Blogging All the Way to Jail 465
Glyn writes "Time magazine is reporting on Josh Wolf the 'first blogger to be targeted by federal authorities for not cooperating with a grand jury.' Josh would have normally been protected from government coercion by California state shield laws but the prosecutors have argued its a federal matter, using quite shaky logic. Josh's blog is being updated by his mother, providing updates on what is happening. From the article: '"Not only does this logic seem silly," Wolf told TIME in June after receiving his final subpoena, "but if unchallenged it will have a deleterious effect on the state protections afforded to many journalists, both independent and those that are part of the established media." Judge William Alsup of Federal District Court rejected Wolf's arguments, and declared him in contempt of court. So he is now being held in a detention center in Dublin, Calif, where he could remain until next July.'"
Re:why not hand the tape over (Score:3, Informative)
If you'd bothered reading the article before commenting, you'd know that he thinks the feds want video footage to identify activists not involved in the arson of the car.
Re:I don't know (Score:5, Informative)
Two sets of laws are in conflict here, question is which do you follow. Federal law is trying to get him to do something (turn over video) that state law explicitly says he does not have to do.
The ("a little shady") jurisdiction question is everything, you can't just say "jurisdiction issue aside..." because it is the issue.
Re:Thinking it Through: The Logic of Shield Laws (Score:5, Informative)
Oh, really now? [msn.com]
Re:Close to the last straw (Score:3, Informative)
Grassroots democracy and mass public relations campaigns basically break down somewhere between 10e6 and 10e8. Why? Taking it in physics terms, the inertia of the sheeple outweighs even a huge and aware minority.
Major corporations can laugh with derision at any sort of boycott. Does Disney cower when Dobbson's flock yell about Gay Day at the parks? Can five hundred small towns bring Wal*Mart to the mat when Wal*Mart dangles a carrot of a few hundred underpaid, underinsured jobs each?
You're never going to get 2/3 of Americans to vote the whole system out. You can't even get 2/3 of Americans to put one little amendment on the constitution very often, and that's small potatos compared to legislating a revolution.
Re:I don't know (Score:3, Informative)
Fortunately for Joe, the election in November is for "United States Senator from Connecticut" instead of "United States Senator from the Democratic Party of Connecticut."
Re:I don't know (Score:5, Informative)
You can get $600,000 in sweetheart deals just by donating $40,000 to a House campaign. [irregulartimes.com] Oh, and note that that's 25 people giving money, not 1 person.
Sure, two grand a person is a lot for representation, but look at the ROI. And it would only take 4,000 people donating $10 each to a cause to get this kind of treatment. Or 400 people giving $100 each.
The Revolution will be Televised (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Gateway (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Gateway (Score:4, Informative)
Perhaps because the shield law is about Protecting Unpublished Information and Confidential Sources [thefirstamendment.org] and specificly "all notes, outlines, photographs, tapes or other data of whatever sort" for the purpose of protecting "a journalist from being adjudged in contempt by a judicial, legislative, or administrative body, or any other body having the power to issue subpoenas, for the failure to comply with a subpoena."
So if he is a journalist, then he should be covered. I don't see how he could possibly not be a journalist. So he should be covered. It certainly feels as though the Feds are more or less saying, "You have it, we want it, we are taking it."
Re:Typical method of Fed intimidation (Score:3, Informative)
No, actually the stated ideal is that for democracy to work, we need to have an informed electorate. That means that journalism serves a purpose that is valuable and worth protecting. This is exactly why CA has a Journalistic Shield Law in place. What does trump the shield law is if a *defendent* requires the information, never (ever) a prosecutor. Note that the shield law is intended to shield a journalist from subpoenas, so "they issued a subpoena for his footage" is less than impelling.
What it comes down to is that the state of CA has laws that protect its citizens. The current federal administration's Dept of Justice doesn't give a rat's ass about such nicities.
No, no, no (Score:5, Informative)
NO. The courts are trying to get him to produce video of a crime that he supposedly witnessed. In fact, even when the video is turned in it might have no burning cars at all... but what it might have are the faces and identities of a bunch of protestors for the police to happily round up and put thumbscrews to. How often nowadays is being within the vicinity of lawbreakers seen as being involved with them, pretty damn often.
On for the record, the state laws do allow him to with-hold the tape, which is why the government has gone to dubious stretches of logic to make it a federal issue.
