Comment by mrtesthah
1 day ago
Unfortunately not everyone in a group chat may be fully vetted, in which case they could be feds collecting "evidence". Some chats may have publicly circulating invite links.
But any judge that doesn't immediately reject such cases on a first-amendment basis is doing the business of an authoritarian dictator. This is fully protected speech and assembly.
> any judge that doesn't immediately reject such cases on a first-amendment basis
If you say something illegal in a chat with a cop in it, or say it in public, I don’t think there are Constitutional issues with the police using that as evidence. (If you didn’t say anything illegal, you have a valid defence.)
Not sure what difference that makes, it's not like the current regime limits their actions to respect constitutional bounds.
Sure. Can you give me an example of something that's illegal to say in a group chat that coordinates legal observers?
One of the things that has been circulating in videos of the Signal chats online is someone confirming/not confirming that certain license plates are related to ICE. Perhaps if someone is misusing their access to an administrative or law enforcement database to ‘run plates’ and report on who owns the vehicle, this could be unlawful.
I don’t know if anyone IS using such a database unlawfully - they might be checking the plate number against an Excel sheet they created based on other reports from people opposed to ICE - but if its a databse they shouldn’t be using in this way, if might be against the law.
3 replies →
> Can you give me an example of something that's illegal to say in a group chat that coordinates legal observers?
Actual examples? No. I don’t believe it happened.
Hypothetical examples? Co-ordinating gunning down ICE agents. If the chat stays on topic to “coordinat[ing] legal observers,” there shouldn’t be liability. The risk with open chats is they can go off topic if unmoderated.
"ICE are at (address)" apparently
> Unfortunately not everyone in a group chat may be fully vetted,
Curious how many group chats have unknowingly allowed a well known journalist into their groups.