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All the threads are talking about Free Speech, but that ended when the person impersonated an FBI agent. That is not a protected act and is prosecutable[0]. [
by irjustin 6y ago
All the threads are talking about Free Speech, but that ended when the person impersonated an FBI agent.
That is not a protected act and is prosecutable[0].
[0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/912 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/912
- centimeter 6y agoOh cool, as long as the government hasn't chosen to protect it, I guess free speech doesn't apply.
- dogma1138 6y agoAre you seriously arguing that falsifying government documents is/should be protected/free speech? If so I have a tax return to sell you. P.S. My cousin is a prince form Nigeria that might want to discuss a business opportunity with you let me know if you’re interested.
- W-Stool 6y agoGreat guy your cousin. Would do business again 10/10.
- uCantCauseUCant 6y agoI bought a bridge from him- like that bridge, its over troubled waters..
- rightbyte 6y agoHow convinient for the state to prosecute citizens spreading "fake" documents. I mean what could go wrong.
- rsynnott 6y ago... Hold on, are you just now realising that fraud isn't legal? Like, it's one of the first things to have been illegal; the oldest legal codes that we know about cover it. That said this isn't a criminal case and the state isn't prosecuting anyone. (Yet; I assume the person might be prosecuted at some point)
- NE2z2T9qi 6y agoAnd this is fraud... how? Because a guy made up fake stories and gave them to a newspaper for free? Or because he posted untrue things on Twitter? I guess the folks at The Onion better expect police knocking at their door any day now. They make up documents and quotes from "government officials" all the time. Better arrest them!
- Rebelgecko 6y agoWho else would prosecute people for spreading fake documents? Do you think a civil suit would be more effective?
- nl 6y agoThe state isn't prosecuting anyone. It's a civil lawsuit.
- nradov 6y agoIt comes down to intent. If you falsify a government document and use it to defraud someone then that would be a criminal act. But if you show a fake tax return form for "Donald Trump" as a joke then that would be protected free speech.
- NE2z2T9qi 6y agoI can't believe how unbelievably little people like you know about law and free speech. Are you the one seriously arguing that it's illegal to lie on Twitter? Or to lie a newspaper? Of course faking a document is perfectly legal as long as it's not used for fraud. Tricking people on Twitter or at a newspaper isn't fraud unless they're contractually paying you for authentic documents and you deceive them for monetary gain. Is this really that hard? The Onion fakes documents all the time and claims to have quotes from police officers and government officials on a daily basis. Free speech is the most essential of all freedoms, and you'd trade it away for a song and a dance out of sheer ignorance.
- google234123 6y agoThat's what the law says. You may also surprised to hear that you can't lie under oath.
- lurquer 6y agoThat’s not true. Your are confusing lying under oath with the crime of perjury. The false statement, standing alone, is not actionable... it is merely one of several elements that make up the crime of perjury.
- ianleeclark 6y agoThe false statement can't stand alone, it's always under a specific historical context.
- zapzupnz 6y agoThe principle of free speech in American law is government-granted to begin with. Why did it surprise people that it comes with limits?
- harpiaharpyja 6y agoIf we've gotten to the point where we just accept that individual rights are granted by the government and can thus be limited by said government by any means or process, then the idea that private individuals have inalienable rights against the state is de-facto dead.
- esoterica 6y agoRights are a societal construct and there is no higher moral authority who gets to decide what the true set of of inalienable rights are. If you decide that X is an inalienable right and the society around you doesn’t agree, on what grounds do you have the authority to claim that everybody else is wrong and only you are in possession of the Truth?
- nkrisc 6y agoThis is true. You only have rights when others agree to grant you those rights. If everyone agreed it was an inalienable right to kill anyone who looked at you sideways, thus it would be.
- ClumsyPilot 6y agoFurthermore, each 'inalienable right' places some burden on the rest of society to actually enforce it. For example, 'right to a fair trial by a jury of their peers' means that judges and the rest of them must be organised, paid for, etc.
- clinta 6y agoWhat grounds would a slave, living in a time and place where slavery is legal, have to argue in defense of their freedom? If you are willing to recognize that society has had an incorrect view of rights in the past, you must recognize that there is a standard beyond society to appeal to.
