[HN Gopher] Former tech CEO suing to get the record of his arres...
___________________________________________________________________
Former tech CEO suing to get the record of his arrest removed from
the internet
Author : danso
Score : 166 points
Date : 2025-01-26 19:32 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (sf.gazetteer.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (sf.gazetteer.co)
| gigatexal wrote:
| Interesting. Will be consequential depending on the outcome:
| could have huge ramifications for free speech and journalists
| everywhere
| jillyboel wrote:
| TIL Maury Blackman, the CEO of Premise Data, was arrested in 2021
| for domestic violence for beating up his girlfriend.
| 2024user wrote:
| Are comments like these in good faith?
| rblatz wrote:
| The parent comment feels like a "Reddit" comment. It appears
| when taken at face value defamatory and potentially in
| violation of California law. It implies guilt and does not
| use words like allegedly for things that have not been
| proven.
|
| This seems like an unwise post to make, and adds nothing to
| the discussion. It very well may also violate the rules of
| HN.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| >> was arrested in 2021 for domestic violence for beating
| up his girlfriend.
|
| > The parent comment ... does not use words like allegedly
| for things that have not been proven.
|
| The 2021 arrest (and charges) seem plainly factual. Is your
| position that the arrest might not have happened?
| ty6853 wrote:
| In many/most jurisdiction police are pretty much forced
| to arrest _someone_ (usually by written policy) if there
| is a DV complaint, yet the conviction rate is way under
| 100%. It is probably the least reliable arrest record as
| a prediction of finding of guilt.
| jappgar wrote:
| unwise?
| khaled_ismaeel wrote:
| I think they're pointing out the Streisand Effect at play
| here.
| SOLAR_FIELDS wrote:
| Comments like above usually serve a couple of sentiments -
| not just pointing out the Striesand effect but attempting
| to amplify it. The trend I think got popular with the
| teenager involved in People v. Turner[1]. At the time there
| was a fair amount of fear that the case would be entirely
| buried due to his advantageous position in society (not
| altogether different than what is being discussed here). He
| also changed his name. So people would make comments like
| above on Reddit and other social media platforms as a sort
| of attempt to ensure that it be extremely difficult to
| erase attachment of the name from the incident in the
| future entirely.
|
| You can see this at play still today anytime that
| teenager's name comes up on Reddit. Very typical example
| thread here[2]
|
| That thread is pretty exemplary of the trend, someone will
| say "convicted rapist Brock Turner", and everyone will pile
| on and also state it, in some sort of attempt to continue
| to keep the association at the top of the search engine.
|
| That being said, after it's been done once the original
| purpose is already accomplished and I'd consider it a
| pretty lowbrow attempt at humor after that. It probably
| would be considered low effort enough to warrant a downvote
| here.
|
| 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_v._Turner
|
| 2: https://www.reddit.com/r/army/comments/zk7jqi/comment/iz
| z33a...
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Is it acting in good faith to hire the professional crypto
| scam whitewasher Christian Ericssen (who sometimes misspells
| his own pseudonym Ericsen) as a representative to threaten
| and bribe people?
|
| Whether or not the police report that was sealed actually
| says what it's reported it does, the courts did not seal the
| record that the recourse he chose was to hire a pseudonymous
| representative so spectacularly unethical and dishonest that
| he has a track record of whitewashing the reporting of crypto
| scams.
|
| Talk about scraping the bottom of the barrel. When you lie
| down with dogs, you get up with fleas. I'd refuse to hire or
| associate with Maury Blackman just for choosing to hire
| Christian Ericssen/Ericsen to represent himself and threaten
| and bribe people on his behalf, regardless of when or how
| often Maury Blackman gets recorded beating his girlfriend
| then successfully threatens her to recant what she said in
| the police report.
| ok_dad wrote:
| Seems like a Streisand effect case to me, but I'm not Maury
| Blackman so I can't say whether or not his arrest for domestic
| violence in Mission Bay in 2021 will be more well-known now that
| he's bullying and suing a reporter about it and trying to make it
| disappear. I can't believe that he might be successful, too, the
| USA is at some sort of crossroads where if we're not careful the
| most important freedoms that we have, those we can use to fight
| un-democratic trash, will vanish.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Definitely, but in this case, it may be a Streisand Effect with
| a $25 million payout attached.
|
| it is unclear to me whether US law and precedent has the idea
| of "half-truths" being defamatory. In this case, I'd imagine
| that would apply if it can be applied; the plaintiff was
| technically arrested, but legally the arrest itself was
| expunged. So telling people he was arrested is a truth that
| definitely isn't telling the whole truth.
