Step right up, ladies and gentlemen! Three for the price of one! Tales of censorious douchebags that will thrill and amaze you!

First up, we have Dr. Randeep Dhillon! Dr. Dhillon is suing Jay Leno. Is he suing Jay Leno for being a trite, phone-it-in placeholder? NO! There's no California cause of action for that! SAG would never allow it! No, Randeep Dhillon is suing Jay Leno for a lame joke about Mitt Romney suggesting that his vacation home was the Golden Temple of Amritsar, a holy site for Sikhs! Dr. Dhillon says that by making this joke, Leno "exposes plaintiff, other sikhs and their religion to hatred, contempt, ridicule and obloquy because it falsely portrays the holiest place in the Sikh religion as a vacation resort owned by a non-Sikh." He's backed up by an Indian foreign affairs minister who says "freedom does not mean hurting the sentiments of others."

Congrats, Dr. Dhillon! You win a date with California's robust anti-SLAPP statute! You're going to pay Jay Leno's attorney fees in this case, which I will estimate to be $50,000! And because some people will generalize about Sikhs based on the act of one asshole — you — you've just done more to expose Sikhs to hatred, contempt, ridicule, and obloquy than that threadbare hack Leno ever could! Way to go!

Next, ladies and gentlemen, we travel North, to Canada, and the Fredericton, New Brunswick Police Department! The Fredericton Police just staged a eight-officer raid of the apartment of Charles LeBlanc! Is Charles LeBlanc breaking bad with a meth lab? Does he have children in cages? Is he a gun-runner? No! He's a blogger, and he's being raided for criminal libel for criticizing the Fredericton Police! That's right! The Fredericton Police Department not only thinks it is appropriate to serve search warrants on bloggers who say mean things to them, they think that they should execute the search warrants themselves, even though they are the alleged victims of the criminal libel! That's the New Professionalism in action, ladies and gents! Stand and be amazed!

And finally, across the pond, to England! Sally Morgan, purported psychic, is suing the Daily Mail for saying her psychic abilities are bunk! Her suit faults the Daily Mail for running columns exposing the ways that purported psychics con their audiences! Hey Sally — surely you don't need to conduct discovery in this case — you know all the answers to your questions already!

It's not faked, ladies and gentlemen! Freakish, yes! Difficult to believe, yes! Astounding, yes! But all of it real! Step right up and see!

When you come right down to it, State Senator Ralph Shortey of Oklahoma is articulating the core value of politicians everywhere: this is America, dammit, and a complete lack of evidence or logic should be no barrier to passing legislation banning or regulating something.

In Senator Shortey's case, the thing in question is the grim prospect of corporations serving us human fetuses to eat as food, or in novelty items like ring-pops. Concluding that this is a real threat that Americans face, Shortey has introduced Oklahoma Senate Bill 1418:

No person or entity shall manufacture or knowingly sell food or any other product intended for human consumption which contains aborted human fetuses in the ingredients or which used aborted human fetuses in the research or development of any of the ingredients.
SECTION 2. This act shall become effective November 1, 2012.

Shortey delayed the bill's effective date until November because, though serving fetuses to unsuspecting consumers is a real and palpable threat, banning it isn't something you want to just rush into.

What caused Shortey to conclude that there was a need for a don't-serve-us-fetuses-you-big-bad-corporations law? He read it someplace. I'll give you one guess as to where.

Freshman Sen. Ralph Shortey said his own Internet research led him to believe such a ban is necessary and prompted him to offer the bill aimed at raising "public awareness" and giving an "ultimatum to companies" that might consider such a policy.

Shortey said he discovered suggestions online that some companies use embryonic stem cells to develop artificial flavors, but added that he is unaware of any Oklahoma companies doing such research.

America needs leaders like Shortey — leaders willing to scour the internet for any hints of threats from fetus-peddling corporations or possibly Lizard People. Who else is going to protect us? Our so-called regulators?

In an e-mail to The Associated Press, U.S. Food and Drug Administration spokeswoman Pat El-Hinnawy said: "FDA is not aware of this particular concern."

Of course the FDA is not aware of this concern. The FDA hasn't read nearly enough Geocities pages.

Some might see Senator Shortey's actions as bizarre, unbalanced, or indicative of poorly chosen priorities. I prefer to see them as noble. Why? Well, if Ralph Shortey is legislating against things that don't exist, he's not micromanaging real-world industries or regulating to help rent-seeking donors or passing stupid anti-bullying laws or otherwise interfering with the affairs of real humans that others can see and hear. Let's encourage more state legislators to be like Ralph Shortey. Let's tell them to spend more of their time legislating against the horrors of jenkem and bonsai kittens and the like. It keeps them busy.

