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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.
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.
As far as I know, someEU countries don't even publish defendants' names in trials in order to protect them since they're presumed innocent. Not to mention that convictions for more minor crimes typically drop off a person's record after 5-10 years. They're actually concerned about rehabilitation, not pure vengeance.
Good thing someone on Twitter already found them
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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".
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Yet, if this happened today, your mugshot may have ended up on some shady website like the one mentioned -- thus, you could say "no" to the "have you been convicted?" question, yet still have prospective employers finding out out the arrest.
Does this mean Yelp owners will get arrested for their policies that solicit payment to hide bad reviews?
https://www.eastbayexpress.com...
As far as I know, someEU countries don't even publish defendants' names in trials in order to protect them since they're presumed innocent. Not to mention that convictions for more minor crimes typically drop off a person's record after 5-10 years. They're actually concerned about rehabilitation, not pure vengeance.
I work in one of the wealthy suburbs in the North Shore of Chicago, and once in a while I leaf through one of the incredibly boring suburban newspapers from places like Northbrook or Glencoe. There is *always* a "police blotter" type column, where they seem to report every last arrest that took place in their suburb, and they make a point of identifying the arrestee as specifically as possible ("Robert Eric Smith, aged 37, of Waukegan, IL"). None of the arrests are remotely newsworthy-- they are mostly someone who was caught shoplifting, or caught with a joint, or caught driving with a suspended license, or something similar. (I also have noticed that the ones who were driving were invariably pulled over for something very minor or nebulous, like "improper lane usage"-- probably they were pulled over for driving a beater car in a town full of one-percenters). Of course, these papers absolutely never publish a followup story to tell us whether the person was convicted or not.
In other words, I agree with the policy of these EU countries, and indeed this is the standard I was taught to follow when I took journalism classes in high school. It's just unfortunate that so many newspapers follow the exact opposite of this policy.
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
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.
"Cops would not be arresting people for no reason..." -- and Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy exist. Welcome to the real world where people are arrested without ample evidence, suspects change, some people are even kept in jail to pressure them into plea bargaining. Remember, sheriffs and prosecutors in the US are often ELECTED, and need to appear to be "tough on crime" (i.e. getting convictions) to be re-elected.
I'm glad that Slashdot is slowly coming around to the idea that the right to be forgotten is a good one.
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