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Censorship

Censorship: It's Not Just For Web Sites 123

Posted by timothy from the [redacted]of-the-[redacted]-[redacted] dept.
rares passed on to us this story from APBNews.com which ought to give pause to all readers: It seems that in Illinois, a revised set of guidelines for professional conduct of police (the guidelines are here in PDF) was issued by the state's Supreme Court. Though the guidelines are not state law, they have led to a sudden drop in the availability of formerly routine information available to the public, including newspapers, about police activities. Question is, whose rights are being respected here, and whose lost? What other formerly public information might soon be at risk -- and should all of it have been public in the first place? Interestingly, the word "censorship" appears only twice in the article.
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Censorship: It's Not Just For Web Sites More

Censorship: It's Not Just For Web Sites

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  • It would appear the police want to riot. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This is sick. I think they are toying with us. For what purpose I know not, but anything which the government (U.S. Federal, State or local) does IS BY DEFINITION public information which cannot be withheld. The exception by court order are usually VERY WRONGLY MANDATED. The exceptions for National security are about the ONLY acceptable ones (when they are minimal with proper checks).

    They government is empowered by the people and all activities which the government undertakes are fully open to public scrutiny. And, yes, before a court has determined the innocence or guilt of an accused, the police MUST NOT CLAIM THE INDIVIDUAL IS GUILTY.
  • I am a moron
    You after reading this following link about what he really said.

    http://www.serve.com/shea/germusa/jfkbe rl.htm [serve.com]

    The real quote:
    ...All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words "Ich bin ein Berliner."
    -John F. Kennedy
  • Sorry I didn't make myself clear.

    The phrase "Ich bin ein Berliner," was not incorrect. He used that phrase twice in the speach.

    The Berliners where not laughing at him.

    This is an urban legend to some degree and should be debunked when possible.

    http://www.serve.com/shea/germusa/jfkbe rl.htm [serve.com]
  • The problem is obviously the press.
    Don't stop the poliece from releaseing information, stop the press from doing crap like this! Don't avoid the problem and at the same time loose all those advantages, fix the problem!

    The press has way too much power that they use for its own goals.... fix that! But I want to be able to review every little thing the poliece force did if I so desire. Locking up information is NEVER a good thing.

    ~Chris

  • The question is not "if" but "when". All the info should be available in due course.

    Exactly! Every trial, no matter how famous/infamous/mundane the victim/accused is, should be shrouded in complete and utter secrecy. No one should know *anything* about it, perhaps not even that it is taking place.



    Once a ruling is made, then it should become public, along with all the evidence, reasoning, and arguments that brought about that ruling. Perhaps a complete court transcript being made online would be a bit much, but perhaps not.



    As many people here have said, this protects those who are accused, yet innocent, from suffering damage to their careers and lives. It also makes it enormously easier to find a jury that can actually be impartial since they didn't even know the crime had happened.



    Now, if they never say anything afterwards it becomes entirely different. Then it becomes the situation feared by those posting perceiving a loss of accountability, and a censorship of information that the public has a right to.

  • Having read the article, now that it's finally not Slashdotted for a while, it seems to me that the police in question have been handed something complicated and confusing from the courts and are erring on the side of caution until they get a handle on just what they are and are not legally allowed or required to do.
    In other words, they're doing their best to obey the law while they try to get a better explanation of what the law *really* says.
    To put this into a perspective understandable by us civilian types, think of trying to make heads or tails out of federal tax laws, IRS interpretations of same, and federal court rulings on both.
    Starting to understand a little better what it's like for those police departments now?

    attention sig nazis--sig nazi annoying sig follows--get over it, get a life

  • It's not censorship. I browse at -1 (sig is a JOKE!) and I saw your stupid, pointless waste of bandwidth. If I chose to set my threshold higher I wouldn't have, but it would still be there to annoy anyone browsing at that level. There are several local television stations that I'm not watching right now, doesn't mean that they've been censored. If I don't have time to read the local newspaper it hasn't been censored. Whatever they chose to print is there on the pages, it still got delivered to the house, and if I chose to arrange my priorities differently, I could read it. Freedom of the press means that the government can't tell them what to print or not print, doesn't mean that I have some obligation to read it or that they can force me to read it.
  • Unless he was arrested, I don't see how that's at all relevant to this (stupid and obviously biased) article

  • On the other hand, I believe that the public has a right to know about what goes on in our criminal justice system

    The question is not "if" but "when". All the info should be available in due course.

  • well not quite. But the Timothy posts seem really lame, mostly quintessential slashdot herd stuff.

  • I imagine that the "highly paid" statement was referring to the people who actually *profit* from the newspaper... the owners, chairmen, etc.

    Which, of course, are the same people who are pushing the reporters to research less and put out the reports that are PR that doesn't look like PR or the sensationalistic bullshit (Lewinski, Jewell, etc). Which validates the original poster's point.

    Jeff

  • Re:Why? (Score:1)

    by swb ( 14022 )
    It's due to the continuing self-absorbed fascination with the "geek" lifestyle and its myopic world outlook. We need more stories on technology and many fewer Jon Katz exposes of the high school social hierarchy.

    I spend more time over at the Register or even reading the overclocking drivel on the Ars Technica Mainboard forum than I do on Slashdot because too often the stories here are nothing but "Why our ancestors fought and died so I could use Napster at the University" or great insights from Jon Katz as to why its so unfair that free software droolers on the internet are rightly labeled wankers.

    I want to know when they're going to finally implement Slashdot article moderation. In a way they already have it. I set my thershold at +1 and the stupid Slashdot stories have a low ratio of >+1 to +1 posts.
  • Also I Disagree with the censorship.

    Sherm
  • Not really, it gets abused to much.

    Sherm
  • I have to release every thing to the press for our agency, infact it is now just emailed via a cron report. They love it but the press picks the stupid stories and prints them instead of the good ones, even though I give them all of the info.

    Officer Sherman Stebbins
    St. George police, Ut
  • The Illinois Supreme court ruling that started this whole brouhaha does not restrict the press from reporting any particular fact. Instead, it puts a kind of default gag order on Prosecutors, Defense Lawyers, court and law enforcement personnel.

    There is nothing preventing reporters from using new-fangled journalistic techniques like "investigation" or "interviewing" to dig up and report any information or opinions about events, from any witnesses, participants, or evidence. These rules seem to intend to keep the partisian professional participants from shooting off incendiary press releaes that can be damaging to the judicial process.

    Crime reporters are whining because no one is spoonfeeding them all the sensational tidbits of information.

  • "The police no longer have to be as complete when reporting crime statistics to media"

    Back in the bad old days of apartheid here in South Africa, the police (under control of the government) would often arrest black activists and other people more generally associated with anti-apartheid activism. Many of these people died while in police custody, with police reports typically attributing the cause of death to things like "natural causes", accidents, or "self-inflicted injuries". Of course, virtually none of this information was ever allowed to go to press.

    But nothing like that could ever happen in the great, infallible US of A ... right?

  • "There is a big difference between "not being complete" and "lying.""

    As far I'm concerned, not making the information available to the press is censorship in cases like that.

    In the South Africa case, the information was literally not made available to anyone outside the small group of people involved.

    The "lying" part of it, the police reports etc, were typically only exposed many years later, in this case, the Truth and Reconciliation commission. The press received no information at the time of the crimes, not false information.

    So yes, I believe that qualifies as censorship - the government actively conspiring to ensure that information about its own human rights violations is never allowed to reach the press.

