Mugshots.com Operators Arrested For Letting Money Influence Editorial Decisions
from the using-poor-inferences-to-unconstitutionally-prevent-other-poor-inferences dept
Earlier this month Ars Technica reported on the arrest of the alleged operators of Mugshots.com, a website that does what it says on the tin: hosts mugshots. The issue is, the site operators didn't just host mugshots; they also charged people to have their mugshots removed from the site through a companion site, Unpublisharrest.com.
Assuming the arrest warrant is fairly stating things, the site's operators may not have had the best of intentions in running their site the way they did. According to the facts alleged they were more interested in making money by charging people to have their pictures removed from their site than in serving as any sort of public records archive.
But it shouldn't matter why they pursued the editorial policy that they did. First of all, mugshots are generally public records, and for good reason. As South Dakota's attorney general Mark Jackley noted last year, when South Dakota declared them to be public records:
"The release of criminal booking photographs to the public will result in greater transparency in the criminal process, enhance public safety, and will further assist the media and the public in the proper identification of individuals in the criminal process."
People are ordinarily allowed to share public records on their websites, just as they may share any other lawful information. People are also free to be arbitrary and capricious in how they choose what information to share. They are even free to be financially motivated in making those decisions.
But according to authorities in California, if the decision on what information to share is linked to a profit incentive (from the arrest warrant: "The motive behind posting the damaging material is financial gain."), and that information is a mugshot, you go to jail. In the case of the Mugshots.com operators, authorities have predicated their arrest on some alarming statutory language:
As of January 1, 2015, California Civil Code Section 1798.91 .1, Subdivision makes it unlawful for any person engaged in publishing or otherwise disseminating a booking photograph through a print or electronic medium to solicit, require, or accept the payment of a fee or other consideration from a subject individual to remove, correct, modify, or to refrain from publishing or otherwise disseminating that booking photograph. By posting the booking photograph online, and requiring a fee to have it removed, the owners and operators of Mugshots.com and Unpublisharrest.com are operating their websites for an unlawful purpose.
In addition, the authorities construed what the operators of Mugshots.com did as identity theft:
California Penal Code Section 530.5 defines identify theft, stating: "Every person who willfully obtains personal identifying information . . . of another person, and uses that information for any unlawful purpose. . . without the consent of that person, is guilty of a public offense. Section 530.55 identifies a 'person' as a natural person, firm, company, corporation or any other legal entity. The section defines 'personal identifying information' as any 'name, address . . . or other unique physical representation.' Because Mugshots.com and Unpublisharrest.com have used, and continue to use, the booking photographs and PII of individuals for purposes of selling the service of removing the photographs and information, the owners are in violation of California Penal Code Section 530.5, identity theft, a felony."
Taken together, the arrest warrant concludes, the site operators are guilty of extortion and conspiracy to commit extortion. But to prove extortion prosecutors must show that the accused threatened a victim either with violence, the accusation of a crime, or the exposure of a secret, if they didn't pay the accused. Yet the defendants are accused of none of these things. Not only is there no issue of threatened violence, but what the site operators are alleged to have done in no way involves revealing a secret or accusing another of a crime. Instead it is the state that has already accused the site operators' purported "victims" of a crime, and its having done so is no secret. The state's accusation against these people became public when it originally released the mugshots, meaning there is nothing that the site operators could have been threatening to reveal that wasn't already revealed.
This apparently sloppy reading of the extortion statute, compounded with the 2015 statutory language giving mugshots a sort of magical status that prevents them from being treated as an ordinary public record, represents a chilling incursion on protected First Amendment activity. It's one thing to impose liability for publishing content that isn't lawful, perhaps because it's defamatory, infringing, or somehow intrinsically wrongful unto itself. But it's another thing entirely to impose liability for publishing content that is entirely lawful – especially, as in this case, when it is not only lawful but a public record.
California authorities would likely argue that the prosecution is not about liability for speech, but liability arising from the decisions about what speech got spoken. (Or, more particular to this case, remained spoken, for the state is not prosecuting the site operators for having posted the mugshots in the first place.) But this is a distinction without a difference. Indeed, decisions about what we choose to say can be as expressive as anything we actually do say. The government ordinarily does not get to come in and force us to make those decisions in any particular way. Freedom of expression means that we are at liberty to decide what to say, and then what not to say, for whatever reason we might decide. Even when these expressive choices are guided by a profit motive.
