The Facebook Comment That Ruined a Life

As a person who has sat on a grand jury, I can speak from personal experience, and let me tell you:

Listening to pud-pulling detectives stumble through the technical details of correlating an IP address to a service provider, at the rehearsed prompts provided by power-tripping district attourneys, and then glancing across the 22 other grand jurors, some withed glazed eyes, and others desperately nodding in agreement, as if they had something to prove to the phantom presence of their usually condescending 13-year-old children about their technical savvy, and the relationship that holds with being able to read a cable bill, I was deeply disturbed by the very low bar that was set, in order to prove to the lowest common denomenator that someone committed a computer crime, when I was out-voted on a whether to bring a flimsy case to trial.

Afterward, I casually chatted up each of the people that voted to bring a guy before the judge for allegedly creating fake credit cards and charging thousands of dollars under someone else's name, to gauge whether they understood what they had just voted on.

Most of them had a hard time using their smart phones for anything besides phone calls, couldn't tell me what an IP address actually was, couldn't readily distinguish AOL dial up service and AOL keyword searches from "Googling the internet" or typing in a URL in their browsers address bar, and were mystified by the difference between typing up a Word document and attaching it to an e-mail, versus just typing and sending the e-mail itself.

The difference between how quickly things went to trial, or how long we deliberated on a particular case often hinged on how close to 5PM it was. The DA's seemed to be aware of this, and the complexity and "appeal" of cases and the order of their presentation seemed to be planned accordingly.

Seems exactly like modern day witchcraft/wizardry hunt.

If a Middle Age dude was an expert in chemistry, he'd probably be tried quite similarly. The fact that no one around him could even comprehend what chemistry is, is now completely irrelevant to them ruining his life.

Now replace that with technology, the people with modern day morons and death with impossibly high bail/languishing in prison for years together ruining any chance of an average, let alone decent future and you've got what we have today.

The point is, they don't know the subject yet feel that they know enough. History, it seems never changes.

IANAL and I am not 100% sure which part of the Stored Communciations Act covers the private messages. But either they need a search warrant or they just need to subpoena them (depending on which section applies). I suspect a search warrant is required for content but not 100% sure.

Now if they needed a search warrant (which is quite possible, if this was treated like email and less than 180 days old), then it is quite possible they asked for one and got laughed at by the magistrate.

> Well, people have children. The protection they feel must be absolute, and here is someone who threatening them.

Meh....

While I was driving my two kids to school today (in Jakarta), my youngest climbed on my lap. Where I am there are no laws against that, so I just kept driving.

I think it is interesting that the people I know who have no kids fit your view of looking for absolute protection more than the actual parents I know. There's a certain point where, as a parent, you come to terms with the fact that the world is a dangerous place.

> If someone came up to me on the street and screamed I'm going to fucking kill you, I wouldn't argue for his freedom of speech.

This would be true especially if you knew the person and had reason to believe that the individual really intended to do that.

On the other hand, if it was one of your bowling buddies you were slated to play with the next day and he came up to you and said, "Tomorrow, I am gonna fucking kill you with a 300!" I would totally say "free speech" and I wouldn't think he was going to bring over the elite Spartan guard and kill you with Greek swords or something.....

So these things require context.

Where else are profitable prison industries to find workers?

Edit: This is a slightly complex relationship but it holds. Once you start down a path of mass incarceration, there's pressure to find a profitable use for prisoners. Once you have a profit-making use, there's a demand for more prisoners. So while it is chicken and egg, it's pretty clear that the demand is a factor today. It is also worth noting that the the 13th Amendment specifically allows slavery as punishment for a crime.