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Thanks for providing your input! > That said, some facts aren't merely private matters. If leading public figures are violating the law or lying to constituent

by ama729 13y ago

Thanks for providing your input! > That said, some facts aren't merely private matters. If leading public figures are violating the law or lying to constituents or abusing their family, the public has a right to know. Is the "Public right to know" a high bar to pass? Would the footage be legal if for example, the farmer has said its meat was "100% without animal cruelty" or if animal cruelty was detrimental to the meat?

brownbat 13y ago
> Is the "Public right to know" a high bar to pass? Would the footage be legal if for example, the farmer has said its meat was "100% without animal cruelty" or if animal cruelty was detrimental to the meat? Oh, big warning. I'm using a general common law tort to interpret a new criminal statute, but only to talk about social fairness involved in policies in a really generic, high level way. Much of my analysis won't apply at all to violations of this statute. You've hit on exactly one such area. I don't know the extent of any "public right to know" exception to this law... I was really just laying out the social considerations at play on both sides when considering a law like this. That was probably really confusing. If you're talking about the tort, the strength of that bar is probably highly dependent upon your jurisdiction or even your judge. No idea. EDIT: The lack of a provision to allow publicly relevant facts, however the legislature defines those, may hurt the law's chances under first amendment analysis, as Zak points out. May bump any review up to something called "strict scrutiny" (which in practice almost always means the law fails). Criminalizing the "collection" of information instead of its release may inoculate the law from some challenges, but I'd still like to read more privacy case law before making a call on that (that's probably the single biggest question here, I'd love pointers here from anyone who has done more privacy research.)

by ama729 13y ago

brownbat 13y ago

> Is the "Public right to know" a high bar to pass? Would the footage be legal if for example, the farmer has said its meat was "100% without animal cruelty" or if animal cruelty was detrimental to the meat? Oh, big warning. I'm using a general common law tort to interpret a new criminal statute, but only to talk about social fairness involved in policies in a really generic, high level way. Much of my analysis won't apply at all to violations of this statute. You've hit on exactly one such area. I don't know the extent of any "public right to know" exception to this law... I was really just laying out the social considerations at play on both sides when considering a law like this. That was probably really confusing. If you're talking about the tort, the strength of that bar is probably highly dependent upon your jurisdiction or even your judge. No idea. EDIT: The lack of a provision to allow publicly relevant facts, however the legislature defines those, may hurt the law's chances under first amendment analysis, as Zak points out. May bump any review up to something called "strict scrutiny" (which in practice almost always means the law fails). Criminalizing the "collection" of information instead of its release may inoculate the law from some challenges, but I'd still like to read more privacy case law before making a call on that (that's probably the single biggest question here, I'd love pointers here from anyone who has done more privacy research.)