Were that not the case, think of how chilling it would be to profit-driven news media if their editorial decisions had to be free from any financial concern in order to retain First Amendment protection. Even in terms of mugshots themselves, think about how chilling it would be if others could not freely use them to tell us about the world around us, if there was money to be made in the process. As case in point, the very same week the arrest warrant was used to extradite the site operators back to California, the New York Times ran a story about the efforts of journalist and photographer Eric Etheridge to document the lives of Freedom Riders.
Among the important artifacts of this historic campaign are more than 300 mug shots taken of the Freedom Riders in Jackson, now the subject of “Breach of Peace: Portraits of the 1961 Mississippi Freedom Riders” (Vanderbilt University Press). In it, the journalist and photographer Eric Etheridge provides visual and oral histories of these courageous men and women, juxtaposing vintage mug shots with short biographies, interviews and contemporary portraits. Originally published in 2008, this expanded edition, with updated profiles and additional portraits…
It is a book that is for sale, so it would seem there is a profit motive somewhere. But consider whether this important historical work could be released if authorities in California – or, perhaps more saliently, in Mississippi, where the mugshots are from – could scrutinize the expressive decisions that went into the book's use of the pictures because it profited from that use.
Yet that's what the California authorities have decided they are entitled to do with the Mugshots.com site. The arrest warrant is dismissive towards the free speech interests of the site's operators, accusing them of "using freedom of speech theories in justifying the activity." Of course, that's what the First Amendment is for, to protect expressive activities that authorities do not like. And authorities really don't like what happened here.
As noted above, the optics in this case are not great. People felt desperate to have their mugshots removed from the Internet, and the site operators profited from that desperation. It feels criminal, but just because they may have had nefarious intent does not mean that they committed a crime. Just reading about the arrest brought to mind the Monty Python sketch where a bunch of gangsters connived a devious plot to go to a jeweler's to obtain an expensive watch - that they paid for.
Sure, it looks like they are up to no good, but to determine whether a crime has been committed we can't just consider how it looks. We have to look closely at the underlying lawfulness of the activity, not the optics surrounding it, and for the very same reason that California authorities are now interested in policing the use of mugshots: to prevent unwarranted inferences of criminal culpability. As the New York Times wrote about the Freedom Riders book:
If these mug shots inadvertently captured the humanity and special qualities of their principled subjects, as Mr. Etheridge observed, their intention was nefarious: to publicly impugn and humiliate people whose only crime was to advocate equality through peaceful protest. No matter their purpose, mug shots inevitably imply aberrance or delinquency, whether or not the people they depict are eventually found to be guilty.
But that's what the California prosecutors have done: impute "aberrance or delinquency" to draw unwarranted inferences about criminal culpability from an act that the law cannot constitutionally criminalize. This inference has already been used to strip the site operators of their constitutional right to express themselves anonymously due to at least three search warrants that were served on their service providers. These warrants were issued upon probable cause, but the only probable cause that can be construed here is that the site operators engaged in expressive activity authorities did not like. Efforts by these authorities to now extradite, further prosecute, and potentially leave the site operators vulnerable to civil damages should not be cheered by anyone who might prefer not to experience the same as a result of their own lawful expression.
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Filed Under: california, editorial choices, extortion, first amendment, free speech, mugshots, public records
Companies: mugshots.com
Reader Comments
The First Word
“Them today, you tomorrow
You should be upset. Yes the site owners come across as seriously slimy, but the very same first amendment protections that are being trampled to get to them are the ones that protect you if someone decides that they don't much care for something you said.
I don't think you'll find anyone arguing that want they were/are doing is anything less than seriously scummy, but as far as I can tell it is entirely legal(though the 'pay us and we'll remove it' does seem to veer into questionable territory), which means they're not being punished for violating the law, they're being punished simply because someone in power felt like bringing the hammer down on them, and if ignoring what the law actually says is acceptable, then whether or not you follow it is no longer relevant, merely 'have you offended/annoyed someone powerful enough to make you regret it?'
made the First Word by Ninja
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*meh*
Same for news sites that put mugshots up. That’s just foul.
