10 ms·
Supreme Court Says People Can’t Be Banned From The Internet
- elkos 9y agoIf I recall correctly Kevin Mitnick was banned from using a phone or a computer quite a while back. Right?
- ionised 9y agoWell they had to. They couldn't very well give him the opportunity to initial a nuclear attack by whistling down the phone could they?
- ceejayoz 9y agoMy understanding of the ruling is that individuals can still be banned, on a case-by-case basis, but not an entire class of offenders by default.
- dis-sys 9y agoThis is now interesting. Apparently prisoners in the US and many other countries are not allowed to have Internet access. In the US there is a system in place that allows inmates to communicate text only emails. I don't think you can call that plain text messaging "the Internet" in 2017. With this supreme court ruling, how prisons in the US are going to allow inmates to have access to the real Internet? I mean you can not ban those inmates from accessing the Internet, right?
- xbmcuser 9y agoMake it extremely expensive people in prison or family have to pay a lot of money to just talk on the phone. This will just give another way for profit based incarceration system to make money for putting and keeping people in jail.
- snvzz 9y agoLet's continue this until everybody is in jail. That's for the best. Reform and all that.
- amelius 9y agoPerhaps a prison would even be the ideal environment for working on e.g. a large open source project.
- matt4077 9y agoThat would be fitting continuing of all the great books that were written in prison.
- douche 9y agoConsidering the vast numbers of prisoners, the rate of literary production is not that great, especially when you take out the political prisoners.
- DiThi 9y agoThat would have meant ReiserFS would have continued.
- skocznymroczny 9y agosudo kill -9 wife
- monksy 9y agoWow, I completely forgot about ReiserFS. That takes me back. I was a huge fan of it.
- kelnos 9y agoTraditionally (for better or worse), prison inmates do not have the same rights/freedoms that everyone else does. For example, they usually don't get unsupervised calls and visits, and depending on their sentence, may not be able to take/make calls or accept visitors at all for a period of time. It's not a stretch to think that this SCOTUS decision is only related to people outside prison.
- alphydan 9y ago>> they usually don't get unsupervised calls Does anyone? NSA and all ...
- kristofferR 9y agoPrisoners in the US have barely any rights, they don't even have voting rights as felons in many states.
- belorn 9y agoThe court decisions focused on peoples ability to be part of society, and as far as I know that US prison system is the opposite of that. If in the future the prison system was reformed to be rehabilitation rather then retribution, then question like how inmates can access the real internet become really interesting. To quote: "convicted criminals—might receive legitimate benefits from these means [social media] for access to the world of ideas, in particular if they seek to reform and to pursue lawful and rewarding lives."
- denzil_correa 9y agoBan != Access You can NOT ban someone from the Internet but you may deny access to Internet in prisons.
- haggy 9y agoI'm confused by your statement. If "Ban != Access" then what's preventing courts from simply denying access (not a "Ban" under your assertion above) to people outside of prisons as well?
- k-mcgrady 9y agoMy thinking was same as the parent. Preventing access would involve telling someone who owns a computer and could, for example, connect to public wifi, that they are not allowed to do that and will be punished for doing so. I think this would be relevant to someone who has committed a crime using a computer and remains banned from using the internet even after finishing a prison sentence (like the kid in the movie Hackers). It doesn't sound like that can happen now.
- Qwertious 9y agoSuppose a state doesn't bother to install an internet connection in the prison, and confiscates phones with mobile data. This is denying access. Suppose someone is caught with an internet phone in jail and is hauled in front of a judge. If it's banned, then they can have their jail term increased.
- haggy 9y agoYea I understand the "If you're in prison" side of this but I feel like asserting "Ban != Access" makes the general public (i.e not in prison) side of this MUCH fuzzier.
- izacus 9y agoWhat's the difference?
- 9y ago
- ngold 9y agoPrisoners are slaves under the constitution. It is a bummer but it is our last slave institution.
- mk7 9y agoPrisoners are (in most cases) slaves of their own deeds. People are free to do whatever they wish. But some deeds are not good to others - like killing, stealing, etc. If they can't control themselves not to do those things (therefore "slaves of their own deeds"), then other people must take control over it and put such people into prison. By doing this, other people - especially those without control - are scared off similar deeds... A new chance is given to a prisoner when their sentence has finished and are free again...
