Supreme Court Says People Can’t Be Banned From The Internet | Hacker News Reader

Supreme Court Says People Can’t Be Banned From The Internet

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240 pointsForFreedom108 comments

People are commenting here without reading or understanding the ruling [edit: I should say that headlines like the one techdirt gave their article are also misleading; they are playing up the "banned from the internet" angle]. What happened is that North Carolina passed a law making it a crime for someone previously convicted of a sex crime to access social media sites (unless the site completely prohibits access except by adults, which most sites do not do). The court ruled that this law is unconstitutional on First Amendment grounds.

The court did not rule that "no one may be banned from the internet" an so on. A specific person can still have conditions attached by the courts to his release; for example, it's common for judges to impose conditions like "no use of computers" on convicted malicious hackers as part of their probation. This hasn't been made illegal. Restricting internet access of current prisoners certainly hasn't been held illegal. What's been held unconstitutional is criminalizing a priori certain modes of speech by a broad class of people.

EDIT2: Since this is apparently attracting a little bit of controversy, I want to add that I did not express any opinion about whether it's good to ban people from using computers or whatever; I just wanted to describe what the ruling says. I am actually not a fan of the general concept of not restoring people's rights after they serve their punishment, although I think it's justified in specific cases.

OMG, another terrible "think of the children" law.

Did you know that 1/4 of all sex offenders offended as juveniles and are not particularly likely to reoffend as adults?

Did you know that well under 5% of "convicted" people actually were convicted? The rest plea bargained out of a combination of not being able to afford trial, and facing much worse potential penalties if they tried to fight it.

Before heaping more punishments on people who have been through our (in)justice system, we need to fix the system so that its results are more believable.

the criminal justice systems is always going to have flaws. sure we should try to address them.

but it would also help a lot if we remembered that criminals are people. members of society who screwed up, felt they didn't have a choice, or have psychological problems. punish them, treat them, restrict them, but they aren't unhuman.

Somebody who could not feed their children and so ended up stealing food from the local store? Alright, I can see that they might not see any other choice.

Somebody kidnaps and rapes a six year old? Yeah no, they are inhuman and just need to be taken out behind the chemical shed and shot.

There will never be any meaningful criminal reform in the US before the right recognize the existence of the first type of offender and the left the second type.

I recognise that emotional response. I feel a similar way to many with Dark Triad personality traits.

But, making rules for everyone on the basis of the worst of the worst makes things worse for everyone: There are people who know they have a problem, but are too afraid to seek help because they are certain that everyone else will want to kill them if their secret ever comes out. Those people might stay hidden for life, or they might get drunk, do something regrettable, and be so frightened of the consequences that they kill their victim.

Dark Triad types don't think of getting caught, or so I am told. Question is, how many want to do things they recognise as immoral but are afraid to seek help to overcome? How many more seek mental stability by staying in denial, either refusing to recognise they have a problem or by refusing to believe society's condemnation? How many people could be saved by stopping people before they act, by treating humans as deeply flawed and letting the challenge be self improvement rather than simple binary good-or-evil?

I don't claim to know. Could be the hypothetical groups are tiny. It's not like it's possible to measure the size of a group which by definition is hiding to the best of its ability.

Agreed. (Related wall of text follows)

I've always thought a major issue with the criminal justice system is serving competing masters:

You want to punish people so OTHERS decide it would be a bad idea and don't try it

You want to punish people so THEY decide it was a bad idea, not worth doing again.