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You're operating under the implicit assumption that "accusing another of a crime" is a thing that can only be done one time by one entity. I see no good reason why this should be considered the case. Seems to me their business model consists of accusing people of crimes (that the state has also accused them of), in a centralized location that is easier for the public to find than wherever the various states publish them, and then extorting them to get it taken down.
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Them today, you tomorrow
You should be upset. Yes the site owners come across as seriously slimy, but the very same first amendment protections that are being trampled to get to them are the ones that protect you if someone decides that they don't much care for something you said.
I don't think you'll find anyone arguing that want they were/are doing is anything less than seriously scummy, but as far as I can tell it is entirely legal(though the 'pay us and we'll remove it' does seem to veer into questionable territory), which means they're not being punished for violating the law, they're being punished simply because someone in power felt like bringing the hammer down on them, and if ignoring what the law actually says is acceptable, then whether or not you follow it is no longer relevant, merely 'have you offended/annoyed someone powerful enough to make you regret it?'
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Re: Them today, you tomorrow
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Re:
Seems to me their business model consists of accusing people of crimes (that the state has also accused them of), in a centralized location that is easier for the public to find than wherever the various states publish them, and then extorting them to get it taken down.
That strikes me as a similar argument that I've seen in other cases, where the one bringing a lawsuit claims that republishing something defamatory(generally in the form of reporting on it) is the same thing as making the defamatory statement in the first place. The state is the one making the accusations, they are merely republishing them with a 'what they said'.
Now if they were accusing them of different crimes that would of course be an entirely different manner, but if simply repeating what the state has already said counted as a new accusation then the only people who would ever be able to use mugshots and the info related to them would be the state.
Centalization I don't see as an issue either, as unless the state has taken steps to make it more difficult to find booking info then it seems it's merely a difference in who's running the database with the info in question, the state or a private individual.
Is what they were/are doing incredibly slimy? Absolutely. The question though is does it rise to the level of extortion, and while it certainly comes across as veering very close to it, the fact that the 'incriminating' information is already made available to the public by the state would seem to undercut that.
This is one of those cases that leave a foul taste in your mouth. What they're doing is disgusting, but it does seem to be constitutional, which means it should be legal, and as such to defend my rights I'm in the position of defending the rights of some right sleazeballs.
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Your usual legalisms in favor of sleazy grifters.
Clearly unlawful by the statute you quote...
Oh, yes it does! If to We The People it "feels criminal" to gain money for REMOVING shaming, then basically it is. Add the "nefarious intent" that you admit, and in formal setting / decision process of a court (esp a jury), it's "extortion" beyond reasonable doubt.
If site operators don't want to risk outraged citzens who find their actions over some line you think vague, then let THEM stay well clear of our notions of common decency, NOT society tolerate ever more SLEAZY ways to gain money.
By the way, ain't it amazing that I'M against publishing mugshots to shame people accused of crimes? That's because I'm a real libertarian, and this is a corporation profiting from human misery: this corp produces nothing, gets its content for free, as always is the "new business model" here at Techdirt.
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Re: Re: Them today, you tomorrow
This isn't 'pay up or we will trash you', it's 'pay up and we'll take down official and public information related to you'.
Dodgy and slimy as hell, yes. Extortion, given the source and availability of the information they're reposting, not so much.
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I'm not sure why California decided to make this a criminal issue though.
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Important issue not addressed
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Re: Re: Re: Them today, you tomorrow
I don't find anything above at all persuasive as to why a mugshot should automatically be a publicly-available "public record." Fingerprints, too? Photos of victims used in a prosecution? I can see when there should be times a mugshot can become publicly available (e.g. if a convict or arrestee has escaped or jumped bail), but not any reason it must automatically be merely because the government took it.
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sounds like Georgia
Probably because somebodies little peach got a DUI at 17 and she offed herself.
It probably wasn't because some sheriffs officers arrested a County Commissioner on trumped up DUI charges ang got his mugshot on the front page of the AJC.
If they had gone for "DUI Less Safe", he'd have never been able to buy his way out of it.
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Re: Your usual legalisms in favor of sleazy grifters.
