association – Techdirt (original) (raw)

Free Speech Absolutist Elon Musk Very Mad At Disney For Its Speech, Funds At Least One SLAPP Suit

from the please-don't-put-in-my-slapp-suit-that-i-got-mad dept

The “free speech absolutist” is at it again. Despite his claim to be an absolutist, Elon Musk has an uncanny ability to magically keep finding himself involved in lawsuits that are attempts to suppress the free speech rights of others.

And he’s at it again. Earlier this week, actor Gina Carano sued Disney almost exactly three years after Disney announced that she would not be returning to The Mandalorian, after she posted a bunch of utter nonsense on social media about mask wearing, the 2020 election, and the Holocaust (specifically trying to equate “hating someone for their political views” with how the Nazis convinced people to hate Jews).

The lawsuit is… not good. It’s extraordinarily bad. They hired lawyers who appear to be decently experienced… to basically embarrass themselves with an obvious SLAPP suit, designed to punish Disney for its own free speech rights. Like so many performative lawsuits these days, the text of it seems designed to rile up idiots on 4chan and some of the sketchier subreddits, but seems unlikely to convince a judge.

Here’s the thing: Disney has every right to hire and fire who it wants, and they can do so in response to someone’s speech. That’s how free speech works. Sometimes, you say something stupid and there are consequences to your speech, including that others do not want to associate with you or work with you. Yet, Carano seems to argue that somehow no one can criticize her for her speech.

This is a civil action arising from Defendants’ wrongful termination of Carano’s employment in retaliation for Carano’s lawful exercise of her right to speak and express her views. Specifically, Defendants—under the regime of former Disney CEO Bob Chapek—fired Carano because of her posts (“the Posts”) on various social media platforms including X (formerly known as Twitter). Carano composed and published the Posts while she was off-duty and away from the workplace.

In her Posts, Carano expressed her personal political views, opinions, and beliefs. In retaliation for Carano’s exercise of her speech rights, Defendants terminated Carano’s employment and took other retaliatory actions to limit and deny her future employment opportunities, including but not limited to making maliciously false statements about Carano with the intention of damaging her reputation and, thus, her ability to find and retain work.

She also complains that other “similarly situated male co-workers” were not disciplined for their speech. Except, um, that’s not what happened. She points to Carl Weathers, who sadly just passed away. He had posted about Nazis pushing hatred through things like book banning and encouraging hatred.

Except, that was not “the exact same message” nor was it posted in the same context (context matters). Carano’s post was at a time when lots of people were discussing her other posts, in which she was pushing nonsense Fox News talking points, and then tried to equate how Nazis drove hate to people disliking your politics. That is… very different.

She also claims that co-star Pedro Pascal wasn’t disciplined for his tweets, including one that compares Donald Trump to Hitler. And, so fucking what? Disney is allowed to not employ someone for their views and to employ someone else with different views. That’s how the rights of association work.

Bizarrely, the lawsuit is full of totally random tweets from random people, some of whom are annoying internet trolls, but who should have no bearing on any of this.

This is the legal equivalent of: “And another thing: I’m not mad. Don’t put in my SLAPP lawsuit that I got mad at random trolls online.”

The actual claims in the lawsuit are nonsense. Wrongful discharge and sex discrimination. Even though, earlier in the lawsuit, she claims that Lucasfilm “defamed” her “by accusing her of being a ‘bigoted’ actress,” and later that mischaracterizing her social media posts is also defaming her, they don’t bother actually filing a claim for defamation. This is either because her lawyers know that’s not how defamation law actually works, or they realize that putting in defamation claims would make it that much easier for Disney to file an anti-SLAPP motion, leaving Carano on the hook for the Mouse’s legal bills.

Indeed, it seems like the decision to go with the claims they went with are yet another attempt to try to hide from an anti-SLAPP motion by claiming that this has nothing to do with speech, even though the rest of the complaint makes it painfully obvious that it has everything to do with speech. It would not surprise me if Disney files an anti-SLAPP motion and makes a strong case that this is a SLAPP suit, to which Carano’s lawyers will play all innocent and claim that it’s got nothing to do with speech, even though the whole complaint says otherwise.