You want to redeem criminals, put them on a better path

You want to ensure the criminals do not post a further threat to society

But these goals contradict each other to a degree:

Punishing to send a message is something I suspect this only work for fringe crimes - most criminals aren't know for their expert cost/benefit analysis - and regardless, "send a message" punishment hurts efforts to redeem ("we're punishing you as a threat to others" isn't something that makes people think you're fair and worth listening too)

Punishing someone to ensure they think it's a bad idea probably works in terms of teaching cost/benefit, but there's the risk that you're teaching the opposite - Life in prison has got to suck, but if you get through it and discover there is no place in the outside world for you, you're socially ostracized, hard to employ, probably in a crappy financial situation...well, crime CAN pay, and you know you can survive the consequences if you do get caught (heck, at this point, crappy as it is, you're probably used to it - not enough to like it, but it would have some degree of comfort compared to the unfamilar-and-crappy situation you are in now. I could continue to armchair psychoanalyze the effects of living in a smaller community, but I think I've made enough unjustified statements.

Redemption directly pushes against the Punishment rules. Not because redeemed criminals can't accept the concept of "paying a debt to society" (I've always hated that phrase), but because (reportedly) rare is the prisoner that ARRIVES at prison redeemed, and starting with punishment and separating them from the situations that were the problems before generally does not help with dealing with those situations. (And this is assuming this is a "dumb" criminal that committed a stupid crime for stupid reasons. My mother told me as a young child to not commit a crime I couldn't retire on. I recommend this to parents of young children...it has an inherent logic that is harder for a child to dispute than "Just Don't". I credit it with keeping me out of trouble until I was old enough to appreciate the value of laws, respect, and morality. Anyway, there are doubtless OTHER criminals who truly had no better option - redeeming them by telling them how that is their fault and we'll punish them doesn't sound like it would succeed.

Sheltering society from the increased threat that a proven criminal represents largely doesn't care about Punishment or Redemption...but it doesn't help them at all. Redemption is easier of the criminals aren't removed from life. Punishment sounds like it is helped by this, but that goes back to the "what lesson are they learning", so if we're training career criminals, that makes the Sheltering concept currently a short term win for a long term loss.

All of this is based on my opinions that are largely formed from random articles and headlines (rarely in-depth) and likely too much influence from TV and movies (insert Law & Order DUM-DUM here) so no one should actually trust this. If, however, anyone has interesting insight or even actual knowledge to share, that'd be great - I have literally thought this general structure for the last 20+ years, so it obviously has some staying power in my brain even if I'm not motivated enough to do much research.

I don't think we should discount the extent to which the purpose of our criminal justice system is vengeance for its own sake. I don't think most people think of it this way, but it's hard to say this isn't the case.

That's a really good point. Everytime I hear someone say they want "justice" for the family of someone that died as a result of crime, I count that sentiment as not helpful. You can't get "justice" because you can't bring back the dead. Paying their debt to society? Society might be be better off without this person in it, but removing a future problem isn't paying a debt - society doesn't benefit as much as gets less penalized.

I think you're totally right, and until we acknowledge this point as a society, it will be really hard to improve things very much.

I 100% agree with this train of thinking and really like the way you've structured this. It's helped me kinda put together all the nagging feelings about what is wrong with criminal justice. In your opinion, what's the alternative though? Or I'd even be interested to hear what your take is on what a step in the right direction is. I know there are systemic problems that really trigger most of this, so maybe the solution is to cure the disease and not the symptoms so to speak?

Oh, improvements? I have very few ideas, and they are largely ones that other people have been saying for a long time.

But, much like improving a technology, you need metrics and you need to decide what your goal is. Presumably society will want a balance between everything listed, not just one...but what are the terms of that balance? As it is, every lawyer, judge, jury member, voter, journalist, and prison warden are all winging it, so we aren't getting a balance, we're getting a mish-mash result from this tug of war. (I wonder how much of that comes from the trial process being adversarial - the assumption is the truth survives if both sides push in opposite directions as hard as they can. Leaving aside if that works as intended, sentences and guidelines are likely heavily influenced by those for whom that environment is familiar and accepted. That's a digression though)

Anyway, if we don't know what we are trying for, how can we take steps towards it?

