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orthogonal |
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New Member ![]() Group: Contributors Posts: 27 Joined: Member No.: 134 ![]() |
QUOTE I have mastered the art of surveillance. For the past four years I have meticulously watched the same woman through my telescope. I know every bra and pair of panties that she owns. I can describe, to the millimeter, the location of every blemish on her body. I have also learned endurance - I went the entirety of last March without touching myself as I watched her. . . . . In desperate situations, I have learned that I can kill another man. A month ago I went out and found a homeless man. I lured him to the railroad tracks and garroted him. The police have yet to name a suspect. I am confident that they never will. The experience was exhilarating, but not so exhilarating that I would consider myself a psychopath. I am confident I can keep my random murders down to one a month with minimal effort. Source I'm sure Fat Phil will explain he was just jerking around, not revealing his unsavory self. (Of course, he'll explain that his plea to "give jackbooted fascism a chance" on his user page is just a harmless joke too.) |
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Daniel Brandt |
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Postmaster ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Group: Regulars Posts: 2,473 Joined: Member No.: 77 ![]() |
Let's explore who is being "stupid" in this whole case. We're in a political climate where a patron of a public library notices a penciled-in quote from Osama Bin Laden in the margins of some book, and shows it to the librarian, and the FBI is called in and eagerly grabs the records of everyone who recently borrowed that book.
In other cases, librarians have acted more professionally. The FBI serves them with a national security letter (no judge's signature required), and under Patriot Act One they were required to cough up borrowing records. If the librarian told anyone the FBI had been there and done this, it's a felony. (Patriot Act Two has modified this, after much lobbying from the American Library Association, so that librarians have slightly more protection now.) Now we have Snowspinner. I think everyone acted reasonably in this case. The original complainer may have been sincerely worried, and it is their right to notify the proper authorities. The UF president took it seriously on its face, and properly referred it to the campus cops. The cops followed up and behaved reasonably. Snowspinner properly insisted, to an extent, on his right to remain silent and refuse fingerprinting. What was unreasonable? Surely something was unreasonable, because a lot of people got activated in a situation where Snowspinner says it was all silly and unnecessary. Let's look at two hypothetical situations where we have a crowded theater. Someone gets up and shouts, "Ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to yell 'Fire!' as loud as I can. Please do not get alarmed. This is only a test. I'm trying to see how far my voice carries." In the second situation, the person gets up and just yells "Fire!" What's the difference? In the first situation we have a meaningful disclaimer. In the second situation the perpetrator is properly hauled off to jail because when people stampede out of a crowded theater someone can get hurt. One is free speech, and the other is a crime. It is clear to me that Snowspinner should have included a fairly elaborate disclaimer on his blog post. He should have explained that he is a grad student and is exploring creative writing, and assuming the role of an unbalanced and dangerous protagonist in a purely fictional presentation. This disclaimer should have been on top, in a typeface that is larger than the rest of it. Better yet, don't even publish the damn thing on the web. Keep it in a drawer until it's time to show it to your professor if you're looking for constructive criticism. Or email it to your friends. Don't publish the thing on the web. Cops are cruising Myspace looking for child porn leads, and you think your blog is off-limits? It was stupid to do what you did. I think this stupidity came from the rush you've acquired from being an admin on Wikipedia. You owe your English Department, and the president of UF, an apology for doing something stupid. By the way, Snowspinner, as someone who has had some experience in these situations from the COINTELPRO days of the 1960s, let me give you some advice. If the next time you decide to be stupid you find the FBI knocking on your door instead of mere campus cops, you should do this: Politely ask them what it's about, and then politely confirm that they are not there to arrest you, and that they have no warrant to search, and politely say that you refuse to talk to them. You see, it's a felony for you to lie to the FBI, but it's okay for the FBI to lie to you and trick you. And they are damn good at it -- they do interviews all day long. They might present you with a waiver form, and ask you to sign it, and you refuse, and then they say, "Well, can we talk to you anyway?" Frequently it works, because you think you were smart for refusing to sign. What really transpired is that the FBI was smarter, because if you talk to them anyway, it makes zero difference that you refused to sign. This happened to me. In my draft trial, we introduced this issue. The judge would have none of it. He said, "You're a college graduate, and you shouldn't have been so stupid." The bottom line is this: Don't try to pull your Wikipedia tricks in the real world. It's not worth the trouble it will cause you. Martha Stewart will back me up on this. |
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