    "And I don't believe that the parent article said anything about the US being infallible"

    I wasn't responding to the article. I was responding to the opinion some had that this was a good thing based on the notion of protecting people who are actually innocent from being smeared in the press. That is true, but I believe that it is definitely a bad thing when police gag's like this become pervasive enough to allow the government to hide its own illegal activities. I can promise you, whatever your own opinions, that there are a huge number of americans who believe that cover-ups of the sort I described only happen in other places, like 'backwards third-world countries'. It was just a caution to keep that in mind before going forward in this direction (policies like that can tend to spread easily when the government decides it likes them.)

  • Finally! Some sanity! It has always been difficult for me to accept that the /. crowd should insist upon open EVERYTHING. Open source is good, yes. But why should the police share everything with everyone?

    The article talks about the people's "Right to Know." Last I checked, the Constitution guarantees no such thing. In face, in seems to say much the opposite, by guaranteeing a fair trial, via an impartial jury of peers. Now, what the definition of peer is, is open to debate....
  • The media takes great delight in making and breaking heroes and zeros by basically being highly-paid ambulance-chasers.
    Choke, gasp, gulp. Highly paid? Highly paid? Not print journalists, that's for sure. How does $18K a year sound?

    I imagine that the "highly paid" statement was referring to the people who actually *profit* from the newspaper... the owners, chairmen, etc.

    -t
  • Masem wrote (in part): "... but if the police were to report on every incidence they cover, local papers would be rather thick ..."

    Well, papers aren't obligated to report all police incidents, but for many years, the police reports have been a staple of local reporting.

    I agree with you that this isn't "censorship" in the way that a ruling would be that declared censorship the law of the land, but I think the Hitchikers Guide example is a good example of de facto censorship ... obfuscation is as good as denial, if it takes more effort to penetrate than reasonable people are willing to give.

    I'd like police reports to be open for one thing as a check on police power. If the police are harrassing someone, I don't want them to be able to (legally) deny their activities. Also, unless a system were utterly leakproof (and none is), /not/ having info. released could be used to smear someone as well as releasing it. "Now I'm not saying mr. Smith was arrested for kiddie porn, since I'm not allowed to say that, but just so you have something to think about, I might be inclined to say something like that." With a police report, smears would require at least a little more effort. (Of course, some depts are probably so used to planting evidence the consider it year-round arbor day ...)

    timothy

  • I don't know which NW IL city you're in but here in "Central" IL as you know it's lots of wide spots in roads. My father in law ran for sheriff here 3 times - the sheriff in power used the media to lie about his record for political gain. Police/Sheriffs and SA's in my opinion use high profile (even low profile for that matter) cases for political gain. Notice how the amount of drug busts and arrests increase in the year before election? IMHO the Supreme Court is on the right frame of mind only a bit off kilter of the extent of the issuance of the ethics canon by leaving interpretation of the canon up to the judicial circuits. I am *not* anti-police by any means. I just don't agree with the tactics of some SA's and sheriffs case in point DuPage Co. with the Rolando Cruz case. They almost had him pernamently hushed for something that it turns out he didn't do. All so the SA would get reelected. Email me if you would like to debate this further. pcdoctor@gocubs.com

  • You are entirely correct that this isn't a censorship issue. No one is barred from saying anything about the police, or reporting on them. Two things, though:

    • Is anyone else disturbed by the fact that there are "reporters" whose jobs apparently revolve around parroting police press releases? Disregarding sensationalism, there's the lack-of-independence issue. Police in this country are running around confiscating property without trial in drug cases,shooting unarmed civilians on the street and in botched "high-intensity" raids, and causing multicar fatal accidents in high-speed chases (or just on their way to a call), just to name the "legitimate" dangers they can pose to the rest of us. Journalists who rely so much on police sources for information on police activities disserve the public.
    • While it isn't a freedom-of-speech issue, this is a secrecy issue. If we really care about a government accountable to the people, government functions must be open except for narrowly defined circumstances where secrecy is justified. At the local police level, a very few select items of information(identities of rape victims or undercover officers, for instance) have been designated as worthwhile to conceal due to a demonstrable public interest. However, this hardly translates to justifying a blanket policy of silence on police department activities. The government takes taxes from us to fund the police, who obstensibly get to drive fast and carry guns in order to serve and protect us - we deserve to know what they're doing.
  • You destroyed Germany ? Last time I looked at their economy and the absorbtion of Chrysler by Mercedes, it looked like Germany was alive and kicking. Or maybe you want to talk about how you crushed Japan ? Last time I looked at the commercial trade balance of the US it looked like you were being screwed very hard by both Europe and Asia.
  • It was merely a speculation on the irony of it. I can't really find the right words here, but it wasn't meant to seriously say that censorship started with websites.

    Chris Hagar
  • This country is getting worse and worse on this issue:

    Kandyland decision a new First Amendment landmark [freedomforum.org]

    This is what happens when people consistently elect fanatics to high office. The most ridiculous part of it is what you know if you, like me, had family in law enforcement: that it can often be a case of "the wolves guarding the hen house." Note: I'm not refering to my Dad, who was a stand up guy. I'm referring to stuff my Dad knew about other cops, especially the ones in Newark.

    Note though your problem was that the girls Dad obviously had it in for you and was able to use our country's rather insane view of sex to get you into trouble. (Note, it wouldn't have happened if you'd had family on the police department... he'd probably have ended up in prison for molesting his own daughter or something in that case!)

    There in lies the problem though, the press is supposed to be independant, but when everyone in power is feeding from the same trough, you end up with a recipe for oppression.

  • When they are acting as citizens (civilians), of course the police have the rights of citizens. But when they are acting in an official capacity, taking up and using the powers the law gives them, they can be no longer permitted to routinely remain silent.

    To pretend otherwise is to invite all public officials to plead the 5th. Can you imagine if Bill Clinton simply stonewalled? Furthermore, if an offical pleads the 5th, the assumption should be that s/he has done something illegal.

    A person has the right under the 5th not to incriminate themselves. They do not have the right to stay silent when they would not be incriminated.

  • Why another pandering article about censorship? Why do you appeal to the worst in us? Why must you dogmatically posit specious arguments for the hell of it?

    I've noticed a continued deterioration of slashdot over the past year. I think it started with Rob Malda's failed attempt to muzzle the trollers. Imagine that. Slashdot, the vanguard of society, protecting us from those who would censor us, yet they force you to take a 70 second break between posts and don't archive posts -1 posts, as though they never existed.

    Slashdot is a fraud and I'm tired of the hypocrisy.

  • I would say that there is a need for balance between the right of the public to be informed and the right of the accused not to be subject to undue harassment. C'mon, if you were unjustly accused of a crime, would you want to have your name and address and phone number given to anyone who is a member of the press? The rules aren't there to protect criminals (although they do have rights), if they are guilty their address will be widely known to be the county jail. If we truly believe in innocent til proven guilty, we won't jump all over people and ask them why did it before the trial.

    Walt
  • Please keep in mind that the laws that allow the police to basicly get away with what they to me were created to "protect" the police department personal and witnesses from harm.

    They just also happen to allow the police to do
    searches without having to justify
    them unless they charge someone.

    This allows our police (and maybe yours) to raid a
    whole block or several homes to find an ileagal activity.

    Police are trained to push all laws to the limit to help him stop crime (they are the "good" guys after all and criminals don't follow the laws so the police need all the tools and tricks they can find, just ask one.)

    Any time you give the police any way to make their job easier they will take it.

    You want to be VERY carefull when giving the police ways to make thier jobs easier.

    BTW had the press forced the police to disclose the information about the raid on my house I would probably be able to sue them (the police) and had my employer required me to take a drug test or I was denied credit it would be even easier.

  • A terrible thing had happened to you. But the police would not have gone to the reporters to tell them what they did. And if they did, they wouldn't have told it from your point of view.