But to give some concrete ideas:

* Improve mental health care, in prison, but mostly out of it. My understanding is that when there was a big push to close "asylums" a few decades ago, significant groups of those populations (and those since that would have gone there) quickly moved to prisons. And even if that was unrelated, it's not hard to find that prisons hold a lot of people with mental issues.

* Improve the social safety net - if people can feed themselves, their kids, and live where there are jobs (or at least opportunities) it becomes much easier to say that there is no need for crime. I think this will become a bigger deal - automation may be costing jobs, or may just result in shifting them, but either way unskilled labor that pays enough to live on is definitely shrinking. I'm very curious about basic income, but the potential for unforeseen side effects is huge, so I'm cautious.

* Non-violent offenders don't need prison (nor lesser violent offenses and/or those that aren't likely to reoffend - a high school fight is different than a murder). Give them GPS trackers, force them to stay inside, to attend whatever sessions are needed. This might be honest real help, or it may be boring them to tears with a shrink or group meetings, depending on your views, but that means it's either Rehabilitation or Punishment. :) But it keeps people in contact with real society (in particular it maintains their corner of society: Friends, family, news), doesn't create a separate concentration to train people to be harder criminals, and is cheaper to boot! Critics would say this lets people stay home and watch TV all day, which is valid, but if Punishment is the goal, there will be downsides, the degree to which can be negotiated.

* Better work plans. I can only imagine getting a job as an ex-con is hell, based on how every job application I've ever filled out asked about it. This ties in with the safety social net above - better handling of managing jobs for everyone, but in particular ex-cons. If you have more to lose, it's easier to stay in the lines. (This is probably the hardest thing in this list to do, because it is to want, hard to figure out how)

* Give white-collar crime the same sentences. If every one of these wealthy execs and financiers that "settle but admit no wrongdoing" got the same treatment as the poor black 20-year old that robbed a 7-11, I'm guessing there'd be a bigger push for reform. That's not just cynicism - I'm guessing most people, including myself, don't realize how bad it truly can be, and thus have only vague interest in improving it.

* End prison rape. It happens. Not rarely. We know it happens. and we joke about it. Not rarely. I know very little about trauma, but I do know that someone that has trauma can form some very hard opinions very quickly. And if most people make jokes rather than care about your trauma, and have no/limited support network, and have no/limited mental health care, I can guess in which direction those hard opinions are more likely to go.

I'm probably missing some, but these are the ideas I've seen that sound to me like they're going in a sensible direction.

Get rid of the plea bargain system. We provide extreme incentives to just cave regardless of the facts.

This is something that I've been painfully aware of since the Aaron Schwartz case.

Edit: Misread parent.

I think you may have read that wrong. I think he's saying that full 25% (the ones who offended as juveniles) are unlikely to be repeat offenders. The remaining 75%, convicted as adults, are presumably a much bigger concern.

Exactly right. In fact adult pedophiles have extremely high recidivism rates.

It appears that pedophile is as much a sexual orientation as homosexual, and is as hard to change. But where gay people do no particular harm except to the sensibilities of conservatives, pedophiles do a lot of damage.

However a 12 year old who sends a naked picture of themselves to a friend is treated by the law in the same way as a pedophile. Ditto an 18 year old whose 17 year old girlfriend's mother gets unhappy. As a father whose children are hitting puberty now, this fact is very scary.

I warn my children, but one mistake could destroy their lives, and there is no shortage of people who it has happened to.

In fact adult pedophiles have extremely high recidivism rates.

Got any support for this? I'm finding contradictory information.

First hit in Google was https://www.smart.gov/SOMAPI/sec1/ch5_recidivism.html which makes the following key points.

1. The measured recidivism rate will depend on time frame. The longer the frame, the higher it is. Most studies use a shorter time frame.

2. Most sex crimes do not get reported. Most studies rely on reported crimes because it is obviously easier to get data for them.

3. Most re-arrests are for non-sexual offenses. But a non-sexual crime when carried out by a pedophile may have a sexual motivation.

