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[PA Comic] Monday, July 8, 2013 - Near Miss
Geth
LegionPerseus VeilRegistered User, Moderator, Penny Arcade Staff, Vanilla Staff vanilla
LegionPerseus VeilRegistered User, Moderator, Penny Arcade Staff, Vanilla Staff vanilla
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Honestly I'm not sure if it's scarier that he got arrested for it or that the comment sections on several sites seem to be of the opinion he deserved it for saying dumb shit on the internet.
I feel the same way about this as I do about the stories of people making 'jokes' about blowing up planes while checking in at the airport, or 'joking' about threatening the Presidents life, and getting in trouble for it.
There are some subjects you shouldn't joke about, not just because it can be offensive and upsetting, but because the people involved are specifically paid not to have a sense of humour about this shit.
If a plane blows up or the President gets shot, who would want to be the person who has to say 'Oh yeah, the guy said something about that, but then he said "jk lol" afterwards, so we didn't take it seriously.'? Sure, 99.9% of the time it's nothing, but they have to check into it on the chance that it's the 0.1%.
It's an incredibly overblown reaction, but they're completely justified to look into it in the first place.
But people should also not be saying stupid shit, especially if it's violent in any way. It doesn't matter if you were being sarcastic or jokey; that doesn't always come across in text. If it got specific in any way then I could understand having law enforcement investigate. But arrest? I dunno.
This is one of those big hurdles we're gonna have to deal with in terms of having an absolute response, legally speaking, and it can go either way in terms of being handled extremely poor.
PSN: TheBrayster_92
According to the article the hearing hasnt actually happened yet.
OK, fine. I doubt he'll get it, and this will all blow over. Maybe he'll learn that if you have to say "lol jk" after a statement intended to be funny, it wasn't that funny in the first place. The courts aren't the people who should be teaching that, though.
I'd be happy with giving these idiots a spell doing community service picking up trash, jailing teenagers for saying stupid things is a step too far.
Making people "an example" is always a terrible logic (mostly aimed for the "he deserves it" comments on The Escapist).
That said, I have never trusted Facebook and use it as little as possible. So yeah.
he's already been jailed for two months. Whatever a reasonable response to this kind of thing was, the state of texas is by now well past it.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
Well you see, now we're in the territory of "it's better to lock up ten innocent people than to allow one guilty person to go free".
Which is exactly why this kid should not be charged with terrorism offenses, once the "T" word comes out it gives the government carte blanche to ignore due process.
I don't even like these things when they're used against actual terrorists but when they're being used to run roughshod over the rights of people who were obviously never intended to be charged with terrorism I hate them even more. We're starting to see the real ugly side of these laws now they're being used against us.
The context of his remark wasn't an actual statement of intent. So if the (state) government did nothing in response in this case, nothing would've happened at all. Which is really the way this all should have gone down in the first place. If anything it demonstrates that our flagging of things for preventive law enforcement - in this case reported to the authorities - lacks any investigation. It's a shitty automated process that merely seeks the use of combinations of words and then acts. That is dangerous.
And the people who screamed "Why didn't this kid get locked up!" would be wrong. Under the banner "mental health care", people seem to think we need to start arresting people before they commit crimes. Wanting to shoot up a school isn't a mental health problem--it's called being a horrible person. But "we don't arrest people for being creepy", and we don't arrest people for being horrible people. We arrest people for breaking the law--which means they have to actually break the law before we should be able to arrest them.
Amended: I realized this comes across like I'm ranting at warhawk, which is not what I intended. I realize you were just saying that's how people would respond, not how you would respond; and that even though the way you described things shouldn't be how things work, it is how things work.
There are a few areas where there's an absolute 'arrest first ask questions later' policy, because waiting until someone actually breaks a law is way, way too risky.
Look at the aforementioned threatening the President/ bomb threat at an airport. You don't want to just wait until it looks like someone's actually going to follow up on that, because there's a chance you won't be able to stop them from hurting someone if it gets that far.
The information the police had to act on was: Someone said they were going to shoot up a school.
Even odds that they didn't have an actual transcript of what he said, and even if they did, sarcasm is subjective at the best of times, especially in (out of context) text.
Just on that basis, they had to look into it, and given the fallout after Sandy Hook, you can bet they were going to err well on the side of caution.
The two months in jail thing is down to the legal system, which is really it's own problem, but that's not the cops' fault. Their job isn't to dispense justice, it's to keep the peace. Once he's not a position to carry out his 'threat', their job is done, and the lawyers and judges can work out what happens next.
I mean, considering that there has been two months they should have had time to search his house, check his financials for any rented off-premise storage etc.
And then either closed the case and sent him free or released him pending trial with a stern warning to not leave the city.