    You were and still are able to go to the reporters yourself about the matter tho.

    I think what Goldmeer meant is that police have a job to do, and it's not to go to the reporters and report their activities to them.

    I wonder if the reporters could use the freedom of information act to get details??
  • In most places crimes commited by juveniles aren't made public. Besides if he were at school and is being expelled, he might not be charged with anything criminal.
  • There is a big difference between "not being complete" and "lying."

    Crime occurs, details not released
    => not being complete

    Person beaten to death, death attributed to natural causes
    => lying

    And I don't believe that the parent article said anything about the US being infallible. Rather the opposite.
  • Why would you want to form an opinion on a subject if all you had was unverified information? After a person has been found (innocent|guilty|whatever) is the appropriate time (if ever) to release details to the general public...because those findings have thier root in fact. (presuming absence of evidence tampering, etc)

    Unless second guessing the courts is a hobby of yours, in which case the above might not apply to you. But then, of course, you're getting into that whole vigilante thing.
  • This all seems off topic. There is no censorship issue here, as many posts have noted. The media has a huge advantage about getting there flames in public view. This is what has happend here. We all know why the media is upset and many people have noted it, the media in Illinois now has to do it's homework. That slows them down, and the only news is new news. The problem that is being addressed (poorly) is that no one is safer, if the media releases the names of suspects, or people charged with crimes. We all have a voice and elect our government officials. These are the poeple deciding (or appointing the poeple who do) weather or not a person charged with a crime is dangerous or can be released on bail. Having these people who have only been accused, not convicted, paraded around the tabloids (or "reliable" papers) does not protect anyone. No one has the right to know my address(snail mail or email) unless I give it out. No one has the right to know weather or not I was at the Blue Oyster Bar on Saterday night at 9 or not. These "details" are not important to the public, they are important to a jury. If the people, or the media want to know, they can file a freedom of information act form at there local court house or police station for reports. No one is stopping the media or public from knowing who was convicted of a crime. Oh, and here is a question. Do you feel safer knowing that Edward Delarox was convicted and executed. I don't, now I just now that at lest 2 people are dead.

    Flagg.
  • The irony is that here (if you can even see that broken thread up there) we see a major display of censorship; DOZENS of moderation points, basically wasted on burying anonymous cowards into oblivion over some stupid lymric. The original story was more concerned with civil rights, as pertains to avoiding abuse by a power hungry police state... not the silly urge to curb potty-mouth stuff like this.
    The irony..... it overwhelms me. Oh well, f#ck it.
  • There is a big difference between "not being complete" and "lying."

    Actually, there is *no* difference at all.

    "Not being complete" is known as "lying by omission." It is when you don't tell someone an important truth. Thus, it is a form of lie.

    "Lying by comission" is another form of lying. It is when you delibarately tell someting that isn't true.

    Both are lies - just two different kinds.
  • Wonder why this is? Well it's not censorship by having access to information seen and heard. Ever wonder why there are people who try and not deliberately say whatever comes into their heads on slashdot? Because of audience. If you have no audience then you have nothing. All of the gret ideas of history dhave essentially been only secussful when others have been able to see/comment on them.
    Trust me my friend if I could create a more complex system of dynamic information display I would do so but am limited because I have never been formally taught better coding skills that pertain to networked media. A more fine grained system of ratings and continuous ratings and word analysis along with trafic analysis and a few other factors should be employed in this. Not only that but allow for a wider distributon mechanism.
    People descriminating by type of information is nothing new but it's effects are qite deadly. That's why many people infinitely prefer to get an actual account and more prefer to add a little feather in their cap to gte a +1 score. It has nothing to do with being able to strut but get stuff read from people who are stuff shirted and normally unwilling to look at anything.
    Slashdot has a style of information analysis and gathering similar to low level military correspondence namely a "trust" based interatione and "reputations" rather interesting but still not good enough.
  • I am not French and I can't see how you post is revelent to mine in any way.
  • I'm sorry about your case it seems a misuse of the law as a weapon, but the new rules described would not have protected you, and would have probably led to the same misinformation, or worse.

    The rules described allow the police or procecutors in the case to release the name the charge and any public record on the case but not to further comment on it or any witnesses in the case, this is probably exactly what the police/procecutor gave the local media in your case, the problem was that the media did not try to find out any more information - thus leading them to print the story as simply XX arrested for Child pornography sensational headline without having to get any facts, just the simple information the police can still provide under the rules. So these new rules don't really change the standard operating procedure of the release of information to the media they just confuse the issue enough that the police/procecutor aren't telling the media anything at the moment, even things that are in the public record (police logs of arrests/charges cases) which can be important to see if the police are abusing their athority as PUBLIC servants.
  • ... the linkage between what could be called public knowledge v those areas of knowledge that cannot so easily be described as 'private' communications. You're right in saying that crime statistics are one way of forming an opinion on say, deciding where to live.

    What if we are talking about anecdotal information? It could be argued, as you have, that journalists of a certain type -- the majority -- are looking at this in the wrong way, because they are only considering what the best way of selling more papers could be amongst a number of options. 'Let's put this rape case on page seven' becomes 'let's feature it with a TV advert on channel 35, tying it in with our series on sex crimes this week'.

    Would you say that anecdotal evidence is then to be avoided? What about what you hear from friends? Do you easily discount their opinions? Only if they come from what they read and listen to, as opposed to their direct experience?

    I'm not so sure. I have a very unsettled feeling about this. At its core, this move is about the police 'redirecting' a conversation, one that is being impaired when yet another source -- no matter how discredited in your eyes -- yet another source of (mis)information is being manipulated by the powerful.

  • Forgive me for saying this, but anyone who claims that the police lack fear need only read this to become very frightened indeed. Fear, in the liability sense, seems to be what has motivated the enforcement authorities in this case.

    And what happens when this meme starts to spread throughout the continent, as it already has -- witness Seattle, witness Davos.

    Jesus.

  • ... which is, if even the compromised people charged with bringing the general population (ie., the 'media') can't get access to disturbing events occurring in the community, how the hell does any of us stand a realistic chance of getting enough information to form an opinion on the subject? Doesn't it worry you that the police as mentioned in the article would not comment on three separate incidents concerning bomb threats at high schools?
  • I don't know...are you sure about that FOIA thing? I live here in Illinois, and the big newspaper organization that the article talked about just recently did a big "investigative report" on how easy it was for regular people to get information using the FOIA. Now unless I am mistaken and IL has its own FOIA, the requests the reporters made to local DA's offices using the FOIA would not qualify under your statement.

    FYI, the reporters did not identify themselves as reporters until after their requests were fulfilled. and unfortunately it was hard for them to get their requests fulfilled in about half the cases throughout the state.

  • Recently a student at my school exposed himself to some girls at the local middle school and is being expelled. None of the newspapers so much as mentioned the crime which included threats of rape...Also the "Police Beat" in my town seems a bit tamer now...

  • Does it make a difference that the person in question was presumably under age 21?
    Up here in Canada we have something called the Young Offenders Act which basically means that in kiddie court the public never knows the identity of the accused and convictions only result in minor or suspended sentences.

