Re: Canada to Start Punishing People for Pre-Crime

On Mar 14, 2024 at 5:16:24 PM PDT, "The Horny Goat" <lcraver@home.ca> wrote:

On Tue, 12 Mar 2024 23:36:34 -0700, BTR1701 <atropos@mac.com> wrote:
 

 While I take your point, I don't think the government is particularly
 all that excited about anyone whose terms of release bar internet
 usage from making a credit card payment (since most stores' credit
 card terminals DO use the net rather than phone lines) - it's when
 they find the newly released individual is accessing things like
 (made-up URL) prettyunderagegirls.com they are concerned PARTICULARLY
 when the newly released has a record of certain types of crimes.

 
Yes, but if you're going to put parole restrictions on people whose
violation will result in re-incarceration, due process requires that you
define precisely what those restrictions are.
 
Saying "no internet use" leaves a person in a world of uncertainty. What
does that mean? Do they mean just no social media? Can I still log on to
my bank account from home? Can I file my taxes electronically? Can I
watch Disney+?

 
OK fair enough - go ahead a draft a term defining the sort of internet
restriction suitable for a person convicted of sexual crimes against
minors.
 
As for filing taxes, there are groups in our area at least that will
freely prepare returns for the indigent. But darned tootin as I judge
I would order software on his machine (and a strict ban on use of any
machine that didn't have such software) to record every URL he went to
- and both (a) strictly ban porn sites of any variety

What's a "porn site"?

Sure, pornhub would qualify, but what about Playboy.com? Is that porn? Is mere
nudity porn or does there have to be some kind of sexual activity? If nudity
counts, what about the greats works of art, like Rembrandt? Would the fact
that there are nude women in his paintings make the website for the NY
Metropolitan Museum of Art a porn site?

What about sites with women in skimpy bikinis? Some people consider that
pornographic. Would watching Baywatch online count as porn?

Whose definition of porn do we go with? We can't go with Justice Stewart's "I
know it when I see it" definition when we're talking about throwing people in
prison.

See what happens when you start to impose restrictions like this without
thinking it through?

As a parolee, I can't just assume "they don't mean that" when it comes
to something that could send me to prison if it turns out they actually
*do* mean that.
 
And even if "they don't mean that" in general, it's a helluva weapon to
use against someone that a cop or a prosecutor wants to "get" but hasn't
actually committed an overt crime or parole violation to hang on them.
 
Like the guy who made the anti-Islam video that Hillary lied and tried
to blame for Benghazi. There was nothing illegal about the video but (at
the time, thanks to Hillary) he was seen as being responsible for a huge
tragedy and national embarrassment, so since the guy was on parole, they
went looking for anything they could hang on him to punish him for and
they ended up violating him for "using an alias". Parolees are generally
prohibited from using fake names to hide from police or to participate
in gangs. That's the intent of that kind of parole restriction. In this
case, the government decided his YouTube screen name was an alias under
the terms of his parole-- something they'd never violated anyone else
for, something that most people, if they thought about it at all, would
have figured "they don't mean that"-- but in his case, they wanted to
save face by punishing him for embarrassing the U.S. and getting Navy
SEALs killed, so they said his YouTube account name was an alias and
threw him back into prison.
 
That's the sort of thing you have to worry about when a parole agreement
says something like "no internet use". What precisely does that mean and
can it be abused to fuck me over on a technicality? Because if it can be
used that way, there's a good chance it will be used that way.