Idiots.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Also, I think it's even better when you just look at the last panel without the context from the first two.
steam | Dokkan: 868846562
I appreciate the thought, but I took it as intended. To be clear, I'm not saying we should lock people up for what they say on Facebook, but it seems like every time there is a shooting, someone finds a comment on a social media sight that the perpetrator made. Then we have the hand wringing and the yelling of "Why wasn't anything done?" The reality is that safety is an illusion, all you can do is try to stack the deck in your favor. Either we live in a police state where anything you say can be used to arrest you (not safe), or a free society in which bad things happen sometimes, and all you can do is try to minimize it and make sure you know how to get out of trouble. (still not safe, but preferable)
Amen, the "Patriot Act" has got to go, it was a bad idea passed under Bush, and one Obama seems disinclined to deal with. I don't want my government to have leave to indefinitely detain someone, that is so ripe for abuse it isn't even funny....
Blame Canada.
"His old address was near a school"
fucking christ. What kind of a person works themselves into this sort of a froth on the regular? I would be more comfortable thinking it was a person who just wanted to fuck with him than someone who actually thought they were being a good human being because they can't understand things.
The Kotaku article:
http://kotaku.com/a-serious-somber-francis-weighs-in-on-jailed-league-of-671783890
The previous NPR article:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2013/07/03/198129617/teen-jailed-for-facebook-comment-reportedly-beat-up-behind-bars?utm_source=npr&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=20130703
The mother's heart-wrenching petition plea:
http://www.change.org/petitions/release-my-son-justin-carter-in-jail-for-a-facebook-comment
Based on the NPR article, the kid is getting his shit pushed in by fellow inmates, and then locked naked in solitary. He was 18 when he made the comment.
Ah, makes sense. Good thing Penny Arcade doesn't fall under those categories.
What kind of sick bastard thinks this is funny only months after Sandy Hook? I hope he's laughing his head off while sitting naked in that jail on suicide watch. I guess we will never again get to experience the "comedic stylings" of Justin Carter (God willing). Hopefully other budding "comedians" out there will take heed, but I doubt it.
Terrorism isn't restricted to people of Middle Eastern descent and I'm saddened that Jerry - who's usually got a solid vocabulary - screwed the pooch this time on such a basic concept. Where the fuck did "Osama Bin Laden" come from?!
posting LICD should be a bannable offense.
not just here mind you. i mean on the internet.
(i wouldn't advocate throwing someone in jail for it though, that's going too far)
steam | Dokkan: 868846562
Aren't we first supposed to present evidence that will allow us to keep someone in jail beyond a certain point?
I'm sorry to those of you that I'm about to offend, but these are the hard facts of life. The fact that someone says something that is in poor taste to you does not mean that person should be punished for saying something, no matter how horrible you may think it is. Especially on the internet. Those who know League of Legends understand that 100x worse things are said 24/7 in game and on forums between people who play the game.
Sure, if I start blabbing that I'm going to blow up a school, I absolutely expect some law enforcement agency to investigate the matter. But they shouldn't be throwing me in jail without substantial evidence that I was actually planning to carry out the supposed 'threat' that I was making. Especially when I specifically add 'lol jk' to the end of my sentence.
Christ people, it used to be you could actually blow up in anger about the things that made you mad. You used to be able to get pissed off and go unload a magazine of ammo at a local shooting range without being investigated for a school shooting. Kids use the internet to expunge their frustration because they're able to reach an audience of people who can commiserate with them. It makes them feel better to know others are out there struggling with the same issue. I have a family member struggling with RA (rheumatoid arthritis) and they're thinking of joining a support group online specifically for the purpose of having others who can empathize with their situation. This kid was talking to a fellow LoL player, completely out of context for the rest of us, and was obviously turning a comment around on someone who was provoking them.
I realize that since the internet and cellphones that we all suddenly think there's all this violence in society that needs to be stopped. News flash. The violence has been there. You just used to get a local paper and listen to the local news so you didn't always hear about the issue affecting someone in some state/country that you honestly didn't give a crap about. Yes, there are bad people out there. No I do not believe that we just get to say "well, they said something, time to punish them for a crime we think they were going to commit."
Society has become entirely over-sensitive to issues and it is because we suddenly have the internet and the things that happened on a weekly, monthly, and yearly basis that we never heard about before, suddenly seem to be happening on a daily basis. It's part of why I don't typically read the newspaper or look up current events. Everything the news does is meant to scare you into tuning in next time so that you can try to prevent the next great tragedy from happening to yourself. Violence in the world could decrease every year, and listening/reading the news will make you think it's still as rampant as ever.
I for one sincerely hope these idiots in Texas get their shit together and release this kid. He has served far more time than he should have already for an off-hand comment during a moment where he wasn't thinking clearly. I will never live or visit Texas.
People always feel histrionic about some social ill.
Maybe it's satanists putting subliminal messages on rock records. Or maybe it's the commies. Or cocaine.
This isn't something unique to a society with an internet connection.
Jerry definitely isn't missing anything. We're under the mistaken impression that we're able to sacrifice some liberty for security. That's a false dilemma. We aren't actually any safer because we're being unreasonably draconinan. By all means, investigate all you want, but as pointed out, it should be pretty clear after a month whether or not the kid has been brewing explosives, owns a weapon, has been collecting ammunition, is mentally disturbed or is keeping shading company.
Strictly speaking he isn't being punished he's being held. America's method of holding non rich prisoners just equates to punishment because generally speaking America has a shitty, shitty attitude when it comes to what prisons are for.