- maxlybbert 9y agoThe headline (and perhaps the article; I haven't read it since the headline is so bad) overstates the importance of the ruling. The case involved someone on his state's sex offender registry. He was also prohibited from accessing social media sites, and got in trouble for posting a complaint about a traffic ticket on Facebook. The actual ruling is that not allowing him on any social media site for any reason was too broad. Apparently the opinion makes comments about how important internet access is to modern society, which does give a hint about how the court might rule in the future, but a concurring opinion says there's no need to go off into the weeds for that discussion.
- pflats 9y agoI don't follow your concerns on the headline. How is "a blanket ban on social media sites is unconstitutional" substantially different from "people can't be banned from the internet"? Perhaps we're reading it differently, but to me, the headline says "you can't be banned from the internet as a whole", not "you can't be banned from a narrowly-tailored subset of the internet".
- cptskippy 9y agoI think his point was the rule isn't in relation to prisoners who traditionally do not have free access to all of the resources a free person might.
- Fjolsvith 9y agoExactly. Prisoners lose a great many 'rights' when they are incarcerated. Internet access is one of those.
- maxlybbert 9y agoTo me the headline says "you can't be banned from any part of the internet for any reason," or, alternatively, "everybody has a right to access the internet." The actual ruling is much narrower: "it's unconstitutional to ban all sex offenders from accessing social media sites." The Court hasn't officially said anything about other people (e.g., current prisoners, people on probation, specific people convicted of computer-related crimes, etc.) or other sites on the internet. I was responding to the questions "With this supreme court ruling, how prisons in the US are going to allow inmates to have access to the real Internet? I mean you can not ban those inmates from accessing the Internet, right?"
- GhostVII 9y agoYou cannot ban someone from the internet, but you are not forced to give them access to it if they do not already.
- wahern 9y agoReason #516 why people should only send plain text e-mail.
- brandonmenc 9y agore: sex offender lists and sentencing The implication is that the people on the list are still a threat. If that's true, shouldn't they still be in prison?
- Tomte 9y agoNo. You don't get thrown into prison for being a threat. You get there for a specific action.
- mtgx 9y agoUnfortunatley, with the machine learning hype, a lot of companies are pushing "AI-assisted software" that does put people in prison for "being a threat" or for a longer time they should normally get, simply because of factors like being black, or poor, or from a bad neighborhood, etc. https://www.propublica.org/article/machine-bias-risk-assessments-in-criminal-sentencing https://www.propublica.org/article/machine-bias-risk-assessm... https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/13/ai-programs-exhibit-racist-and-sexist-biases-research-reveals https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/13/ai-progra...
- Udik 9y agoOn the other hand, you can only be considered a threat as a consequence of specific actions you took in the past. When you get out of prison that means that, according to the law, you're no longer a threat, and there shouldn't be any reason or justification for limiting your freedom or shaming you publicly by putting your name on a list.
- jorgeleo 9y agoThis is interesting... then what happens to the concept of 3 strikes and out?
- Navarr 9y ago3 strikes is not law, it's policy of some ISPs. They can still do whatever they want.
- cronjobber 9y agoDoes this apply to seizing domains?
- bitwize 9y agoWhat's gonna end up happening is law enforcement is going to strike deals with the major sites like Facebook and Twitter, which are the internet now, to ban anyone on the sex offender rolls -- and nothing much of value will be lost. These companies are not ready for the shitstorm of outrage that will ensue when it is discovered that they are allowing predators to communicate with children.
- throwaway2048 9y agoThe people most likely to respond to dumb outrage like that are also the least likely to stop using such platforms. I don't think they have much to worry about.
- kodt 9y agoIsn't it advantageous for law enforcement to keep as many criminals as possible on social media? Many criminals these days are caught because they boast about their illegal actions (or live stream them) on Facebook.
- ransom1538 9y agoAfter a prisoner has served their said time [for felons]: 1) remove their right to vote [in florida 1/4 african americans can't vote] [i] 2) force them to divulge they are felons to all new employers 3) force them to tell their neighbors they are criminals [sex crime cases which often only involve one witness testimony] 4) garnish their wages 5) seize their property [drug cases] 6) place them on parole to increase mental fear [at any moment they can return to prison without trial] 7) force them to provide random urine tests and body searches [creates anxiety for people with addiction] 8) force them into community service mixed with other felons This is a system designed to create crime. [i] https://theintercept.com/2016/12/22/a-quarter-of-floridas-black-citizens-cant-vote-a-new-referendum-could-change-that/ https://theintercept.com/2016/12/22/a-quarter-of-floridas-bl...