| wbl wrote:
| The US has truth has absolute bar to defamation. He really
| did get arrested the police report says what it was reported
| to have in it.
| buyucu wrote:
| I doubt the journalist actually has 25 million to pay, even
| if the CEO wins the lawsuit.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| Streisand effect is for when someone is trying to intentionally
| hide something from the public eye. Here the case is already in
| the public eye and they are suing for damages. It seems less
| about hiding it anymore and more about seeking damages for
| what's already been shared in the public.
| duxup wrote:
| >Seems like a Streisand effect case to me
|
| He already lost his job, news is out there, so at some point I
| wonder if the effect doesn't matter anymore.
|
| I gotta think it doesn't really matter if more distant randos
| (you, me) know.
| abrookewood wrote:
| Hmmm ... at some point, maybe one of those random people are
| in a position to hire him and now they know.
| cowl wrote:
| He was suing to remove the report from google results so
| FUTURE employers do not find it. so yes, the effect mattered
| to him. now even if he wins that case there will be dozens
| others that have reported this and will be impossible to
| remove them all.
| jjeaff wrote:
| In this case, the effect would not be to merely bring the
| arrest to light. Anyone who comes across the arrest now, is
| likely to come across the whole story, which is that it has
| been expunged and he was not guilty.
| ok_dad wrote:
| The whole story is also what the report says, which was that
| his partner was bloodied and cut and only recanted her story
| after he was being arrested, which is common in domestic
| abuse cases. His arrest was sealed after the charges were
| dropped, but he wasn't found "not guilty" or "guilty" in this
| case.
|
| Also, the "effect" could be to ruin an independent reporter,
| not just hide or explain the arrest.
| user3939382 wrote:
| I see, so the justice system we've all agreed as a society
| to defer to, including the detectives that worked this
| case, don't have the right answer but Internet Guy with 0
| first hand knowledge does.
| ok_dad wrote:
| What kind of a comment or question is that? Do you have a
| point? I'm arguing this dude shouldn't be suing a
| reporter for reporting facts, you are willfully ignoring
| the fact that wealthy CEO-types often use money and high-
| powered lawyers to hide their misdeeds, who knows if this
| was the case here, and I am not saying it was, but how is
| this defamation? The guy _was_ arrested for domestic
| violence, the statement by the officer states the woman
| was injured, what am I doing wrong here by repeating
| these same facts I just read in an article? Your comment
| is useless as-is, it 's just appeal to authority.
| BoxFour wrote:
| Obviously you're being sarcastic, but this is pretty much
| how things function in 2025.
|
| Faith in the justice system is almost zero, and
| widespread skepticism of mass media means that "Internet
| Guy online with 0 firsthand knowledge" is often viewed as
| just as credible as major news outlets.
|
| I don't have an answer, but it is a sad state of affairs
| that people aren't incorrect to embrace.
| krisoft wrote:
| > the justice system we've all agreed as a society to
| defer to
|
| I don't remember that anyone has asked me. I know this is
| an often cited justification for laws but it is kinda
| suspect and not well tought through.
|
| > the detectives that worked this case
|
| I would trully love to read their opinion / notes on the
| case.
| mvdtnz wrote:
| Do you not see the problem? Despite a judge discharging him
| without conviction, you feel as though you have the full
| story and he's absolutely guilty and irredeemable. You
| leave no room in your analysis for information the judge
| may have had which you do not.
| Hizonner wrote:
| > expunged and he was not guilty
|
| Sealed, for undisclosed reasons, with no determination as to
| his guilt or lack thereof.
| sangeeth96 wrote:
| The internet never forgets as they say. I'm not sure why this
| person and their lawyers even thought it was a good idea to bring
| this into court and drag it out long enough for even more news
| outlets to pick it up and links to be indexed by search engines.
| This is never getting erased. I'd be shocked if the plaintiff
| somehow wins, doesn't make any sense to me.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> Poulson described the fight as "an immense time sink."_
|
| I'll bet that he turns out getting a big rep bump from this,
| though.
|
| If it were Texas or Oklahoma, there's a good chance that he'd be
| thrown in jail, or get a wood shampoo, at his next traffic stop,
| but in San Francisco, this will not be buried.
