8 ms·

Former tech CEO suing to get the record of his arrest removed from the internet

227 points by danso 2y ago

nmstoker 2y ago
I'm not up to speed on the California court system, but is there some way to establish if a case is sealed? Wouldn't such a form of lookup, in itself, defeat the point of trying to make it secret?
gigatexal 2y ago
Interesting. Will be consequential depending on the outcome: could have huge ramifications for free speech and journalists everywhere
jillyboel 2y ago
[flagged]
- 2024user 2y ago
  Are comments like these in good faith?
  - rblatz 2y ago
    The parent comment feels like a “Reddit” comment. It appears when taken at face value defamatory and potentially in violation of California law. It implies guilt and does not use words like allegedly for things that have not been proven. This seems like an unwise post to make, and adds nothing to the discussion. It very well may also violate the rules of HN.
    - WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
      >> was arrested in 2021 for domestic violence for beating up his girlfriend. > The parent comment ... does not use words like allegedly for things that have not been proven. The 2021 arrest (and charges) seem plainly factual. Is your position that the arrest might not have happened?
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - ty6853 2y ago
        In many/most jurisdiction police are pretty much forced to arrest _someone_ (usually by written policy) if there is a DV complaint, yet the conviction rate is way under 100%. It is probably the least reliable arrest record as a prediction of finding of guilt.
        WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
        As someone who long was married to an abusive spouse, I'd offer that we spouses tend to view mistreatment as a workable, if difficult, part of a marriage. Our desire to put events behind us doesn't mean that the events didn't happen.
        ty6853 2y ago
        The public doesn't know what events happened if they don't make it to trial or some other public forum. An arrest record unfortunately can't distinguish between events put behind and those that never happened. A presumption of innocence barring further evidence is not an unreasonable approach.
        WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
        > A presumption of innocence barring further evidence is not an unreasonable approach. General calls to stop bullhorning about arrest details are best directed at police and justice depts first. While they get a pass, calling out anyone else makes little sense.
    - jappgar 2y ago
      unwise?
    - jillyboel 2y ago
      You think that me, a European, is violating Calfironia law by posting a comment on Hacker News that cites the linked article? Don't you people have a thing for free speech or something? > This seems like an unwise post to make What are you threatening, exactly?
  - khaled_ismaeel 2y ago
    I think they're pointing out the Streisand Effect at play here.
    - SOLAR_FIELDS 2y ago
      Comments like above usually serve a couple of sentiments - not just pointing out the Striesand effect but attempting to amplify it. The trend I think got popular with the teenager involved in People v. Turner[1]. At the time there was a fair amount of fear that the case would be entirely buried due to his advantageous position in society (not altogether different than what is being discussed here). He also changed his name. So people would make comments like above on Reddit and other social media platforms as a sort of attempt to ensure that it be extremely difficult to erase attachment of the name from the incident in the future entirely. You can see this at play still today anytime that teenager's name comes up on Reddit. Very typical example thread here[2] That thread is pretty exemplary of the trend, someone will say "convicted rapist Brock Turner", and everyone will pile on and also state it, in some sort of attempt to continue to keep the association at the top of the search engine. That being said, after it's been done once the original purpose is already accomplished and I'd consider it a pretty lowbrow attempt at humor after that. It probably would be considered low effort enough to warrant a downvote here. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_v._Turner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_v._Turner 2: https://www.reddit.com/r/army/comments/zk7jqi/comment/izz33at/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button https://www.reddit.com/r/army/comments/zk7jqi/comment/izz33a...
  - DonHopkins 2y ago