    Here (in Alaska) under age 18, names are not given for crimes like shoplifting etc. but are given for underage drinking and controlled substence abuse (drugs).
    This is a BAD thing, try geting a job or whatever after you get you name in the paper for underage drinking. Despite the fact that we know all kids do it, if you get caught, you have a real hard time for the next 3 years. Definitely a cruel and unusual punishment!
  • 1st off, don't get the wrong idea. Censorship is definatly a bad thing. and from the sounds of it, this law doesn't restrict the police, so this "problem" will eventually go away on it's own. but mabie this will have some possitive effects too (I'm being very overly optimistic here) in that mabie it'll help improve the quality of the news for a little while? (yeah right) it would be nice if the media reported on fewer crimes because of the lack of info and reported on more importaint issues to all of us. the majority of the news media seems to have turned into basically a dramma. it's all abnout entertainment and not aboutinforming the people. this is very unfortunate because I think alot of the problems (especially with our govt) could be turned around if only the media was more informative about importaint issues to people..
    but anyway, back to this situation, there seems to be a very fine line between what's censorship, and what's just protecting peoples privacy. and protecting people's privacy can be very importaint up until they're convicted of the crime that they're accused of.. without privacy, just being accused of certain types of crime, especially if it's highly publicized, can have a very bad effect on someone's life, and give someone a reputation that cannot be changed by an verdict of innocence. so, is this really censorship, or is it neccisary privacy to protect a potentially innocent person? (what ever happened to innocent until proven guilty anyway??)
    just my $.02 .. or mabie a lil more than that.. :)

  • I doubt that the news media really shares the same perception as you of which is bad or good.

    I think they are more interested in making money and/or furthering their own agenda(s).

  • Ah... but self-censorship is often a good thing.

  • Hehe... we aren't talking about the same thing, I think.

    I meant keeping my mouth shut or holding on to my own opinion can sometimes be a good thing.

  • You can hear all sorts of stuff on scanners that the cops don't want you to know about. There are gangs in this area that the cops don't want to admit exsist, for instance, and there's a whole bunch of domestics a day that that never make the papers. If you don't have one already, I encourage you all to go out and get a scanner. They are from $100 to $300, but you can watch the watchers. Another thing is that they are entertaining when used at establishments such as mcdonalds or other fast food resteraunts.
  • Hello Everybody:
    I just wanted to send this out as a general warning to all college kids in the state of Illinois. I'm fairly sure that the police of college towns all over Illinois are preparing for the biggest underage drinking bust of ALL time. They just want to take us by surprise, but I got word of their plan. Let's just say McGruff the Crime Dog remembers what it waslike to be a puppy, i mean a kid.

    So all you kids, Watch yourselves : especially in the Champaign-Urbana area!!!

    -dennis the kid

    charge: 2 cents.
    tax : .085*2;
    floor(total)=0.
  • There are always cases when authorities refuse to talk to the press--politicians caught doing something bad, generals conducting secret wars, police officers disregarding the law, etc, etc. They always say that there's a official regulation that prevents them from saying anything, that it would violate some privacy law or help the enemy or something.

    The press has a simple way to retaliate, and they frequently use it. Just interview the enemies of these people, and print what they say as if it were the pure unadulterated truth. "Well, we asked you, but you said you had no comment!" They'll talk.
  • I've lived in Illinois for the last ten years and have been active in the local political scene.

    This "news blackout" of crime activity is nothing new. I live in a medium sized north western Illinois city and, while crime in the area has been on an INCREDIBLE upsurge over the past several years, media coverage has been almost nil.

    Many of my friends are officers on the police force and have informed me of many drug busts and police raids that have been occurring in the area.
    Yet no news!

    This is an outrage. I'm relieved to find out that it has come to the attention of slashdot.

    While I cannot speak on this new policy of a statewide blackout of crime coverage, many of my police friends have pointed out that politicians have been directly behind this. Our Mayor doesn't want his citizens to know how truly dangerous it has become to walk out on the streets after dark.

    I just wish there was something more I could do...

  • I can add a few tidbits and background to the fray. Remember that the guidelines issued by the Supreme Court are supposed to affect professionals only - lawyers, judges, and specifically state's attorneys. One of the reasons the guidelines were revised in the first place was that a few state's attorneys had the unbelievable practice of putting transcripts of secret Grand Jury testimony into the folders of convicted criminals, thereby making secret Grand Jury testimony public!!!!! When pressed by the media for an explanation of how they could justify such an unethical and unspeakable act, they replied "because there's nothing that says we can't"!! Voila - New Guidelines are hastily issued.

    And because they were hasty and for some reason vague - some state's attorneys are, out of ignorance or an act of defiance, trying to cause FUD by passing the buck to police. And some media and police departments in other parts of the state all have their panties in a bunch over something that was probably never meant to affect them.

    This is not censorship. It is just a (poorly executed) attempt to plug a 'procedural loophole' to prevent some unethical state's attorneys from making legally protected secret Grand Jury testimony public. Once the politically-motivated fear mongers get their 15 minutes of fame by making something out of nothing, this will all die down and nothing will have changed, except that secret Grand Jury testimony will remain secret, as it was always intended.
  • There is an undocumented feature where if you have been mod'd down more than 5 times in 24 hours every single one of your past, not-yet-archived posts gets reset down to -1 (even if it had been mod'd up). The effect of this, though seemingly punitive to the down-mod'd user, is that others going through the archives in the future will have no idea what is being discussed due to broad jumps in content caused by the missing relevant posts.

    Your examples are valid, but the practice of not archiving -1 posts needs to be rethought due to the feature I described above. Perhaps, if this "feature" is removed, -1 posts will not need archiving.

    A better thing would be to archive all with moderation scores intact. Then those sorting through the archives can choose on their own to view or not -1 posts. Retaining the nesting structure would be nice, too.
  • How about making this a seperate sight for info like this that doesn't really have much to do with technology?

    I mean, this is great stuff but is this the best place for it?

    anyway, having speechdot.org/.net/.com redirect here just breaks the site anyway...can't auto log me in when I go to it using that address.

    -fp
  • I get from this article that Slashdot thinks this is a negative thing, that by not publishing this information that we're somehow infringing on the press' privilege of universal access. Is this the same Slashdot that I see clamoring to clamp down on personal privacy information? Is there somehow a difference between accused criminals and ordinary Internet users? Guess what, when you make a decision to withold or not withold someone's information, you are performing an act of censorship. Either you are preventing someone from accessing information or you are preventing someone from protecting information.

    Slashdot needs to make up its mind about what it wants. Someone, somewhere is not going to have access to the information they want and someone somewhere is going to have access to information someone else may not want them to have. Either way, you're screwed. Which is worse?

    Information wants to be free. But not my information.
  • The First Amendment gives all Americans the right to free speech. However, implicit in the right to speak is the right to not speak. Furthermore, it should be noted that the guidelines mentioned here don't appear to be laws; officers are still free to break the guidelines if they desire.

    I'll grant, the withholding of information of police activity is suspicoius. If nothing else, someone should be able to invoke FOIA (or does that only apply to the Feds?) and get the information that way. However, is it censorship? I'm not certain of that. There is a difference between choosing not to speak and not allowing something to be said.
  • I definitely don't consider this censorship. And I definitely think that the press should not report the names of people who are accused of crimes until they are actually convicted of comitting those crimes.

    Why? Because of simple human nature. The average person relies heavily on memorable impressions, and not the facts, when making decisions. Let us consider this simple scenario...

    My employer accuses me of theft. Local newspaper publishes huge article on front page, "Dig Dug accused of theft at work." Two days later, I am cleared of all charges. Does the newspaper publish a huge article on the front page, saying "Dig Dug cleared of all charges"? Of course not! Only the "interesting" news gets published there.

    So, basically, the public opinion is still that I am a thief. Even if my employer's accusations were totally baseless.

    Now, replace "thief" with "murderer" or "child molestor." Think you could get a good job after having been publically accused of one of those crimes?

    --

  • Here goes Timothy with a two-minutes-of-hate post. I guess we're all supposed to go red in the face, tear our hair out and express our rage at this "enemy of the slashdot way".

    No thanks.