| afavour wrote:
| Streisand effect is clear here but also worth pointing out that
| this is a clear downside of citizen journalism, or even small
| newsrooms: even if they're in the wrong the rich can sue news
| providers into oblivion via lawyers fees alone.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Not just small newsrooms; Gawker was plenty big.
|
| Peter Thiel had a bigger bankroll.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > Not just small newsrooms; Gawker was plenty big.
|
| Yes. It was maddening seeing news orgs everywhere yawn at
| this process. It was an obvious proving ground event - and
| today is being more widely deployed.
| perihelions wrote:
| The same lawyer who won _Gawker_ threatened the _New York
| Times_ to not publish their stories about Harvey Weinstein 's
| rapes,
|
| - _" Weinstein's attorney Charles Harder, who was then known
| for filing the suit that bankrupted Gawker, said his client
| would be suing The New York Times,[140] but by October 15,
| 2017, Harder was no longer working for Weinstein.[141]"_
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Weinstein_sexual_abuse_.
| ..
|
| There were multiple other news companies (not including the
| _Times_ ) that were successfully dissuaded from publishing
| anything about the Weinstein accusations, by his litigation
| threats.
| stg22 wrote:
| Gawker flouted the law.
|
| They were publicly sharing an intimate video of Hogan without
| his consent, he got a court order telling them to stop and
| they just refused to obey it, stating that they had a first
| amendment right to do it. Except, Gawker got the constitution
| wrong - and apparently didn't even ask a lawyer before
| refusing to obey the order -, which is why the later law
| against sharing intimate videos without consent is
| uncontroversial
|
| Hogan was in the top 1% and even he couldn't afford justice
| when a large media organisation committed a blatant violation
| of his rights. His need for Thiel's support isn't an example
| of oppression of those organisations, it's an example of
| their power.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| Whether he did it or not, if a record was sealed and a journalist
| explicitly goes around publishing the details of a case and the
| person loses their job, I think it's grounds for defamation. The
| sealed records are sealed for a reason.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| If they were sealed, it stands to reason as well that the
| journalist may not have seen _all_ the sealed records, leading
| to an incomplete picture. Perhaps the girlfriend had a written
| recantation, or came to a mutual understanding, or a
| psychological assessment was conducted, or it was discovered
| she was the instigator; we wouldn't know, it's sealed. Good
| luck defending your name publicly when your defense requires
| pointing to sealed records the public can't verify.
| MollyGodiva wrote:
| Defamation requires the information to be false.
| baobabKoodaa wrote:
| As a blanket statement that is incorrect. For example, in
| Finland it doesn't have to be false.
| kstrauser wrote:
| Possibly true, but not relevant to a case in California.
| lokar wrote:
| In the US the truth is an absolute defense for liable and
| defamation (aiui)
| jrflowers wrote:
| This is a good point. In a similarly salient vein it is
| legal to drive without a seat belt in New Hampshire and
| federally illegal to catch lobsters below a certain size in
| the US.
| tw04 wrote:
| They were sealed because the abused woman refused to cooperate
| with the state - a pretty common occurrence with abuse victims
| and definitely not "proof" that the initial arrest should be
| hidden from public view.
|
| Everything in the initial report is pretty horrible.
| lolinder wrote:
| This specific case is not a great test bed for this, but it's
| absolutely a big problem that newspapers will publish the full
| name of someone who was arrested, even if they're subsequently
| released without a conviction or even without charges. It's a
| massive and dangerous weapon in the hands of law enforcement (and
| others) that they can permanently damage someone's reputation--
| harming their future job prospects and social connections forever
| --without ever having to prove anything.
|
| This isn't a problem that's going to be solved by lawsuits,
| though, partially because Streisand and partially because in most
| of the cases where someone's hurt by this the newspapers have no
| legal obligation to refrain from publishing, so there's no
| grounds to sue. What we need is to reevaluate the law in light of
| "the internet never forgets".
| hsshhshshjk wrote:
| See: Luigi Mangioni
| wernerb wrote:
| Here in the Netherlands even after criminals are convicted we
| refer to them as Sean B for example. I agree this is good
| practise.
| eastbound wrote:
| I disagree. We publish the full name of the victims,
| disclosing their privacy and the one of their families, but
| we don't disclose the full name of the criminals.
|
| For their privacy.
| Hizonner wrote:
| Without taking a position on the larger issue, it's not
| dishonorable or shameful to be a _victim_ of something.
| Xenoamorphous wrote:
| I guess it depends; see the recent case where apparently
| some old French lady was scammed out of hundreds of
| thousands of euro that she thought were being sent to
| Brad Pitt.