    Is it acting in good faith to hire the professional crypto scam whitewasher Christian Ericssen (who sometimes misspells his own pseudonym Ericsen) as a representative to threaten and bribe people? Whether or not the police report that was sealed actually says what it's reported it does, the courts did not seal the record that the recourse he chose was to hire a pseudonymous representative so spectacularly unethical and dishonest that he has a track record of whitewashing the reporting of crypto scams. Talk about scraping the bottom of the barrel. When you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas. I'd refuse to hire or associate with Maury Blackman just for choosing to hire Christian Ericssen/Ericsen to represent himself and threaten and bribe people on his behalf, regardless of when or how often Maury Blackman gets recorded beating his girlfriend then successfully threatens her to recant what she said in the police report.
ok_dad 2y ago
Seems like a Streisand effect case to me, but I'm not Maury Blackman so I can't say whether or not his arrest for domestic violence in Mission Bay in 2021 will be more well-known now that he's bullying and suing a reporter about it and trying to make it disappear. I can't believe that he might be successful, too, the USA is at some sort of crossroads where if we're not careful the most important freedoms that we have, those we can use to fight un-democratic trash, will vanish.
- shadowgovt 2y ago
  Definitely, but in this case, it may be a Streisand Effect with a $25 million payout attached. it is unclear to me whether US law and precedent has the idea of "half-truths" being defamatory. In this case, I'd imagine that would apply if it can be applied; the plaintiff was technically arrested, but legally the arrest itself was expunged. So telling people he was arrested is a truth that definitely isn't telling the whole truth.
  - wbl 2y ago
    The US has truth has absolute bar to defamation. He really did get arrested the police report says what it was reported to have in it.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - fortran77 2y ago
      A judge had said that it's as if the arrest had not occurred and ordered the record sealed. Without reporting the whole story, they're certainly not telling the "truth."
  - buyucu 2y ago
    I doubt the journalist actually has 25 million to pay, even if the CEO wins the lawsuit.
- darth_avocado 2y ago
sangeeth96 2y ago
The internet never forgets as they say. I'm not sure why this person and their lawyers even thought it was a good idea to bring this into court and drag it out long enough for even more news outlets to pick it up and links to be indexed by search engines. This is never getting erased. I'd be shocked if the plaintiff somehow wins, doesn't make any sense to me.
ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
> Poulson described the fight as “an immense time sink.” I'll bet that he turns out getting a big rep bump from this, though. If it were Texas or Oklahoma, there's a good chance that he'd be thrown in jail, or get a wood shampoo, at his next traffic stop, but in San Francisco, this will not be buried.
afavour 2y ago
Streisand effect is clear here but also worth pointing out that this is a clear downside of citizen journalism, or even small newsrooms: even if they’re in the wrong the rich can sue news providers into oblivion via lawyers fees alone.
- ceejayoz 2y ago
  Not just small newsrooms; Gawker was plenty big. Peter Thiel had a bigger bankroll.
  - WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
    > Not just small newsrooms; Gawker was plenty big. Yes. It was maddening seeing news orgs everywhere yawn at this process. It was an obvious proving ground event - and today is being more widely deployed.
  - perihelions 2y ago
    The same lawyer who won Gawker threatened the New York Times to not publish their stories about Harvey Weinstein's rapes, - "Weinstein's attorney Charles Harder, who was then known for filing the suit that bankrupted Gawker, said his client would be suing The New York Times,[140] but by October 15, 2017, Harder was no longer working for Weinstein.[141]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Weinstein_sexual_abuse_cases#Weinstein's_response https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Weinstein_sexual_abuse_... There were multiple other news companies (not including the Times) that were successfully dissuaded from publishing anything about the Weinstein accusations, by his litigation threats.
  - stg22 2y ago
    Gawker flouted the law. They were publicly sharing an intimate video of Hogan without his consent, he got a court order telling them to stop and they just refused to obey it, stating that they had a first amendment right to do it. Except, Gawker got the constitution wrong - and apparently didn't even ask a lawyer before refusing to obey the order -, which is why the later law against sharing intimate videos without consent is uncontroversial Hogan was in the top 1% and even he couldn't afford justice when a large media organisation committed a blatant violation of his rights. His need for Thiel's support isn't an example of oppression of those organisations, it's an example of their power.
darth_avocado 2y ago
