5 ms·
The point of the arrest was not to win. The point was to inconvenience the whistleblower, cause her grief, and maybe as a bonus make her spend a night or two in
by ryandrake 5mo ago
The point of the arrest was not to win. The point was to inconvenience the whistleblower, cause her grief, and maybe as a bonus make her spend a night or two in jail. Nobody doing this remotely believed that they wouldn't have to settle. They did it to show that if you speak out against them, they'll arrest and inconvenience you. So the next person who gets a thought to speak out might decide not to bother.
Same for the guy in TN who got arrested for posting that anti-conservative meme. Nobody thought they would win, but they want to make everyone else think twice about criticizing a particular political side.
- john_strinlai 5mo ago>They did it to show that if you speak out against them, they'll arrest and inconvenience you. So the next person who gets a thought to speak out might decide not to bother. some of my students have expressed that they wish they could get arrested for a meme and walk away with a couple hundred grand. i, of course, have told them that they would be playing with fire. but they are still viewing it as a potentially life-changing payday. so, for some subset of people, they might be having to opposite of the desired chilling effect.
- ryandrake 5mo agoYea, an arrest on your record, even if you're acquitted and/or get a settlement for police wrongdoing, can still mess you up. There are employers and landlords who will ask you / check whether you were ever arrested, regardless of the outcome of the arrest. Mere involvement with Law Enforcement puts a permanent black mark on your record and can interfere with basic things for the rest of your life.
- beepbooptheory 5mo agoAs someone who lives this reality (arrest but no conviction), it's in practice not really so bad. It's never come up with a landlord. The last time it came up was after being accepted to grad school and I had to fill out a form about it. You do just carry with you the knowledge that if you ever get pulled over the cop can pull it up about you and have reason to hassle you more.
- zephen 5mo ago"I'm going to hassle you because my brethren have hassled you before." Yup, sounds about right.
- theendisney 5mo agoNot sure, would you (as a cop) help them with content creation?
- raddan 5mo agoGiven that you’re posting on HN and went to grad school, I wonder whether you’ve worked a minimum wage job. Most of those applications ask whether you’ve ever been arrested. It’s been a long time since I worked one of those jobs, but I remember that all of the applications I filled out back then asked me. Thankfully the answer was no. Working minimum wage jobs is demoralizing on multiple levels. The jobs are often physically exhausting (I unloaded trucks and stocked shelves among other things). But the worst part is that the entire system treats you with disdain. You walk away with the strong feeling that nobody gives a shit. I knew that I wanted and could have better things but many of my coworkers internalized a different message.
- dylan604 5mo agoThen make part of the settlement having the arrest expunged.
- fc417fc802 5mo agoHow would being arrested for memeing be a black mark? It would be a hilarious talking point that I would be more than happy to chat with a landlord, employer, or literally anyone else about. Anyone who would hold that against you is pretty much a textbook example of a bad person (banal evil or some such).
- cebert 5mo agoI could see firms doing background checks not caring about those nuances or taking the time to consider why the individual was arrested.
- daheza 5mo agoEspecially if it’s just an AI review
- justech 5mo agoIn a perfect world, sure. But realistically, people don't dig into the context. They see an arrest on your record and move to the next guy. Either that or, some automated system sees you checked 'yes I was arrested before' and filters you out automatically.
- dgoldstein0 5mo agoSome won't ask for details and just reject. Which of course sucks but they may view it as less risky than trying to evaluate the details and make a judgement call. That said if you do go into circumstances - "I did it to get arrested and get a payout" could also be viewed as a red flag - says "may screw you/the company for money". Probably not the employee / tenant / etc you might want.
- buzzerbetrayed 5mo agoI wouldn’t rent my house to someone who has been arrested for memeing. It’s an unnecessary risk with absolutely no upside for me. What happens when they decide to meme on their landlord?
- 5mo ago
- vitally3643 5mo agoYou must not have ever been poor because the idea of several thousand dollars right now completely obliterates any notion of "maybe less money later, possibly" Particularly if you're young and poor. Humans don't really work the way you're implying from your armchair.
- borski 5mo agoI was poor (as in, well below FPL), the son of two immigrants, for many years. That’s precisely how I thought - getting involved with a “get money now” scheme was not worth the “no money ever again” it often came with. I watched friends do things like this and face consequences later. Not to discourage anyone from protesting, but not all poor people think alike.
- rolandhvar 5mo agoThere's poor and stupid, and then there's poor and smart
- NikolaNovak 5mo agoI was a poor refugee, but different people take such situations differently. For my family, it was a stern adherence to law and rules, an extreme low risk approach. For others, granted, it was dismissal of law and rules. Certainly, being poor and hungry made us even more averse to conflicts with the law / police / society / system. Again, others drew opposite lessons and approaches.
- 5mo ago
- worik 5mo ago> Yea, an arrest on your record What an awful data environment The fact that you were arrested, charged even, if not convicted should not be discoverable by third parties Uncivilised
- jMyles 5mo ago> The fact that you were arrested, charged even, if not convicted should not be discoverable by third parties That's how people get disappeared in failed states. It's perfectly fine to force the state to clearly declare whom they have detained and their reasons for doing so. We also need to recognize that arrests are very often preposterous (or worse, retaliatory) and not hold it (absent other information or further proceedings) against people.