Re:Typical method of Fed intimidation (Score:5, Informative)
Here [nytimes.com] is a graphic that you don't need to pay for.
Googling for NYPD RNC edited tapes turns up a bunch of hits.
I was actually involved in this story - I volunteered to watch videos of the RNC protests to write logs for them for I-Witness Video. I logged the differences between the tapes, although it was someone else who first noticed the difference - Eileen Clancy, who's mentioned in the article. Also edited out, but not mentioned in the NYT article, is the NYPD beating the shit out of a black protestor.
Nor is this an isolated incident - the NYPD routinely denies that tapes exist. In an unrelated case, a witness's tape caught several plainclothes cops on camera with videotapes in one of these cases, and the NYPD said, "How do you know those are cops, that could be anyone." Eileen had to be called to the stand to testify that those people had been identified as cops in other videos before the NYPD (and DA's office) admitted that tapes existed and released them to the defense.
Or how about the Miami PD denying they attacked a first aid station during protests there in 2003, despite reports that the PD videotaped it?
I'd like to see the Feds take action in THOSE cases (the DOJ was supposed to look into the NYPD abuses, but Google turns up nothing after the initial announcement). Josh Wolf is a brave man, and his reasons for not providing the tape certainly, in the context of our country's law enforcement tactics, certainly outweigh the potential benefit of releasing the tape.
CA journalist shield law (Score:1, Informative)
I want to add a little context. Why does the federal government care about this case? You'd think they have more important things to do than investigate every alleged attempted arson on a municipal police car. There's no SFPD records of a damaged car from that night and no repairs were made. And the link to federal juridiction because they gave money which may have been used to pay for the car is tenuous at best.
There was an SFPD officer who was injured that night and the FBI and US Attorneys office are improperly collaborating with the SFPD to investigate it. There is a CA journalist shield law [thefirstamendment.org], but no federal shield law (much to the chagrin of Judith Miller). If they had played by their own rules and convened a state grand jury to investigate the injured officer, Josh would have been protected by this law and wouldn't be in custody now. The government is doing an end-run around these protections by using the federal grand jury and is lying about its motives.
Re:Unfortunately the ACLU is part of the problem (Score:4, Informative)
In slightly more depth; the ACLU did not "oppose" the recall election, they were instead attempting to ensure that each person who bothered to cast a vote had their vote counted. At that time it had been mandated that new voting machines be in place before the next general election, but 12 counties had not yet complied with the order (since they still had a significant amount of time before the next "regularly scheduled" election was to take place). The ACLU was pointing out that since the recall election would take place before the 12 counties wouold be able to get their act together, resulting in another election with wide-rannging impacts potenitally being decided by voting machines officially considered unreliable, the election should be delayed until those counties were able to comply.
Like usual, the right then jumped all over them (as you do) for getting involved in party politics, when in fact they were doing what they have done incredibly consistently in the past - attempting to protect the civil liberties that we enjoy, regardless of what narrow group it will harm or help in the short term. The ACLU is functioning perfectly well; the problem is that people like you consistently mis-interpret their fights to protect our basic rights and liberties in terms of who they are helping or hurting short-term; the same people who say how evil the ACLU is when they fight, for example, for the freedom of speech of groups that are widely despised.
Re:Gateway (Score:3, Informative)
I didn't realize there was such a difference in legal definitions until someone pointed me to this page. [rcfp.org] More can be found here [rcfp.org]. In california though, he seems to be considered a jounalist for a number of reasons but the most compelling is that a news agency already purchased some of his work reguarding this.
If some one witnessed a crime first hand, I don't see a problem with compelling them to give testimoney or evidence. If they didn't witness it first hand, then I can understand the hesitation. Lots of criminals get away with if because the witness is given an option to not provide evidence. This allows the criminals to create a sence of fear of reprisals if the witness helps. If they were compelled to testify or turn over evidence, this fear would be pointless. But that is a chicken and egg problem.
Many people who claim the press "should be free no matter what" would change thier minds if the press witnessed a crime commited directly against them. I have seen these positions reverse first hand when someone recorded a vehicle breakin resulting in over $5,000 in damages. The champion of free speech and freedom of the press turned into a whinning wimp complaining that the criminals (who he thinks he knows) would be caught if they could view the tape. Unfortunatly the tapes were destroyed as the story goes but after letting the person know that they recorded the crime and refusing to let the cops see it. Of course i doubt the reporter actualy recorded the instance, he was more likley antagonizing the person because of some other issues between them.