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The developer has not been charged.
by ipnon 1y ago
The developer has not been charged.
- jkaplowitz 1y agoBut he has been publicly threatened by the Attorney General: > "We are looking at him," she said on Fox News, "and he better watch out." (Source: The submitted Apple Insider article, citing Wired, which as noted in the quote was citing Fox News.) When the head of the DOJ publicly threatens someone, saying that she "goes after" that person is entirely accurate.
- gorlilla 1y agoHow is that not prior restraint?
- akerl_ 1y agoSort of by definition, prior restraint is when the government prevents someone from doing something (in the context, of the term, generally always speech/expression) prior to it happening. This is the kind of bluster that has certainly become more common in recent years, but has to some extent always been part of political theater. You'll see the same kind of thing every now and then if somebody tweets about how they'd love to feed a political figure into a wood chipper, or that the government should be launched into the sun. The Secret Service or some executive official will post that they're "investigating the matter and will take all available action", only for it to turn out that the comment was obviously protected speech.
- Fluorescence 1y agoThis doesn't seem to be true. Implications of Government speech are not taken lightly and I can see examples of "informal censorship" including implied threats of legal action being classed as prior restraint. Pretty moot given today's US legal environment though. e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bantam_Books,_Inc._v._Sullivan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bantam_Books,_Inc._v._Sullivan "Justice William J. Brennan Jr. delivered the majority opinion that stated that the actions of the Rhode Island commission to Encourage Morality in Youth were unconstitutional due to their actions violating the First Amendment by placing a prior restraint on free speech. Justice Brennan's opinion stated that the commission's practice of notifying book distributors and retailers about "objectionable" publications, combined with implied threats of legal action, effectively made a system of informal censorship."
- jkaplowitz 1y agoIt's certainly some inappropriate kind of intimidation, but the concept of prior restraint includes some claim that the person is forbidden from doing something, and it typically pertains to speech acts rather than to the distribution of functional tools. "He better watch out" from the AG is certainly a serious threat, but its meaning is too vague and implicit to reach the level of a prohibition or to definitively pertain to speech acts.
- msgodel 1y agoJust a reminder for those who aren't aware: Apple typically makes you upload your government ID to publish apps. I used to be part of their developer program (although I never finished any of the apps I wrote) and was forced to upload mine. For those of you who think there's no problem with forcing everyone to go through the app store, here's just one more serious issue that creates. Now they can be subpoenaed for something that could otherwise have been done anonymously.
- vdfs 1y agoanonymous app submissions will make the app store more dangerous. You can go the extra mile and create a company or legal entity if you want to hide your name, but it's straightforward for gov. to get your identity no matter what, they can just ask Apple or Google
- msgodel 1y agoThere still should be a way to share software anonymously. Just saying "it's dangerous so the whole use case is invalid" is retarded, lazy, and if you're an OS vendor benefiting from an app store the way Apple does, malicious.
- spacemadness 1y agoMaybe it’s better as a web app in that case.
- haswell 1y agoFTA: > "We're working with the Department of Justice to see if we can prosecute them for that because what they're doing is actively encouraging people to avoid law enforcement activities and operations," Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem said to press, "and we're going to actually go after them and prosecute them... because what they're doing, we believe, is illegal."
- epistasis 1y agoGuilty, until proven innocent, or until it's proven that there's no law that is being broken.
- bb88 1y agoThe defendant still has to pay for their defense, even if the charges were frivolous.
- epistasis 1y agoExactly, and defense of a federal prosecution is a multi-million dollar defense.
- burnt-resistor 1y agoFederal criminal prosecutions have a 91% conviction rate. 89% plead guilty, only 2.3% go to trial and most of those are convicted. A Just Us system.
- burnt-resistor 1y agoA crime will always be found.
- i80and 1y agoWhen I played Half-Life 2 for the first time as a teen, the dialogue of man 1: "They have no reason to come to our place." man 2: "Don't worry, they'll find one" felt so abstract
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- i80and 1y agoIt's not really relevant in a greater sense that they haven't been charged, if the DOJ is making credible threats. Which they are.
- bb88 1y agoAnd there's no punishment for Pam Bondi, she's got a get out jail free card with a Trump pardon.
- burnt-resistor 1y agoShe just needs to be convicted of state charges or hauled to the Hague.
- akerl_ 1y ago"credible threats" is a term of art, and these comments aren't that.
- i80and 1y agoI think this is pretty clearly outside the context of the term of art, but whatever, "threats of applying dubious legal force that a reasonable person might gnaw their fingernails at".
- ajross 1y agoCare to explain why? The threats are specific and made by people in power to execute them. What standard for "credible" would fail here?
- bb88 1y agoCorrection: The developer has not been charged... yet. If you dig into someone's past, you can probably find something, or make it look like there's something. Pay informants. Frame people for other crimes. Etc. When a justice department doesn't believe in the laws they're supposed to uphold, they don't have to follow their own rules. They can send people through the judicial wringer by merely filing a complaint against them. That in itself is a punishment.
- burnt-resistor 1y agoThere are so many (especially commerce) laws and the lawless regime will find an excuse to deport them to CECOT without due process.
- roody15 1y agoAgree one worrying idea is using rumors to discredit or just put pressure on the individual in question. Can simply monitor the individual and then report any odd behavior to friends, co-workers, etc. The result is the individual has to focus on these issues and will likely seize the behavior. No charges ever even need to be filed, and nothing is illegal on doing this activity.
- spacemadness 1y agoMight be a good career move for a lawyer to represent him since it’s an obvious violation of his rights.