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Notice to Cyber Stalkers
by Not O'Brien •
Tuesday, Jan. 10, 2006 at 8:56 AM
You can now EASILY be prosecuted.
While many may consider this bad new, I consider it good news. Remember a certain harassment group spamming this website (begins with a "K"). They can now easily be sent to jail. This means various cops can now be prosecuted for their online harassment:::
Annoying someone via the Internet is now a federal crime.
It's no joke. Last Thursday, President Bush signed into law a prohibition on posting annoying Web messages or sending annoying e-mail messages without disclosing your true identity.
In other words, it's OK to flame someone on a mailing list or in a blog as long as you do it under your real name. Thank Congress for small favors, I guess.
This ridiculous prohibition, which would likely imperil much of Usenet, is buried in the so-called Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act. Criminal penalties include stiff fines and two years in prison.
"The use of the word 'annoy' is particularly problematic," says Marv Johnson, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. "What's annoying to one person may not be annoying to someone else."
Buried deep in the new law is Sec. 113, an innocuously titled bit called "Preventing Cyberstalking." It rewrites existing telephone harassment law to prohibit anyone from using the Internet "without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy."
To grease the rails for this idea, Sen. Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, and the section's other sponsors slipped it into an unrelated, must-pass bill to fund the Department of Justice. The plan: to make it politically infeasible for politicians to oppose the measure.
The tactic worked. The bill cleared the House of Representatives by voice vote, and the Senate unanimously approved it Dec. 16.
There's an interesting side note. An earlier version that the House approved in September had radically different wording. It was reasonable by comparison, and criminalized only using an "interactive computer service" to cause someone "substantial emotional harm."
That kind of prohibition might make sense. But why should merely annoying someone be illegal?
There are perfectly legitimate reasons to set up a Web site or write something incendiary without telling everyone exactly who you are.
Think about it: A woman fired by a manager who demanded sexual favors wants to blog about it without divulging her full name. An aspiring pundit hopes to set up the next Suck.com. A frustrated citizen wants to send e-mail describing corruption in local government without worrying about reprisals.
In each of those three cases, someone's probably going to be annoyed. That's enough to make the action a crime. (The Justice Department won't file charges in every case, of course, but trusting prosecutorial discretion is hardly reassuring.)
Clinton Fein, a San Francisco resident who runs the Annoy.com site, says a feature permitting visitors to send obnoxious and profane postcards through e-mail could be imperiled.
"Who decides what's annoying? That's the ultimate question," Fein said. He added: "If you send an annoying message via the United States Post Office, do you have to reveal your identity?"
Fein once sued to overturn part of the Communications Decency Act that outlawed transmitting indecent material "with intent to annoy." But the courts ruled the law applied only to obscene material, so Annoy.com didn't have to worry.
"I'm certainly not going to close the site down," Fein said on Friday. "I would fight it on First Amendment grounds."
He's right. Our esteemed politicians can't seem to grasp this simple point, but the First Amendment protects our right to write something that annoys someone else.
It even shields our right to do it anonymously. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas defended this principle magnificently in a 1995 case involving an Ohio woman who was punished for distributing anonymous political pamphlets.
If President Bush truly believed in the principle of limited government (it is in his official bio), he'd realize that the law he signed cannot be squared with the Constitution he swore to uphold.
And then he'd repeat what President Clinton did a decade ago when he felt compelled to sign a massive telecommunications law. Clinton realized that the section of the law punishing abortion-related material on the Internet was unconstitutional, and he directed the Justice Department not to enforce it.
Bush has the chance to show his respect for what he calls Americans' personal freedoms. Now we'll see if the president rises to the occasion.
news.com.com/Create%20an%20e-annoyance%2C%20go%20to%20jail/2010-1028_3-602249...
I am annoyed
by anti-racist
Tuesday, Jan. 10, 2006 at 11:46 AM
I am annoyed and insulted by being called a goon on the SOS website. Since they are not using their real names, can they be prosecuted?
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Wording of the New Law
by Dislikes Right-Wing Nut Jobs
Tuesday, Jan. 10, 2006 at 1:50 PM
Section 2261A. Interstate stalking
Whoever - (1) travels in interstate or foreign commerce or within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States, or enters or leaves Indian country, with the intent to kill, injure, harass, or intimidate, or places under surveillance with the intent to kill, injure, haras, or intimidate, another person, and in the course of, or as a result of, such travel places that person in reasonable fear of the death of, or serious bodily injury to or causes substantial emotional harm to, that person, a member of the immediate family (as defined in section 115) of that person, or the spouse or intimate partner of that person; or (2) with the intent - (A) to kill, injure, harass, or intimidate, or places under surveillance with the intent to kill, injure, harass, or intimidate, or to cause substantial emtional harm to, a person in another State or tribal jurisdiction or within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States; or (B) to place a person in another State or tribal jurisdiction, or within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States, in reasonable fear of the death of, or serious bodily injury to - (i) that person; (ii) a member of the immediate family (as defined in section 115) of that person; or (iii) a spouse or intimate partner of that person, uses the mail, any interactive computer service, or any facility of interstate or foreign commerce to engage in a course of conduct that causes substantial emotional harm to that person or places that person in reasonable fear of the death of, or serious bodily injury to, any of the persons described in clauses (i) through (iii), shall be punished as provided in section 2261(b).
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Thanks for the heads up I will have tell
by Morely
Tuesday, Jan. 10, 2006 at 7:43 PM
Lupe Moreno, Frank Jorge, Don Silva and a few other people who have been stalked here.
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the intellectual prowess of the Unbathed
by left wing fecal matter
Tuesday, Jan. 10, 2006 at 8:27 PM
If you are featured on their hate website...
by Go for it Tuesday, Jan. 10, 2006 at 5:59 PM
You may have a case. That would be thousands of counts of Cyber Stalking. I for one am going to call the police every time a right-wing piece of shit,/b> harasses me online. Something tells me that some certain websites are not going to survive this.
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Never Hold Up
by Anti-Racist
Wednesday, Jan. 11, 2006 at 4:01 AM
Depending on how this law is enforced, it likely will not hold up in court. Cases of untrue accusations that harm another individual are already illegal and called slander. If the comments are true, or they do not harm another individual, then they are protected under the freedom of speech.
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Relax ... it's only about stalking individuals:
by New World Order Resistance
Wednesday, Jan. 11, 2006 at 10:53 AM
 nowarforisrael.jpgfqwwxk.jpg, image/jpeg, 600x150
Go to http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?c109:6:./temp/~c109RM9paN:e91030: and read it for yourself. Looks like the JDO terrorist website is safe for at least another year.
www.israel-state-terrorism.org
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