Now, you might have read this far and wondered why the post started off talking about Elon Musk and his willingness to get involved in suing people over their speech rights. Well, it’s because apparently Elon is funding Carano’s vexatious lawsuit.

Apparently, this is part of what Elon promised last year, when he talked about how he would fund “with no limit” lawsuits for anyone fired for tweets. That apparently still does not apply to all of the former Twitter employees he fired for their tweets. I mean, literally a week ago, Elon had lawyers in court claiming that of course ELON can fire people for their tweets. His lawyer called it “a no-brainer.”

But, now, he’s funding Carano suing Disney, and asking for more people to join in.

Once again, as is all too common these days, the answer seems to be “it’s okay if Elon does it, and it’s the worst thing in the world if it’s done to people Elon likes.” He can fire people for tweets, but others fired for tweets must sue.

Of course, the fact that it’s against Disney is probably even more appealing to Musk, since he’s super salty about the fact that Disney chose (again, a free speech choice) to no longer advertise on ExTwitter. In some sense, this looks like Elon trying to imitate his former colleague, Peter Thiel, in how he destroyed Gawker with mostly frivolous lawsuits.

But Disney is not Gawker. And Disney’s lawyers don’t fuck around (much to our own annoyance regarding copyright).

The free speech absolutist Elon Musk has also been going on a conspiratorial days long rant about how awful Disney is… for deciding that it should use its own speech to introduce audiences to more diverse characters in its shows and movies. Hilariously, he posted Disney’s “inclusions standards” as if he got it from a deep mole within Disney, even though it was published in Variety 3 years ago.

Either way, an actual free speech absolutist would support Disney’s right to have its own speech standards, Carano’s right to say whatever nonsense she wants to say, and Disney’s right to decide not to associate with Carano or Musk when they feel that their values diverged. Those are all forms of free speech.

But, tellingly, Musk seems to think some of them are not allowed.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, association, consequences, elon musk, free speech, gina carano, slapp suit
Companies: disney, lucasarts, lucasfilm, twitter, x

NYPD’s New Labor Day Tradition Involves Drone Surveillance Of People’s Private Parties And Property

from the fight-for-your-right-to-party dept

Never let it be said the NYPD doesn’t know how to have a good time. The question remains as to whether it’s possible for the NYPD to allow others to have a good time.

The NYPD has always been in the business of acquiring the latest in law enforcement tech. The arrival of easily affordable drones attracted the NYPD’s acquisition team, which began obtaining these eyes-in-the-sky more than a decade ago when they were still considered to be mostly a military plaything.

The acquisition of drones also attracted the eye of a local artist, who was arrested by the NYPD for satirizing its drone fleet with publicly posted “ads” that suggested the PD was getting into the drone strike business. The NYPD had drones. It did not, however, have a sense of humor. It engaged in a “weeks-long manhunt” for the artist behind the satirical posters that so offended the NYPD it decided it must be a criminal offense.

This criticism was shut down with the heaviest hand the NYPD could apply to the situation. The criticism (at least in this form) stopped. The NYPD’s acquisition and deployment of drones did not.

The NYPD is subject to some limitations on drone use by city law. The POST (Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology) Act requires the NYPD to inform the public about any new use of surveillance tech 90 days ahead of deployment. It did not do this… not in this case.

What it has said about its drones is that their use will be limited to the following situations, as noted by Sean Hollister for The Verge:

[W]hile the NYPD did publish a document about how it uses drones back in 2021, it suggested back then that drones would only be used for:

search and rescue operations, documentation of collisions and crimes scenes, evidence searches at large inaccessible scenes, hazardous material incidents, monitoring vehicular traffic and pedestrian congestion at large scale events, visual assistance at hostage/barricaded suspect situations, rooftop security, observations at shooting or large scale events, public safety, emergency, and other situations with the approval of the Chief of Department

Missing from this list? The thing the NYPD has decided its drones are going to do over the Labor Day weekend:

The New York City police department plans to pilot the unmanned aircrafts in response to complaints about large gatherings, including private events, over Labor Day weekend, officials announced Thursday.

“If a caller states there’s a large crowd, a large party in a backyard, we’re going to be utilizing our assets to go up and go check on the party,” Kaz Daughtry, the assistant NYPD Commissioner, said at a press conference.

