he could at me to see what would stick (which subsequently got thrown out at court). Thankfully that was before this crap went online.
If only false accusations were illegal enough to encourage arresting people that make them.
They are. It's just that the law is exceedingly selectively enforced.
I think we could easily crowdfund the money to pay a clerk $20 an hour wait in line for records and scan/OCR them to a central location.
So long as you aren't extorting people to remove it, I don't see a problem.
A conviction is already an issue for certain job types. For even more certain job types, whether it's working with vulnerable people or to get some Top Secret clearance, it's also of interest to have the arrest record.
The arrest record is also disclosed when there's a pattern of arrests where the victim is a vulnerable person, and patterns tend to be a good indicator of potential problems. Also, the reason why the arrests haven't lead to a conviction is also documented, thus false accusations will also be detailed as well. Even if the vulnerable sector check finds an issue, the person should still be able to find employment in related positions that don't require high-end checks.
Speaking of "innocent until proven guilty", why not challenge the concept behind the Vulnerable Sector check? If it is an actual infringement on people's rights, then it shouldn't be too hard to have it struck down.