Whether he did it or not, if a record was sealed and a journalist explicitly goes around publishing the details of a case and the person loses their job, I think it’s grounds for defamation. The sealed records are sealed for a reason.
- gjsman-1000 2y ago
  If they were sealed, it stands to reason as well that the journalist may not have seen all the sealed records, leading to an incomplete picture. Perhaps the girlfriend had a written recantation, or came to a mutual understanding, or a psychological assessment was conducted, or it was discovered she was the instigator; we wouldn’t know, it’s sealed. Good luck defending your name publicly when your defense requires pointing to sealed records the public can’t verify.
- MollyGodiva 2y ago
  Defamation requires the information to be false.
  - baobabKoodaa 2y ago
    As a blanket statement that is incorrect. For example, in Finland it doesn't have to be false.
    - jrflowers 2y ago
      This is a good point. In a similarly salient vein it is legal to drive without a seat belt in New Hampshire and federally illegal to catch lobsters below a certain size in the US.
    - kstrauser 2y ago
      Possibly true, but not relevant to a case in California.
      - lokar 2y ago
        In the US the truth is an absolute defense for liable and defamation (aiui)
lolinder 2y ago
This specific case is not a great test bed for this, but it's absolutely a big problem that newspapers will publish the full name of someone who was arrested, even if they're subsequently released without a conviction or even without charges. It's a massive and dangerous weapon in the hands of law enforcement (and others) that they can permanently damage someone's reputation—harming their future job prospects and social connections forever—without ever having to prove anything. This isn't a problem that's going to be solved by lawsuits, though, partially because Streisand and partially because in most of the cases where someone's hurt by this the newspapers have no legal obligation to refrain from publishing, so there's no grounds to sue. What we need is to reevaluate the law in light of "the internet never forgets".
- wernerb 2y ago
  Here in the Netherlands even after criminals are convicted we refer to them as Sean B for example. I agree this is good practise.
  - eastbound 2y ago
    I disagree. We publish the full name of the victims, disclosing their privacy and the one of their families, but we don’t disclose the full name of the criminals. For their privacy.
    - Hizonner 2y ago
      Without taking a position on the larger issue, it's not dishonorable or shameful to be a victim of something.
      - Xenoamorphous 2y ago
        I guess it depends; see the recent case where apparently some old French lady was scammed out of hundreds of thousands of euro that she thought were being sent to Brad Pitt.
      - BoxFour 2y ago
duxup 2y ago
My first thought was if you can be sued for revealing sealed court records? Apparently in CA it is explicitly illegal: >The lawsuit leans heavily on a California law that makes it illegal to publish an arrest report after it has been sealed by a court. The law has been attacked by First Amendment advocates, who say it violates free speech protections, strengthened in this instance because the information is an issue of public interest — an argument Blackman contests.
kittikitti 2y ago
In a world where people are eviserated for being too woke, I have no empathy for this former tech CEO who was arrested for domestic violence. You can't have your cake and eat it too. If you fire and layoff DEI departments and the lowest performers, why are you crying victim when you get arrested for violent assault?
- n144q 2y ago
  I think the article made it very clear that there is a distinction between an arrest and a conviction. But I guess it's very easy for you to write such a comment without ever establishing that the person is actually guilty, as if, in domestic violence, people should be considered guilty unless proven innocent? Thankfully you are not a prosecutor.
  - lokar 2y ago
    I don’t think the arrest is really the important part. It’s the account by the officer of what they saw. If there had just been a report with that info, and no arrest the damage to him would have been about the same.
- curt15 2y ago
  "woke" I'd like to see more people spell out what they mean by that overused term.
- woadwarrior01 2y ago
  I think this case is orthogonal to woke and DEI. Would you knowingly hire anyone who's physically assaulted anyone for any position, let alone for that of a CEO? I certainly wouldn't.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
_sys49152 2y ago