- trinifar 9y ago"After being a felon..." Sounds like they were a criminal before that.
- AlecSchueler 9y agoSo rehabilitation's completely out the window then? Why take an offender and create a situation for them in which they'll be more likely to re-offend and work more closely with other criminals? I know that personally if my vote was taken away, for example, that I'd lose a great deal of respect for and connection to the state; the meaning and validity of laws would be seriously diminished.
- opportune 9y agoYeah, that's the whole point. If you make it so a felon is essentially completely shut out from mainstream society, it will be really hard for them to not commit crime again, since they may not even be able to get a job or find a place to live. So in effect you just incentivize them being jailed again, which is bad for them and for all of society, since we have to pay for it.
- clarkmoody 9y agoLots of felonies are completely ridiculous and cater to special interests, such as felony copyright infringement.
- yaakov34 9y agoPeople are commenting here without reading or understanding the ruling [edit: I should say that headlines like the one techdirt gave their article are also misleading; they are playing up the "banned from the internet" angle]. What happened is that North Carolina passed a law making it a crime for someone previously convicted of a sex crime to access social media sites (unless the site completely prohibits access except by adults, which most sites do not do). The court ruled that this law is unconstitutional on First Amendment grounds. The court did not rule that "no one may be banned from the internet" an so on. A specific person can still have conditions attached by the courts to his release; for example, it's common for judges to impose conditions like "no use of computers" on convicted malicious hackers as part of their probation. This hasn't been made illegal. Restricting internet access of current prisoners certainly hasn't been held illegal. What's been held unconstitutional is criminalizing a priori certain modes of speech by a broad class of people. EDIT2: Since this is apparently attracting a little bit of controversy, I want to add that I did not express any opinion about whether it's good to ban people from using computers or whatever; I just wanted to describe what the ruling says. I am actually not a fan of the general concept of not restoring people's rights after they serve their punishment, although I think it's justified in specific cases.
- erroneousfunk 9y agoThe problem is that so many sites have social networking aspects to them, like the Supreme Court ruling pointed out. The North Carolina law is this: http://www.ncleg.net/gascripts/statutes/statutelookup.pl?statute=14-202.5 http://www.ncleg.net/gascripts/statutes/statutelookup.pl?sta... This law does not prohibit the offender from _making a profile_ on these sites, but from accessing them altogether. So any site that allows users (news commenters, product reviewers, whatever) to have a "user profile" page cannot be accessed. Amazon.com meets these criteria: https://www.amazon.com/gp/profile/amzn1.account.AGRXMFWYARWRFWYV4CN7I52OI53A https://www.amazon.com/gp/profile/amzn1.account.AGRXMFWYARWR... Stack Overflow meets these criteria: https://stackoverflow.com/users/8131287/data-scientist https://stackoverflow.com/users/8131287/data-scientist Github, all of Google, Wikipedia, ALSO meet this criteria. (Although Hacker News does not) There are a few key things that are problematic with the wording of this law: 1. "Facilitates the social introduction between two or more persons for the purposes of friendship, meeting other persons, or information exchanges." The key word is "or" Every website is involved in information exchanges. This effectively does not limit the scope of the law. 2. The requirements of the profile pages contain "and" statements, but they're fairly generic. Name or username/nickname, photographs, and links placed somehow to other friends and associates. If there's a profile page, you can usually access some sort of activity log of the user (comments they've replied to, which may lead to users they've interacted with directly or indirectly) The only real limit here is the photograph, which not all websites (like Hacker News) have. 3. There is an exception involving "Has as its primary purpose the facilitation of commercial transactions involving goods or services between its members or visitors." However, this does not exclude sites like Amazon, given the strict wording of the law. Members are not exchanging goods with each other. This would exclude sites like Craigslist. 4. There is another exception: "Provides only one of the following discrete services: photo-sharing, electronic mail, instant messenger, or chat room or message board platform" The problem with this is that there aren't many "discrete service" websites that exist anymore. Google provides all of these services, Yahoo provides all of these services. Hotmail provides all of these services. Services like chats, forums, e-mail, and photo sharing are often bundled by a huge collection of other services. 5. The vague wording of "Web site" Is it a single domain? A single corporate entity? A single subdomain? The vague wording only works in favor of the law here.
- ericfrederich 9y agoAre prisoners people? Should inmates have access to the internet?