While it could be argued (poorly, but argued nonetheless) that drone deployments might reduce wasted law enforcement resources by determining whether noise complaints are worth an in-person follow-up, the decision to convert a holiday weekend into a trial run for unfettered surveillance isn’t the sort of thing anyone (outside of the NYPD) is ever going to embrace.

You see, it’s not just about the parties. It’s about what can be seen and where it can be seen from. An officer at street level outside of a fenced yard can only see so much. A drone flying over enclosed yards can give officers a form of “plain view” they simply cannot achieve on their own. And since law enforcement believes anything its eyes (or its proxy eyes) can see is fair game when it comes to warrantless searches, flying drones over yards just because someone said a party is too loud is an abusive use of surveillance tech, which should be limited to the far more serious suspected criminal acts enumerated in the NYPD’s 2021 drone use document.

Considering the city’s size and population, one would expect the NYPD’s drones to be flying nonstop all weekend long. If the only justification for deployment is complaints about parties, the NYPD will have all the reason it needs to engage in extended, expansive surveillance of entire neighborhoods under the pretense of keeping the peace during a period of celebration.

Should the latent “threat” of people enjoying themselves a bit too much justify this kind of surveillance? The answer is obviously “no.” And a drone flight over a reported party can easily provide glimpses into neighboring property that has been the subject of zero complaints.

Then there’s the chilling effect. Is a Labor Day party protected by the First Amendment? Quite possibly. Not only is it an exercise of the right to freely associate, the perhaps-rowdy statements made by attendees are protected speech that should not be deterred by surveillance efforts seemingly completely divorced from anything resembling probable cause or reasonable suspicion. Sure, the city has an interest in ensuring neighboring residents aren’t subjected to excessive noise or intoxicated spillover, but those objectives can still be achieved without sending a camera into the curtilage without developing an articulable reason for doing so.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, 4th amendment, association, chilling effects, drones, nypd, surveillance

Lawsuit: Boston PD's 'Gang Database' Says People Who Wear Nikes And Have Been Beat Up By Gang Members Are 'Gang Associates'

from the guilty-until-negatives-proven dept

The Chinese government uses a number of measures to keep tabs on citizens. One is what’s known as a “citizen score” — a compilation of all the good/bad habits the government can track that determines whether a person should be viewed as a contributor to society or someone the government should take out of circulation.

We do the same thing here in the US. Credit scores determine who gets to live where and what vehicle they can own. It also can affect employment opportunities. This version of a “citizen score” is compiled by private parties who have access to information Americans are given no choice in relinquishing.

But the government also uses point-based systems to determine what kind of citizen you are: one of the good OK guys or possible a menace II to society. The ACLU is currently suing the Boston Police Department over its ad hoc “citizen score.” The BPD adds and subtracts points to add and (possibly?) subtract people from its “gang database.” Things citizens actively do — and even things they passively don’t — can put them on this watchlist.

From the ACLU’s public records lawsuit [PDF]:

Under the point system, a person is designated as a “Gang Associate” if he is assessed six or more points, and a “Gang Member” if he is assessed ten or more points. See Exhibit A, Boston Police Department Rules and Procedures Rule 335.

The point system makes it possible to designate someone a Gang Associate or Gang Member without any allegation that he engaged in violence or criminal activity.

An individual may be assessed eight points for being the victim of gang-related violence.

Yes, you read that right: Boston residents magically become “Gang Associates” if they’re shot at by gang members. Or carjacked. Or mugged. If this happens twice, it appears they’ll be upgraded to “Gang Member” thanks to their inability to avoid being victimized by gang members.

There’s more to the list — things that assure plenty of other non-gang members will be treated like gang members by cops relying on this ridiculously-compiled database.

An individual may be assessed two points for each instance in which he is seen with an alleged gang member or associate, even in a photograph, and even if that alleged gang member or associate is a classmate, neighbor, or family member.

An individual may be assessed four points for each instance in which a police report describes him to have been “[w]alking, eating, recreating, communicating, or otherwise associating with” a gang member; for making a hand gesture believed to be a gang sign; and for wearing clothing that police deem to be gang-related.

Going to school that gang members attend: that’s going to cost you. Being even distantly related to gang members? That’s a few points.