That said, in the largest available long term study, the 10 year rearrest for another sex crime is 20%. The actual re-offense rate is certainly much higher.

Making it personal, I was abused as a child. I know two other people who that person abused, and I have strong evidence that there were many more before that. However looking at his legal history, you'd only see a single arrest and conviction for public indecency in the 1960s.

I have seen surveys indicating that the most unusual thing about this example is that he was arrested and convicted at all. That perfectly fits with what I've heard from other people who were abused. Most of the abusers were serial offenders, few were convicted.

Moving on, visit http://virped.org/ to get an idea of how hard it is to be a pedophile who is attempting to never offend. I fully respect their attempts to be better people, but won't be letting my children be around anyone who I suspect is in that group...my reasons should be obvious...

I'm sorry for your experience and I won't dive into your response to it, but as to your points they're all incredibly hand-wavey and #2 & #3 are especially magical thinking. This isn't to say that they aren't so, but unless it's possible to prove them they're pretty tenuous reasons with which to shape policy.

Think of it what you will. But to #2, googling randomly, http://www.nsvrc.org/sites/default/files/publications_nsvrc_... claims that only 12% of child sexual abuse is reported to the authorities, and cites a study on the topic. The majority of such studies that I've seen are based on surveys.

On #3, anyone with experience in how the legal system works will agree that while how often it happens may be hard to quantify, but it certainly does happen. And probably not very rarely.

I don't think that follows.

Remove juvenile after 75% of

The problem is that so many sites have social networking aspects to them, like the Supreme Court ruling pointed out. The North Carolina law is this: http://www.ncleg.net/gascripts/statutes/statutelookup.pl?sta...

This law does not prohibit the offender from _making a profile_ on these sites, but from accessing them altogether. So any site that allows users (news commenters, product reviewers, whatever) to have a "user profile" page cannot be accessed.

Amazon.com meets these criteria: https://www.amazon.com/gp/profile/amzn1.account.AGRXMFWYARWR...

Stack Overflow meets these criteria: https://stackoverflow.com/users/8131287/data-scientist

Github, all of Google, Wikipedia, ALSO meet this criteria. (Although Hacker News does not)

There are a few key things that are problematic with the wording of this law:

1. "Facilitates the social introduction between two or more persons for the purposes of friendship, meeting other persons, or information exchanges." The key word is "or" Every website is involved in information exchanges. This effectively does not limit the scope of the law.

2. The requirements of the profile pages contain "and" statements, but they're fairly generic. Name or username/nickname, photographs, and links placed somehow to other friends and associates. If there's a profile page, you can usually access some sort of activity log of the user (comments they've replied to, which may lead to users they've interacted with directly or indirectly) The only real limit here is the photograph, which not all websites (like Hacker News) have.

3. There is an exception involving "Has as its primary purpose the facilitation of commercial transactions involving goods or services between its members or visitors." However, this does not exclude sites like Amazon, given the strict wording of the law. Members are not exchanging goods with each other. This would exclude sites like Craigslist.

4. There is another exception: "Provides only one of the following discrete services: photo-sharing, electronic mail, instant messenger, or chat room or message board platform" The problem with this is that there aren't many "discrete service" websites that exist anymore. Google provides all of these services, Yahoo provides all of these services. Hotmail provides all of these services. Services like chats, forums, e-mail, and photo sharing are often bundled by a huge collection of other services.

5. The vague wording of "Web site" Is it a single domain? A single corporate entity? A single subdomain? The vague wording only works in favor of the law here.

With regard to the profile page elements, you seem to be reading “information, such as...” (which is usually read in legal, and plain, English as introducing a lost of examples) as meaning “information which includes, at a minimum, all of...”.

The more normal reading of “such ad” makes the scope of the law even broader than you describe (and would seem likely to include HN, which you view as excluded because it doesn't include every enumerated kind of information, specifically missing pictures, in it's profile pages.)

