Roy Wilson 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Facebook Tells Cops Its 'Real Name' Policy Applies To Law Enforcement Too

    Roy Wilson ( profile ), 27 Sep, 2018 @ 02:13pm

    Nothing new...

    We had cops masquerading as "real people" back on FIDOnet and RIME. I suspect even back on the internet from inception, though back then it was probably more Federal agencies than local police.

    I have to wonder if putting "no fake names, cops not excluded" has an legal standing in court if evidence is presented that was collected by a cop using a nom de guerre on Facebook, though.

  • On the post: Study Buried For Four Years Shows Crime Lab DNA Testing Is Severely Flawed

    Roy Wilson ( profile ), 27 Sep, 2018 @ 05:29am

    How soon they forget...

    It's only been what, about 20-25 years since the FBI lab was busted for just making up matches?

    108 labs, "most" (say 90) correctly matched two out of three in the blend. 74 of the labs incorrectly "found" the no-match control in the blend.

    This study was about blended samples, not discrete samples. Send them a cheek swab and they'll probably get it right. Send them a swab from a coin with 30 different DNA traces on it, they might get it right.

    In any event, ALL DNA evidence can be challenged and a sample of the evidence provided to the Defense for 3rd party testing. There is a caveat, where if a sample is too small for more than one test, the Judge MAY allow it. Or toss it out.

  • On the post: Legislators Pushing A Patriot Act, But For Human Trafficking In The Wake Of FOSTA

    Roy Wilson ( profile ), 26 Sep, 2018 @ 11:14am

    Re:

    Nah. Check your calendar - September 26th is National Be an Idiot Day.

    Next Monday is National ?Drive Like an Idiot Day...

  • On the post: Twelve Rules For Not Being A Total Free Speech Hypocrite

    Roy Wilson ( profile ), 26 Sep, 2018 @ 09:57am

    Re: 12 Steps....

    The thing to remember, which the young firebrands often forget in their haste to be offended, is that the First Amendment is there specifically to protect objectionable speech. Unobjectionable speech needs no protection by definition.

  • On the post: State Attorneys General Really Want To Go After Big Internet Companies; But Claim It's About Privacy, Not Bias

    Roy Wilson ( profile ), 26 Sep, 2018 @ 04:07pm

    I just can't figure the angle...

    Ok they want to go after the "big guys". They supposedly have enough evidence to go after them with an anti-trust suit.

    So far, so good - approve or not, they're following established law.

    WHY say something about *bias*, an obvious First Amendment violation?

    To get votes? To make SURE that any suit is overturned on Malicious Prosecution claims?

  • On the post: Judge Says Student Can Sue School For Suspending Her After She Called A Fictional Cop A 'Pig'

    Roy Wilson ( profile ), 21 Sep, 2018 @ 05:45pm

    Re: Re: Re: tl;dr

    It's both simple and convoluted at the same time.

    Can we agree that insulting people is bad? We shouldn't do it?

    If the answer to that is "no", then I can't explain in a manner that will be understood.

    There can't be a degree of "worse" when talking about a slur - it's an insult, it's dehumanizing, and it's meant to make a member of the insulted group feel smaller.

    What the group actually IS doesn't effect that. It's a slur.

    It's the double standard on this that bugs me. If you'll use slurs to describe one group, what's your logic behind other people using other slurs to describe another group?

    Yeah, some cops are horrible. So are some Muslims. So are some Inuit. So are some waitresses.

    But it's ok to insult the cop with a slur but not the Muslim, Inuit, or Waitress?

  • On the post: Judge Says Student Can Sue School For Suspending Her After She Called A Fictional Cop A 'Pig'

    Roy Wilson ( profile ), 21 Sep, 2018 @ 05:31pm

    Re: Re: Re: And they still feel the need to keep fighting

    You answered it yourself in the question. It's a SLUR - a comment that dehumanizes and often ridicules the group it's directed at.

    They're not limited to race or sexual orientation. Any body that can be defined as a "group" can have slurs directed against it.

    All of which are offensive. Does it matter if slurs against people of African descent have been around longer than those against Lesbians? Or vice versa? Is one "worse" than the other?

    Philosophy aside, public schools have rules against "offensive speech", same as they did when I was a student in them back in the sixties. Break the rule, earn a suspension. Nobody argued about it (other than to deny they used the word).

    In this one particular case, as I mentioned earlier, a "warning" of "Please don't refer to police as pigs" SHOULD have settled the matter.

    One person thinks I didn't read the entire article because I said that I suspected the kid kept on doing it, while the article says the teachers kept repeating other slurs.

    The article tells only one side of the story - HERS.