| BoxFour wrote:
| That's not really accurate, both historically and
| presently. I highly doubt it's true even in a place as
| progressive as the Netherlands.
|
| An obvious one is that many fraud victims are often
| shamed for "falling for it."
| krisoft wrote:
| > it's not dishonorable or shameful to be a victim of
| something.
|
| That is not generally true. Or perhaps true in an
| idealised word, but in the real world many victims have a
| stigma attached to them.
|
| Victims of scams are frequently seen as guilible or
| naive. I think if it were known that someone has been
| scammed before many would be hesitant to hire them in a
| postition of financial trust.
|
| Similarly victims of rape are often portrayed in a bad
| light. People frequently question what did they do, or
| what did they wear such that what happened to them
| happened to them.
|
| Female victims of domestic abuse are often portrayed as
| schemers who orchestrated false circumstances such that
| they can get their exes in trouble with the law. Male
| victims of domestic abuse are often portrayed as not
| manly enough to protect themselves.
|
| Victims of workplace sexual harrasment are often
| portrayed as wrongdoers who just couldn't keep their
| mouths shut. Someone who should just "took the
| compliment", or perhaps be "less stuck up". As if the
| real problem is that they reported what they reported as
| opposed to suffering it silently.
|
| None of these attitudes are okay, but nevertheless they
| do exists. Being a victim of these specific crimes
| happens to be dishonorable and shamefull at least in some
| people's eyes.
| em-bee wrote:
| well we shouldn't be publishing names of victims either.
| ourmandave wrote:
| What if we had Community Notes for newspaper arrest reports?
|
| "Ourmandave was mistakenly identified by Internet Sleuths and
| is NOT the shooter in the Grassy Knoll."
| ano-ther wrote:
| The EU has a "right to be forgotten", which is why you
| sometimes see a notice under the google results. This usually
| means someone asked them to clear certain search results.
|
| https://gdpr.eu/right-to-be-forgotten/
|
| https://support.google.com/legal/answer/10769224?hl=en
| BoxFour wrote:
| It's a double-edged sword. If the press is prohibited from
| reporting on arrests, you can end up with people just
| apprehended without a trace. The US certainly isn't above that,
| especially for "national security concerns."
|
| I'm not sure what the right balance looks like, but it's
| definitely not a straightforward issue to resolve.
| lolinder wrote:
| I can't remember the last time I saw news reports about an
| arrest where the arrestee plausibly benefited from the story
| being publicized. Maybe Snowden (who I think was charged but
| not arrested)?
|
| I think you'll find that where the state has an interest in
| keeping something under wraps it will be kept under wraps.
| Most arrest reports are of the casual voyeuristic kind, not
| serious journalism trying to keep the government accountable.
| woodruffw wrote:
| > I can't remember the last time I saw news reports about
| an arrest where the arrestee plausibly benefited from the
| story being publicized.
|
| The current POTUS and O.J. Simpson come to mind.
| lolinder wrote:
| OJ was pre Snowden, but I'll take the POTUS as an
| example! Not a great argument in favor of allowing the
| reports, though.
| BoxFour wrote:
| > I can't remember the last time I saw news reports about
| an arrest where the arrestee plausibly benefited from the
| story being publicized
|
| Bad week to say this, given Ross Ulbricht was just
| pardoned. There's zero chance he would've been pardoned
| without all the publicity around his arrest and
| incarceration.
| lolinder wrote:
| Fair enough. Is he the exception that makes all of the
| lives ruined worth it?
| BoxFour wrote:
| History offers plenty of other examples. Daniel Ellsberg
| is one of the most notable that comes to mind without
| spending more than a few seconds to think about it.
|
| Is it worth it? That likely depends on how highly you
| prioritize the protection of liberty. It's ultimately a
| personal call, and I don't mean that as a judgement one
| way or the other.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Is he the exception that makes all of the lives ruined
| worth it?_
|
| The reason we publicise arrests is to check the police
| against disappearances.
| Animats wrote:
| Arrests have to be a public record. Otherwise you get secret
| jails and disappearances. Like Chicago.[1]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homan_Square_facility
| ty6853 wrote:
| Yes but for instance you can be imprisoned without arrest.
| CBP has done it to me and I verified no record of arrest
| with an FBI record search.
| woodruffw wrote:
| It's a problem, but the counterbalancing problem is (IMO) an
| equally big one: the public has a legitimate interest in how
| the criminal justice system handles cases, _particularly_ when
| cases are dismissed before entering a public trial period.