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Re: Re:
What do you mean by this? Taking it to its logical conclusion (nothing the Constitution does not forbid should be illegal) would involve a bunch of truly absurd things, considering that the constitution says nothing about murder, robbery, or rape, just for starters. Since that's clearly not what you actually meant, would you mind clarifying?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Them today, you tomorrow
I don't find anything above at all persuasive as to why a mugshot should automatically be a publicly-available "public record." Fingerprints, too? Photos of victims used in a prosecution? I can see when there should be times a mugshot can become publicly available (e.g. if a convict or arrestee has escaped or jumped bail), but not any reason it must automatically be merely because the government took it.
That I can certainly see and find persuasive. If there's a pressing need for the public to know about someone, like say an individual escapes custody and there's good reason to believe that they pose a real danger to those around them, then yeah, having the picture available would make sense. Other than that though, what purpose does it serve other than 'name and shame'?
However, so long as they are public, and the state is making them available, then reposting them would seem to be constitutional, and therefore legal, even if, as noted, 'pay us to take them down' is all sorts of scummy.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Them today, you tomorrow
Whether it should be may be a good question, but it's outside the scope of this case. Mugshots are public records, whether you believe they should be or not; therefore, disseminating them is legal.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Them today, you tomorrow
Someone shows up at arraignment looking all beat up, then the public has a pressing need to know whether the physical damage occurred before or after booking.
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Re: Re: Re:
Constitutional in the sense of free speech and the exercise thereof, which at times like this can involve free speech by scumbags.
Yes what they're going with the information they're posting is sketchy as hell, and skirts very close to extortion with their 'pay us to take it down', but at the core they're reposting something someone else(in this case the state) said, which would seem to fall under the cover of free speech and therefore protected.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Them today, you tomorrow
Which would also fall under the 'exception to the rule', as that would involve a need for the picture to be made, if not public, then at least known to the court.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Them today, you tomorrow
The arraignment is a public proceeding, 'cause truth be known, we don't trust the judge as far as we throw his honor.
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Re: Re: Them today, you tomorrow
The root problem here is the state making mugshots and accusations public rather than private.
If these shots weren't published *already* - by the state itself - then these guys couldn't have done this to start with.
The state is demanding more power to fix a problem caused by the state.
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Re:
All they're doing is collecting in one place, all the accusations the state has made.
Look - if we allow these guys to be prosecuted, we basically allow the state the power to shut down anyone who posts publicly available information.
Yeah, these guys are scum. No argument there. But there's larger stakes in play here.
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Re:
Why would these guys have a greater responsibility to do so than the state?
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Re: Re: Re: Them today, you tomorrow
Just for the moment, set aside the mugshots, and focus on the accusations.
Should the accusations be read in open court to the accused, shortly following arrest?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Them today, you tomorrow
I don't find anything above at all persuasive as to why a mugshot should automatically be a publicly-available "public record."
"Should" has nothing to do with it. They ARE public records under existing law. Therefore, this is about public records. That you think they should not be public records is a different issue entirely.
Given that they are currently public records, the arrest here is worrisome in the extreme.
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It's capitalizing on societal attitudes.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Them today, you tomorrow
The Declaration Of Inspector Sara Delaney In Support Of Arrest Warrants states that Mugshots.com publishes “confidential information”.
p.10 (p.14 in PDF) (with added emphasis):
p.21 (p.25 in PDF):
Confidential information is not a public record.
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Re: It's capitalizing on societal attitudes.
Let's try again (<enter> in the Subject field posts right away)
Employers in the current clime don't like people who've had even a run-ins with the law. It doesn't matter if they were found innocent or arrested for resisting arrest or whatever, our job market is such that they can choose between people who've encountered law enforcement and those that have not.
Since such prejudice exists, it would be like listing known gays or known Jews or known Klan members and then facilitating a payment schedule to keep one's own record off the database.
While I can't speak for good real solutions to it, a good counter list will be a list of known employers who don't hire people who have a mug shot would help.
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It's simple extortion
Hey, I found out that you've got some nasty convictions on your record - after all, it's public information. But none of your neighbors or cow orkers are aware of your transgressions, so pay me or I tell them.
That's extortion/blackmail, plain as day, using nothing more than public information.
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Fair Report Privilege [was Re: ]
California Civil Code § 47
“Fair and true report” is the language used in the California statute, but it's generally referred to, in most states, as simply the fair report privilege.
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It also goes to what seems what I see as a common problem' It amounts to extrajudicial punishment being handed out when you haven't been convicted of anything.