  • This has nothing to do with police accountability ( which I'm in favour of ). It has to do with "innocent until proven guilty", and not trashing an innocent person's reputation until they've had their day in court.

  • One effect of the anonymity of the accused is that we've lost the corrective power of shame. In our efforts to "avoid further damaging" a criminal, we sacrifice a major corrective tool

    You admit that "outing" the accused has a punitive effect, but fail to observe that the accused is not always a "criminal". Whatever happened to "innocent until proven guilty" ? Out them for all I care -- but not until they are proven guilty. How would you like it if you were "outed" as a rapist without a trial ?

  • 1) A person is tried for murder. His lawyer cannot publicly say "This is harrassment! The victim's entire family, the Governor, the Mayor, and Linus Torvalds all said he was at a fundraiser 150 miles away at the time of the crime." Rule 3.6(b)(1)

    a) Why should we care? Public pressure is the only force defending against certain miscarriages of justice (alas it can also cause them). I wish the record showed that investigations and prosecutions in relative secrecy were better, but they aren't.

    b) However, public pressure (good or bad) is always uncomfortable. This rule is intended to remove the discomfort from police/prosecutors (public servants) without addressing any substantial issues of fairness.

    c) The rules muzzle almost any substantive comment on the case.

    2) "My client admits his guilt and will throw himself on the mercy of the court. He wishes to apologize to the victims and their families." or "My client will deny all charges in court" Instead, just stony silence from the attorney while the public and media are free to speculate. Rule 3.6(b)(2)

    3) "DNA, fingerprints, and blood samples all rule my client out." Rule 3.6(b)(3)

    4) "We believe we have the right person in custody for this crime." Rule 3.6(b)(4)

    Note that the above examples all refer to paragraph (b). That's because paragraph (d) allows the client's counsel several specific reasonable comments that might be against paragraph (a) but offers no such protection against paragraph (b)


    __________

  • I can see the argument for anonymity of *CONVICTED* criminals being bad.

    *ACCUSED* criminals? Consider the huge abuse potential. I think anonymity for people who are accused, but have not been convicted, may be a reasonable baseline.

    Otherwise, it's not too hard for someone to cause you to be widely known as an "accused murderer" - and you know the papers will never give as much coverage to the "innocent" verdict.
  • That is the names and identities of suspects, at least before they are arrested.
    I've heard people argue that "the public has a right to know".
    As far as I'm concerned, they don't.
    You could be under investigation for a crime you most certainly did not commit,
    and even the police agrees, but people still regard you differently, because you were
    a suspect. When the case goes to trial, you could release the necessary information.

    I'm also very much against trials on tv. Reporters can be present, and take notes, and
    report later, but the TV-cameras makes the whole trial a farse.

  • Exhale (Score:2)

    by Wah ( 30840 )
    I'll let you know if I come up with a solution for this, but don't hold your breath.
    Where's my idealism? I know I left it around here somewhere?

    Build you own paper. It's quite simple. IP address + server + domain. Spend a couple grand and few weeks, and report whatever the hell you want. It's a soapbox derby, get in on it.

    As my Mom always told me "Remember who you are and what you stand for."


    --
  • ... is a 17-year-old who is accused o child pornography for taking nude photos of themself with a digital camera. I actually did take "interesting" photos of myself, when I was 17 - I'd like to see some right-winger take me to court for it. That would make my day. I'm 19 now, but I think I'll take some risque pictures of myself tonight and post them on the web... It'll be fun to see how my college reacts, if nothing else :)

  • In my opinion slashdot doesn't censor at all. All the moderation is done by the people, not by the slashdot operators. The pause between posts is to keep people from posting crap. Not archiving -1 posts is because -1 posts tend to not be good so why waste the disk space archiving them? If you want to read everything that is -1 just change your thresh hold to -1, then you can't claim anything is being censored.
  • I think that you have this partly confused. I think most people don't like jail because of a few basic reasons.
    1. I like my freedom
    2. I don't like getting raped by someone of the same sex
    3. Almost always has a negative effect on life and income

    I don't think that I would so much feel embarassed as hideously filled with pain and looking for the nearest chance to hang myself in my cell.
    Crimes are not commited because most people don't like 1-3 and usually don't want to feel the need to end their lives.
    I think that prison can and most likely does have this effect on people who live through it.

  • -1 (Score:2)

    by Money__ ( 87045 )
    Re your comments: ...and don't archive posts -1 posts, as though they never existed.

    You mean these wonderfull little gems?

    http://slashdot.org/comm ents.pl?sid=00/04/03/115218&cid=74 [slashdot.org]
    http://slashdot.org/comm ents.pl?sid=00/04/03/115218&cid=43 [slashdot.org]
    http://slashdot.org/comme nts.pl?sid=00/04/03/115218&cid=4 [slashdot.org]
    http://slashdot.org/comme nts.pl?sid=00/04/03/115218&cid=3 [slashdot.org]
    http://slashdot.org/comm ents.pl?sid=00/04/03/115218&cid=64 [slashdot.org]
    At the risk of soundung trollish, I ask you: Where is the in these drive-buy-digital-puke posts?
    ~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`~`

  • this [dailysouthtown.com] is a link to a local Illinois newspaper editorial on the Illinois State's Attourney commenting on this to various policing bodies. He presents some interesting points. Check it out ..
  • I went to the referenced website, and didn't really find any more objective info than was summarized here (ie, no spelling out of what the rules actually forbid and didn't) But, oh goody, they had a link to the actual text of the rules, and the memo that had all the departments in a tizzy.

    Well, I read the backup info and I got the impression that it makes a fair amount of sense and police dept are just going to have to make a couple of minor adjustments to what they release to the press, and the press are just being whiners. Unfortunately I paid for this independant judgement with an upgrade to the headache I woke up with this morning. Why? Because the links are to scanned in copies of faxes of printouts of the decisions! And the decisions have old parts of the rulings that were removed crossed out and new material underlined, all in 10 or less point type with no spacing between lines. Its almost like they said "well, we would normally provide links to the original info we're working from, but in this case it so clearly proves we have a bias, we better provide it in a format almost no one would read more than a paragraph of without giving up."

    But anyway, it all comes down to straightforward attempts to leave judgements to the jury or judge and not to the media blitz, which I think is a fairly worthy cause. There are clear allowances for reporting info on a subject at large to help aid in aprehension and protect at risk citizens. Calling it censorship is just typical /. hysteria. IMHO, and I've got the headache to prove it.

    -Kahuna Burger

  • No, that doesn't worry me. What does my opinion on the subject matter? If I'm a juror, THEN and ONLY then do I need to be informed on the matter. Otherwise, all the information I need to know, crime statistics for my area and the like, is still a matter of public record and I can get that information. Journalistic sensationalism doesn't inform, it misinforms; it's not designed to provide facts, only entertainment and opinion.

    Again -- a journalist who is determined and dedicated to seeking the truth is not going to be stonewalled by the police voluntarily being silent. It's only the yellow journalists who want to publish whatever sells papers cheaply who are suffering.
  • As with free speech, defamantion, and public disclosure: It's a balancing act between the rights of society and the rights of the individual.

  • There are two classes of police reports that I can think of not being public (or at least immediately).

    1. Dealing with juvenile arrests.

    2. Ongoing investigations, where the investigation may be harmed by disclosure. For example the drug bust that will happen tommorow, or an undercover investigation.

  • In the case of the police, they are working for us! We are paying them to do this job.

    What would happen if your boss asked, "what did you do on your job today?" And you refused to answer.

    What they are trying to do is to achieve a balance. While there are rights for the accused, the public is voyeuristic. In the United States, we decided that trials should be public. Keeping trials public is a way to keep some control on the courts and keep them honest.