|
| Florida has the worst possible version of this, where local
| governments/PDs appear to revel in publishing mugshots with
| virtually no pretense. But if I was a taxpaying citizen in SF,
| I believe I would be right in feeling entitled to read more
| about why a domestic violence case with a pre-existing written
| statement was dismissed and then sealed.
| lolinder wrote:
| It's all well and good in theory, but no one publishes the
| follow-ups because they don't get engagement. Unless there's
| a very good story behind it, the vast majority of dismissals
| go entirely unreported, so the only record you get is that so
| and so was arrested. If it turns out that they arrest someone
| else for the same crime, you might get a follow-up that
| mentions that the original person was exonerated. But you
| certainly don't get a report that "such and such wasn't
| actually as exciting as it first appeared so charges were
| dropped".
|
| As you say, this case is the exception, but there has to be a
| decent middle ground that allows exceptions and doesn't allow
| casual voyeurism.
| mlyle wrote:
| Either harm is bad.
|
| If you release arrest records, people who are innocent have
| their reputations sullied.
|
| If you don't release arrest records, it's easier for the
| police to do questionable things (particularly to the poor
| and otherwise disadvantaged) without it being visible to
| the media, public, and those that might seek to right these
| wrongs.
|
| (Why so many arrests that don't lead to charges is
| interesting. People who prove innocent is one cause, and
| another is prosecutors only advancing really strong cases
| to maximize conviction rates is another. These are hard to
| tell apart.)
|
| So, the right now when we publish arrest records we give
| police the tool to create some lasting harm to people
| without strong proof, but make it harder for them to
| capriciously arrest people or for prosecutors to abuse
| their discretion.
| lolinder wrote:
| I'm less interested in whether arrest records are public
| than I am in whether they are publishable in online
| newspapers. If I have to go down to the county courthouse
| to get access to the records, then there's a barrier that
| prevents people from casually googling someone and
| learning that they were arrested at one point.
|
| If every arrest is published with both first and last
| name in the local newspaper, which is then archived
| online and fully indexed, that doesn't seem to be serving
| the cause of government transparency so much as the cause
| of sensational local news.
|
| I also think that allowing publication of the arrest but
| without the full name of the alleged criminal would
| address concerns about government accountability while
| not handing a dangerous reputational weapon to the
| police.
| mlyle wrote:
| > I'm less interested in whether arrest records are
| public than I am in whether they are publishable in
| online newspapers
|
| I think "this is 'public' information that you can't
| publish" is a yucky slippery slope.
| lolinder wrote:
| I think that if we can't define a category like that then
| the next century is going to be pretty awful in a lot of
| ways. If "public" automatically means "accessible
| instantly from anywhere in the world and irreparably
| archived forever", then we're either going to have to
| have a lot of stuff pulled from the public space or we're
| going to have a _lot_ of lives ruined by all kinds of
| "public" stuff.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Why does it matter?
|
| There are no preordained guarantees that any specific
| things will be or not be in the "public space".
| swatcoder wrote:
| > If you don't release arrest records, it's easier for
| the police to do questionable things (particularly to the
| poor and otherwise disadvantaged) without it being
| visible to the media, public, and those that might seek
| to right these wrongs.
|
| Hot take: you could have _professinal journalists_ who
| have trafficked in the incidents but reserved publication
| of them investigate patterns of misbehavior in community
| institutions like the police.
|
| I mean, you can't now, as we seem to have crossed some
| kind of rubicon and abandoned investigative professional
| journalism for blogspam and tabloid, but that had been
| the functioning alternative for a while there. Maybe we
| can find a new functioning alternative?
| skissane wrote:
| > If you don't release arrest records, it's easier for
| the police to do questionable things (particularly to the
| poor and otherwise disadvantaged) without it being
| visible to the media, public, and those that might seek
| to right these wrongs.
|
| In Germany, the media aren't legally allowed to publish
| the full names of suspects, only first name and first
| letter of surname. What if the law said law enforcement
| had to release all arrest records promptly to the media,
| but without surnames or photographs?
| woodruffw wrote:
| > As you say, this case is the exception, but there has to
| be a decent middle ground that allows exceptions and
| doesn't allow casual voyeurism.