I don't know the answer as I do believe in the 1st amendment. I do know however that it's unfair to punish someone who has don't nothing more than be at the whim of an officer in a bad mood.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Them today, you tomorrow
That's a false assertion, as noted in the story above. The images posted are public documents.
Just as a hypothetical, could you make the same charges (identity theft, extortion) by posting selfies found on facebook?
Hint: copyright. But "confidential"?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Them today, you tomorrow
p.22 (p.26 in PDF)
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Them today, you tomorrow
From the same page:
'mugshots (dot) com is website that publishes the names, booking photographs, arrest information, and the personal identifying information (PII) of individuals who have been arrested.'
Which of that is 'confidential information'? It's certainly not the name or photos, it's probably not the arrest information as I would guess that's also involved in the mugshots that the state makes public(otherwise you'd have situations of 'Person X has been charged with violating [REDACTED] law')... the only possible match would be the 'personal identifying information', and that's assuming that's something beyond place of residence, phone number and so on, as that sort of stuff is also public information.
If it's confidential information that's meant strictly for use within the courts/law enforcement you can be all but certain that there would be CFAA charges involved for 'unauthorized access of a secure network'. That this doesn't seem to be the case would seem to argue that the extra information was also publicly available.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Them today, you tomorrow
Should read as, “The relevant identifying information for …”
That was my omission in typing.
I observe that the 2018 California Rules of Court web page for Rule 2.550. Sealed records contains a note on the rule's history.
(Highlighting added.)
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Blackmail-- can two legal acts be combined to make a crime?
This question has been around long enough to post to Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackmail#Objections
An analogy is sometimes made to drunk driving: it is legal to get drunk and legal to drive, but combining the two poses a criminal risk to other drivers on the road.
On the general subject of dirtbags on the edge of the law, I prefer California's approach to one witnessed by Sherlock Holmes:
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Adventure_of_Charles_Augustus_Milverton
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separating fools from their money
Desperate & deluded people do desperate & deluded things, and exploiting that fact seems to be this website operation's primary business model. Paying a few hundred dollars for "reputation laundering" might seem like a good deal if somehow, perhaps even magically, doing so rewarded the person with employment, friendship, romance, and a host of other benefits that these people feel were deprived from them specifically due to their arrest record.
But the cold hard reality is that the person's mugshot and arrest record will remain publicly available, essentially forever, from the same police databases it was originally harvested from, and besides its continued availabity on official sources, there's nothing to prevent additional copycat websites from continually popping up, each demanding payment to remove a person from its site.
Just as the Church of Scientology (and Barbara Streisand) discovered long ago, sooner of later these fools will realize that you can't fight the internet.
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Re: Re: Re: Them today, you tomorrow
I'd say it's still extortion, for the following reasons:
1. Knowledge. Yes, *you* know it's publicly accessible information, but do the people being asked to pay? If they were misled into thinking it was only available on that website, it's still extortionate even if the facts state that the photos were public record.
2. Threat of publicity. I know for a fact that I've seen photos that originated from the mugshots site that have gone viral, to the point where one forum I frequent used to do a weekly "best of" thread. Some of those photos remain as popular memes to this day. I don't recall having seen too many that originated with people going to the actual public source of the photos, but aggregators like these can lead to embarrassing publicity far easier. The cops usually aren't going to spread the photos across the web far beyond their own records, but the website owners might threaten to make it very visible if they don't get paid.
The extortion is therefore not dependant upon whether or not the photos can be accessed elsewhere, but whether or not they're deliberately publicised. If I threaten to doxx you using your address and phone number unless you pay me, it's still extortion even if they're publicly listed in the phone book. That threat of publicity under condition of payment is still blackmail, even if the information to be published is known on public record.
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They should've left CA alone!!
to LEGALLY screw people over for $ and NOW that some states that did something about it LATER (after the fact) and assumed this "West Indies" company would RESPECT THE LAW!!!
Clearly they belong in jail and the author doesnt relize
his first point of the "Mugshot law" IS the extortion!!
Just like how cyberbullying was filed under "Stalking"
in most states, Mugshot removal fees was filed under CA
law as part of the "Extortion" statute of the state and
over 3 years ago at that!! So SO glad criminals in the past
screwed it up for Sarid and Keesee, by extorting people in
another state and factually being safe until the extortion laws started to change to include cross-state extortionist acts!! The MAIN reason they're screwed is because they went
with the VICTIM'S jurisdiction and NOT offender's!!