> (Although Hacker News does not)

I think it does - we have profiles with info like our personal website URL, twitter handle, a brief description on them. Here's mine, for instance: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=ivraatiems

But we don't have photos in the profiles

I take a different reading of clause 3. The main criteria is "Allows users to create Web pages or personal profiles that contain information". The restrictions following that are prefaced by "such as"... which is a very weird word choice for legal stuff. Usually you see stuff like "including but not limited to the following" or "including all of the following". So a bit of a wild card, but the common usage of such as is to preface representative but not exhaustive examples. So I don't think a site has to fit all of the such as criteria to be included, or even any of it. It just has to have pages with information of a type similar to the given examples, which I think Hacker News profiles clearly has.

Ah, yeah, that makes sense. This makes the law even worse.

After a prisoner has served their said time [for felons]:

1) remove their right to vote [in florida 1/4 african americans can't vote] [i]

2) force them to divulge they are felons to all new employers

3) force them to tell their neighbors they are criminals [sex crime cases which often only involve one witness testimony]

4) garnish their wages

5) seize their property [drug cases]

6) place them on parole to increase mental fear [at any moment they can return to prison without trial]

7) force them to provide random urine tests and body searches [creates anxiety for people with addiction]

8) force them into community service mixed with other felons

This is a system designed to create crime.

[i] https://theintercept.com/2016/12/22/a-quarter-of-floridas-bl...

10) Ineligibility for many govt. subsidized programs (SBA loans being one)

11) No longer able to become a doctor, nurse, banker, most govt. jobs, etc. (Many colleges won't accept you for the program based on the low possibility of employment after graduation)

Sex offenders have quite a few extra rules. i.e. no playgrounds or places where kids are present typically. I am not against a rule saying "You cannot knowingly communicate with minors online" but excluding people from the internet is a bit extreme.

edit: 12) Unable to rent housing. A large majority of property management companies will not rent to felons...period.

Another comment further down reminded me of that.

6/7/8 are not after a prisoner has "served their said time" its an alternative to that.

Oh no, 6/7 are not just alternatives.

Parole after release is common (e.g. you're sentenced to X years, get released earlier at Y years and are now on parole for X-Y years). Depending on country, a simple traffic ticket(!) can be a parole violation, so you get why this is an issue.

Same goes for alcohol and drug testing, again often used in combination with parole.

> e.g. you're sentenced to X years, get released earlier at Y years and are now on parole for X-Y years

I think that's exactly what was meant as an "alternative" to serving their time. You state it yourself, they were sentenced to X, but only serve Y behind bars. They are offered the choice of some years outside prison but with restrictions instead of that time in prison.

The point of parole should be to prevent future criminal acts. Making "everyday crime" (like loitering, jaywalking, speeding, "driving with a broken light") a possible breach of parole defeats this purpose and thus is no alternative. It's keeping someone in constant fear.

> The point of parole should be to prevent future criminal acts.

I think you mean the point of enforcing the rules of and revoking parole is to prevent future crime? Sure. But parole, which is specifically something handed out for good behavior in prison and is in lieu of prison, is still better than prison. They are still serving a sentence, and it's not as bad as it would be in prison. There's lots of problems with how we treat felons and restrict their futures, but I do not consider strict parole rules part of that, given it's during the time allotted for their original sentence. Just because they are out of prison, doesn't mean their punishment is complete (in this case).

Put simply, in all cases I can think of, parole is better than prison, and that's what it should be compared to, because that's the other option (no parole). Comparing it to being completely free for the purpose of deciding whether it's fair is nonsensical to me.

Edit: s/Comparing it to not being/Comparing it to being/

You are wrong. Look up federal supervised release.

Source: I served it, after completing my federal sentence.

Sure there are sentences that include supervision up front and supervision that is given after sentencing as an alternative to completing the full sentence. But from the parents post that isn't in addition to "has served their said time", its part of the said time.

