Virginia’s law requiring sex offenders to provide law enforcement officials with information about their social media identity is constitutional, a Virginia appeals court ruled. Full Article
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This is a disturbing opinion. I could only hope that it is corrected by a higher court.
Having read the Opinion, it seems diametrically opposed to Doe v. Harris (CA) even though they basically are the same facts. Actually VA is a bit worse in that it requires notification within 30 minutes! CA “only” required 24 hours…and yet that was found to be, “onerous and overbroad.” It’s also in stark contrast to the AL District decision, where the judge found AL failed not only strict scrutiny, but intermediate as well. There are other courts, though (IA? 7th?) that find it all hunky dory.
There is certainly a disagreement among the courts on this, seemingly due to varying interpretation of the intermediate-scrutiny standard. I hope this gets appealed higher…though I must be honest, I somewhat fear the outcome.
What really boils my butt about this Opinion is the contention that the State isn’t prohibiting anything, it’s merely requiring reporting…which then gets told to the platforms via the Feds, and then the platforms prohibit use. Though not directly prohibiting, the State’s actions and requirements start the ball rolling and result in the prohibition. But that’s all legal and fine, of course. The State can hand out a list of “bad people: all day long, but as long as the State itself doesn’t do the the blacklisting, all’s good. How F’d up is that? That’s merely contracting out the banishment.
“The requirements are the cyber-equivalent of providing identifying information such as photographs and fingerprints, the court said.”
Piss poor argument seeing how identification is not awareness and that doesn’t translate into prevention, much less minimization of risk. Lawmakers really do have a skewed perspective of reality selling this “knowledge is power” crap to the public.
More like the “cyber equivalent” of public shaming and retaliatory mob justice.
Privacy is not “secrecy.” Nor is it cover for criminal activity.
White v. Baker, 696 F. Supp. 2d 1289 (N.D. Ga. 2010)
The real argument in federal court is this will chill free speech and removes the constitutionally protected right to anonymous speech, even on the internet
It is already being used to prohibit speech – FB TOS – only possible via disclosure.
At my 2011 FTR.
Agent DOC SOR demands email address disclosure from registrants? A: Yes
Agent does DOC SOR intend to use email to communicate with registrants? A: No.
Did you just say no Agent? Yes.
Agent communication is the usual purpose of email exchanges – what it’s used for? A: Yes.
Agent DOC SOR demands email addresses for another purpose outside of communicating? A: Yes.
Agent please disclose to the jury the other purposes the state intends to do with these disclosures. …………
Agent the state and people intends to impose affirmative restraint with these disclosures? FB, MS, Date.com, etc etc.
@Happy, Joyous and Free
There were a few Tor breakdowns. One was a phishing hack that claimed to be a Tor update. My point was that I don’t surrender my privacy to my ISP because I us a VPN (that has proven it doesn’t log). I’ve been on the Internet for about 25 years and have never done anything illegal on it that I know of (evidently, some have accidently downloaded stuff). The cops would find nothing. But I still use it to troll the trolls (stalkers) and to argue and debate, as here, by exercising my 1st Amendment rights anonymously, and to keep the corporate stalkers from sucking the data points soul out of me. On occasion I’ll run Tor through a VPN (safest) just to get the trolls’ b-hole all a quiver because they think they might be on to something. I waste their time. Gladly. It is not a very powerful weapon, but it helps a little because there is a little satisfaction.
Bottom line, if doing something the government will want us for bad enough, eventually Tor nor a VPN will stop them because a mistake is inevitable. But we could safely organize a clandestine group with Tor. Many dissidents use it, it’s purpose in fact, according to torproject.org.