2 ms·

First amendment has a strong influence, through when it comes to obstructing justice I would lean towards the action being illegal. I wonder if obstruction of

by belorn 5y ago

First amendment has a strong influence, through when it comes to obstructing justice I would lean towards the action being illegal. I wonder if obstruction of justice can impact someone who has not made any agreement beforehand. A random pedestrian who tries to stop the police, in a public space where they otherwise would have a right to be, could still end up in jail if I understand the laws right. If they can do that with their physical body I suspect the same punishment can occur if they do that with their own first amendment voice given special circumstances and results of that speech. It is however difficult for a random pedestrian to commit obstruction of justice out of accident, but a lot of actions done by a police officer would obstruct justice by the nature of their own work. Similar if a person were employed at a court, if they misbehaved erroneously, I would guess that it would carry a bit more legal risk just given the environment. Nothing of this has anything to do with internal policy. Obstruction of justice is mostly about the intention and results.

akiselev 5y ago
Those are separate things and they're treated differently. The illegal act is obstruction of justice, not the speech itself, which is why criminal OoJ penalties don't run afoul of the first amendment. If you have insider information on an ongoing investigation and you tell it to your buddy at the bar who doesn't care one bit about it and immediately forgets, that's not obstruction of justice because the speech itself isn't the criminal act. If you tell that same information to the suspects though, then that's obstruction of justice. With classified (natsec) information, on the other hand, telling it to anyone who you're not absolutely certain has clearance to see it is a violation and could land you in jail for years if you get a bloodthirsty DA. (again, IANAL)
- belorn 5y ago
  In this specific case we have a police interfering with a case about an undercover officer by informing the suspect about the under cover agents identity. However, the whole affair was actually a sting operation to test if the officer would interfere. It is a bit of a special situation since the interfering was over a fake case, through the legal frame work of sting operations has always been a bit grey. It seems to me however that it flights clearly above that of first amendment rights. It seems simply that the prosecutor chose to go after CFAA because the case is about a sting case rather than a real one. Had the police officer interfered in a real case, where a criminal had been given information that obstructed police officers in their job, the case had been about that. If that is true then the case has very little to do about internal policy decisions, exceeded permissions, unauthorized vs authorized users, employee contracts and so on. It is actually about sting operations and a prosecutor who attempts to bypass that discussion by using a law designed for a different purpose.

by belorn 5y ago

akiselev 5y ago

Those are separate things and they're treated differently. The illegal act is obstruction of justice, not the speech itself, which is why criminal OoJ penalties don't run afoul of the first amendment. If you have insider information on an ongoing investigation and you tell it to your buddy at the bar who doesn't care one bit about it and immediately forgets, that's not obstruction of justice because the speech itself isn't the criminal act. If you tell that same information to the suspects though, then that's obstruction of justice. With classified (natsec) information, on the other hand, telling it to anyone who you're not absolutely certain has clearance to see it is a violation and could land you in jail for years if you get a bloodthirsty DA. (again, IANAL)

belorn 5y ago
In this specific case we have a police interfering with a case about an undercover officer by informing the suspect about the under cover agents identity. However, the whole affair was actually a sting operation to test if the officer would interfere. It is a bit of a special situation since the interfering was over a fake case, through the legal frame work of sting operations has always been a bit grey. It seems to me however that it flights clearly above that of first amendment rights. It seems simply that the prosecutor chose to go after CFAA because the case is about a sting case rather than a real one. Had the police officer interfered in a real case, where a criminal had been given information that obstructed police officers in their job, the case had been about that. If that is true then the case has very little to do about internal policy decisions, exceeded permissions, unauthorized vs authorized users, employee contracts and so on. It is actually about sting operations and a prosecutor who attempts to bypass that discussion by using a law designed for a different purpose.