Are you suggesting that you got supervised release after completing your full sentence as outlined after your conviction?

For example, my sentence was 70 months prison (1 month under the maximum allowed), then 3 years supervised release (the maximum allowed for my crime). During that 3 years, if I violated any condition of supervised release (including accessing the Internet, or working as a programmer), I could have been sent back for 3 more years of prison. This is different from parole, where you are conditionally released before your original sentence is completed. In my case, they had to let me out when I completed the 70 months. They could not let me out any sooner or any later.

Right. But the supervised release was part of "your time" to use the OP's term.

I'm not arguing that this is fair, or right, or the best we can do. I'm arguing that its not a case where these specific items are tacked on "after" your time is served. The other things he mentions (loss of voter rights, loss of housing rights, etc) truly are permanent punishments.

9) remove their right to own firearms

This one is a big deal in states like Montana, where you can no longer hunt for food as a felon. And Archery is now in a gray area too, where they aren't letting felons hunt with bows either.

Are some people reliant on hunting for food?

I live in North Idaho. Many people in this area and Montana hunt exclusively for food. Every year they kill/butcher/freeze the meat and use it to supplement.

Not everyone actually gets an animal and a large portion of those people are out there to just get drunk and camp...but there are many who do rely on the additional meat to get through the year. Especially in areas like this where people tend to shy away from the govt. and their subsidies.

Is that:

(hunt exclusively) for food?

hunt (exclusively for food)?

I.e. do they get all of their food from hunting? (what GP asked) Or do they eat all that they hunt?

This is why I wish we used a postfix language. Precidence rules are always ambiguous.

Theres a lot of little and big costs associated with living in the middle of fuck all nowhere that are offset by hunting (and fishing but I'm pretty sure felons are allowed fishing poles). I dunno Montana but Alaska, Yukon, Nunavut: a lot of people are reliant reliant on wildlife.

Using a gun after being a felon is nuts. The punishments are totally absurd.

just hunting: http://www.andymboyle.com/portfolio/felons-hunting-with-guns...

in Montana, many people who are lower income are partially or heavily reliant on harvesting big game for food.

if you're a felon, ironically, often times this need is compounded because you might have limited job opportunities due to your status as a felon.

Having a deer or hog in the freezer can make a significant difference in stability for people living paycheck to paycheck. What a household spends on meat in a month is probably in the same ballpark as a lower tier internet plan.

Call me simple-minded, but if you serve the time, you should regain all rights. How is any of this constitutional? Like, how can your right to vote be removed?

The concept of universal suffrage is a relatively recent thing. Indeed, it doesn't even exist given felon disenfranchisement.

Long story short, it's constitutional because the disenfranchisement of felons was expressly contemplated by the 14th Amendment.

  But when the right to vote at any [Federal] election ... is
  denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being
  twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States,
  or in any way abridged, except for participation in
  rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation
  therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number
  of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male
  citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

Technically speaking any kind of disenfranchisement is contemplated here. It's just that, excepting felons, the consequence is that a state loses representation. That said, most forms of disenfranchisement would be disallowed under Federal constitutional law for other reasons.

6) happens before conviction in a lot of cases

"After being a felon..."

Sounds like they were a criminal before that.

So rehabilitation's completely out the window then? Why take an offender and create a situation for them in which they'll be more likely to re-offend and work more closely with other criminals?

I know that personally if my vote was taken away, for example, that I'd lose a great deal of respect for and connection to the state; the meaning and validity of laws would be seriously diminished.

Yeah, that's the whole point. If you make it so a felon is essentially completely shut out from mainstream society, it will be really hard for them to not commit crime again, since they may not even be able to get a job or find a place to live. So in effect you just incentivize them being jailed again, which is bad for them and for all of society, since we have to pay for it.

Lots of felonies are completely ridiculous and cater to special interests, such as felony copyright infringement.