- UncleMeat 6y agoThat's why you support fraudulent advertising, right?
- save_ferris 6y agoFree speech has never meant that citizens get carte blanche abilities to say absolutely anything they want, and there are pretty darn good reasons why it's illegal to impersonate an officer. Free speech laws don't cover the distribution of child porn, for example. Are you saying that the government shouldn't restrict the distribution of child porn because it infringes on free speech?
- NoPicklez 6y agoI don't see any responses to your comment, I wonder why! Perhaps you made sense.
- garbagetime 6y agoActually, perse[1] didn't make much sense. Perse missed the point. The point is that whether some speech is prosecutable under US law is not a deciding factor of whether it should be protected under the principles of freedom of expression. [1]https://stallman.org/articles/genderless-pronouns.html https://stallman.org/articles/genderless-pronouns.html
- bobthepanda 6y agoWhat rules of freedom of expression actually cover false impersonation?
- garbagetime 6y agoI'm not sure why you ask. But one example would be as follows: -RULES OF FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION- 1. Any person may say anything
- bobthepanda 6y agoYeah I don't think any reasonable person believes this is the absolute inviolable sacrosanct ideal, nor is this actually a legal standard anywhere. Spouting falsehoods under a false pretense as an authority shouldn't be protected. Otherwise what's stopping society from drowning in a he-said she-said of conspiracy noise?
- mhh__ 6y agoYou have the freedom to defend yourself, you do not have the freedom to kill the president - they both involve guns and people
- cortesoft 6y agoFraud is not protected speech, so you are correct, free speech does not apply? Are you really arguing there should never be any legs consequences for text/speech? If so, so many laws would no longer apply - fraud, harassment, false advertisement, perjury, racketeering... hell, you couldn't even convict someone of hiring a hit man to kill someone, because it was just words telling the guy to kill someone for money!
- lurquer 6y agoA statement standing alone is not fraud. Fraud is a tort that involves several elements, with the ‘speech’ being merely one element. Ditto with harassment. To analogize, your comment is akin to the following: Poster: We should have a right to use knives. You: Murder by stabbing is not a right! [edit] In short, you can lie all day long... it’s your right. It only becomes ‘fraud’ when (in most jurisdictions): 1. You make a misrepresentation, 2. About something material, 3. That you intended another to rely upon, 4. And which they did in fact rely upon, 5. And that reliance was reasonably justified, 6. And they suffered harm thereby, 7. And the harm was proximately caused by the statement. If any element is missing, your free to engage in the conduct without interference by the govt.
- cortesoft 6y agoSo it sounds like in this case, all 7 elements are present, which is why they are being ordered to break anonymity.
- NE2z2T9qi 6y agoWhere do all your anti-free-speechers get your identically wrong talking points? Lying on Twitter or to a newspaper ISN'T FRAUD. And if you used your half-assed definitions to write laws, you could throw authors at The Onion in jail for creating fake documents and making up fake quotes from government officials. Newspapers and Twitter users have no right to expect that anonymous statements made online or documents given to them for free are accurate or true. If they chose to publish defamatory articles based on their lack of due diligence, the civil liability rests with them.
- encryptedgrizz 6y agoAmerican law. Pft. Not everyone in the world is subject to Roman rule... Not talking about Twitter here - the individual may not be American (America - the new Rome.)
- anonuser123456 6y agoYou underestimate the reach of the American banking system.
- ahupp 6y agoTheir headquarters is in America.
- encryptedgrizz 6y agoWell aware.
- esotericimpl 6y agoSo Twitter can turn over the information and allow investigators to determine whom or where the user was from.
- encryptedgrizz 6y agoYes, of course - that’s not debated. Now if that post was by a someone outside American boarders...
- nl 6y agoThis seems irrelevant. The Twitter user isn't charged with anything.
- cortesoft 6y agoTwitter is, though
- _fizz_buzz_ 6y ago
- Natsu 6y agoThe article claims they forged an FBI document, as far as I can see, not that they impersonated an FBI agent. I'm not quite sure that's the same thing and it's a civil case, whereas that appears to be criminal law.
- hunter2_ 6y agoIs impersonating not a dependency of forging? You're performing an action usually performed only by someone else, and then promulgating an artifact thereof.