If it wasn’t all ridiculous enough already, here’s the best part: cops can use calling a person a gang member to rack up points on the gangland score.

Other factors the BPD considers are circular. For example, an individual may be assessed eight points if another law enforcement agency determines he is a gang member, without regard to the evidence or criteria used, or nine points for being in possession of court or “investigative documents” that label him a gang member.

If a Boston resident is served with a summons from another law enforcement agency and it happens to say something about “suspected gang member” on them, that’s nine points: “Gang Associate.” If the documents say this designation was based on some sort of mystery database, that’s 17 points and the full “Gang Member” designation with points to spare.

The ACLU’s lawsuit is seeking a decision forcing the BPD to turn over documents on its gang database so the citizens affected by it can see what’s being used to treat them as criminals, even when they haven’t officially been accused of anything. As the suit notes, these designations — based on bad/circular reasoning — routinely ensnare people who’ve never been arrested, much less suspected of criminal activity. And yet, there they are, listed as associates or gang members in a database police officers have access to when making stops.

Just getting dressed in the morning is enough to turn someone’s life upside down. The lawsuit points out the BPD has designated things like Chicago Bulls caps and Nike sneakers to be “gang apparel.” Officers routinely surveil youths at parks, schools, and recreation centers — places they’re sure to see people wearing NBA merchandise and Nike shoes. And, because gang members are also human beings, they’ll frequent public places to use those facilities, putting everyone else in the same location in danger of being deemed “gang associates.”

The problems aren’t just local. ICE has access to the BPD’s database and makes deportation decisions based on this extremely faulty info.

The lawsuit pits the ACLU against the state with the most public-unfriendly public records laws in the nation. Overcoming the dozens of exemptions the BPD can use isn’t going to be easy. Hopefully, though, the court will see the public interest outweighs the built-in excuses provided by the state’s terrible laws and force the department to turn over the requested documents.

Filed Under: association, boston, boston police department, citizen score, gang database, gangs
Companies: aclue

Canadian Town Bans Spitting, Swearing And Gathering In Groups Of Three Or More

from the law-enforcement-brain-trust-baffled-by-backlash dept

Taber, a town of 8,100 in Alberta, Canada, must be in the midst of the nation’s smallest and least impressive crimewave. How else would you explain the town’s new “Community Standards Bylaw,” which imposes the following on its residents?

With a sweeping new bylaw, the southern Alberta town of Taber has outlawed swearing in public, instituted a nightly curfew on kids and teenagers, and granted local law enforcement the power to break up any assemblies of three or more people.

It’s petty enough in the summary, but it gets even worse in the fine print.

Here’s the “swearing” part of the bylaw:

No person shall yell, scream, or swear in any Public Place.

Which won’t hold up to Canada’s free speech laws, even with the plentiful exceptions the government can enact at any time. And it will apparently be up to patrolling officers to decide when a raised voice constitutes a “yell,” and always with one ear cocked towards any errant public swearing occuring at lower volumes.

Then there’s this part of the bylaw, which makes possibly disturbing others a crime.

No persons shall, during any period of the day allow, suffer or permit any electronic equipment, musical instruments, vehicles or any other devices to be sounded or used in any area of the Town of Taber, that may, or is likely, to disturb others.

There’s also a clause apparently inserted by Taber’s Behavior Nazis solely to anger the world’s Grammar Nazis.

And bad cops will have all sorts of fun with this one:

No person shall be a member of the assembly of three or more persons in any Public Place where a Peace Officer has reasonable grounds to believe the assembly will disturb the peace of the neighborhood, and any such person shall disperse as requested by a Peace Officer.

“Reasonable grounds.” As is common to the rest of the bylaw, criminal intent is scuttled in preference of “whatever the Peace Officer believes.”

So, what has prompted this move towards a more controlled populace? The answer appears to be that it’s just something the town’s law enforcement wanted.

[Police Commission Chairman Ken] Holst said the goal of the bylaw was “to give another layer of tools to our police service.”

He said it came largely in response to concerns raised by citizens in a survey commissioned by the Taber Police Service.

“Graffiti was the main concern and the second concern was large gatherings of youth and other people on town property, sometimes causing issues,” he said.

While some of those issues could be addressed through existing provincial and federal laws, Holst said Taber wanted to empower its law enforcement when an offence is “imminent to occur,” which he described as “preventative policing.”

