Possible 10 years in prison for internet post to trick the stupid about election

The entire point of this thread is that someone was indicted, tried, and thrown in prison for exercising their first amendment rights. If you assume that just because someone is jailed they deserve to be than you will never see injustice.

 

it's not a first amendment right to try to trick people into thinking they can cast their vote by text or telling people they can vote on the day after the election

now if one posted this AFTER the election, then it would be considered a first amendment right

 

It's clearly satire, protected by the first amendment. But what's the use? Arguing free speech with a leftist? Lol...impossible.

 

Its not about "making a post". The internet was only the tool he used to carry out the alleged crime.

Ok, looks like he was sentenced to 7 months for "conspiracy to interfere with potential voters’ right to vote in the 2016"

Of course they sat on it. He is one of their own. He was part of "team Trump", helping tip the scales.

 

The problem, as I see it, is this is YET ONE MORE type of limitation on freedom of press. All those keep adding up. Where does it end?
At some point you're going to have to admit that you don't really believe in "freedom of the press", not in an absolute sort of way, there are simply too many caveats.

This is ONE individual, making a casual post on the internet -- a post that could be regarded as an amusing joke by many. And not only that but it was posted in a place where it would be unlikely for anyone reading there to be tricked, since there are obviously not going to be many Hillary supporters on a Far Right leaning site, and if there were they would probably be very suspicious about anything they read there.
Or is his "crime" making a meme that could be copied and used by others?

And how stupid would someone have to be to be tricked by this? It could be argued that if anyone were that clueless that they could be misled by this, they should probably not be voting at all.

When it comes to something that could fall under freedom of the press and free speech, government should err on the side of caution, but that is not what happened.

I don't want some government officials nitpicking through everyone's public communications (especially political discussions) and deciding what could be criminalized or run afoul of some law. Do you?

 

It looks like the only really tangible part of that "conspiracy" that they could actually put a finger on (and say "he did this") was that meme he posted.

No other evidence that anything else was actually done to "interfere with voters rights".

And this is one more example of a law being interpreted to include something that would not be obvious.

 

seems like that is not what it was in this case, it went beyond that

https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/p...s-mackey-convicted-election-interference-2016

"As proven at trial, between September 2016 and November 2016, Mackey conspired with other influential Twitter users and with members of private online groups to use social media platforms, including Twitter, to disseminate fraudulent messages that encouraged supporters of presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to “vote” via text message or social media which, in reality, was legally invalid."

 

and his social media posts saying why he was doing it.....

 

So you're going to make a stupid action (actually the simple posting of a meme), that would otherwise not be seen as illegal, illegal because of what you assume to be intent (a frame of mind) based on other public communications.

That's not really much better. That's like making some public speech illegal based on other public speech.

(And not only that but I don't think there was any specific communications about specifically trying to use that specific meme to try to mislead voters. Even if you can argue he expressed a separate desire to mislead voters, that meme could have still been a joke that he did not seriously expect would mislead anyone)

 

it was more than just posting a meme, as the case showed

 

I don't think it was much more than posting of a meme. The actions involved posting of a meme, with some other posts suggesting a possible desire to mislead voters, but which was not even really clearly and strongly connected to that meme.

You're still advocating criminally charging people for public communications. It really seems you have very little regard for what should be the sacrosanct tower of free speech.

But thank you for expressing your opinions. It reveals to us what much of the population believes.

All those conservatives who are totally oblivious and have their heads in the sand should listen to you and realize there are plenty of others out there like you.

 

i think it was obvious, as did the jurors in this case that he was trying to mislead voters

 

To many libertarian-minded people, it seems so obvious that your perspective is wrong, they cannot believe there could be very big segment of the population who would hold the perspective you are expressing.

But I think those libertarian-minded people I referred to are dangerously naive.

 

by your logic, hacking would not be a crime, you're just talking to their systems and the fact they do something based on your speech is not your fault

 

In my personal opinion, the issue of hacking is a slippery slope, since in a way it is ultimately about just information and electronic data. I expressed that opinion when the first law specifically against hacking was passed. But that is another issue and another discussion.

That is the problem with making one thing illegal. Later on, that same principle could then be used to make other things illegal, when the argument for making those things illegal is much weaker. People will then say "Well this thing is already illegal, so why not make this illegal too?"
Of course it always starts with the thing that seems more reasonable to people.

This is why legal principles are so important. The "legal logic" used to do one thing could then also be used to do other things, things which could get increasingly more questionable and controversial.

 

some speech is a crime, try telling someone you are a cop, and they are detained and see if your speech gets you arrested (it is a crime), even if later you say you were just joking with them

 

Yes, some speech is a crime. I don't think you will find anyone who will claim that there is absolutely no form of speech that should be a crime.
But I think we should really try to keep the categories of speech that is a crime as small as possible.

If a line is not drawn in the sand somewhere, there will be no end, and what should be the right to free speech will just inevitably get gradually chipped and chiseled away. Imagine if there were so many reasons why what you say could be illegal you could not even count them all, and someone could try to argue that something you said was illegal even though it was not obvious it was or should be.

 

we do, I think it was more than just his meme that got him in trouble

Trying to trick people into missing the opportunity to vote is one line we draw - without his social media posts, he probably would have got away with it

 

Yes. But it seems that meme was the only tangible thing they could actually point to that constituted a crime.

 

it doesn't though, his social media posts showed his intent

 

"intent" is not really an actual crime. Do you want to point to anything specific he did that you think was a crime, besides from that meme?

 

intent shows the other action "the meme" was a crime though

 

It is a crime if judges and juries say it is a crime. It seems the progressive Left has discovered they can begin to enact new policies and change the way society works without, or before, needing to pass any new laws.

I could point to many examples of this.

They don't pass a new law, they just find ways of "reinterpreting" existing laws. Lawyers are really good at that, and the Democrat Party is made up of a huge number of lawyers. Obviously with certain jury pools, if it's someone they don't like, they don't need a huge amount of convincing to buy a very stretched and questionable interpretation of the law.

For conservatives, I think it's too much below their ethical standards to weaponize the law like this against their political enemies.

 

nope, this was a crime, he was convicted and sentenced for the crime

the right may think it's ok to try to mislead voters into thinking their vote by text counts, but the law disagrees

 

I think free and open political discussion is going to be shut down if we start imprisoning anyone we think is misleading other people to think untrue things.
(I do see a distinguishing difference, but again view this as a huge slippery slope)

The crime of "misleading voters" should have to involve something much bigger than just a meme posted by someone on a casual public internet site.