121–130 of 138 posts
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Which is worse: taking a job under false pretenses, or abusing animals? The balance of the good seems clear to me.
Two wrongs do not make a right. FWIW however, I am a big proponent of exposing animal cruelty.
I grew up on a beef farm in Idaho, a family business. I have some opinions about this. 1) I don't believe animal cruelty is okay. 2) If someone is abusing an animal, they should be prosecuted by the law 3) I find that many people have no idea the conditions or actions that are required to raise large animals. Some practices may seem cruel to the unknowing bystander, but are, in fact, practices to help maintain the he…
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I consider myself a far left liberal and I certainly don't condone abusing farm animals. However, taking a paying job under falsified pretenses with a made up resume and then spending your working hours secretly filming internal operations for future public release with the sole goal of harming your employer, that is just sketchy. If you believe in the cause so much that you call it war - well understood. But protect…
Which is worse: taking a job under false pretenses, or abusing animals? The balance of the good seems clear to me.
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This is similar to the tort of public disclosure of private facts. (Libel protects me against you lying about me, but this tort protects against you publicizing my strange hobbies or sexual practices or other private practices so long as, and this is huge, there's no public interest). I know Idaho was a late adopter to the tort, while many other states committed the tort to statute. They may just be coming around. Th…
Fantastic response. I just want to say though that wrt > ...are violating the law...the public has a right to know. There may not be a legal obligation for the public to know, if no violation of the law has occurred, however just because something isn't illegal, does not make it right (abusing animals) I know that reasoning does not hold from a legal standpoint, but without standing up to unjust laws, the civil right…
But even that's imprecise, some violations of law by public individuals might not even qualify as warranting public scrutiny (a speeding record 20 years ago?), whereas some legal activities by private individuals might warrant public scrutiny and get dropped from this sort of tort, it's very case by case.
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This is similar to the tort of public disclosure of private facts. (Libel protects me against you lying about me, but this tort protects against you publicizing my strange hobbies or sexual practices or other private practices so long as, and this is huge, there's no public interest). I know Idaho was a late adopter to the tort, while many other states committed the tort to statute. They may just be coming around. Th…
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 me…
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.)
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This is similar to the tort of public disclosure of private facts. (Libel protects me against you lying about me, but this tort protects against you publicizing my strange hobbies or sexual practices or other private practices so long as, and this is huge, there's no public interest). I know Idaho was a late adopter to the tort, while many other states committed the tort to statute. They may just be coming around. Th…
This is similar to the tort of public disclosure of private facts. Similar, perhaps, but torts entitle someone to sue for damages and this law creates a new crime for which people can be imprisoned. It also removes the opportunity to argue on a case-by-case basis whether the facts disclosed were, in fact a matter of public interest. If covert films document violations of the law regarding animal cruelty or food safet…
I should have written, "The considerations underlying this law may be similar to a very different common law tort"... which don't help us predict outcomes in individual cases, might just shed some light on how, if it did survive any First Amendment challenge, how that would happen.
In practice there are enormous differences. And even the First Amendment challenge would be complicated by this being a criminal statute and not having an out for the public interest.
I'm less sure about the effect of criminalizing the collection of information instead of its dissemination. I'm more unsure whether animal cruelty is public interest by default, just don't know the animal rights cases. But, eh, Ninth Circuit, you're probably right, Idaho may have a tough shot.
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This isn't very difficult to do. Take 100K. Hire private investigators to find people who work at the place in question and who are not happy. Pay these people for affidavits stating that animal cruelty goes on. Based on that sworn testimony, go to a federal prosecutor and get a warrant. Take the warrant and gather evidence. Or, start a civil action and begin discovery. This kind of thing is done all the time. But yo…
>This isn't very difficult to do. >Take 100K. Are you serious?
Makes sense. A farm is private property. You don't have the right to come into my house or my place of work and film me. (Even if you suspect I'm doing something wrong) Also makes sense that falsifying a resume in order to do so would be illegal.
No, that doesn't make sense. If it is considered wrong/unethical to film on private property in Idaho - why would they legislate for a specific industry? Shouldn't filming video on private property be illegal all across the board in Idaho if the problem is about basic rights?