|
| I agree, although I think that middle ground is elusive :-)
|
| Two things that strike me as easy to do and unequivocally
| good from a civics/civil liberties perspective: forbidding
| "mugshot" journalism (cf. Florida) and forbidding "perp
| walks" by local PDs. Both disproportionately punish the
| poor/underprivileged and directly promote the kind of
| reputational sullying that local PDs revel in.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Florida has the worst possible version of this, where
| local governments /PDs appear to revel in publishing mugshots
| with virtually no pretense_
|
| Criminal charges are public information in Florida [1].
|
| [1] http://www.leg.state.fl.us/statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Di
| spl...
| woodruffw wrote:
| Criminal charges (and even timely arrest records) are
| public in New York too, but we don't have nearly the same
| "Florida man" phenomenon.
|
| (Maybe the devil is in the details here? I don't know if
| Florida _requires_ releasing the mugshot with arrest
| records, or whether that 's something that municipalities
| do because there's local demand for it, or what.)
| lokar wrote:
| I think the arrest report is somewhat irrelevant. The neighbor
| could have knocked on the door and observed much of what was in
| the report. And without question they could report on their own
| firsthand experience.
| tehwebguy wrote:
| This reads like "police abuse their power to arrest, so let's
| let them arrest people in secret"
| user3939382 wrote:
| It's also used to stifle 2A rights. Many states require a
| license application which intentionally asks not whether you've
| ever been convicted of a crime but whether you've ever been
| arrested, which can then be used to deny you.
| curt15 wrote:
| Protecting the 2A doesn't have to come at the expense of the
| 1A. The real problem is the license criterion that presumes
| guilt, not the accurate reporting of the arrest.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| In what ways has it been used to deny a license application?
| Please give specific examples.
| _heimdall wrote:
| > It's a massive and dangerous weapon in the hands of law
| enforcement (and others) that they can permanently damage
| someone's reputation
|
| I'd love to see people take the real lesson here - an arrest
| proves nothing of guilt, and it's surprisingly easy for cops to
| falsely arrest someone (whether they intended to or not).
|
| Our legal system is flawed enough as it is. When there are real
| concerns that can be raised over some cases that make it all
| the way to conviction we should be treating arrest records
| about as seriously a a politician promising the moon in a stump
| speech.
| lolinder wrote:
| This is a really great idea in theory. Do you have a proposal
| for how to get there without stepping over tens of thousands
| of broken lives? How do you go about educating an entire
| population that's accustomed to thinking that arrest=guilt
| that this isn't true, especially when their news sources
| continue to report as though the arrest is the only really
| interesting part of the criminal justice system?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Do you have a proposal for how to get there without
| stepping over tens of thousands of broken lives?_
|
| An innocent unless proven guilty law. Employers, _et
| cetera_ , may not conclude adversely from criminal charges
| absent a guilty plea or conviction.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| But are they allowed to not hire someone if doing so
| would draw public outrage (and financial harm) against
| the company? What about if the person was arrested for
| something that would cause that, but never actually
| charged?
|
| In the US at least, being arrested (or even accused) of
| certain things can end your career. Because, even it it's
| proven you didn't do it, no company will touch you with a
| 10 foot pole, because people (who don't care/know that
| you were innocent) will avoid the company if they hire
| you.
|
| There is no known solution to this problem.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _are they allowed to not hire someone if doing so would
| draw public outrage (and financial harm) against the
| company?_
|
| Yes, that's the point of such a law. The company gets to
| deflect blame to it.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "But are they allowed to not hire someone if doing so
| would draw public outrage (and financial harm) against
| the company?"
|
| Could you face the same because of gay/trans/etc hiring?
| That's the point of anti-discrimination laws - that
| nobody is allowed to discriminate and thus the public
| outrage is diluted if all are hiring the "undesireables".
| _heimdall wrote:
| That's such a huge gray area though. One doesn't know why
| an employer or anyone else decides to fire, or not hire,
| someone unless the employer documents the reason.
|
| We already have discrimination laws on the books in the
| US that can't reliably be enforced for this exact reason.
| I have heard multiple accounts of very clear
| discrimination taking place in org hiring practices, but
| they are never documented and when discussed everyone is
| very careful with their words.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _One doesn 't know why an employer or anyone else
| decides to fire, or not hire, someone unless the employer
| documents the reason_
|
| It won't be entirely effective. But it gives companies
| plausible deniability. I've been the one who voiced up
| because a sealed marital-dispute arrest came up in an
| archival background check. Having such a law would have
| meant doing so was unremarkable, a routine comment.