This is now interesting. Apparently prisoners in the US and many other countries are not allowed to have Internet access. In the US there is a system in place that allows inmates to communicate text only emails. I don't think you can call that plain text messaging "the Internet" in 2017.

With this supreme court ruling, how prisons in the US are going to allow inmates to have access to the real Internet? I mean you can not ban those inmates from accessing the Internet, right?

The headline (and perhaps the article; I haven't read it since the headline is so bad) overstates the importance of the ruling.

The case involved someone on his state's sex offender registry. He was also prohibited from accessing social media sites, and got in trouble for posting a complaint about a traffic ticket on Facebook.

The actual ruling is that not allowing him on any social media site for any reason was too broad. Apparently the opinion makes comments about how important internet access is to modern society, which does give a hint about how the court might rule in the future, but a concurring opinion says there's no need to go off into the weeds for that discussion.

I don't follow your concerns on the headline. How is "a blanket ban on social media sites is unconstitutional" substantially different from "people can't be banned from the internet"?

Perhaps we're reading it differently, but to me, the headline says "you can't be banned from the internet as a whole", not "you can't be banned from a narrowly-tailored subset of the internet".

To me the headline says "you can't be banned from any part of the internet for any reason," or, alternatively, "everybody has a right to access the internet." The actual ruling is much narrower: "it's unconstitutional to ban all sex offenders from accessing social media sites." The Court hasn't officially said anything about other people (e.g., current prisoners, people on probation, specific people convicted of computer-related crimes, etc.) or other sites on the internet.

I was responding to the questions "With this supreme court ruling, how prisons in the US are going to allow inmates to have access to the real Internet? I mean you can not ban those inmates from accessing the Internet, right?"

I think his point was the rule isn't in relation to prisoners who traditionally do not have free access to all of the resources a free person might.

Exactly. Prisoners lose a great many 'rights' when they are incarcerated. Internet access is one of those.

Traditionally (for better or worse), prison inmates do not have the same rights/freedoms that everyone else does. For example, they usually don't get unsupervised calls and visits, and depending on their sentence, may not be able to take/make calls or accept visitors at all for a period of time. It's not a stretch to think that this SCOTUS decision is only related to people outside prison.

>> they usually don't get unsupervised calls

Does anyone? NSA and all ...

Prisoners are slaves under the constitution. It is a bummer but it is our last slave institution.

Prisoners in the US have barely any rights, they don't even have voting rights as felons in many states.

The court decisions focused on peoples ability to be part of society, and as far as I know that US prison system is the opposite of that. If in the future the prison system was reformed to be rehabilitation rather then retribution, then question like how inmates can access the real internet become really interesting. To quote: "convicted criminals—might receive legitimate benefits from these means [social media] for access to the world of ideas, in particular if they seek to reform and to pursue lawful and rewarding lives."

Make it extremely expensive people in prison or family have to pay a lot of money to just talk on the phone. This will just give another way for profit based incarceration system to make money for putting and keeping people in jail.

Let's continue this until everybody is in jail.

That's for the best. Reform and all that.

Ban != Access

You can NOT ban someone from the Internet but you may deny access to Internet in prisons.

I'm confused by your statement. If "Ban != Access" then what's preventing courts from simply denying access (not a "Ban" under your assertion above) to people outside of prisons as well?

My thinking was same as the parent. Preventing access would involve telling someone who owns a computer and could, for example, connect to public wifi, that they are not allowed to do that and will be punished for doing so.

I think this would be relevant to someone who has committed a crime using a computer and remains banned from using the internet even after finishing a prison sentence (like the kid in the movie Hackers). It doesn't sound like that can happen now.

Suppose a state doesn't bother to install an internet connection in the prison, and confiscates phones with mobile data. This is denying access.

Suppose someone is caught with an internet phone in jail and is hauled in front of a judge. If it's banned, then they can have their jail term increased.