Via Consumerist, courtesy of Amy Alkon.

"Liberty," said Learned Hand, "lies in the hearts of men and women. When it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it."

Learned Hand was quite right — if people don't support basic legal norms like freedom of expression and due process of law, no legal systems will be sufficient to enforce those norms. They will wither. But how is the appetite for liberty born in our hearts? Some choose to believe that it is an inherent aspiration of humanity. I don't think that history, ancient or recent, supports that. Rather, I think that liberty is a cultural value, carefully cultivated by example and education. Good American citizenship is characterized by fidelity to shared taught values, and a willingness to support them and teach them to others.

Like any value, liberty can also be suppressed. People — especially young people — can be taught to scorn it.

Right now, the Shawano School District is Wisconsin is teaching students to scorn free expression. The Shawano School District, through its leaders, is teaching bad American citizenship.

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A couple of weeks ago I described events at University College of London, where the Atheist, Secularist and Humanist Society got in trouble with the Student Union because it posted a "Jesus and Mo" comic on its Facebook page.

That incident demonstrated that the "we have a protected right not to be offended" sentiment survives and even thrives.

It ain't over yet. The controversy has spread to the famous London School of Economics, where the local Atheist Secularist and Humanist Society posted the same "Jesus and Mo" comic on its Facebook page in solidarity with their UCL chapter, and received an even stronger response from the local Student's Union: a threat that they could be expelled from the Student Union unless they took it down. The LSE Student Union's statement on the matter is a master class in the mindset of censorious bureaucrats; indulge me and read it in full, with my emphasis:

On Monday 16th January it was brought to our attention via an official complaint by two students that the LSESU Atheist, Secularist and Humanist Society posted cartoons, published by the UCLU Atheist, Secularist and Humanist Society, depicting the Prophet Mohammed and Jesus "sitting in a pub having a pint" on their society Facebook page. Upon hearing this, the sabbaticals officers of the LSESU ensured all evidence was collected and an emergency meeting with a member of the Students' Union staff was called to discuss how to deal with the issue. During this time, we received over 40 separate official complaints from the student body, in addition to further information regarding more posts on the society Facebook page.

It was decided that the President and other committee members of the LSESU Atheist, Secularist and Humanist Society would be called for an informal meeting to explain the situation, the complaints that had been made, and how the action of posting these cartoons was in breach of Students' Union policy on inclusion and the society's constitution. This meeting took place on Friday 20th January at 10.30am. The society agreed to certain actions coming out of the meeting and these were discussed amongst the sabbatical team. In this discussion it was felt that though these actions were positive they would not fully address the concerns of those who had submitted complaints. Therefore the SU will now be telling the society that they cannot continue these activities under the brand of the SU.

The LSE Students’ Union would like to reiterate that we strongly condemn and stand against any form of racism and discrimination on campus. The offensive nature of the content on the Facebook page is not in accordance with our values of tolerance, diversity, and respect for all students regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality or religious affiliation. There is a special need in a Students' Union to balance freedom of speech and to ensure access to all aspects of the LSESU for all the ethnic and religious minority communities that make up the student body at the LSE.

All the tropes of the censorious bureaucrat are there: leaping into action to bring petty power to bear, inquisitorial demands about the reasons for speech, and a bold pronouncement that free expression must be "balanced" — the balancing to be done by petty bureaucrats — against open-ended, vague, and unprincipled anti-discrimination principles. All of this was a result of a cartoon, on an organization's own Facebook page.

There are two ways to approach this phenomenon in the university. One way is for student organizations to abandon student unions and their petty speech-policing martinets and go their own way at the cost of funding and facilities. Student union funding has often been used as a weapon to suppress disfavored speech and association, and American courts have sometimes supported that use — as when the Supreme Court recently ruled that public schools could use anti-discrimination principles to de-fund religious groups unless they allowed non-believers to take leadership positions. This is a hard path — that student union money and those student union facilities, meager though they may be, can be essential to getting an organization off of the ground.