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Re: Re:
In some cases they do. There are people who have been found not guilty or had the charges against them dismissed with the court ordering the records of their arrest to be expunged. This is because those ever arrested can still face ruinous discrimination. For example, there are many employers and landlords who exclude anyone who has ever been arrested, whether they were convicted or not. Mugshots.com extorts people to remove those records.
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Re: Them today, you tomorrow
It was a very didactic moment for me and I wanted to share with you and the rest of the community. I can understand those flagging your comment. The behavior these people are displaying is disgusting, it feels like extortion for sure and they come out of this generally looking bad. But we should not let that feeling of "they got what they deserve" swipe our reason. They have not committed any crime under current laws and they are protected by the Constitution. As you said, it leaves a foul taste like when I remind people that ACLU protected despicable kkk members on 1st amendment grounds and won. Thankfully. And I say thankfully with a very bad taste in my mouth. But if we want to make sure we preserve our freedoms and our protections from government overreach we should devote special care for the cumbags of the world that are despicable but deserve the same protections. Because when we decide that somebody doesn't deserve them it's a situation where everybody loses.
I urge my fellow readers who flagged the comment to take a moment and rethink it. That One Guy is not defending the scumbags. He is defending our collective freedom of speech. Sadly but fortunately it is valid to the scum of the world as well.
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Re: Your usual legalisms in favor of sleazy grifters.
It must be added that I'm not defending their actions. It's slimy and disgusting as hell but it's not illegal. If you are uncomfortable with it then go talk to your legislators and see if a law can be put on the books to avoid such behavior. A Constitutional law of course.
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Re: Blackmail-- can two legal acts be combined to make a crime?
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Re: They should've left CA alone!!
For doing something questionable but lawful? Let's try something: let's suppose you are a cartoonist and you specialize in drawing erotic content that's somewhat violent and you create a cartoon that depicts rape in it's all, uncensored and explicit glory. I may find it questionable, tons of moral police govt folks might find it questionable. You keep creating such material over and over and making it public on your site. Should you be arrested because you are doing stuff that people think it's disgusting and generally sleazy?
So don't be so fast to condemn when it's not explicitly criminal under the law. I'm with you when you say they are sleazy bastards but I don't want pseudo-laws being wielded around to arrest people because it may be turned against me.
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Re: Re: They should've left CA alone!!
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Re: Re:
No. It's not the posting of publicly available information that's objectionable; it's the extorting people into paying them to remove it, and I'm just fine with allowing the state the power to smack down people who do that!
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Re: Re: Re:
- Copying publicly available information
- Posting it on another website
- Demanding payment from people to remove it from that website, with the implication that embarrassing publicity would occur if not paid, that would not be happening with the original source
It's the third act that's being prosecuted here, and it's independent of whether or not the information itself is public. It would make the case for extortion more clear cut if this we previously private/hidden info. But, it's not necessary for the third activity to be extortionate. As I said above, if I threaten to advertise your home address and phone number on a website if you don't pay me, it shouldn't matter that I originally obtained the info from a phone book or directory enquiries. It's still an attempt at extortion.
I am no lawyer, nor American, of course. But, that's how I'm reading it. I'll welcome corrections, but the legal availability of the photos is not the thing at question here.
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Re: Re: They should've left CA alone!!
I don't understand. California has the following law:
>It shall be unlawful practice for any person engaged in publishing or otherwise disseminating a booking photograph through a print or electronic medium to solicit, require, or accept the payment of a fee or other consideration from a subject individual to remove, correct, modify, or to refrain from publishing or otherwise disseminating that booking photograph.
So how can you call it "lawful"?
Yes, you can publish booking photos. That's your First Amendment right. But you aren't allowed to then require a payment to take them down. it's the payment, not the publishing, which is illegal, so I don't think this law violates the First Amendment.
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Re: tl;dr
Huh? It's cited in the article.
The question isn't "what law says this is illegal?"; that question's been answered. The question is, does that law pass constitutional muster, and is it a good law?
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Re: Re: Re: They should've left CA alone!!
*Nit pick, I don't think this is a free speech issue. I think its a free press issue. But the particulars are not particularly important.