- thaumasiotes 6y agoNo. When you forge a document, you do not purport to be the person who notionally created that document legitimately. You only represent (falsely) that the document was created legitimately, generally not by you.
- andrewprock 6y agoThis sounds like the opposite of what you meant to say. When you are forging the document and claiming the document is from the FBI, you are fully t acting as an FBI agent.
- acoard 6y ago>When you are forging the document and claiming the document is from the FBI, you are fully t acting as an FBI agent That's sophistry and confuses the issue. One is absolutely not acting as an FBI agent when forging FBI documents. There is a clear and common-sense difference between impersonation and forgery, and you seem to be misusing language to willfully misunderstand the difference. When you're forging the document, you are not pretending to be an FBI agent. You are being a forger. The forger then claims that the FBI made the document. Saying, "The FBI made these documents and here they are" is fundamentally different than saying, "I made these documents and am with the FBI." They do not collapse into the same thing. To be honest, I still would hope forging FBI documents is a crime in the same way that impersonating an FBI agent is a crime; however that's a matter of law. It is a matter of fact that forgery and impersonation are different. One is falsifying documents, the other is falsifying identity. If you want to say that both can be reduced to falsification or deception, sure, but that's not a crime. Forgery (falsifying documents) and impersonation (falsifying identity) are crimes, and separate ones.
- nl 6y agoThis is an irrelevant issue here. 1) The Twitter user isn't charged with anything, so no one is trying to restrict their speech. 2) Anonymous speech isn't the same as free speech 3) This is a civil suit. Civil suits have always been able to compel the disclosure of some private information in some circumstances.
- BlackFly 6y agoAnonymity is not free speech, but anonymity is absolutely required for some free speech. Consider the case of free elections, most people consider it an absolute given that these need to be anonymous. The potential for reprisal in expressing your choice or opinion in some circumstances is very high and anonymity is sometimes the only thing that can eliminate the chill of that risk. It is in this way a free speech issue. On the other hand, if a crime or tort was committed, well that isn't considered free.
- implements 6y ago> ... absolute given that these need to be anonymous. British elections aren’t anonymous - the ballot paper has a unique identifier and this is written beside the voter’s name on the polling station’s list when the ballot is issued by a polling clerk. The list is sealed when the polling station closes, but can be opened by court order if the election result is challenged.
- icebraining 6y agohttps://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/i-am-a/voter/register-vote/register-vote-anonymously https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/i-am-a/voter/register...
- implements 6y agoIt’s only anonymous at the polling station - the Returning Officer (senior local government employee overseeing the election) can match the voter’s unique anonymous ID to a specific person.
- mc32 6y agoWould Dan Rather or his source be liable for the faked documents that questioned GWBushes service records, for example? Unfortunately for US GwB emerged unscathed and Dan Rather is ignominious now... though that doesn’t happen to bad reporters any longer.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- cwhiz 6y agoTwitter is a private platform. Free speech laws in America do not apply. People seriously need to get this pounded into their heads. Read the bill of rights. You do not have a right to free speech on private platforms. Twitter is the equivalent of you arguing with me in my house. I can tell you to be quiet or I’ll kick you out of my house. You have no free speech rights in private spaces. Twitter is a private company. You have no free speech rights on their platform.
- nkozyra 6y agoI don't see any reference to the 1st Amendment in the parent comment. Rather, this is a better analog to shield laws, which can protect media from divulging sources in many cases.
- cwhiz 6y agoOP mentioned free speech and Twitter is using free speech in their legal defense.
- nkozyra 6y agoIn the argument you made, private versus public is entirely irrelevant. There are two free speech arguments. Keep in mind that "free speech" is not relegated to the 1st Amendment and defenses of that generally lean on supplementary law. 1) The free speech of the user. Again, while it's true that it's not protected within a private entity, it's irrelevant because your protections are limited; in this case when your speech breaks another law. 2) The free speech of the platform. Being compelled to reveal this information really doesn't even touch any free speech argument except a vague interpretation of shield laws. DMCA as it exists provides legal protection against the crime, of course.
- Wowfunhappy 6y agoI saw the free speech angle as related to the government’s ability to go after Twitter, and this user. (But I agree with GP that the point is moot if they impersonated the FBI.)