The other approach is to speak out, forcefully, and call out the bureaucrats who use their petty power to suppress expression they don't like under the thin guise of anti-discrimination principles. The seeds of the student unions' destruction lies in their own hubris, their own words. Ask any student: do you really trust student union leaders to "balance" your right to speak against whatever they feel is important on any given day? Ask any student: what sort of puerile, sanitized campus will you have if the student union defunds any group that ever says anything that anyone could find objectionable? Ask any student: do you really think, for even a moment, that the student union will weigh speech in the balance even-handedly? The London School of Economics Student Union condemns and censors a satirical cartoon on a humanist site — but do you think that those same student union members will lift a censorious finger to condemn or discourage actual threats of violence by people who claim offense at such discourse?

The survival of core cultural values like robust freedom of expression depends upon you — and people like you — calling out and condemning the censors of the world. I'd like to see the specific LSE Student Union leaders who took this action named and shamed worldwide. What can you do to help?

Hat tip to Ophelia Benson.

Edit: Via the comments, two more posts about the incident: the LSE Student Union paper, and Legal Cheek.

…when joined by Wikipedia, reddit, Google, and countless other sites….

Courtesy of ProPublica.com

Popehat will be blacking out tomorrow, January 18, 2012, to protest SOPA and PIPA. Even though those measures appear to be on the ropes, vigorous resistance is essential.

If we had any doubt, the MPAA helped clear it up today with a press release that reveals it and its allies for what they are: rent-seeking thugs using their political influence to push through legislation beneficial to them and detrimental to everyone else.

In the MPAA's release, shill Chris Dodd comes out swinging:

Only days after the White House and chief sponsors of the legislation responded to the major concern expressed by opponents and then called for all parties to work cooperatively together, some technology business interests are resorting to stunts that punish their users or turn them into their corporate pawns, rather than coming to the table to find solutions to a problem that all now seem to agree is very real and damaging.

Only the MPAA and a used-up ex-Senator like Dodd could imbue "technology business interests" with a mock-populist sneer whilst lobbying for one of the titans of American business interests. Note also the sneer at internet users, who are mere "pawns" of sites participating in the blackout. Also note the ambiguity of the last phrase, "a problem that all now seem to agree is very real and damaging." What problem is that? SOPA and PIPA's creation of dangerous avenues of censorship and MPAA-driven government control? Piracy? The MPAA's and RIAA's long-standing hostility to technological change?

It is an irresponsible response and a disservice to people who rely on them for information and use their services.

As opposed to the actions of the MPAA and RIAAA, which propagandize to make fundamental changes to the way the internet works, increase government control of it, and rent-seek in order to protect their 1950s-era business model. That's perfectly responsible.

It is also an abuse of power given the freedoms these companies enjoy in the marketplace today. It’s a dangerous and troubling development when the platforms that serve as gateways to information intentionally skew the facts to incite their users in order to further their corporate interests.

Nice freedom you've got there, Reddit and BoingBoing and Wikipedia. Shame if something happened to it. Shame, shame if influential lobbyists from the MPAA and its allies had to start thinking more about how it might be restricted. [Note to people who decry Citizens United and despise the idea that corporations have free speech rights: I think Dodd and the MPAA agree with you in this instance.]

A so-called “blackout” is yet another gimmick, albeit a dangerous one, designed to punish elected and administration officials who are working diligently to protect American jobs from foreign criminals.

The "punishment," of course, comes in the form of lack of financial and electoral support, which the MPAA apparently views as inappropriate. It is "dangerous" to "punish" elected and appointed officials by organizing opposition to measures they support when you disagree with that message. That does not comport with the MPAA's view of what America is: a protected market. A feeding ground. The role of the citizenry is to pay for the MPAA's products through the venues the MPAA favors, and the role of the government is to protect the MPAA's market, using any means necessary.

It is our hope that the White House and the Congress will call on those who intend to stage this “blackout” to stop the hyperbole and PR stunts and engage in meaningful efforts to combat piracy.”

It is my hope that everyone involved will invite the MPAA to snort their taint. But that's probably too much to ask for.

The MPAA is crossing into Westboro Baptist Church territory: it has the Constitutional right to do what it's doing, but decent people everywhere should regard it with contempt and rise up against it.

I hoped that President Obama would live up to campaign promises to protect civil liberties in post-9/11 America. So far, he's been a grave disappointment on that subject.

But let's give his administration some credit on the occasions it is due. Kudos are due to the Department of Justice for taking the right position on the right of citizens to record police in public:

The Obama administration has told a federal judge that Baltimore police officers violated the First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendments by seizing a man's cell phone and deleting its contents. The deletions were allegedly in retaliation for the man's use of the phone to record the officers' arrest of his friend. According to the Maryland ACLU, this is the first time the Obama Justice Department has weighed in on whether the Constitution protects citizens' right to record the actions of police with their cell phones.