Yea I understand the "If you're in prison" side of this but I feel like asserting "Ban != Access" makes the general public (i.e not in prison) side of this MUCH fuzzier.

What's the difference?

Cigarettes aren't banned. That doesn't mean everyone gets free cigarettes.

I can't stop you from going online but I don't have to give you a computer to access it?

Again what's the difference? Your actions forbade someone from using the internet, what's the difference besides playing dumb word games?

You can get some money together, go and buy a laptop, connect to free public wifi. The government cannot ban you from using it if you complete those steps. i.e. they cannot be the only thing preventing you from accessing the internet. If you have no money or no way of buying a computer or no way of accessing a connection that's on you, the government isn't required to give you those things for free. Huge difference between the two concepts and very much not word games.

I'm pretty sure US prisons don't allow you to have a laptop (they certainly don't permit cell phones), nor is there likely to be public wifi on the premises.

I'm not sure how you can't see the difference. If you have a laptop + Internet subscription you can access the internet. If you don't, tough luck.

"Access to the Internet" is the right. Not the tools to access the internet.

Perhaps a prison would even be the ideal environment for working on e.g. a large open source project.

That would have meant ReiserFS would have continued.

Wow, I completely forgot about ReiserFS. That takes me back. I was a huge fan of it.

That would be fitting continuing of all the great books that were written in prison.

Considering the vast numbers of prisoners, the rate of literary production is not that great, especially when you take out the political prisoners.

You cannot ban someone from the internet, but you are not forced to give them access to it if they do not already.

Reason #516 why people should only send plain text e-mail.

If I recall correctly Kevin Mitnick was banned from using a phone or a computer quite a while back. Right?

Well they had to.

They couldn't very well give him the opportunity to initial a nuclear attack by whistling down the phone could they?

My understanding of the ruling is that individuals can still be banned, on a case-by-case basis, but not an entire class of offenders by default.

re: sex offender lists and sentencing

The implication is that the people on the list are still a threat. If that's true, shouldn't they still be in prison?

No. You don't get thrown into prison for being a threat. You get there for a specific action.

Unfortunatley, with the machine learning hype, a lot of companies are pushing "AI-assisted software" that does put people in prison for "being a threat" or for a longer time they should normally get, simply because of factors like being black, or poor, or from a bad neighborhood, etc.

https://www.propublica.org/article/machine-bias-risk-assessm...

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/13/ai-progra...

On the other hand, you can only be considered a threat as a consequence of specific actions you took in the past. When you get out of prison that means that, according to the law, you're no longer a threat, and there shouldn't be any reason or justification for limiting your freedom or shaming you publicly by putting your name on a list.

> according to the law, you're no longer a threat

What part of the law specifically rules released prisoners as not a threat?

Actually, being put under probation after release means you are still considered a threat.

While I can't speak of US law, being on probation in Sweden is just an other name for a shortened sentence. The general idea is that you spend a portion of the prison time outside, but under strict conditions.

What's gonna end up happening is law enforcement is going to strike deals with the major sites like Facebook and Twitter, which are the internet now, to ban anyone on the sex offender rolls -- and nothing much of value will be lost. These companies are not ready for the shitstorm of outrage that will ensue when it is discovered that they are allowing predators to communicate with children.

Isn't it advantageous for law enforcement to keep as many criminals as possible on social media? Many criminals these days are caught because they boast about their illegal actions (or live stream them) on Facebook.

The people most likely to respond to dumb outrage like that are also the least likely to stop using such platforms.

I don't think they have much to worry about.

This is interesting... then what happens to the concept of 3 strikes and out?

3 strikes is not law, it's policy of some ISPs. They can still do whatever they want.

But if a policy is found unconstitutional, can it be challenged?

Not a lawyer here

Its voluntary system in the US, while law in several other countries.

Other countries also aren't beholden to US Supreme Court rulings so...

Are prisoners people? Should inmates have access to the internet?

Does this apply to seizing domains?

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