    While my teenage years are lost in the mists of time, I raised two daughters. I know all about the OTHER side of the story that eventually comes to light.

    This event escalated FAST to ridiculous levels. That rarely happens when only one side is pushing it.

  • On the post: Judge Says Student Can Sue School For Suspending Her After She Called A Fictional Cop A 'Pig'

    Roy Wilson ( profile ), 21 Sep, 2018 @ 05:18pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: And they still feel the need to keep fighting

    Exactly. Are you referring to a young cat, thus comparing me, personally, to an animal? That's an insult, not a slur.

    Are you referring to female genitalia? In that case, you're committing a slur against women by claiming my statement isn't something any Real Man would say.

    And, I have to admit that I'd hit the Funny button half a dozen times if I could for such an apt reply to my comment. :)

  • On the post: Judge Says Student Can Sue School For Suspending Her After She Called A Fictional Cop A 'Pig'

    Roy Wilson ( profile ), 21 Sep, 2018 @ 05:14pm

    Re: hmmm...

    I can't believe some of these "counter-arguments".

    By saying that the slurs are "reinforced by social NORMS", you've just declared the people they're directed against as ABNORMAL.

    Look, this is very simple: If you approve of the use of ANY slur against ANY group, you haven't got a leg to stand on when someone uses a slur against any OTHER group.

  • On the post: Judge Says Student Can Sue School For Suspending Her After She Called A Fictional Cop A 'Pig'

    Roy Wilson ( profile ), 21 Sep, 2018 @ 05:11pm

    Re: Re: hmmm...

    I'm not a lawyer. I'm just bloody OLD. Passions of the young burned out long ago - which means I can see BOTH sides of most situations.

    The bothersome one here is that apparently a lot of the comment think it's just fine to use slurs to define one group but not others.

    I've got no bias towards or against cops. Or blacks, or Muslims, or ... I could go on, I can't think of a single group I'd judge by a stereotypical slur. Like I said, they're all just PEOPLE.

    And if you've got enough brains to tie your own shoes, you'll realize that the TRUE stereotype is... MOST people are jerks.

    I remember when everyone called cops "pigs" as well. Cops didn't like it then, they don't like it now.

    As to them "choosing" the profession being somehow a way of making it OK to cast slurs at them, I simply can't fathom. Cops are a necessary evil.

  • On the post: Judge Says Student Can Sue School For Suspending Her After She Called A Fictional Cop A 'Pig'

    Roy Wilson ( profile ), 21 Sep, 2018 @ 03:13pm

    Re: You do NOT have the right "not to be offended"...

    "There are plenty of good cops, but there is also an over-abundance of bad cops, who deserve to be called pigs - or worse."

    So because there ARE members of minority groups that DO fit stereotypical slurs used to describe ALL of them, it's OK to use those slurs?

    How do you know there's an overabundance of bad cops? Did someone poll every cop in the country?

    For the most part, I've found cops to be just doing a job. Only rarely in the last half century have I come across truly bad ones. And those usually don't last long - they get shifted out because not the "good" cops, but the average, everyday, just doing my job cops can't stand them either. But it's Union job - TRY to actually fire one.

    I've also found exactly the same to be true of most of the member of minority groups I've met and dealt with over the years. They're simply just PEOPLE.

    No slurs required against an entire group for the actions of a few.

    (Insert Moore's Law example here, if you just gotta say Nazi's)

  • On the post: Judge Says Student Can Sue School For Suspending Her After She Called A Fictional Cop A 'Pig'

    Roy Wilson ( profile ), 21 Sep, 2018 @ 03:07pm

    Re: Re: Re: 'Offending others is terrible... unless we're doing it.'

    You do realize that all you're saying is that you agree that slurs against SOME groups are OK by you, right?

    What about the families of people in groups that slurs are applied to? They have no right to be insulted, or to "feel smaller" because those slurs are used? THEY didn't have the "choice" you seem to feel makes a difference.

    And again, what if no members of the group referred to by slur are present? That makes it OK?

    Slurs are dehumanizing and reflect the bias or ill-education of those who use them. Which doesn't make it impossible to be biased against law enforcement without calling them "pigs".

    You simply can't have it both ways.

  • On the post: Judge Says Student Can Sue School For Suspending Her After She Called A Fictional Cop A 'Pig'

    Roy Wilson ( profile ), 21 Sep, 2018 @ 03:02pm

    Re: Re: Re: And they still feel the need to keep fighting

    The reason slurs are demonized is that they dehumanize the person or group being insulted.

    What is more dehumanizing than referring to a person or group as a class of animal?

    Wildly blown out of proportion by all sides.

    It COULD have simply been solved even with "Don't call police 'pigs' in school".

