New York Wants To Punish Criminals For Incriminating Selves On YouTube

from the if-you-confess,-we-punish-you-more dept

We've been seeing plenty of stories lately that incorrectly place the blame when people film themselves doing something illegal and put that video online. This should be something where politicians and the police should be thrilled. After all, it makes it that much easier for the police to find them, arrest them and convict them of a crime. If people are so stupid to post evidence of their crime in public, then isn't that a good thing? Yet, politicians who incorrectly like to put the blame for the crime on the video of the crime, come up with harebrained proposals like a new one in New York that will make putting a video of yourself committing a violent crime online a felony in itself (above and beyond whatever charges you might face for the violence). Think about that for a second. New York politicians are basically telling people that they'll get charged with even greater crimes if they decide to incriminate themselves by posting evidence online. This makes no sense.

The reasoning behind the bill is that politicians believe people are committing these kinds of crimes for the publicity in the first place. The thinking is that such crimes wouldn't happen at all if they couldn't be put online. However, that's rather meaningless. If someone is going to commit a violent crime -- punish the violence itself. Not the fact that the idiots handed over the evidence as part of a publicity stunt. If the (small number) of idiots who commit violent crimes and post the videos online are getting caught and arrested for the violence itself, shouldn't that act as enough disincentive?

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