A Level 1 sex offender from the Tuscarora Indian Reservation was sentenced Thursday to a year in the Niagara County Jail for not telling authorities one of his social media passwords.
____ ____, 48, of Susie’s Lane, must register because of a misdemeanor sex conviction in 2004, defense attorney David J. Mansour said.
In April, ____ pleaded guilty to a felony count of failure to register. He reported two social media accounts last year, but only one password. Mansour said ____ thought the accounts were linked. Full Article
WTF really? A misdemeanor from 14 years ago. I bet this is more time than he got for his original charge. I feel sorry for him it seems he has tried to live a clean life and all this over a password.
You can comment at the source article.
Wage war. Especially over this long weekend. As long as the Registries exist, there must be no peace.
Is this for real? NY wants your social media account PASSWORDS???? That is nuts!
Last I knew you just had to let them know your email and /internet identifiers. It’s a violation of privacy and not required by law for the password. If they have the password they could fuck your life worse than it already is because many people use the same password for all accounts like bank and student loans.
Anyway the NY police send your email to facebook which will ban you from facebook permanently with that Email unless you win an appeal.
This is insane, it is nothing but abuse. The people on the registry are reaching almost a million nation wide. It is going to be time to take the masses to the streets and wake people up. You have gang members with multiple firearm convictions treated with less concern than a misdemeanor level one of a single offense 14 years ago. This must stop.
A man that had committed a misdomeanor 14 yrs ago can be incarcerated for not providing a password? And you guys think the registry can be abolished? Yeah, right.
I’m inclined to believe he thought the two accounts were connected with one password. So he gets a year for a mistake. Seems the government thinks her should be thankful he didn’t get the full 4 years.
Has this law been challenged?
What SPECIFIC law was he prosecuted for? I don’t see any law REQUIRING disclosure of passwords under any New York statute. The following information was taken from the official New York criminal justice government site, of which I will post the entire section here (http://www.criminaljustice.ny.gov/nsor/faq.htm#2):
NOWHERE in that sequence does it say ANYTHING about passwords. In addition, I had searched for the CURRENT text of the law regarding registrant Internet disclosure requirements, and I can’t find ANY text that states that passwords MUST be disclosed. NONE. Not in any of the original assembly, senate, or even NY Attorney General’s office text.
TO CONCLUDE: What specific ordinance or law was the registrant convicted, and sentenced, under? I can’t find any!
I just commented here with a long response, and for some reason it didn’t take. I’ll write a summarized version here:
There is no law in the state of New York that states that passwords must be disclosed to the authorities. Only the usernames and websites have to be disclosed, and it is apparent that the registrant indeed disclosed every site. So WHAT was the registrant convicted of, if there is no SPECIFIC law he violated?
Search for New York ESTOP law, and search all the texts you can find like I did to confirm.
The only people who should have been jailed are the JUDGE and PROSECUTOR for such gross negligence of serving the public’s interest and waste of taxpayer funds.
Please someone leave this as a comment on the article because it’s asking me to subscribe to read it. Thank you.
There has to be something more to this. Passwords are not legally required to be given to LE unless you’re on supervision. Once you’re off, they can’t “enter your home” which is what a password to any account would be. All they can do is track you, which would be updating your address and providing them with your identifiers. Getting a felony for no actual crime when the original crime was a misdemeanor is just stupid. This is totally entering Wonderland territory where up is down and everything is crazy.
I have emailed his attorney to ask how they got a conviction does not appear to violated any laws. I also asked how they didnt challege the collection of Internet Identifiers under Packingham as ESTOP only serves the purpose of removing RC from Social Media.
Indian reservations have their own registry rules just like each state has. The fact the Indian nation is physically in NY is why the story’s title references New York. My bet is on the Indian nation requiring those passwords. Recall that the AWA compliance levels are for states and tribes when measured.
At one point in time, Georgia did require passwords also. It was very plainly written into the law. I gave them passwords. I changed many of them to something very rude (e.g. “gofyourself”). I also had an attorney send them a letter that stated that they did not have permission to use any of my passwords to login to anything. They did not login to anything as far as I know. The law was not on the books for very long. I assume that they were sued. It went away so fast I never did look into it.
If a person needed to give a criminal regime passwords these days they could fairly easily make it useless. You could enable multi-factor authentication on the account and they wouldn’t be able to login. But it would also be fun to have an account where they did login and you just e-mailed back and forth a bunch of large, encrypted files, with interesting names. That would surely drive them crazy. Would be fun.