on the cusp of the incoming dead internet, there could be services provided to intentionally defame everybody of everything and just jam pack the internet with so much disinformation that nobody will be able to trust anything they read. so this fella caught a case for domestic violence? jam the internet with bunches of fake negative charges across a swath of fake internet pages. caught doing something stupid and reddit picked it up? jam pack it with a firehose of other plausible fake negative stories. provide a service, get boatloads of cash, and contribute to the deadification. makes no sense to limp wrist-edly moonwalk into the dead future - barrel through it with tanks. its not like google is working all that great these days anyway
- Wistar 2y ago
  Poisoning. Like cops posting fake speed trap locations on Waze.
n144q 2y ago
Just finished Kara Swisher's Burn Book today, in which she says she does not report on such scoops unless personal matters have a repeated pattern or could affect a company's stock. It never occurred to me that there is such a choice to make here, but after thinking about it a bit, I realized that this is what distinguishes a bad journalist who writes an article that could end up hurting people more and make matters worse (e.g. about people who are going through divorce), from a good journalist that writes about things that actually matter to shareholders and to the industry.
- ternaryoperator 2y ago
  Precisely. This is the difference between scandal-mongering and journalism. Both can cover things that are true and factual, so can be deemed news. However, the former is closer to entertainment than it is to information of value.
- swatcoder 2y ago
  Yep, professional journalists for much of the 20th century aspired to be conscious of what they were covering and how that served the public interest. There was a duty being honored. It was exactly this understanding that allowed closeted public figures in politics, entertainment, to navigate a time when it wasn't okay for their personal lives to be made public. Journalists and editors were often aware of stories that could be told, but believed that their duty wouldn't be served by reporting on them. Journalism did not always look like that, and did not everywhere look like that, but it was the prevailing norm. We're now in a very different time again, where any "scoop" that stirs moral outrage, earns lurid eyeballs, or undermines a public figure is not only fair game, but the ideal career-making story.
perihelions 2y ago
I recall reading in one of Ken White's pieces that his one of his most frequent types of consultation, in his First Amendment litigation practice, is with victims of domestic violence being sued by their abusers.
buyucu 2y ago
It would be such a shame if this went viral. Before today I did not know who Maury Blackman was. I now know that he was arrested for domestic violence in 2021. Here is the original news report: https://jackpoulson.substack.com/p/the-covert-gig-work-surveillance https://jackpoulson.substack.com/p/the-covert-gig-work-surve...
jarsin 2y ago
I remember all those "who got arrested" sites. The ones where you had to pay to remove yourself. Not sure if there have been lawsuits around those as well.
Bengalilol 2y ago
The Streisand effect in full force. Hiring a competent and transparent person—someone who shows remorse, regret, and apologizes while explaining why such behavior won’t happen again—despite a past conviction for domestic violence isn’t necessarily the real issue. But hiring someone who shifts the blame onto others for making the news public? That’s an entirely different problem
- winwang 2y ago
  > despite a past conviction What conviction?
  - Bengalilol 2y ago
    You are right. That's my opinion, which is of no interest at all and factually there was not any conviction. Let me rephrase : The Streisand effect in full force. Hiring a competent and transparent person—someone who shows remorse, regret, and explains how they’ve grown from a difficult situation—isn’t necessarily the real issue. But hiring someone who shifts the blame onto others for making past incidents public? That’s an entirely different problem.
zombiwoof 2y ago
He’s clearly paid off someone to not be arrested
giantg2 2y ago
"Poulson called the San Francisco Police Department, which authenticated the arrest report, without mentioning that it had been sealed." Why are police validating sealed reports? Seems like a major flaw.
jappgar 2y ago
"Beyond a reasonable doubt" is a good basis for a justice system, but I'm under zero obligation to operate that way. If you're arrested for assaulting your girlfriend, it's smart to err on the side of caution and not associate with you in any way. I certainly will not hire you. "What about false accusations etc etc?" That's exactly why arrest records should be public.
rideontime 2y ago
Wealthy domestic abusers HATE to have their records known. Before Gurbaksh Chahal was banned from Twitter, I made sure everybody who saw his tweets saw what he'd done.
grugagag 2y ago
No Streisand effect on Maury Blackman?
pylua 2y ago
Why do we publish the names of accused before they are convicted?
james4151 2y ago
[dead]