. . . .

"Although defendants have taken some remedial actions, these measures do not adequately ensure that violation will not recur," the Obama Administration said in a Tuesday court filing. While the city's new training materials acknowledge that it's legal to record the actions of the police, they "do not explicitly acknowledge that private citizens' right to record the police derives from the First Amendment, nor do they provide clear and effective guidance to officers about the important First Amendment principle involved."

As readers know, citizens' right to record cops without abuse is a major issue for us, and I submit that it is a canary-in-the-coal-mine issue on limits on police power. Good for the Obama DoJ on this one issue.

Thanks to tipster Andrea on the link.

Edit: In the course of shaking his palsied fist and yelling at me to get off of his lawn, Scott Greenfield points out that he already wrote about this, as did Radley Balko. Perhaps. But Andrea was the one who used a shiny object to attract my attention at the price moment when I needed something to post about. So there.

Back in December I wrote about Rhys Morgan, the 17-year-old British skeptic-blogger who stood up to legal threats from the transcendentally nutty fake lawyer Marc Stephens. As I said then, the internet needs more people — whether 17 or 70 — like Rhys, who are willing to stand up against such censorious intimidation tactics.

But standing up is sometimes easier said than done. Legal threats — like physical threats — can have real-world consequences. Rhys is learning that this week, as online threats and complaints have led him to censor his Facebook page upon pain of suspension or expulsion from his school.

Rhys is in what we in America would call high school. In the U.K. I believe they call it Secondary School or Twentieth Form or the loo or lorry or Toad in the Hole or Spotted Dick or something. Recently Rhys saw fit to comment upon something that I discussed here — a controversy at University College of London regarding a cartoon of Mohammed and Jesus, which became embroiled in a discussion of the imagined right not to be offended. Rhys — both as a skeptic and as a supporter of free expression — changed his Facebook profile picture to the cartoon in solidarity with the UCL skeptics.

Then all hell broke loose. Rhys was deluged with demands to take the picture down, insults, and threats. His school got involved, and threatened him with expulsion or suspension — apparently upon the theory that his actions his expression may have brought the dispute into the school, and because his posting causes offense to some classmates. Rhys' critics are employing the classic categorical dodge I've written about, saying that his actions have "nothing to do with freedom of expression" — because, see, if we say it's offensive, if we say it's "hate speech," then it no longer belongs in the free speech box.

Rhys is experiencing harassment and suppression in the U.K., but his situation reflects a universal problem, and one that is at the cutting edge of First Amendment litigation in the United States. The extent to which American public schools can punish students for out-of-school speech — especially speech on the internet — is in flux. First, student free speech rights in general seem to be on the wane, declining from a high-water mark with Tinker as the Supreme Court has given school administrators more discretion to determine what speech is "disruptive" and to police "inappropriate" speech at school-related events. The Supreme Court has not yet applied this line of cases to student expression on social media or other internet venues; just today, in a move that may or may not be significant, the Court declined to review a number of Circuit cases involving off-campus internet speech, leaving the area in doubt.

Though it takes place in another country under notably different legal standards, Rhys' situation perfectly illustrates the dangers of giving schools an unrestricted and unprincipled license to police students' online speech based on their "disruptive" or "offensive" qualities. A compliant school gives Rhys' critics a perfect heckler's veto: merely by attacking, harassing, and threatening him online, even anonymously, they can convince the school that his expression is "disruptive," and therefore make his school feel justified in demanding that he change his Facebook profile to satisfy his censors. Similarly, an utterly subjective and unprincipled notion of "offense" — one that focuses on the feelings of people who voluntarily visit Rhys' Facebook page, and not on the question of whether Rhys is doing anything to interfere with students' day-to-day activities at school — allows anyone who disagrees with Rhys to demand that the school censor him by making the irrefutable claim "this offends me." Under this arrangement, students can only write online under the sufferance of their most censorious critics.

Yet as I suggested before, Rhys Morgan is precisely the sort of student that should thrill schools: engaged in important adult issues, curious, expressive, self-motivated, and involved in larger communities of ideas. Don't we want 17-year-olds thinking and writing about subjects that involve controversy? Don't we want them to engage the big ideas that historically have caused division? Or do we want them to proceed ploddingly from one standardized test to the next, concerned only with dining on the reheated and prefabricated meals that schools put before them, never dabbling in anything that might offend or cause controversy or headlines? Of course, young people who explore and learn and engage and write on their own are independent in ways that might not please people whose power depends upon them acting like junior stenographers. Could there be something about Rhys Morgan — something more than posting a cartoon depicting Mohammed — that threatens and offends modern "education professionals" even more than it angers and offends interest groups? Could part of the conflict between free speech and "disruption" be not so much about harmony on campus, but about "professionals" seeking control over the ways that students think, interact, and learn?

