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>his failure was allegedly looking at child pornography FTFY It doesn't matter what they accuse him of, until they prove it, he's innocent.
by literallycancer 10y ago
>his failure was allegedly looking at child pornography
FTFY
It doesn't matter what they accuse him of, until they prove it, he's innocent.
- dbg31415 10y agoThanks. I don't care what the charge is, if the government can not prove their case without compelling the person to testify / provide evidence against himself the judge needs to throw that case out. This is terrifying that anyone could be jailed for using what anyone would consider their 5th amendment right.
- hyperpape 10y agoHe's innocent in court (and my non-lawyerly (aka worthless) sense says the fifth amendment favors him). But we're not a court, and our standard for speech shouldn't be "beyond a reasonable doubt". The parent poster was right. His failing was looking at child pornography.
- EdHominem 10y agoSays who? Neither of us saw it, so we can't know. There's a procedure though that we use to determine the likelihood of someone's guilt, based on evidence and legal arguments. Would you like to hear about it?
- dllthomas 10y agoI think it's legitimate to say, in a discussion like this one where we're not dealing with punishment, that we should hold to a weaker standard (preponderance of evidence?) than should a criminal court. That said, as far as I'm aware the only evidence we've seen is that he's been accused of the crime. I don't what portion of accusations are false (or even a proxy like conviction rate in comparable situations).
- Freak_NL 10y agoThat might seem reasonable at first glance, but it tends to turn into a witch hunt — especially with modern day communication channels. That is, you are effectively dealing with punishment (by treating a suspect as a criminal and tarnishing their reputation before being convicted) by not applying the same rigour as the courts.
- dllthomas 10y agoI agree that social condemnation - especially mass condemnation - is a form of punishment, and should be treated with corresponding care. But I reject the attempt to extend that to all related reasoning - it is specifically a question of requiring a high confidence for punishment.
- sjy 10y agoThere's a lot more evidence in the government brief, which was linked in the article.
- dllthomas 10y agoFair enough.
- sgift 10y agoWhat should our standard be? Being accused equals being guilty? Tread carefully. The protections you give others are the protections you'll enjoy yourself if needed. And hoping you'll never need them is a very shortsighted strategy.
- imcoconut 10y agoWell said.
- jonathanstrange 10y agoBut we're not a court, and our standard for speech shouldn't be "beyond a reasonable doubt". The parent poster was right. His failing was looking at child pornography. That's what you think until you're falsely accused of such a crime...
- hyperpape 10y agoFor everyone who's poo-poohing this, go read the government's brief (https://arstechnica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/fedsrawls.pdf https://arstechnica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/fedsrawls...). There are logs that show him visiting child pornography groups, there are recorded requests of him accessing files whose hashes matched child pornography, his sister says he showed her child porn and told his entire family that he had a problem with child pornography, and he admitted that he may have been emailed child pornography. Now, replace child pornography with any other thing. Would you question me saying that he'd been downloading that thing?