| giantg2 wrote:
| If you're constitutionally innocent until proven guilty,
| then you could create anti-discrimination protection laws
| that make it illegal to discriminate based on arrests
| without convictions.
| lolinder wrote:
| It's already illegal to discriminate against a lot of
| things that people still choose to keep secret rather
| than rely on the law to protect them. Many people hide
| their diagnosed disabilities rather than trust that their
| employer will follow the law, because your advancement
| _actually can_ be limited by exposing it even if it 's
| technically illegal.
|
| Anti-discrimination laws also fail to protect people from
| the social consequences of the unwarranted publicity.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| I don't know how it would mesh with the US constitution,
| but Canada, while still having freedom of expression, has
| much stronger rules about police and courts releasing
| names. Judges will happily kick all reporters out of a
| courtroom if personal details are leaked in the press. They
| will castigate police and prosecutors if they release too
| much information that could taint the jury pool, etc.
|
| There is no legal need for jails and police to release all
| of the details and photos that they do. A simple notice
| that a person is in police custody fulfills the argument
| against hidden arrests, while also not providing enough to
| damage a reputation. Announcing arrest reasons before
| charges have even been laid is unconscionable in a world
| where googling a name is this easy.
| _heimdall wrote:
| I never said we need to educate people or that this idea,
| or any other for that matter, should be driven from a top-
| down approach. I wish people would learn it for themselves,
| not that the idea would be forced upon them.
|
| The idea is simple though, and I don't think it requires
| anything other than old ideas.
|
| A person is innocent until proven guilty. Period. End of
| story. An arrest proves very little and says nothing of
| guilt, just take it for what it is.
|
| The news may portray things wrong but people should be
| expected to, and given the trust to, think for themselves.
| The news can talk about an arrest however they want, its up
| to hear it, think critically, and take whatever meaning
| from it that I choose to take.
| ty6853 wrote:
| An arrest indicates probable cause a crime happened. It
| also for instance voided my complaint to the medical
| board when I complained I was treated without consent for
| a fabricated medical search for drugs without a warrant.
| It can also be used against you in immigration processes.
| lolinder wrote:
| I wish that too, but wishing people would be different
| than they are doesn't make it so. You have to act to make
| a change, and if there's no path to effect change in the
| people the next best thing is to change the laws to
| protect people from each other.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Some situations (immigration?) count arrests against you even
| if there are no charges.
| aimazon wrote:
| > I'd love to see people take the real lesson here - an
| arrest proves nothing of guilt
|
| And neither does a guilty verdict in a court of law. An
| arrest is a data point that we can use to inform our opinion
| of someone just as a verdict is.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| It's bizarre and freaky to even imagine the newspapers being
| remotely the problem here.
|
| The problem is the significant mismatch between the stigma of
| being arrested and the ease and frequency in which police
| perform arrests.
|
| Arrests do not imply guilt but arresting someone later found to
| be not guilty should be incredibly embarrassing for the police.
| But this is at odds with the unhealthy amount of vindictiveness
| found in many societies. You get people frothing at the mouth
| about how cops don't seem to arrest people so easily.
| Politicians are perpetually harder on crime because that
| satisfies fearful minds. But the price of running a society in
| such a broken manner eventually comes due.
| lolinder wrote:
| How do you think the stigma of being arrested developed? It
| didn't come to exist in a vacuum, it exists in a feedback
| loop with the kinds of voyeuristic news reporting that
| glories in showing a captioned photo of a person at their
| lowest: in a mug shot.
| sedatk wrote:
| I once chatted with a police department Twitter account that
| used to publish names and pictures of people arrested. They had
| said it was their duty to inform the public and I had told them
| they could do that without attaching stigma to people's faces
| and names. They didn't agree to anything, but had stopped doing
| it after a while.
| duxup wrote:
| My first thought was if you can be sued for revealing sealed
| court records? Apparently in CA it is explicitly illegal:
|
| >The lawsuit leans heavily on a California law that makes it
| illegal to publish an arrest report after it has been sealed by a
| court. The law has been attacked by First Amendment advocates,
| who say it violates free speech protections, strengthened in this
| instance because the information is an issue of public interest
| -- an argument Blackman contests.
| kittikitti wrote:
| In a world where people are eviserated for being too woke, I have
| no empathy for this former tech CEO who was arrested for domestic
| violence. You can't have your cake and eat it too. If you fire
| and layoff DEI departments and the lowest performers, why are you
| crying victim when you get arrested for violent assault?