. . . and damn, are they ever right.

I mean, if you get involved with marijuana, and the cops catch you with a small amount, they may bully you into cooperating with one of their drug investigations — which can get you killed.

Or, if you use marijuana, and have a small amount of marijuana in your home, you may get shot to death by police during a raid. In fact, marijuana is so dangerous that police may shoot you when they raid your home if they just think you may have it. And it goes without saying that marijuana is dangerous to your dog, who may get shot during a raid.

And I need not remind you that if you have preexisting health condition, marijuana can kill you. For instance, if you are a paraplegic who requires adequate medical care to live, if you get caught with marijuana a sociopathically indifferent judge may condemn you to death by sending you to a jail that cannot care for you.

But that's not all. Marijuana encourages lawlessness — by encouraging law enforcement to disregard laws. It turns parents against children — through state-run programs encouraging children to inform on their parents. In fact, marijuana is so dangerous that merely speaking of it in less than condemning tones can lead to you losing your job . . . with the government.

If you were a hand-wringing soft-on-crime looney liberal, a damned dirty hippie, you might say that the thread running through all of this is that the War on Drugs is dangerous, not marijuana. If you were a wild-eyed Paulbot glibertarian, you might conclude the common thread is that government is dangerous.

But of course good Americans have listened to Nancy Reagan, listened to the nice DARE officers, listened to the decades of public officials exhorting us to win the War on Drugs, and they know the truth: it's marijuana that's dangerous.

Hat tip: Jacob Sullum.

You remember Froma Harrop. She presided over an organization advocating civility in public discourse, called Tea Party advocates terrorists, then said that wasn't uncivil because the essence of incivility is denying other people their say, then deleted critical comments on her blog about her views.

That's her.

So, if you are Froma Harrop, how might you recover some of your credibility? Gosh, maybe a friendly-but-substantial, serious, thoughtful media interview.

Say, how about one with John Oliver of The Daily Show?

There are different ways to interpret this. One is that Froma Harrop is so stupendously foolish that she thought this interview would make her look good, and would be a venue to vindicate her views.

I prefer to believe that this is Froma Harrop's penance for her silly behavior: that, as her blog post suggests, she know she would be the butt of a joke, and willingly participated in the joke (flawlessly executed by John Oliver) to acknowledge she'd acted like an ass.

That's kind of cool in my book. Not as cool as coming out and saying she was wrong, of course.

MidClassMitt took the New Hampshire expansion easily.  It's looking like it's all down to the South Carolina expansion.

It's the last gasp for many players,  so expect a lot of aggression and a LOT of cheese.  I anticipate that only AtlasFan (resources), ZhouYu (possible map advantage), and TheGrinch (sheer spite) will remain as serious players after this. 

Listen to me: no sensible and well-ordered society can recognize a right to be free from offense. It's unprincipled and mercurial, a celebration of the rule of subjective reaction over the rule of law. It's an open invitation to censorship-by-heckler's-veto. It chills satire, parody, sharp retorts, hard truths, and uncomfortable revelations. George Bernard Shaw says "all great truths begin as blasphemies" — so where is the room for exploration of truth in a society that lets every entitled group define its own blasphemies and demand that everyone avoid uttering them? Going to courts complaining of fee-fees is no basis for a system of government.

Why the mini-rant? It's because today, courtesy of Ophelia Benson, I learned of a loathsome example of the assertion that we all have the right not to be offended, and an illustration of how it can be used as a weapon of suppression. The Atheist, Secularist and Humanist Society (ASHS) at University College London has a Facebook page, and on that page they posted a picture as part of an invitation to a party:

And you know what happened next:

Continue Reading »

I'll be the first to admit: sometimes we are more than a little mean to the United Kingdom here at Popehat. But we kid because we love. The language, the history, the culture, the television, the fond memories of student life spent shivering on cobbled streets after the bars closed ludicrously early, waiting for a kebab van so that we could eat some gray meat carved off of a questionable shapeless haunch — we love it all.

But we don't love the U.K.'s approach to libel, and we applaud the recent rumblings of reform there. Though the SPEECH Act helps to protect Americans from the worst excesses of the U.K.'s plaintiff-biased and libel-tourist-destination system, that's cold comfort to Brits who get sued.