Ah, the old “thoughtcrime,” as practiced by loitering youths. Holst didn’t want this community of 8,100 to suffer the existential threat posed by aimless teens, so he and his law enforcement buddies helped write the bylaw.

Holst said the bylaw was drafted by town staff and the Taber Police Service and was reviewed by the police commission before being sent on to town council, where it was approved by a 6-1 vote.

And, since it was written by law enforcement, there was apparently no need to ensure the bylaw didn’t violate anyone’s rights or would even hold up in court. Because who knows the law better than law enforcement officers? No one, that’s who. Just ask any cop.

Holst said no lawyers were involved in the police commission’s review and they didn’t discuss whether aspects of the bylaw would violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms…

“Exactly how that sits with the Charter, to be 100 per cent honest with you, that discussion did not come up with the commission,” Holst said.

Because screw the public.

Save that 100%, Holst. You’re going to need it. Here’s an actual legal expert with 45 years experience, and he’s of the opinion there’s a 100% chance it’s in violation.

“It clearly, clearly infringes the Charter,” [Michael] Dietrich said.

And now that the ridiculous bylaw has drawn mockery from around the internet, Holst and other city representatives are shocked and saddened by all the criticism.

“It hurts my heart,” Ken Holst said Tuesday. “I’m hurt today to read some of the extreme comments that have circulated on social media…”

“We really feel this is the best for Taber and makes it a better place, as opposed to ‘the worst place on Earth,’ as the way some people are portraying this,” he said.

Holst further defended his stupid bylaw by pointing to other similarly stupid Canadian towns that have enacted similarly stupid bylaws. Presumably, this belated justification will also not be run by any legal experts — armchair or actual — who may point out that two wrongs still don’t equal a right, no matter what some informal, police-guided survey might “indicate.”

Filed Under: alberta, association, canada, free speech, swearing, taber, yelling

Connecticut Supreme Court Says State Cops Can Detain You Simply For Being In The Vicinity Of Someone They're Arresting

from the serving-up-retcons-and-rights-removal dept

Gideon, the pseudonymous public defender who blogs at A Public Defender, has a thorough rundown of a very disturbing ruling recently issued by the Connecticut Supreme Court. It involves every Connecticut citizens’ civil liberties, which have now been thrown under a bus bearing the name “officer safety.”

The court’s decision basically makes everyone a suspect, even if they’re suspected of nothing else than being in the relative proximity of someone a police officer suspects of committing a crime, or someone simply “matching the description.” How does this work in practice? Gideon posits a single scenario, as interpreted by the person being (wrongly) detained and those doing the actual detaining.

First, imagine you are walking down a public street with your friend. You’re both on your way to the local grocery store to buy some hummus. The police pull up, take a look at you friend and mistakenly believe that he’s a notorious wanted criminal. They order him to stop. You, not wanting to be caught up in this police business, keep walking, but they order you to stop, even though they don’t know you, don’t suspect you and you haven’t done anything wrong. You have rights, dammit and you know the Fourth Amendment. Can they stop you and force you to give up your freedom?

The second is this: what I’ve just described above is a version of the events that transpired. They’re “facts” in a sense that they’re your recitation of the events. But that’s obviously not good enough, right? There is another version – that of the police officers. So who gets to decide which is the “truth”? Which is believable and accurate and should be relied upon? Because – and this is critical – the law is entirely fact-dependent. How the law applies depends on the nuances of the factual scenarios. And that is left entirely up to the trial judge: the judge that hears the evidence from you and the police officers and then decides what “actually” happened. That’s called fact-finding and will only be overturned if “clearly erroneous”. Meaning almost never. There is a deified deference paid to the trial court’s “findings of fact”.

As always, this situation becomes your word against theirs. But the court has now placed even more confidence in “theirs.” Your version is that you just happened to be in the vicinity of someone the police are expressing interest in. Their version is that anyone within eyesight is probably either a) an accomplice or b) a threat. And it gets even worse. The police can be completely in the wrong and still be covered by this ruling.

One of the bulwarks of the Fourth Amendment protection is that the police need something called particularized suspicion, meaning that they need to have some evidence to believe that you have committed a crime in order to stop you.