227 points by danso 2y ago

I'm not up to speed on the California court system, but is there some way to establish if a case is sealed? Wouldn't such a form of lookup, in itself, defeat the point of trying to make it secret?

gigatexal 2y ago

Interesting. Will be consequential depending on the outcome: could have huge ramifications for free speech and journalists everywhere

jillyboel 2y ago

[flagged]

2024user 2y ago
Are comments like these in good faith?
- rblatz 2y ago
  The parent comment feels like a “Reddit” comment. It appears when taken at face value defamatory and potentially in violation of California law. It implies guilt and does not use words like allegedly for things that have not been proven. This seems like an unwise post to make, and adds nothing to the discussion. It very well may also violate the rules of HN.
  - WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
    >> was arrested in 2021 for domestic violence for beating up his girlfriend. > The parent comment ... does not use words like allegedly for things that have not been proven. The 2021 arrest (and charges) seem plainly factual. Is your position that the arrest might not have happened?
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - ty6853 2y ago
      In many/most jurisdiction police are pretty much forced to arrest _someone_ (usually by written policy) if there is a DV complaint, yet the conviction rate is way under 100%. It is probably the least reliable arrest record as a prediction of finding of guilt.
      - WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
        As someone who long was married to an abusive spouse, I'd offer that we spouses tend to view mistreatment as a workable, if difficult, part of a marriage. Our desire to put events behind us doesn't mean that the events didn't happen.
        ty6853 2y ago
        The public doesn't know what events happened if they don't make it to trial or some other public forum. An arrest record unfortunately can't distinguish between events put behind and those that never happened. A presumption of innocence barring further evidence is not an unreasonable approach.
        WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
        > A presumption of innocence barring further evidence is not an unreasonable approach. General calls to stop bullhorning about arrest details are best directed at police and justice depts first. While they get a pass, calling out anyone else makes little sense.
  - jappgar 2y ago
    unwise?
  - jillyboel 2y ago
    You think that me, a European, is violating Calfironia law by posting a comment on Hacker News that cites the linked article? Don't you people have a thing for free speech or something? > This seems like an unwise post to make What are you threatening, exactly?
- khaled_ismaeel 2y ago
  I think they're pointing out the Streisand Effect at play here.
  - SOLAR_FIELDS 2y ago
    Comments like above usually serve a couple of sentiments - not just pointing out the Striesand effect but attempting to amplify it. The trend I think got popular with the teenager involved in People v. Turner[1]. At the time there was a fair amount of fear that the case would be entirely buried due to his advantageous position in society (not altogether different than what is being discussed here). He also changed his name. So people would make comments like above on Reddit and other social media platforms as a sort of attempt to ensure that it be extremely difficult to erase attachment of the name from the incident in the future entirely. You can see this at play still today anytime that teenager's name comes up on Reddit. Very typical example thread here[2] That thread is pretty exemplary of the trend, someone will say "convicted rapist Brock Turner", and everyone will pile on and also state it, in some sort of attempt to continue to keep the association at the top of the search engine. That being said, after it's been done once the original purpose is already accomplished and I'd consider it a pretty lowbrow attempt at humor after that. It probably would be considered low effort enough to warrant a downvote here. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_v._Turner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_v._Turner 2: https://www.reddit.com/r/army/comments/zk7jqi/comment/izz33at/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button https://www.reddit.com/r/army/comments/zk7jqi/comment/izz33a...
- DonHopkins 2y ago
  Is it acting in good faith to hire the professional crypto scam whitewasher Christian Ericssen (who sometimes misspells his own pseudonym Ericsen) as a representative to threaten and bribe people? Whether or not the police report that was sealed actually says what it's reported it does, the courts did not seal the record that the recourse he chose was to hire a pseudonymous representative so spectacularly unethical and dishonest that he has a track record of whitewashing the reporting of crypto scams. Talk about scraping the bottom of the barrel. When you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas. I'd refuse to hire or associate with Maury Blackman just for choosing to hire Christian Ericssen/Ericsen to represent himself and threaten and bribe people on his behalf, regardless of when or how often Maury Blackman gets recorded beating his girlfriend then successfully threatens her to recant what she said in the police report.

