Sarah Tomic ([info]sarahtomic) wrote,
@ 2005-04-02 16:03:00
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War is Peace! Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength!
A comprehensive article on what happened to Paul.

My comment (with the above title):
Paul clearwise thinked crimethink, thuswise he is joycamp bound. Possibilitywise Paul is unperson bound. His writewise undoubletalk only crimetalk.

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[info]eliciel
2005-04-03 04:53 am UTC (link)
doubleplusgood comment.

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[info]nednefarious
2005-04-03 06:58 am UTC (link)
So I read that article as promised.

I'm not sure how to feel about this situation: on one hand, the idea of 5 years of jail time is staggering, and that is an absolutely awful magnitude of punishment for such a little (if extremely regrettable) indiscretion. On the other, I didn't even think the thing he said was so lucid or even funny on any level, and I thought the comparison someone made to Swift's "A Modest Proposal" was kind of melodramatic and unreasonable because of the disparity in how well expressed the two criticisms were. In other words, as far as I can see the guy does not have a brilliant sense of humor or of current standards in free speech, but it sucks that someone could get so shafted just for that.

All my best wishes to him and his family; I hope the jury ends up stacked with Grinnell students, or some other people who know what's up ;)

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[info]sarahtomic
2005-04-03 05:49 pm UTC (link)
The only way I could tell he was being ironic was because he referred to the bubble we've been "promised" and also to "Ruby Ridge." He's a weird guy, I'll admit, but totally harmless.
I agree having to spend 5 years in jail for something you write in a (membership-viewing-only) semi-private forum is a lot more than the law should require. Even if Paul were serious (and to an outsider, it would seem so) I think it would be much more of a warning sign, and less of an actual felony. Well, at least that was true before the Patriot Act!

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[info]scarybug
2005-04-03 07:33 am UTC (link)
I think the most important thing to note is that posting to Plans should not be considered the same as posting on the interweb. It's a private conversation (and obviously one in which context is important).

I didn't think it was funny either (though I didn't read it in context). It shouldn't matter whether sarcasm is eloquent. He *was* basically arrested for crimethink. That's not okay.

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[info]belacane
2005-04-03 10:14 am UTC (link)
the thought police got him.....

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[info]m00n
2005-04-03 09:53 pm UTC (link)
To me one of the most insipid things about this new found paranoia is what an incredible waste of time and manpower it's turning out to be. I understand the tenant of "take every threat seriously" but to me that does not mean (and cannot mean, as I will explain) prosecution of anyone who makes any threat of any kind (especially one that, regardless of its being funny or not, was so obviously made in jest).

One of the central problems with the prosecution of thought crime is that its definition is often far too broad. For example, nine years ago, congress passed the Communications Decency Act in order to curtail "indecent" and "patently offensive" content on the Internet. The problem, as the supreme court outlined when it struck down the law a year and 5 months later, is that the definitions of these terms are far too broad. The reason the police today are able to get away with arrests like these is because they are operating in sort of a judicial dead area; there's very little case law out there to guide the correct procedures in prosecuting these things.

But what really worries me is the lack of critical thinking that seems to be involved in picking out whom to arrest. I think it goes without saying that anyone who was actually planning to stage something as grossly illegal and violent as what this kid threatened to do would probably be a bit more clandestine about it. By the same token, anyone who gives this two seconds of thought ought to be able to figure out that extremely over-the-top "threats" made in public forums, especially at liberal universities, are pretty much totally benign. I can sort of understand the idea that every threat should be taken seriously, but the problem is that's not what they're doing! They're spending their precious time, effort, and manpower to prosecute the really easy to find if obviously meaningless sarcastic Internet threats and more or less totally ignoring the need to do any kind of real and genuinely difficult reconnaissance.

I mean why, when the white house isn't even able to properly act upon the CIA's legitimate and very specific counter-terrorism intelligence are we even REMOTELY concerned about prosecuting a student in a fucking Internet chat room ranting about Ruby Ridge?!

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[info]sarahtomic
2005-04-04 05:51 pm UTC (link)
I have no fucking idea.

I'm pretty damn sure what he did was not illegal because he was not "sending" this to anybody. "Plans" are a lot like livejournal, but can only be viewed if you are a member, so this definitely wasn't a "threat," at least in the case of, say, a "bomb threat."

Because what he did is probably not illegal, and since he's still in jail, I think newspapers tend to use wording like this.

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[info]m00n
2005-04-04 11:27 pm UTC (link)
The heart of the problem is that the legality of his statement is entirely dependent on the police department's conceptions about what constitutes a "threat." Personally I think they're completely idiotic to believe that allowing this kid to go unpunished would somehow compromise the safety of the students, but clearly they do not share my views.

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