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Unfortunately not everyone in a group chat may be fully vetted, in which case they could be feds collecting "evidence". Some chats may have publicly circulating

Unfortunately not everyone in a group chat may be fully vetted, in which case they could be feds collecting "evidence". Some chats may have publicly circulating invite links. But any judge that doesn't immediately reject such cases on a first-amendment basis is doing the business of an authoritarian dictator. This is fully protected speech and assembly.

JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
> any judge that doesn't immediately reject such cases on a first-amendment basis If you say something illegal in a chat with a cop in it, or say it in public, I don’t think there are Constitutional issues with the police using that as evidence. (If you didn’t say anything illegal, you have a valid defence.)
- mrtesthah 9mo ago
  Sure. Can you give me an example of something that's illegal to say in a group chat that coordinates legal observers?
  - direwolf20 9mo ago
    "ICE are at (address)" apparently
  - JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
    > Can you give me an example of something that's illegal to say in a group chat that coordinates legal observers? Actual examples? No. I don’t believe it happened. Hypothetical examples? Co-ordinating gunning down ICE agents. If the chat stays on topic to “coordinat[ing] legal observers,” there shouldn’t be liability. The risk with open chats is they can go off topic if unmoderated.
  - docdeek 9mo ago
    One of the things that has been circulating in videos of the Signal chats online is someone confirming/not confirming that certain license plates are related to ICE. Perhaps if someone is misusing their access to an administrative or law enforcement database to ‘run plates’ and report on who owns the vehicle, this could be unlawful. I don’t know if anyone IS using such a database unlawfully - they might be checking the plate number against an Excel sheet they created based on other reports from people opposed to ICE - but if its a databse they shouldn’t be using in this way, if might be against the law.
    - JohnFen 9mo ago
      > Perhaps if someone is misusing their access to an administrative or law enforcement database to ‘run plates’ and report on who owns the vehicle, this could be unlawful. But that's not an example of something that would be illegal to say in a chat. It would be an example of something that's illegal to do regardless of the chat.
      - defen 9mo ago
        I don't think the idea is that the speech in the chat is inherently illegal; it's that it could be used as evidence of illegal activity. Using that example - if someone in the chat asks about plate XYZ at 10AM, and if a phone linked to "Bob" posts to the group chat at 10:04 AM that license plate XYZ is used by ICE, and the internal logs show that Bob queried the ICE database about plate XYZ at 10:02 AM, and no one else queried that license plate in the past month, that is pretty good evidence that Bob violated the CFAA.
    - deleted 9mo ago
      [deleted]
- tremon 9mo ago
  Not sure what difference that makes, it's not like the current regime limits their actions to respect constitutional bounds.
dylan604 9mo ago
> Unfortunately not everyone in a group chat may be fully vetted, Curious how many group chats have unknowingly allowed a well known journalist into their groups.

JumpCrisscross 9mo ago

> any judge that doesn't immediately reject such cases on a first-amendment basis If you say something illegal in a chat with a cop in it, or say it in public, I don’t think there are Constitutional issues with the police using that as evidence. (If you didn’t say anything illegal, you have a valid defence.)

mrtesthah 9mo ago
Sure. Can you give me an example of something that's illegal to say in a group chat that coordinates legal observers?
- direwolf20 9mo ago
  "ICE are at (address)" apparently
- JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
  > Can you give me an example of something that's illegal to say in a group chat that coordinates legal observers? Actual examples? No. I don’t believe it happened. Hypothetical examples? Co-ordinating gunning down ICE agents. If the chat stays on topic to “coordinat[ing] legal observers,” there shouldn’t be liability. The risk with open chats is they can go off topic if unmoderated.
- docdeek 9mo ago
  One of the things that has been circulating in videos of the Signal chats online is someone confirming/not confirming that certain license plates are related to ICE. Perhaps if someone is misusing their access to an administrative or law enforcement database to ‘run plates’ and report on who owns the vehicle, this could be unlawful. I don’t know if anyone IS using such a database unlawfully - they might be checking the plate number against an Excel sheet they created based on other reports from people opposed to ICE - but if its a databse they shouldn’t be using in this way, if might be against the law.
  - JohnFen 9mo ago
    > Perhaps if someone is misusing their access to an administrative or law enforcement database to ‘run plates’ and report on who owns the vehicle, this could be unlawful. But that's not an example of something that would be illegal to say in a chat. It would be an example of something that's illegal to do regardless of the chat.
    - defen 9mo ago
      I don't think the idea is that the speech in the chat is inherently illegal; it's that it could be used as evidence of illegal activity. Using that example - if someone in the chat asks about plate XYZ at 10AM, and if a phone linked to "Bob" posts to the group chat at 10:04 AM that license plate XYZ is used by ICE, and the internal logs show that Bob queried the ICE database about plate XYZ at 10:02 AM, and no one else queried that license plate in the past month, that is pretty good evidence that Bob violated the CFAA.
  - deleted 9mo ago
    [deleted]
tremon 9mo ago
Not sure what difference that makes, it's not like the current regime limits their actions to respect constitutional bounds.

dylan604 9mo ago

> Unfortunately not everyone in a group chat may be fully vetted, Curious how many group chats have unknowingly allowed a well known journalist into their groups.