  • Personally, this whole "disaster journalism" thing has gone too far. Must we know when a boy accosts a group of middle school girls? (See other posts.) No...not that this sort of thing is encouraged, but our Jerry Springer, "get-into-other-people's-lives-and-fuck-around" attitude is not healthy. Our society has deteriorated into a group of voyeurs, living vicariously through criminals. Well...maybe not so bad. But that is, without a doubt, the track we're on.

    The solution, I believe, would be more reports on events outside the country. How about some reports on the EU? (In papers, not on live news.) Front page stories here in Bloomington, Indiana are more often about crimes or athletics than foreign affairs.

    Ultimately, I think this censorship on the part of the police is a Bad Thing. We don't need confidentiality on the part of the police, but more good judgement and actual journalism on the part of the journalists. Dagnabbit.

    Mikey G.


    ===================

  • Odd, I was just thinking about this. I don't think someone should have ready access to personal information.

    They should have to provide a lot of proof of who they are and what they need your information for before the red tape is removed and they're allowed access to the info.

    I mean, if they can restrict and sue people for using One-Click sales methods, it's seems far more sensible to restrict how much information you can find out about me with just some curious probing.

    (The One-Click sales thing still sucks -- I'm just saying things are out of whack in the universe.)
  • Does it make a difference that the person in question was presumably under age 21?

    Up here in Canada we have something called the Young Offenders Act which basically means that in kiddie court the public never knows the identity of the accused and convictions only result in minor or suspended sentences.

    One effect of the anonymity of the accused is that we've lost the corrective power of shame. In our efforts to "avoid further damaging" a criminal, we sacrifice a major corrective tool.

    The biggest reason people don't commit crimes is that they believe that it's wrong. The second biggest reason is that they fear their peer group will look down on them. Anonymity destroys this.
  • Attention all faithful Slashdot viewers! [suck.com] It seems that somewhere in the U.S. today [ulg.ac.be], some dude [algore.com] did something bad [ulg.ac.be] that you should all be really mad at [microsoft.com]. We must make sure that these dudes [ulg.ac.be] stop doing bad stuff [microsoft.com] so we can be happy [debian.org]. It would be a real travesty to see backwater America (read: Everywhere inbetween L.A. and New York) lost to the rednecks, ignorants, simpletons and retards! So write to all your congressmen [news.ai] and tell them to make sure doesn't happen! [goregallery.com]
    Over and out.

  • Source is an interested party (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 07, 2000 @05:16PM (#1144715)
    Not to downplay the seriousness, if any, but APBNews's business relies on the re-reporting of police information; they therefore have incentive to decry any rule changes making this information harder to get, even ones you and I wouldn't necessarily mind.

    I'd say that two basic needs clash here, public access to information vs. privacy.

    Public access: if a murderer is prowling your neighborhood, you damn sure want to know about it.

    Privacy: if a vengeful ex were to tactically accuse you of child abuse in a custody dispute, you might not want it on the nightly news until you'd had your day in court.

    -----------------

    Based on the last few years of crime coverage in the news, getting enough info hasn't been the problem - applying some basic standards of journalism has. Crime pushes up those ratings, and it's a happy news channel that can get live footage of, heavens, some drunk idiot refusing to pull over for his traffic ticket.

    I notice one of the new rules forbids people involved in a trial to publically predict a verdict. Maybe this is as it should be; before a verdict happens, nobody's done their best to figure out whether an accused person is actually guilty, but that doesn't stop the media from destroying their reputation with rating-boosting innuendo. This rule could return verdict power to the actual jury (who hear the actual evidence) and actually keep the system more honest.

    Also mentioned is a rule forbidding police from prejudicing a trial with public leaks. APB argues that this could prevent public access to critical information, but there's a case in favor of it too - a jury first briefed by Channel 9 might find it harder to make an objective decision, and there's an important public interest in court trials being fair and unbiased.

    -------

    To sum up: it's an interesting debate, but I bet APBNews isn't the most reliable source for it.

  • Re:Double Wrong! (Score:3)

    by bjk4 ( 885 ) on Saturday April 08, 2000 @03:26AM (#1144716) Homepage
    The new regulations passed in Illinois do not restrict publishing of material once a case is resolved. Nor does it restrict releasing information to relevant parties, such as those accused, their lawyers, the accuser, and the lawyers of the accuser.

    This means the regulations will *not*, I repeat, *not* affect your personal experience. Yes, I can see where you find the lack of information annoying.

    However, there is a great difference between your circumstance and the one where the newspaper headline reads: "romco house raided for drugs!", at which point your employer forces you to take drug tests and undergo psychological examinations. Meanwhile a credit agency gets hold of the article and decides to deny your next credit card.

    This is what the regulation is designed to prevent.

  • No violation here. (Score:3)

    by Masem ( 1171 ) on Friday April 07, 2000 @05:23PM (#1144717)
    I would only say there is a problem if the police could completely hide records that are meant to be open to the public by law. Ethically, this is bad, but they aren't censoring things, just making it more difficult to learn about them.

    However, you then run into the problem that sort of falls into the Hitchhikers Guide situation: they could make it as hard as possible to find the public notices, but they are still available.

    Maybe there needs to be a public good consideration in these releases. Does the incidence affect more than a certain percentage of the local population? Are the lives or personal property of the population in trouble? Sure, this could cause more problems, but if the police were to report on every incidence they cover, local papers would be rather thick...

  • From the article, it makes me wonder whether police are purposely overreacting to the new guidelines, as a form of protest, because they don't like them-- they remove an unfair advantage the police are used to having.

    The way it usually is, police and prosecutors have the overwhelming upper hand when it comes to news coverage of a case. As soon as they label someone a "suspect" and "charge" them with something, that defendant becomes less credible in the public's perception. Almost all of us tend to believe what "authorities say" in police statements to the media. (If you think you're immune to such manipulation, watch yourself more closely.) Once that happens, we are less prone to believe the defendant because "they'll say anything to get out of a conviction", or "why would police lie?". Not many people consider the self-interest at stake for police officers, police departments, and prosecutors, to get a conviction, even if the defendant is innocent. But there are plenty of reasons why convictions benefits those parties, for money, power, and ego.

    Anyway, police and presecutors are used to creating an impression of guilt in the public's perception. Take that power away from them, and they get upset, and try to make the media blame the big bad judge for it. They do this by clamming up, even though they know they're perfectly safe if they stick to facts. They're not willing to act like the defendant is innocent until proven guilty.

  • Withholding information is SELF-censorship (Score:3)

    by redelm ( 54142 ) on Friday April 07, 2000 @04:52PM (#1144719) Homepage
    This becomes dangerous. It is just as important to know what the various authorities are doing as it is to prevent them from doing freedom-depriving things. How else can the public judge when corrective action is required?

    Freedom of information is a very important concept. If you don't know what someone is doing, how can you protest or stop it? The secret police are so named because their actions are secret.

  • Whose rights... (Score:3)

    by goldmeer ( 65554 ) on Friday April 07, 2000 @04:59PM (#1144720)
    How is it a violation of a reporter's 1st amendment rights when someone does not give them information?

    If a police officer wanted to talk about an arrest, and did do, and was sanctioned for doing so, that might be a violation of 1st amendment rights, but probibly not. Especially if the job duties clearly state that the officer is not to talk about cases.

    Just as it's not my job to make it easier for the police to investigate a crime, it's not the police's job to make it easier for reporters to cover stories.