    If she'd continued to do so, the suspension would have been valid.

  • On the post: Judge Says Student Can Sue School For Suspending Her After She Called A Fictional Cop A 'Pig'

    Roy Wilson ( profile ), 21 Sep, 2018 @ 02:12pm

    Re: 'Offending others is terrible... unless we're doing it.'

    So if using any of the racial or sexual orientation slurs supposedly equated to "pig" by the teachers are ok to use so long as nobody belonging to any of those groups isn't in the room?

  • On the post: Judge Says Student Can Sue School For Suspending Her After She Called A Fictional Cop A 'Pig'

    Roy Wilson ( profile ), 21 Sep, 2018 @ 02:09pm

    Re: And they still feel the need to keep fighting

    Yup, once the lawyers get involved everything goes pear shaped.

    The teachers WERE correct in pointing out than it's no different from any of the other slurs they mentioned.

    Then they had to go full frontal idiot.

    A CASUAL mention of something like "Calling a police officer a "pig" is no different than calling a black person 'the N-world'" should have sufficed, and not required anything further.

    That it DID go further makes me suspect the student kept doing so after being told to stop.

    But lawsuits? Someone just HAD to get a lawyer involved.

  • On the post: The DOJ's Rules For Spying On Journalists Get A Bit Flimsy When It Reaches The FISA Court

    Roy Wilson ( profile ), 20 Sep, 2018 @ 01:17pm

    Re: Unless they're foreign journalists....

    That struck me as odd too.

    But the part about requiring the AG or Deputy AG literally sign off on a FISC request I see as an improvement over the "jump through hoops committee" currently in place, as now it attaches a NAME to the request - which means liability is clear in cases of abuse.

  • On the post: Elon Musk May Have Talked His Way Into A Pretty Serious Defamation Lawsuit

    Roy Wilson ( profile ), 20 Sep, 2018 @ 11:22am

    Re: Re:

    Not his wealth, the amount of weed he smokes.

    He's really gone off the rails with twitter and the like comments the last couple of years. Probably posting while stoned.

  • On the post: State Cops Accidentally Out Their Surveillance Of Anti-Police Groups With Browser Screenshot

    Roy Wilson ( profile ), 20 Sep, 2018 @ 07:34am

    Re: Re: Re: Is reading public web pages "survellience"?

    Re: the "terrorism" comment.

    To be honest, it's a FACT that it's been dramatically expanded, mainly under obama.

    I don't agree with the expansion - "terrorism" used to have a very narrow definition, and was rarely prosecuted, other than the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy hobgoblin under clinton, when it appeared everyone who had ever even seen a gun on TV was a member of a "militia".

    They're watching the PUBLIC POSTINGS of left-wing sites for a simple reason. Trump WON. If she'd won, they'd be watching right-wing sites. It's a cycle.

    They're not "investigating" the groups (per this article), they're monitoring their web pages. If that's illegal, both you and I should be prosecuted for "monitoring" techdirt.

  • On the post: State Cops Accidentally Out Their Surveillance Of Anti-Police Groups With Browser Screenshot

    Roy Wilson ( profile ), 20 Sep, 2018 @ 05:36am

    Re: Is reading public web pages "survellience"?

    Thank you - well said.

    You're addressing the part of the article I had a problem with as well;

    "What this looks like is probably what it is: police keeping tabs on people they don't like or people who don't like them. That's not really what policing is about and it sure as hell doesn't keep the community any safer."

    OF COURSE they keep tabs on people (and groups) that "don't like them", and that "they don't like".

    It's common sense. Now if the sites they had bookmarked were along the lines of "Grandmas Who Knit" and "Boston Beagle Society", paranoia would have me thinking those groups are covers for illegal activities.

    Why? Because cops watch for TROUBLE spots. That they have a pile of bookmarks of sites which basically boil down to "We Hate the Police!" and "We Hate Trump" should actually be lauded, not lambasted - they're looking at potential trouble spots. Trouble as in "illegal, possibly violent", not trouble as "We need to violate these civil rights".

    As to the Terrorism link, YES. Because under the last three Presidents, the legal definition of "Terrorist" has been expanded to the point where it almost covers Jaywalking.

  • On the post: Court: Trump's 'Get 'Em Out' Order Directed At Campaign Rally Protesters Is Protected Speech

    Roy Wilson ( profile ), 18 Sep, 2018 @ 11:48am

    Re: Re: Re: Re:

    "Get 'em outta here" is probably given about 10,000 times per night or more in the US. By bar and club owners speaking to bouncers. And they don't add "don't hurt 'em".

    Come to think of it, I've heard a lot of cops say "get 'em outta here" over the years as well.

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