Via "Lex iniusta non est lex", the action may be considered lawful if the law that outlaws it is invalid (such as for being unconstitutional).
Not saying it is; just saying it potentially is.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Them today, you tomorrow
Hmm, you make a good case. I'll grant that it absolutely feels like extortion(that has been pretty clear from the outset), no doubt about that, the question is does it rise to the legal definition, of which I'm not so sure. At the moment I'm leaning towards 'no' due to the public nature of the information and because of what a precedent could mean for other, non-scumbags who published publicly available information that might be inconvenient if known.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Them today, you tomorrow
I think the real problem stems from our society automatically assuming guiltiness based on merely accusations. But we also shouldn't naively allow potential dangers to roam freely which is why we incarcerate people, based on the accusations, until a court determines innocence.
So it comes down to making a judgement call whether the needs for privacy of the accused out way the needs for awareness by the public. It's not a perfect solution but I'm glad it errors on the side of the publics right to know.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Them today, you tomorrow
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Them today, you tomorrow
But that's not a thing. "The public has a right to know" is an often-used phrase, but that's not really a legal principle.
The First Amendment grants a right to free speech and freedom of the press -- which means that individuals and publishers have the right to share information, not that the public has a right to know something.
Whether something is of public interest can be a factor in determining whether or not speech falls outside the First Amendment, but nonetheless, that's not the same thing as a legally-enshrined public right to know things.
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publicly available information, inconvenient if known
Like which people are known to be gay? Or what people are known to be Jewish? Or what people are known to be liberals? Mormons? Irish? Klansmen? Muslims? Freemasons? Skateboarders? White Nationalists? Antifa? People with nudes on line?
Have I touched on any group you'd rather not be outed to employers, law enforcement and hate groups?
While I'd like to believe that human beings can rise to being entirely rational and not use such information to discriminate against others, so, so often they don't, and I've lost faith that they might rise beyond bigotry anytime in the foreseeable future, especially while scarcities make for a desire to scapegoat.
As it is, eventually we'll have to live in an era where anything about each of us is discoverable, just as we'll have to live in an era where those who want guns will be able to print molds and turn them into working prototypes. But hopefully we can change our data culture before then, much the way we hope to change gun culture when access to guns cannot be inhibited by law.
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Re:
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Re: Re: Re: Them today, you tomorrow
"As of January 1, 2015, California Civil Code Section 1798.91 .1, Subdivision makes it unlawful for any person engaged in publishing or otherwise disseminating a booking photograph through a print or electronic medium to solicit, require, or accept the payment of a fee or other consideration from a subject individual to remove, correct, modify, or to refrain from publishing or otherwise disseminating that booking photograph. By posting the booking photograph online, and requiring a fee to have it removed, the owners and operators of Mugshots.com and Unpublisharrest.com are operating their websites for an unlawful purpose."
Like "collusion" is not a crime, it is a requisite for the crime of conspiracy.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Them today, you tomorrow
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Them today, you tomorrow
But what the site does is display the public record that the state has ALREADY published, and then offer to edit out the photo if a fee is paid. There is no 'or else' to it.
If the state published the wrong photo there might be grounds for a defamation case, but that would properly be against the state.
All the website operators do to increase the exposure of the photos that the states don't is they make all the state's records available in one spot, rather than having to do 50 mugshot searches.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Them today, you tomorrow
If the state publishing public records is a violation of privacy, then prosecute/sue them for that.
If it's truly public information, then denying someone access would be a violation of a statutory right. And that's a federal crime.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Them today, you tomorrow
I disagree. There's the implied "pay us or else we will continue to publicise it as we are currently doing". The fact that they started publicity before demanding payment doesn't change that.
"All the website operators do to increase the exposure..."
...unless they receive a fee. Exactly my point.
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Re: Re: tl;dr
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Them today, you tomorrow
Agreed.
IMO the relevant factor is the fact that they are expecting to get the people whose information is being publicized to pay them in order to cease publication.
Disseminating publicly-available information more broadly than it would otherwise reach is not, and should not be, illegal.
Doing it when the people the information is about do not want it disseminated is not, and should not be, illegal. (Consider reporters covering a scandal about some public figure.)
Doing that for a profit motive is not, and should not be, illegal. (Even assuming that the reporters from the previous example did not have a profit motive, consider someone writing an unauthorized biography.)