    After all, the police are not telling the press that they cannot cover a particular story, it's just no longer going to be an active source of information. (shock) Oh no! reporters will soon have to become journalists!(/shock) :)

    Goldmeer

  • Hmm...your ideas intrigue me and I want to subscribe to your newsletter...
    What I really believe is that utilitarian concepts are the best to follow. Ultimately if I were desperate enough then my boss would get a nice suprise in his back :)
    The problem is that it's risky. You have to set up in the bushes wait, and then fire and make sure no one can tell what you did.
    Now my idea (this may have been done before) is to simply to make a device with a silencer which would be remotely operated and could fire from a distance. It could send a video singal to a remote operator and the operator could then fire the projectile without being in the same general vicinity. Add a nice little cache of thermite to destroy the device when finished and you have secussfully gotten away with it. However that dosn't mean you totally could without any chance of failure at all.
    Commiting crimes entails risk. Problem with risk is that is usually dosn't work for me. Maybe your the kind of guy who can just pop a quarter into a slot machine in Vega and win a jackpot but I bet I could spend $100 and still not get anything.
    Most of the time I really don't like to take a risk I know I can't win at all or am not sure of winning. I have this little theory. Life thinks it's in charge of you but if it tries to make a slave of me I will always have a way to opt out.

    Yes jail is crummy but I really don't fear the disapproval of a few lone people in a vacuum. I think where it begins to be a problem is where you could get blighted for being a person who is a criminal. I fully intend to cary a nice concentrated cyanide capsule. If the police try to arrest me for anything at all that results in an attempted stay in the big house I will take it. By the way in current toxicology I can't find anything more toxic in small doses that works as well.
    Quick, easy, and better than having fun in the big house.
  • It's based on the idea that your superiors are in fact supposedly smarter, bnetter, and always right within areas like the military.
    A great deal of organizations are warped into thinking that the reason America sucks is because more people aren't like the military. That is where this comes from. Even if you are a rapist you have a right to at least a decent reputation. People have to live and not have their entire lives totally ruined. If your life is ruined then wehat possible excuse do you have to live? I think that the only one that needs to know about your life is maybe you and a few select people who can be trusted with that information.
    Now I don't look for ways to help rapists but anyone who commits a crime has a right to be eventually left alone and allowed to be a natural citizen again. I mean what would happen if say you did someone stupid and shoplifted something when you were a kid. What if you were reqired to wear a nice big stylized logo in red that said THIEF on it for the rest of your life? What if most stores except crappy ones wouldn't let you in if you wore the THIEF logo?
    This means that you are a second class citizen and you have no future.
    My personal favorite is getting revenge. Say if they did that you could always get a gun and let a few people have an "accident" before I used it on me.
    I just think that Justice should be used but not to the extent that justice kills mercy or allows life to be a farce.

    What about this senario:
    A group of heavily armed men with assault riffles and such is approached by the police and then an arrest attempt is made. Suppose those people resist and say the cops get gunned down by the guys. Now what if they decide to say use some mussle and take out the HQ of the police?
    Has this ever happened. Has a group of people ever been that secussful with it?

    More to the point I think that full disclosure of data is importnt in any organization where you intersect with "citizens" of any type. Hiding data bsecause you called all people stupid or made systematic quasi-legal concepts in said documents is your problem and should have not but anything in there like that.
    I have made repeated evidence that the supposed "keeper of rights" that the states seem to be on slashdot are in fact corrupt groups of greedy pigs.
    The reason why we have a FoIA is because we have people in washington who are actually more concerned with rights than individual states. I would no more trust my local leaders than fly to the moon. However the Bill of rights and the constitution are in a better position to be obeyed by the people who actually run our country than in little feifdoms.

  • Adverse Fiscal Effect (Score:3)

    by sredding ( 107116 ) on Friday April 07, 2000 @05:57PM (#1144723) Homepage

    This could ultimately turn out to be a bad thing for the police forces.

    As an example... Although the Department of Justice has reported a decline in the amount of teen violence and murders, the news media has the general public convinced that it's actually the opposite. Net effect, people vote for politicians and laws that throw increased funding at the problem, mainly in the form of law enforcement.

    Maybe the police need to rethink that. The minute people feel safe, funding is diverted elsewhere. Having the media around to sensationalize ultimately profits the police business.

  • A worthless troll, and a coward... (Score:3)

    by Sir_Winston ( 107378 ) on Friday April 07, 2000 @08:22PM (#1144724)
    Screw you "Coward"! If you post a hateful little comment like this, you should at least have the brass valls to post it from your real account. As the bloody judge himself said, I was prosecuted as an 18 year old high school student under a law that's meant to protect young people from adults who can take advantage of them through significant differences in age, power, authority, and other imbalancing factors. It is *NOT* a law that was meant to be levied against a high school kid for some pretty normal sexual exploration. It's not like I posted the damn things to the Net, in fact they were at *her* house in *her* posession which is how her militant Nazi of a father found them.

    You know what? Reactions like yours are *exactly* what's wrong with this country--no regard for justice and common sense, just an ignorant statement based on a general principle which is good but which can be taken too far. Justice has to take into account individual circumstances, not just blindly quote statutes. "There can be no justice when laws are absolute."

    I have respect for a judge who could look at the circumstances of a case and say "case dismissed" not because the law says he should dismiss a case in those circumstances, but because he knows that it's the just thing to do.

    I do not, however, have respect for a worthless troll such as yourself who'd rather be an insulting louse than take into account the person to whom he's responding was deeply emotionally scarred by a misapplication of law and the corresponding volley of heartless press coverage which also failed to take into account a little something called THE FACTS.

    Fact is, the law was meant to protect young people from predators, not to screw over a high school senior for dating a high school junior when many people in my grade were dating freshmen. A crime of photography? Between 2 people IN THE SAME PEER GROUP?

    In short, you, dear sir, are an ass.
  • Ok, so the police can't say (or think that they can't say) anything to the press. Since one can usually count on law enforcement to give out reports that prejudice the process, this is actually an improvement from the standpoint of the suspect.

    And lets get something straight. The First Amendment states Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. I don't see "the people's right to know about criminal activity" in there anywhere.

    Frankly, the people of Illinois should be thankful that the newspapers will have fewer sources of official information, which is usually an oxymoron anyway. Maybe journalists in Illinois will actually do some work now to get background information instead of relying on what the police and the DA want us to know.

  • Duh!!! (Score:3)

    by www.sorehands.com ( 142825 ) on Friday April 07, 2000 @05:31PM (#1144726) Homepage
    Of course censorship did not start with websites.

    In my case [sorehands.com] most of the libel issues in the case referred to non-computer related cases.

    Censorship has been going on in the United States for over 200 years. That is why we have many first amendment cases. Libel and censorship cases go from old media to new media as the new media matures. Many of the libel cases went towards newspapers, then radio, then TV. Now, it goes to the internet.

    Some of the limits of what public officials can say, is just a CYA move. Look at Richard Jewell. High profile cases can be harder to try, look at Louis Woodward.

    But on the otherside of the coin, by seeing the accussed, others may come forward with information on the case.

    In Boston, there is John TV. It is designed to discourage prostitution in Boston. They put the arrested Johns on the local cable network.

    But what about the people who were not convicted?

    For those not in the United States, we have laws against prostitution and a stigma attached to most things related to sex.

