Nefarious ProbeFollow

"If there was nothing bad going on, why are they trying so hard to avoid it?"

Milk from an aged cow, or cow's milk that has aged?

This is a pretty important distinction for the one consuming the milk.

The nefarious probe story - I forgot to link it in the op.

Nefarious Probe sounds like a great metal band name.

If they do they need to practice more and get better because I can't find them with google.

That would make sense, can't imagine any of the lyrics would make it past the censors anyway.

I thought it sounded like a rare-drop weapon from the Interrogator Boss mob in some syndicate type game.

Sounds like people with no concept of what "free speech" is, then.

I think it's what Leia used on Luke in Empire Strikes Back.

No, really. "Free speech" (technically the concept thereof, not the phrase) has an actual meaning from a legal standpoint. It's not "Waahhh, some people were mean to me because they didn't like what I said".

Edited, May 12th 2014 7:05pm by Jophiel

Which isn't the issue at hand. The issue at hand is a government agent (in this case, the court) collecting and assembling information about the speech of others so that it can be used by those opposed to the speech "to be mean to them". That's where the governments actions are problematic. No one's saying that if someone steps out in the public arena and says something, that said person isn't subject to any public reaction that may garner.

The question is whether or not someone can be compelled to provide information about what they spend money on, or what speech they support, if they wish that information to remain secret. Can the government essentially spy on its citizens in order to provide information about them to interested (and opposed) third parties. Think carefully about your answer here. While this particular case may seem easy to say "Of course!", think about how this might be abused (or has been in the past). Let's imagine that this was a group of people donating the the SPLC in the South in the 60s, and someone sued them to get their list of donors so they could be made public (with potential negative effects ranging from loss of business to being lynched by the Klan). Would that be ok with you?


Maybe "free speech" is the wrong label to use, but that's the one usually associated with things like donating to political causes. And while that should be protected like speech, it should not always be required to be "public". People should be able to donate to causes without fear of reprisal from those who disagree with them. Such speech, when it intersects with political alignments, should be allowed to be privately engaged, for much the same reason we use secret ballots when voting. The problem of undo influence on people's true choices is too great to insist that such activities should be fully open to public scrutiny.

Whatever we call it, attempts to use the government to compel donor lists should only be allowed under really exceptional cases, and should be destroyed once the case at hand has been resolved. Certainly, they should *never* be used for any purpose other than to determine if some illegality was at play. And in this case, the judge clearly seemed to believe that the sole purpose of the lawsuit was to collect the donor lists, so his order to destroy them as evidence was justified.

In the course of an investigation into illegal activity? Of course. What a silly question. Mind you, the question isn't your strawman "what speech they support" but rather the "what they spent money on". If that happens to reveal what speech they support, so it goes.