This opinion does away with that. In fact, the police don’t even have to be correct about the person in your vicinity they are seeking to stop.

So, police can be targeting the wrong person and sweep up anyone who happens to be in the vicinity and still be immune from the consequences. In essence, the court gives police the ability, if not the actual right, to detain anyone at anytime for no reason at all. How did the court manage to arrive at this bizarre rights-trampling ruling? Well, it had to do a whole lot of re-imagining of the actual events using the most paranoiac of police officers’ mindsets. As Gideon points out, he’s never seen the court engage in such a thorough retroactive fact-finding mission — one that involved massaging the facts until they conformed with the court’s preferred outcome.

From the majority opinion:

The defendant next claims that the Appellate Court incorrectly concluded that the trial court properly had found that Detective Rivera and Lieutenant Angeles were justified in detaining the defendant because they had a reasonable concern for their safety. In support of this claim, the defendant asserts that the trial court’s conclusion was based on clearly erroneous factual findings and, further, that the Appellate Court ignored those erroneous findings and improperly upheld the trial court’s ruling on the basis of facts that the trial court never found.

Explained in plain English by Gideon, who has been following this case as it has progressed through the system:

In support of the finding of officer safety, the trial judge found that the guy the police were looking for (who, of course, was neither of the guys stopped) had a felony warrant for possession of a firearm, and that’s it.

The Appellate Court found that the stop was justified because of the felony warrant for a firearm and credible evidence that the guy they were looking for was armed and dangerous, a fact omitted by the trial court.

The Supreme Court had to agree that the “felony possession of a firearm” factual finding was clearly erroneous because no witness testified as to those words. It was, in fact, a warrant for a violation of probation.

It doesn’t add up, but the court fudged the math. Officer safety trumps rights because credible threats are credible even when they’re not threats (a probation violation rather than an “armed and dangerous” suspect) and even when they’re not credible (no witnesses stating anything to the effect of “armed and dangerous”).

The dissenting opinion shows just how dangerous this ruling is.

I agree with the majority that the police have a legitimate interest in protecting themselves. There must be, however, some restrictions placed on the intent. In my view, there are several potential unconscionable ramifications to the majority opinion. For instance, if a suspect with an outstanding warrant is talking to his neighbor’s family near the property line, can the police now detain the entire family as part of the encounter with the suspect? If the suspect is waiting at a bus stop with six other strangers, can they all be detained? If the same suspect is observed leaving a house and stopped in the front yard, can the police now seize everyone in the house to ensure that no one will shoot them while they question the suspect? What if the suspect is detained in a neighborhood known to have a high incident of crime, can the police now seize everyone in the entire neighborhood to ensure their safety while they detain the suspect? There simply is no definition of who is a ‘‘companion’’ in the majority opinion. I would require more than mere ‘‘guilt by association.’’ Ever mindful of Franklin’s admonition, we cannot use the omnipresent specter of safety as a guise to authorize government intrusion.

This is a law enforcement blank check. This allows police to use spurious reasons to detain people they just don’t want around — like eyewitnesses and photographers. This allows police to perform en masse detentions and gives them the opportunity to root around from something more than weak obstruction/interference charges. This eliminates the public’s right to live their lives unmolested by law enforcement officers. This makes simply existing “guilt by association.” If a criminal is arrested in your yard, you and everyone in your house and every rubbernecker on the street can be detained by officers in order to ensure their safety.

Just as troubling is the amount of creative thinking the court had to engage in to reach this horrific decision. Facts are no longer facts. Facts are just something to be considered or discarded at the court’s whim.

It is certainly very curious that the Supreme Court would take the extraordinary step of clarifying “factual findings” by the trial court in an effort to support the conviction, when the clear record below – the words said by the judge in open court – would support a reversal…

Where does it stop? Are facts only facts as long as they’re convenient? Are rights only rights as long as they don’t get in the way of governmental authority?

The Connecticut Supreme Court has delivered its public into the hands of a police state. Anyone, anywhere can be detained for absolutely no reason at all, and when they complain or file lawsuits, this ruling will allow officer safety to override all other concerns. If any facts are actually considered, they’ll be filtered through law enforcement sensibilities.

Filed Under: arrests, association, connecticut, connecticut supreme court, police