  • The media takes great delight in making and breaking heroes and zeros by basically being highly-paid ambulance-chasers.
    Choke, gasp, gulp. Highly paid? Highly paid? Not print journalists, that's for sure. How does $18K a year sound? Journalists traditionally take less pay as a sacrifice to the importance of our vocation. ::cynical laugh::
    This forces newspapers and TV stations to get involved with a story if they want to cover it. No longer can they just skim the surface, quickly condemn whoever looks guilty and call it a done deal. Now they have to actually do some investigation and REAL JOURNALISM to get facts to sell their papers! How novel.
    Perhaps this hasn't been made clear in the mainstream media, but reporters absolutely love getting their by-lines on top of a nice, juicy story. Unfortunately, many of the media in which those stories would be published are becoming moderately monolithic (You may have noticed a brief or two about a couple of obscure newspaper companies: The Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times, for example).
    Yes, we'd love to spend the time to do research, but the public can't wait, the publisher says. Gotta get the stories out the door. Have to have something to fill up the space we didn't get advertising for.
    I was recently sacked from my first honest-to-gods reporting position for spending too much time doing research. Newspaper owners don't want muck-raking. They want press releases that don't quite sounds like PR.
    There are papers that aren't like this. For example:
    http://www.monitor.net/monitor/0003a/default.html
    But even most of the local "Independents" aren't.
    Yes, I'd love to work for a paper that permitted me to do in-depth reporting. That's what I got in this business for. I think that's what most journalists got in the business for. But the current business model makes it impossible for all but a few to pursue true reporting. I'll let you know if I come up with a solution for this, but don't hold your breath.
    Where's my idealism? I know I left it around here somewhere?
    "Who has lit his pipe in the morning calm that follows the midnight stress/Hath sold his heart to the old black art we call the daily press." R. Kipling, "The Press"

  • Wrong! (Score:4)

    by romco ( 61131 ) on Friday April 07, 2000 @05:50PM (#1144728) Homepage
    "Just as it's not my job to make it easier for the police to investigate a crime, it's not the police's job to make it easier for reporters to cover stories."

    That's exactly what a cop's job is. That's one of the things that seperate us (The US) from countries like China. The Police in the US are public servants. They are accountable to the pubic .

    I know from personal experince what can happen when we lose rights to make our police publicly accountable.

    In Florida (as in some other states) we are at "war" with drugs. I did not fully understand what that ment till my local police department did an armed raid on my house. Because they they did not arrest or charge anyone (or find anything ilegal)
    we cannot force them to release the search warrent info. We could force them only if they charged me or my family with a crime because only then would they have to prove grounds for a search warrant

    Because no one was hurt (although getting thrown to the ground and a shotgun put to your head is a little trumatic) We cannot sue them for damages.

    Police not having to report and account for what they do is a BAD THING.

  • Not ironic at all. (Score:4)

    by localman ( 111171 ) on Friday April 07, 2000 @06:26PM (#1144729) Homepage
    The moderation system slashdot uses is clear censorship no matter how much Taco says otherwise.

    Censorship is something that the government does to you. Individuals (Taco, myself, you) or companies (Andover, Enquirer) can do whatever they want with their property.

    Just because Taco lets us use his server doesn't give us any special rights. We're just lucky that he uses democratic moderation instead of monarchistic.

  • Good god people. IT'S NOT CENSORSHIP!!

    I don't know when it happened, but censorship is not a catchall word describing everything to do with Stuff We Don't Like.

    Nothing was censored here. No jack booted thugs busted into a local newspaper and smashed the presses. No threats of legal prosecutions were made, no fines for publication. IN OTHER WORDS, NO CENSORSHIP. The courts didn't make reporting crimes illegal, the police didn't beat crime reports with a batton. IN OTHER WORDS, NO CENSORSHIP. There was no prior restraint, no time place and manner restrictions, no content restrictions.

    Aside from the sensationalist yellow journalism on Slashdot (something which NEEDS to be censored) what happened here was this:

    The police no longer have to be as complete when reporting crime statistics to media.

    THAT'S *NOT* censorship.

  • This is a GOOD thing... (Score:5)

    by Sir_Winston ( 107378 ) on Friday April 07, 2000 @05:52PM (#1144731)
    What happened to "innocent until proven guilty"? When you publicize the name of someone *accused* of a crime, who hasn't been convicted, you're throwing that out the window. If you think people who are arrested are always guilty, you're deluding yourself. If you think people who may or may not have committed crimes should be paraded through the press by name--and the press *always* assume guilt, and see things in the worst possible light--I'd like to kick your ass. Proverbially, of course. I'm not saying that because I'm trying to be flamebait, I'm saying it because I'm mad and I have a right to be. Here's why:

    Senior year of high school, I was as happy as a geek could be. I had a close circle of fine friends, and an active social life, and I'd been accepted early decision to the college of my choice. Best of all, I had my first real girlfriend. She was a HS junior, a fellow member of the academic team, and as gorgeous as she was smart. She was everything I'd wanted. Guess what ruined it? Her dad had me arrested on a serious-sounding felony charge, just because after going out for many months we fooled around as teenagers do and one time we took some risque photos of ourselves. We were two teenage kids experimenting, nothing serious or wrong, and I got arrested for felony production of child porn for playfully taking a few nude pictures of a girl who was just a year and a half younger than I was. It didn't matter that she'd had ten times the experience that I'd had, that I'd been a virgin and she'd been with three guys before me, or that everything was done between a boyfriend and girlfriend who loved each other in that sickeningly sweet adolescent way, all that mattered was a number. The justice system isn't about justice anymore, it's just about law without using common sense. Guess what the headline was in the next issue of the local paper? "Local man arrsted for making child pornography." A silly adolescent experiement for private use between 2 people, and suddenly the police and the press put me on the same level as some sick child molesting freak. They printed my full name and address, those worthless press bastards. They did this to a HS student who just barely turned 18. Instead of her name, they listed my girlfriend as "the victim" because by chance she was a year and a half younger than me. "The victim," as if I'd abused her in some way. The judge had common sense enough to dismiss the case, but by that time my future college read the article and it took a lot of explaining to avoid getting my admission revoked. Never mind that it's enough to have to deal with being accused of a serious felony like that, without your name and address printed in the paper for the world to see whether you deserve it or not.

    Fuck the irresponsible press, they have no right to know when you haven't even had your day in court yet. Innocent until proven guilty left the legal system about the same time justice did. Americans should start caring about freedom more. Think about these quotes before whining about what the press ought to be told about *accused*, rather than convicted, people:

    "Those who desire to give up Freedom in order to gain Security, will not have, nor do they deserve, either one."--Thomas Jefferson

    "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."--Benjamin Franklin - 1759

    "The American people must be willing to give up a degree of personal privacy in exchange for safety and security."--FBI Director Louis Freeh - 1994

    "Man did not enter into society to become worse than he was before, nor to have fewer rights than he had before, but to have those rights better secured."--Thomas Paine, 1791
  • It's not like the judge is preventing the newspapers from reporting information. It's not the case that the police are being forced to be silent.

    What's happening here is that the police have voluntarily decided not to give out this information, and the newspapers are pissed that they can't sell crime any more. Hey, bad news sells newspapers, and if they can't get the bad news, they can't get the paper! This has nothing to do with the First Amendment and everything to do with the media's bottom lines.

    It's all about greenbacks.

    This is great news, if you ask me. The media takes great delight in making and breaking heroes and zeros by basically being highly-paid ambulance-chasers. Consider the story of Chuck Jewell and the Atlanta bombing. That wasn't news; that was libel. The media made him into the criminal (with prodding from the police) without a trial.

    This forces newspapers and TV stations to get involved with a story if they want to cover it. No longer can they just skim the surface, quickly condemn whoever looks guilty and call it a done deal. Now they have to actually do some investigation and REAL JOURNALISM to get facts to sell their papers! How novel.

    There's a big difference between what's happening in Illinois and what's happening with things like the CDA from a couple of years ago; the difference is, the police chose this route. We just have a lot of publishers about to lose their bread-and-butter business, and so they're crying about it.

    Let them cry.

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