But in that last case, the profit is meant to come from third parties who are interested in the information, and by way of the dissemination itself - not by way of ceasing dissemination.
When the intent is for the profit to come from the parties who do not want the information to be disseminated - when you're saying "if you don't want this information widely publicized, pay me" - that IMO crosses the line into (attempted) extortion.
(Although it occurs to me that that description could apply to things like the hush-money cases which have been much in the political news lately...)
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Re: Re: Re: tl;dr
California Civil Code § 1798.91.1
Very plainly, this statute does not contemplate the available civil action as excluding “other sanctions, penalties, or remedies”. Clearly, it's not exclusive.
“[P]rovided by law” may mean other civil or criminal law.
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Stone Cold Look
Yesterday, Scott Greenfield over at Simple Justice posted his short take, “Neither Mugshots Nor Schadenfruede Is A Crime (May 24, 2018), linking back to this Techdirt article.
(Embedded hyperlink points here.)
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Them today, you tomorrow
It's certainly not as definite as—
Even Cal. Const. Art I. Sec.3 (b) (1)—
—is not as definite as Cal. Const. Art. I Sec. 14—
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Them today, you tomorrow
Arguing merely that “They ARE public records” —capital ARE by diktat— fails to sufficiently account for the great weight of the public interests in this particular class of public records.
We're not talking about the minutes of some zoning commission meeting. If the state insists that zoning commission meeting minutes are “confidential information”, then where, really, is the great and immediate loss of individual liberty?
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has anyone read this document associated with the crime?
scroll to court
This isn't about 1st Amendment protections. It's about a criminal mafia disguised as a "news organization", that is not recognized in any of the 50 united states, laundered money to offshore bank accounts, through fraud, extortion, and identity theft. It's not even a state to state issue, nor is it the responsibility for each and every citizen to just suck it up. This is a matter of national security in the highest degree and a real cybersecurity threat, through social engineering, by distorting the law, confusing legal experts, and trying to challenge the 1st Amendment entirely. In short, it's an act of war against all Americans, through cybercrime extortion.
Cyberextortion is a crime and does not protect organized criminal enterprises 1st amendment protections for committing all of the related crimes associated with mugshots.com and affiliated enterprise such as unpublish.com.
Again, though this is seen as a 1st Amendment issue, it's a cybercrime issue, and shouldn't be misconstrued that the individuals are in any way running a "legitimate business, though scummy practices, like many others, therefore, they have 1st Amendment protections". It's a national security threat, extortion ever American Citizen who has a booking arrest record, which is probably.
Keep in mind that roughly "70 million Americans have a criminal record — that’s one in three adults."
And, The FBI considers anyone who has been arrested on a felony charge to have a criminal record, even if the arrest did not lead to a conviction. The FBI only counts those with a misdemeanor if a state agency asks the bureau to keep it on file.
So by the FBI’s standard, 73.5 million people in the United States had a criminal record as of June 30 2017.
The Census Bureau lists the adult population in the United States at 249.4 million. That means the FBI considers about 29.5 percent of adults to have a criminal record.
When the big picture begins to sink in that this cyber extortion website operating in public yet with the operation of a black market, then any litigation about the issue about "if" mugshots.com has 1st Amendment protections, it turns to be organized crime and a matter of national security.
Also, before commenting a rebuttal about what I am saying(keep in mind a cybersecurity professional), read the court document in its entirety(see link PDF) because, though Techdirt does have solid reporting, who I read from on the regular if not daily. Again it's not a 1st Amendment issue, though it's the topic at hand most are arguing here, instead, it's a carefully socially engineered criminal mafia-style organized crime.
source>https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/09/mugshot-website-must-face-class-action-f or-charging-to-remove-photos/
P.s. I am not promoting the article from arstechica.com, I am merely sourcing where I obtained another different court document that pertains to this subject.
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The big picture is entirely misconstrued and misunderstood
FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF ILLINOIS
EASTERN DIVISION.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Them today, you tomorrow
by what you are saying then the governement should have a manadate for copyright of those images. so peoppe can view images as public record but could bot redistrubute. ie create their own website displaying these images. not only for the payme and I'll take it down. but also advertising gain public recognition. There's still reputational gain from creating the site and many other ways they have profited from exposing people or some or a lot of the times have turned up innocent. this causes a lot of damage to the individual.
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