- FireBeyond 5mo ago... subsequent to release. The fact that someone is in custody should be always available. But it should not be up to Joe Random to pay $11 to my State Patrol to find out why I was arrested last week, especially if I wasn't charged.
- jMyles 5mo agoForgive me if I'm misunderstanding the nature of information propagation in the universe, but how do you propose to require the state to declare whom it has detained one week, and then to make that information unavailable the following week? (and even if you were able to change the nature of reality as you suggest, why accommodate the state's desire to deny such an action after-the-fact?)
- A1kmm 5mo agoI think regulating the retention and processing of information is entirely feasible even in circumstances where the information is initially available for a different purpose. This is in fact the legal status quo in Europe as well as many non-EU countries. Now there is no absolute guarantee that, if someone has the information, and they are legally required to delete it or not use it, that they don't break the law. But it works in the case of balancing the need to avoid people being disappeared against preventing dragnet misuse of arrest data by employers and landlords. Maybe organised crime employers would systematically break the law if maintaining a database illegal, but they also probably don't mind people with arrest records.
- alexanderh 5mo agoThis is really far from true, unless you're talking about federal security clearances.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- tamimio 5mo agoWhich is why I believe criminal records should only be kept for serious crimes (killing, etc.), anything less, the record gets deleted after few months completely. Otherwise, just as you said, the black mark on the records are worse than serving a whole year in prison, and can be used to exploit others.
- FireBeyond 5mo agoWhile there are a few other ways it can happen, my state likes to say that certain criminal records are available for expungement. One of the criteria: "The person has reached 120 years of age." Cool.
- cybercatgurrl 5mo agothis is gonna have chilling effects on free speech in america. people are gonna be thinking twice about criticising authorities after a pattern of this happening on a national level is established
- alsetmusic 5mo agoIf you let them make you think twice before posting, you're letting them win. I'm not saying that I don't think twice about how to word things or that I'm some sort of free speech warrior. I'm saying that when I make concessions, I feel bad about it. Try to be brave and keep speaking openly about your contempt for the people in charge.
- pavel_lishin 5mo agoI have an arrest on my record. It has never, to this day, impacted my life negatively. (Aside from the actual experience, including paying legal fees - I certainly didn't get a settlement out of it.)
- throawayonthe 5mo agoto clarify, is this a 'record' in the abstract sense of 'something that can be known about your past' (someone googles your name and a news article mentions arrest) or some kind of literal record with arrest records etc accessible (publicly? by employers?) in the US?
- ponector 5mo agoStudents are young and often have nothing to lose, aside from missing opportunities.
- kimixa 5mo agoAnd the ones who get the "payday" are just the ones we've heard of. How many people didn't get media attention, don't have the ability (time/money) to sue, lost that case, and those where the intimidation and "punishment" was successful? At some level the people doing this intimidation believe it'll be successful. Is that from experience?
- borski 5mo agoYes; it works. That’s why they do it.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 5mo ago>so, for some subset of people, they might be having to opposite of the desired chilling effect. Those ones are the easiest though, are they not? Someone going into it with convictions (or even chickening out because they are aware of the consequences) have consolation and inner reserves. Some kid angry that he can't get a six figure salary at age 22 fresh out of college might regret it as soon as they're in the clink, but if that doesn't get them... the 6-10 years of lawyer-wrangling and stress certainly will. All for the payday to not even go half as far as they think... it'll pay down some bills, there won't be any sports cars.
- cybercatgurrl 5mo agonot with that attitude there won’t! straight into investments, don’t touch for a few decades and she’ll be right. then again most people desperate for money don’t think like that unfortunately
- alsetmusic 5mo ago> some of my students When I was young, I might have thought this way for sure. I didn't expect to have a future anyway and this would have potentially been a cool level-up that I'd seize. Responding to someone in another comment that happened after the parent, when I was young and had no real prospects (despite coming from a well-off but not super wealthy family), I had a lot of mental health issues and emotional issues that didn't seem possible to resolve and it wasn't realistic to think I'd finish a college degree or start a career. Imagine being a well-educated white male in the USA who expects to be trapped working retail forever while peers get white-collar jobs and you can see the appeal. Fortunately, decades of hard work and treatment can make a world of difference, but that's not anything you can bet on when you're young and desperate.
- eduction 5mo agoMuch like peter thiel’s lawsuits against Gawker, which included funding a guy who dubiously claimed to have invented email and sued Gawker for pointing out this was absurd. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/peter-thiel-email-inventor_n_581a50cde4b0c43e6c1dc44a https://www.huffpost.com/entry/peter-thiel-email-inventor_n_... YC and its founders worship him like a hero.
- obsidianbases1 5mo agoMostly this > They did it to show that if you speak out against them, they'll arrest and inconvenience you. So the next person who gets a thought to speak out might decide not to bother. That needs reiterating because an uncomfortable amount of people think this sort of thing simply doesn't affect them.
- efitz 5mo agoThe process is the punishment.
- cortesoft 5mo agoThis is why the saying “you can beat the rap but you can’t beat the ride” exists. They know the charges won’t stick, they are using the process of fighting the charges itself as the punishment.