ok_dad 2y ago

Seems like a Streisand effect case to me, but I'm not Maury Blackman so I can't say whether or not his arrest for domestic violence in Mission Bay in 2021 will be more well-known now that he's bullying and suing a reporter about it and trying to make it disappear. I can't believe that he might be successful, too, the USA is at some sort of crossroads where if we're not careful the most important freedoms that we have, those we can use to fight un-democratic trash, will vanish.

shadowgovt 2y ago
Definitely, but in this case, it may be a Streisand Effect with a $25 million payout attached. it is unclear to me whether US law and precedent has the idea of "half-truths" being defamatory. In this case, I'd imagine that would apply if it can be applied; the plaintiff was technically arrested, but legally the arrest itself was expunged. So telling people he was arrested is a truth that definitely isn't telling the whole truth.
- wbl 2y ago
  The US has truth has absolute bar to defamation. He really did get arrested the police report says what it was reported to have in it.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - fortran77 2y ago
    A judge had said that it's as if the arrest had not occurred and ordered the record sealed. Without reporting the whole story, they're certainly not telling the "truth."
- buyucu 2y ago
  I doubt the journalist actually has 25 million to pay, even if the CEO wins the lawsuit.
darth_avocado 2y ago

sangeeth96 2y ago

The internet never forgets as they say. I'm not sure why this person and their lawyers even thought it was a good idea to bring this into court and drag it out long enough for even more news outlets to pick it up and links to be indexed by search engines. This is never getting erased. I'd be shocked if the plaintiff somehow wins, doesn't make any sense to me.

ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago

> Poulson described the fight as “an immense time sink.” I'll bet that he turns out getting a big rep bump from this, though. If it were Texas or Oklahoma, there's a good chance that he'd be thrown in jail, or get a wood shampoo, at his next traffic stop, but in San Francisco, this will not be buried.

afavour 2y ago

Streisand effect is clear here but also worth pointing out that this is a clear downside of citizen journalism, or even small newsrooms: even if they’re in the wrong the rich can sue news providers into oblivion via lawyers fees alone.

ceejayoz 2y ago
Not just small newsrooms; Gawker was plenty big. Peter Thiel had a bigger bankroll.
- WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
  > Not just small newsrooms; Gawker was plenty big. Yes. It was maddening seeing news orgs everywhere yawn at this process. It was an obvious proving ground event - and today is being more widely deployed.
- perihelions 2y ago
  The same lawyer who won Gawker threatened the New York Times to not publish their stories about Harvey Weinstein's rapes, - "Weinstein's attorney Charles Harder, who was then known for filing the suit that bankrupted Gawker, said his client would be suing The New York Times,[140] but by October 15, 2017, Harder was no longer working for Weinstein.[141]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Weinstein_sexual_abuse_cases#Weinstein's_response https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Weinstein_sexual_abuse_... There were multiple other news companies (not including the Times) that were successfully dissuaded from publishing anything about the Weinstein accusations, by his litigation threats.
- stg22 2y ago
  Gawker flouted the law. They were publicly sharing an intimate video of Hogan without his consent, he got a court order telling them to stop and they just refused to obey it, stating that they had a first amendment right to do it. Except, Gawker got the constitution wrong - and apparently didn't even ask a lawyer before refusing to obey the order -, which is why the later law against sharing intimate videos without consent is uncontroversial Hogan was in the top 1% and even he couldn't afford justice when a large media organisation committed a blatant violation of his rights. His need for Thiel's support isn't an example of oppression of those organisations, it's an example of their power.

darth_avocado 2y ago

Whether he did it or not, if a record was sealed and a journalist explicitly goes around publishing the details of a case and the person loses their job, I think it’s grounds for defamation. The sealed records are sealed for a reason.