| curt15 wrote:
| "woke"
|
| I'd like to see more people spell out what they mean by that
| overused term.
| _sys49152 wrote:
| on the cusp of the incoming dead internet, there could be
| services provided to intentionally defame everybody of everything
| and just jam pack the internet with so much disinformation that
| nobody will be able to trust anything they read.
|
| so this fella caught a case for domestic violence? jam the
| internet with bunches of fake negative charges across a swath of
| fake internet pages.
|
| caught doing something stupid and reddit picked it up? jam pack
| it with a firehose of other plausible fake negative stories.
|
| provide a service, get boatloads of cash, and contribute to the
| deadification. makes no sense to limp wrist-edly moonwalk into
| the dead future - barrel through it with tanks. its not like
| google is working all that great these days anyway
| Wistar wrote:
| Poisoning. Like cops posting fake speed trap locations on Waze.
| n144q wrote:
| Just finished Kara Swisher's Burn Book today, in which she says
| she does not report on such scoops unless personal matters have a
| repeated pattern or could affect a company's stock. It never
| occurred to me that there is such a choice to make here, but
| after thinking about it a bit, I realized that this is what
| distinguishes a bad journalist who writes an article that could
| end up hurting people more and make matters worse (e.g. about
| people who are going through divorce), from a good journalist
| that writes about things that actually matter to shareholders and
| to the industry.
| ternaryoperator wrote:
| Precisely. This is the difference between scandal-mongering and
| journalism. Both can cover things that are true and factual, so
| can be deemed news. However, the former is closer to
| entertainment than it is to information of value.
| swatcoder wrote:
| Yep, professional journalists for much of the 20th century
| aspired to be conscious of what they were covering and how that
| served the public interest. There was a duty being honored.
|
| It was exactly this understanding that allowed closeted public
| figures in politics, entertainment, to navigate a time when it
| wasn't okay for their personal lives to be made public.
| Journalists and editors were often aware of stories that
| _could_ be told, but believed that their duty wouldn 't be
| served by reporting on them.
|
| Journalism did not _always_ look like that, and did not
| _everywhere_ look like that, but it was the prevailing norm.
|
| We're now in a very different time again, where any "scoop"
| that stirs moral outrage, earns lurid eyeballs, or undermines a
| public figure is not only fair game, but the ideal career-
| making story.
| nmstoker wrote:
| I'm not up to speed on the California court system, but is there
| some way to establish if a case is sealed?
|
| Wouldn't such a form of lookup, in itself, defeat the point of
| trying to make it secret?
| perihelions wrote:
| I recall reading in one of Ken White's pieces that his one of his
| most frequent types of consultation, in his First Amendment
| litigation practice, is with victims of domestic violence being
| sued by their abusers.
| buyucu wrote:
| It would be such a shame if this went viral.
|
| Before today I did not know who Maury Blackman was. I now know
| that he was arrested for domestic violence in 2021.
|
| Here is the original news report:
| https://jackpoulson.substack.com/p/the-covert-gig-work-surve...
| jarsin wrote:
| I remember all those "who got arrested" sites. The ones where you
| had to pay to remove yourself.
|
| Not sure if there have been lawsuits around those as well.
| Bengalilol wrote:
| The Streisand effect in full force. Hiring a competent and
| transparent person--someone who shows remorse, regret, and
| apologizes while explaining why such behavior won't happen again
| --despite a past conviction for domestic violence isn't
| necessarily the real issue. But hiring someone who shifts the
| blame onto others for making the news public? That's an entirely
| different problem
| winwang wrote:
| > despite a past conviction
|
| What conviction?
| zombiwoof wrote:
| He's clearly paid off someone to not be arrested
| giantg2 wrote:
| "Poulson called the San Francisco Police Department, which
| authenticated the arrest report, without mentioning that it had
| been sealed."
|
| Why are police validating sealed reports? Seems like a major
| flaw.
| jappgar wrote:
| "Beyond a reasonable doubt" is a good basis for a justice system,
| but I'm under zero obligation to operate that way.
|
| If you're arrested for assaulting your girlfriend, it's smart to
| err on the side of caution and not associate with you in any way.
| I certainly will not hire you.
|
| "What about false accusations etc etc?"
|
| That's exactly why arrest records should be public.
| rideontime wrote:
| Wealthy domestic abusers HATE to have their records known. Before
| Gurbaksh Chahal was banned from Twitter, I made sure everybody
| who saw his tweets saw what he'd done.
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