On Mon, 2004-01-12 at 01:26, Tim May wrote:Have you done this since 9/11? I know that in my [red]neck of the woods, I would without question be spending a few days in the system for this.
That's what sniper rifles with low light scopes are for: kill one or both or all of the cops who arrested you in this way. Cops who abuse the criminal system and violate constitutional rights blatantly have earned killing.
This has probably been mentioned here before, but another interesting approach is what justicefiles.org used to do (I'm not sure what the status of the site is, it seems to be down now).
They collected the names of police officers (particularly ones known to be abusive of their authority) in King County, WA and published that + all public information they could find on them (including SSN's, addresses, phone numbers, etc).
Of course the police tried to take the site down but the court upheld the site's right to publish any publicly available information about the cops (I believe they excepted the SSN's).
The First Amendment is quite clear about prior restraint and censorship. Not only is it legal for "The Progressive" to publish details of how to make a hydrogen bomb, and for the "New York Times" to publish the Pentagon Papers, but it is legal to publish SS numbers when they become available.
Now civil actions are another can of worms, and Bill Gates, for example, may sue somebody for publishing his SS number. Or I may sue the U.S. Marshal's Service for illegally using my SS number as a legal ID (which my SS card, still in my possession from when I got it in 1969) says is to be used for tax and Social Security purposes ONLY and MAY NOT be used for identifcation) and letting it circulate over the Net.
But such civil suits--by Gates, by cops, by me--are NOT the same as prior restraint on publishing words.
(Though of course this is only the _theory_. The fact that all of the Bill of Rights, except perhaps the Third, have been violated by the Evildoers in government is well-known.)
--Tim May