gjsman-1000 2y ago
If they were sealed, it stands to reason as well that the journalist may not have seen all the sealed records, leading to an incomplete picture. Perhaps the girlfriend had a written recantation, or came to a mutual understanding, or a psychological assessment was conducted, or it was discovered she was the instigator; we wouldn’t know, it’s sealed. Good luck defending your name publicly when your defense requires pointing to sealed records the public can’t verify.
MollyGodiva 2y ago
Defamation requires the information to be false.
- baobabKoodaa 2y ago
  As a blanket statement that is incorrect. For example, in Finland it doesn't have to be false.
  - jrflowers 2y ago
    This is a good point. In a similarly salient vein it is legal to drive without a seat belt in New Hampshire and federally illegal to catch lobsters below a certain size in the US.
  - kstrauser 2y ago
    Possibly true, but not relevant to a case in California.
    - lokar 2y ago
      In the US the truth is an absolute defense for liable and defamation (aiui)

lolinder 2y ago

This specific case is not a great test bed for this, but it's absolutely a big problem that newspapers will publish the full name of someone who was arrested, even if they're subsequently released without a conviction or even without charges. It's a massive and dangerous weapon in the hands of law enforcement (and others) that they can permanently damage someone's reputation—harming their future job prospects and social connections forever—without ever having to prove anything. This isn't a problem that's going to be solved by lawsuits, though, partially because Streisand and partially because in most of the cases where someone's hurt by this the newspapers have no legal obligation to refrain from publishing, so there's no grounds to sue. What we need is to reevaluate the law in light of "the internet never forgets".

wernerb 2y ago
Here in the Netherlands even after criminals are convicted we refer to them as Sean B for example. I agree this is good practise.
- eastbound 2y ago
  I disagree. We publish the full name of the victims, disclosing their privacy and the one of their families, but we don’t disclose the full name of the criminals. For their privacy.
  - Hizonner 2y ago
    Without taking a position on the larger issue, it's not dishonorable or shameful to be a victim of something.
    - Xenoamorphous 2y ago
      I guess it depends; see the recent case where apparently some old French lady was scammed out of hundreds of thousands of euro that she thought were being sent to Brad Pitt.
    - BoxFour 2y ago

duxup 2y ago

My first thought was if you can be sued for revealing sealed court records? Apparently in CA it is explicitly illegal: >The lawsuit leans heavily on a California law that makes it illegal to publish an arrest report after it has been sealed by a court. The law has been attacked by First Amendment advocates, who say it violates free speech protections, strengthened in this instance because the information is an issue of public interest — an argument Blackman contests.

kittikitti 2y ago

In a world where people are eviserated for being too woke, I have no empathy for this former tech CEO who was arrested for domestic violence. You can't have your cake and eat it too. If you fire and layoff DEI departments and the lowest performers, why are you crying victim when you get arrested for violent assault?

n144q 2y ago
I think the article made it very clear that there is a distinction between an arrest and a conviction. But I guess it's very easy for you to write such a comment without ever establishing that the person is actually guilty, as if, in domestic violence, people should be considered guilty unless proven innocent? Thankfully you are not a prosecutor.
- lokar 2y ago
  I don’t think the arrest is really the important part. It’s the account by the officer of what they saw. If there had just been a report with that info, and no arrest the damage to him would have been about the same.
curt15 2y ago
"woke" I'd like to see more people spell out what they mean by that overused term.
woadwarrior01 2y ago
I think this case is orthogonal to woke and DEI. Would you knowingly hire anyone who's physically assaulted anyone for any position, let alone for that of a CEO? I certainly wouldn't.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

_sys49152 2y ago

on the cusp of the incoming dead internet, there could be services provided to intentionally defame everybody of everything and just jam pack the internet with so much disinformation that nobody will be able to trust anything they read. so this fella caught a case for domestic violence? jam the internet with bunches of fake negative charges across a swath of fake internet pages. caught doing something stupid and reddit picked it up? jam pack it with a firehose of other plausible fake negative stories. provide a service, get boatloads of cash, and contribute to the deadification. makes no sense to limp wrist-edly moonwalk into the dead future - barrel through it with tanks. its not like google is working all that great these days anyway

