Losing the Ability to Speak Freely
Posted By Kathleen David on September 29, 2006
I have some serious concerns about the country that I am living in.
A woman who is running for public office is under investigation for TALKING about wiretapping her husband. You can tell from the way she is talking that she is very angry and most of the talk is just venting. The wiretap never happened and she is still married to her husband who is a big political liability not only for his philandering but also for his drinking and driving or his driving in general. She under investigated by the FBI because she asked a friend to help her. Let me rephrase this, she is being investigated for talking. (I know there is more to this than I put here. And some are going to say what about the supposed terrorists that were caught for talking. I saw apples and oranges. She wanted to know what her husband was up to and they wanted to hurt lots of people. Now if she wanted to kill her husband and they go that on a wiretap then she gets no sympathy from me.) This comes out 6 weeks before the election and is seriously undermining her campaign.
A teacher in Long Island was arrested for have child pornography on his computer along with some films. Now he had been stopped on the Canadian board by the Canadians who asked him to fire up the laptop. He informed them that there were some things on there that were a little odd. He ran a website about slave boys, severe SM, and cannibalism where he and his webmaster (who happened to be in Canada) wrote out their fetishes. On the computer at the time he had pictures of boys in bathing suits that he had collected off the internet. There were no nude pictures on the hard drive at the time. The website had a disclaimer on it that all content was a work of fiction and was for the entertainment purposes don’t really do this.
Squiggy I know but how is this different from some of the Harry Potter slash fiction? He was arrested for the nude images which I applaud the police for. But now they are exploring the possibility that he might have done what he wrote about since he was so into this “stuff”. Considering the disclaimer on the website I highly doubt it. He seems to have a firm grasp of reality with rather twisted fantasies. If we take that to the logical conclusion then the police better go arrest Neil Gaiman, Clive Barker, Anne Rice, and Stephen King since some of the stuff they have written about may mean they are cannibals or have vampires in their basement or children in peril. And he is be investigated for something he said/did on top of what he did that was wrong (child pørņ is so wrong). Again I know I don’t have all the facts.
So if this is taken to its logical conclusion then we need to Mirandizes the entire population of the Internet. Anything you say/type may be used against you in the court of law even if it was when you were back in college and talking about a bad trip on acid so now you will never do acid again but since you did it and wrote about it then the police can use it to persecute you for using illegal drugs. The fanfic pørņøš that you wrote in your early 20s will come back to haunt you in later life because of the subject material. Your political debate in a chat room where you claim that you know how to use explosives and want to blow up the state Senate can be used against you in a court of law. Things said/written in anger come back and haunt you many years later. Kind of a scary place to live don’t you think?
I am grateful that we are not at this point…yet.
Kath, I’m confused. Did the teacher in the story have nude pictures of kids or not? Your account says both. First it says he had pics of “boys in bathing suits. . .[T]here were no nude pictures on the hard drive at the time.” Then, a few sentences later you write that he “was arrested for the nude images which I applaud the police for.” How can someone be arrested for images which he doesn’t have? Would it be possible for you to provide a link or some sort of update? I’d certainly hate to think that one can be arrested simply for having pics of kids in bathing suits.
JosephW, as I read it, these were two separate incidents, one where he had such material on his HD, and another where he did not.
-Rex Hondo-
I may be missing something here, but if he did have pictures of child pørņ on his PC don’t the authorities have an oblication to check out some of the sick fantisies he wrote about. The worst that’s gonna happen is the cops verify he didn’t do those things. How is this different from a killer who keeps a diary of people he may or may not have killed, if he’s caught for killing one person don’t the cops have a responsiblity to check those other names to see if he’s responcible for those killings as well? I’m sorry if the guy didn’t have pictures of naked boys on his PC I’d agree with you, but once you cross the line, (which he apparently did), yeah I think things you’ve prevoiusly said in public that relate to the type of crime you’ve been caught doing should be investigated by the authorities. The key word being “investigated”.
A woman who is running for public office is under investigation for TALKING about wiretapping her husband.
The only reason I think this is actually relevant is because of the particular office she’s running for, namely Attorney General. To have a candidate for that office actively talk about subverting various wiretapping rules really does strike me as a relevant contraindicator of her fitness for the job. I agree that there’s plenty of nonsense surrounding this, but Pirro has so far struck me as one of the most inept major candidates in history, so I’m not surprised that things are just getting weirder.
Your political debate in a chat room where you claim that you know how to use explosives and want to blow up the state Senate can be used against you in a court of law. Things said/written in anger come back and haunt you many years later. Kind of a scary place to live don’t you think?
Most definitely, though the “know how to use explosives” part strikes me as close enough to an actual threat that it’s worth investigating. Now, something like “man, I wish someone would just blow up that building” is an entirely different kettle of fish — there I would totally share your worries about overreaction.
TWL
Oops. I keep forgetting that italics don’t work here. (I find that weird, since they do on Peter’s site.) The first and third paragraphs above are Kath’s, not mine. Sorry ’bout that.
TWL