Anyone who has to give any criminal regime any “internet identifier” or passwords needs to retaliate. Make them pay. Make them sorry. Do not allow people who support these laws to live in peace. They are no different than the invading Nazis were in WW2. Or any other criminal army has ever been. We need to run Registry Terrorists out of OUR country. Or at the very least neutralize, ostracize, and marginalize them. Let’s make sure they don’t count.
This case reminds me a lot of Doe v. Harris. Doe v. Harris was one of the earliest cases that ACSOL, then known as CA RSOL — and with the help of ACLU of Northern California — took on to fight for registrant internet anonymity and Free Speech rights. It’s one of the reasons to why most (but not all) registrants, at least here in California (and in most of the 9th Circuit), are *not* burdened by any internet reporting requirement that serve to chill Free Speech. The opinion was unanimous in favor of registrant Free Speech rights. Surprisingly, ultra-conservative Judge Jay Bybee wrote the Harris opinion in siding with registrants. As Bybee wrote, even a username reporting requirement “has the inevitable effect of burdening sex
offenders’ ability to engage in anonymous online speech.”
The thought of having to report any and/or all internet identifier(s) is outlandish. The added burden of having to report your freaking PASSWORD is at least thrice as outlandish!
https://www.aclunc.org/our-work/legal-docket/doe-v-harris-internet-free-speech
Link to oral argument by ACLU attorney Michael Risher, argued September 10, 2013: https://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/media/view.php?pk_id=0000011287
Little off topic here, but I just watched a segment on FOX news where this college MVP football player was accused of rape (that was just the gist of it as I am not sure all the facts) and the girl was just sentenced for false accusations. I did not catch what the sentence was but this guy was treated as we all know he would be as guilty as charged without even being able to give his statement or any due process at all. According to his attorney Obama signed a law that denies anyone accused of a sexual offense on college campus any type of due process whatsoever. The kid was kicked out of school, lost all his scholarships and financial aid, and basically had his life ruined based on that one girls false statement. This is the new Salem witch hunt or McCarthyism at its finest….
Keep hearing stuff like ” The pendelum is swinging back your way”. Stories like this makes it feel more like, ” the Guillotine is being sharpened”.
Something isn’t right here. SCOTUS has already declared passwords protected against unreasonable search AND is protected information for reasons of self incrimination….
The ONLY way this would be legal is if the guy was on parole. Misdemeanors aren’t prison offenses so there is no parole. I refuse to believe this story is real as written.
Also, didn’t SCOTUS already declare this unconstitutional?
How does one who gets prosecuted for a federal crime end up in a county jail?
I’m happy to read so many replies and I hope to see much much more.
I’ve been saying here that out of Manhattan New York State is a cesspit especially the farther north you go. I’d say Niagara is just about as far north! I don’t know what the tribal laws are.
Is the NYCLU going to get involved? Why don’t we all help this poor guy out and e-mail them to be involved?
I’ll probably be adding more to this thread.
I just checked my NYS Annual Registration form and it clearly asks for internet supplier, email addresses and to report any social media sites that you subscribe to ONLY. The form and the Sex Offender police do make you supply any social media sites that you are on as per Cuomo’s E-Stop law started by Laura Ahearn. Check as well his ban on joining Pokemon. That is ALL they require- that they have that information. They more than likely do forward that to the Social media site who will block you.
If you subscribe to Facebook, Instagram etc you will be asked to sign that you are not a sex offender. If you lie to them, that is NOT a crime. If you do not not inform the police of any social media sites that you are on that IS a crime.
It’s possible that a person could have an e-mail addressnthat they have not supplied the police with, use that to join social media. That is a BIG crime.
I think anyone doing that needs their brains examined and needs therapy.
There was a discussion on this back when Calif. was going to require social media registration and names and password for various sites. I suggested signing up to sites with 20 or more random character user names and a different 20 random character passwords. Paste them to a txt file, print them out, and mail them in. Let the cops try to type them into their database. If we joined, say, 100 sites like that, think of all the time it would consume!
@The Static-99R Is A Scam. They will claim that they are not squashing or limiting your free & anonymous speech one iota.
Can someone in New York that’s registered there please help me can you call me or email me please I have questions regarding registration?