Wistar 2y ago
Poisoning. Like cops posting fake speed trap locations on Waze.

n144q 2y ago

Just finished Kara Swisher's Burn Book today, in which she says she does not report on such scoops unless personal matters have a repeated pattern or could affect a company's stock. It never occurred to me that there is such a choice to make here, but after thinking about it a bit, I realized that this is what distinguishes a bad journalist who writes an article that could end up hurting people more and make matters worse (e.g. about people who are going through divorce), from a good journalist that writes about things that actually matter to shareholders and to the industry.

ternaryoperator 2y ago
Precisely. This is the difference between scandal-mongering and journalism. Both can cover things that are true and factual, so can be deemed news. However, the former is closer to entertainment than it is to information of value.
swatcoder 2y ago
Yep, professional journalists for much of the 20th century aspired to be conscious of what they were covering and how that served the public interest. There was a duty being honored. It was exactly this understanding that allowed closeted public figures in politics, entertainment, to navigate a time when it wasn't okay for their personal lives to be made public. Journalists and editors were often aware of stories that could be told, but believed that their duty wouldn't be served by reporting on them. Journalism did not always look like that, and did not everywhere look like that, but it was the prevailing norm. We're now in a very different time again, where any "scoop" that stirs moral outrage, earns lurid eyeballs, or undermines a public figure is not only fair game, but the ideal career-making story.

perihelions 2y ago

I recall reading in one of Ken White's pieces that his one of his most frequent types of consultation, in his First Amendment litigation practice, is with victims of domestic violence being sued by their abusers.

buyucu 2y ago

It would be such a shame if this went viral. Before today I did not know who Maury Blackman was. I now know that he was arrested for domestic violence in 2021. Here is the original news report: https://jackpoulson.substack.com/p/the-covert-gig-work-surveillance https://jackpoulson.substack.com/p/the-covert-gig-work-surve...

jarsin 2y ago

I remember all those "who got arrested" sites. The ones where you had to pay to remove yourself. Not sure if there have been lawsuits around those as well.

Bengalilol 2y ago

The Streisand effect in full force. Hiring a competent and transparent person—someone who shows remorse, regret, and apologizes while explaining why such behavior won’t happen again—despite a past conviction for domestic violence isn’t necessarily the real issue. But hiring someone who shifts the blame onto others for making the news public? That’s an entirely different problem

winwang 2y ago
> despite a past conviction What conviction?
- Bengalilol 2y ago
  You are right. That's my opinion, which is of no interest at all and factually there was not any conviction. Let me rephrase : The Streisand effect in full force. Hiring a competent and transparent person—someone who shows remorse, regret, and explains how they’ve grown from a difficult situation—isn’t necessarily the real issue. But hiring someone who shifts the blame onto others for making past incidents public? That’s an entirely different problem.

zombiwoof 2y ago

He’s clearly paid off someone to not be arrested

giantg2 2y ago

"Poulson called the San Francisco Police Department, which authenticated the arrest report, without mentioning that it had been sealed." Why are police validating sealed reports? Seems like a major flaw.

jappgar 2y ago

"Beyond a reasonable doubt" is a good basis for a justice system, but I'm under zero obligation to operate that way. If you're arrested for assaulting your girlfriend, it's smart to err on the side of caution and not associate with you in any way. I certainly will not hire you. "What about false accusations etc etc?" That's exactly why arrest records should be public.

rideontime 2y ago

Wealthy domestic abusers HATE to have their records known. Before Gurbaksh Chahal was banned from Twitter, I made sure everybody who saw his tweets saw what he'd done.

grugagag 2y ago

No Streisand effect on Maury Blackman?

pylua 2y ago

Why do we publish the names of accused before they are convicted?

james4151 2y ago

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