Consider the case of Vaughan Jones, a young blogger sued for leaving negative reviews of a book. I learned of Mr. Jones when he made some kind comments in the course of discussing legal threats from bumptious fake lawyer Marc Stephens. From there, I found and read John's fascinating and chilling blog about being a libel defendant in the U.K.

U.K. law limits what Jones can say about his own case. But he has a good summary of links to media coverage, including this one. The case concerns reviews Mr. Jones left on Amazon — now deleted — regarding Chris McGrath's book The Attempted Murder of God: Hidden Science You Really Need To Know. McGrath has also sued Amazon itself over these negative reviews, and has sued Richard Dawkins and the Dawkins Foundation for their commentary. As you know, we have a low opinion of people who sue over negative book reviews. They are loathsome.

Apparently a decision is expected soon based upon the initial hearings. I look forward to reading it. Meanwhile, consider Jones' discussion of proposed reforms to U.K. libel law. Also consider his description of proceedings, some of which seem very odd to our tastes.

Well, it's Primary Day in New Hampshire,
And the voters must finally decide.
In the Countertop State, it's for damned sure,
That no candidate gets a free ride.

Having put paid, Mitt Romney is cruising
By a margin of many a digit.
He likes firing his engine half-throttle,
While conservatives waver and fidget.

Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, and Huntsman,
To put brakes on Mitt's juggernaut and park it,
Have tried all the political stunts. Man
Bites dog! They disdain the free market!

Poor Rick Perry had fire in the belly,
But in truth he's at home on the range.
Since his race is all "Oops!" and "Whoa, Nelly!"
His insistence on bucking seems strange.

By both flanks of the centrist investor
Drives a dark horse who might take it all,
But would settle for place, show, or jester:
It's irascible Ludwig von Paul.

So Republicans, Democrats, and even
Independents will vote all day long
To anoint a Republican leader.
What could possibly go wrong?

Since Rodney King, we've been told that citizens with video cameras will deter excessive force by law enforcement. As video cameras have miniaturized until they're just one app on a smartphone, we're told the same thing, only more emphatically. Patrick highlighted the possibilities here years ago, though sounding a note of caution that a mechanism for reporting what you've taped to a powerful entity is as important as the recording itself.

But you really didn't think that it was going to be that easy, did you?

A certain segment of law enforcement has always viewed the use of force against citizens not as an ugly necessity in extreme circumstances but as a perquisite of the job. Those cops are not going to change their spots just because everyone's got an iPhone. So now we have pushback. Radley Balko documented it at Reason, Carlos Miller documents it tirelessly at Photography Is Not A Crime, and Injustice Everywhere frequently has pertinent stories.

Sometimes the pushback is cloaked in shameless OMG-9/11-CHANGED-EVERYTHING rhetoric, and sometimes it's straight-up thuggery. Cops arrest people for filming police conduct — whether it's out in public or from the photographer's own lawn. Cops profess not to recognize cameras and pretend they are potential weapons, sending the not-too-subtle message that pointing a camera might get your ass shot. When they think they can get away with it, they destroy cameras wholesale. Prosecutors back the cops up: they prosecute citizens for things like "wiretapping" or "disorderly conduct" when they record encounters with cops (even — or perhaps especially — angry and abusive cops), and they abuse governmental power in an effort to keep government-created recordings secret.

So, how is this relevant today? Well, a link on Reddit led me to a disturbing but entirely consistent-with-this trend discovery: Google's Transparency Report, in which Google describes the number and type of take-down demands it receives. Did you think that the New Professionals would be content arresting photographers in the street? Hell, no. If we've gone digital, so have they. And they know how to work the system. Google reports:

We received a request from a local law enforcement agency to remove YouTube videos of police brutality, which we did not remove. Separately, we received requests from a different local law enforcement agency for removal of videos allegedly defaming law enforcement officials. We did not comply with those requests, which we have categorized in this Report as defamation requests.

Click that link and see the statistics for various six-month periods. Note that Google records not just take-down demands (including categories for executive and police demands premised on "national security" and "criticism," among others), but demands for user identifying information. Police would never abuse the system by demanding the identity of photographers who posted videos documenting their conduct, would they? Heaven forfend.

So: bear in mind, when you consider measures like SOPA, that giving the government increased power over internet posts and increased ability to seek out user information may not just impact talking about music and movies — it might impact our ability to talk about, and document, police misconduct. Think the police would never seek to abuse such power? Then you're a damned fool.