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Comment by kennywinker | Hacker News Reader

I have three replies:

1. is civil disobedience a crime, or the duty of all engaged citizens?

2. dna proves he was present AT SOME POINT, at that location, but not that he did anything illegal. I suspect they don't actually need to win the case, they just want to chase this guy down to chill further protests.

3. while I don't like cigarette butts littered around either, the environmental impact of a cigarette and its filter is so far outweighed by the impact of the pipeline in question. To compare the two is ridiculous.

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The whole point of civil disobedience is to intentionally commit a non-violent and non-destructive crime.

If there is no crime, in the US it's just a lawful protest as permitted by the First Amendment.

Pardon, you are right. I'm actually not trying to say that the action itself is not illegal, just that I believe the RIGHT thing to do is consider political actions differently from un-politically motivated actions. To potentially punish or pursue them less (protest, civil disobedience) or more (hate crimes, corruption, terrorism).

The protest was not illegal. Stop saying it was.

From the article: "100 demonstrators, many with their faces covered, halted construction and vandalized equipment." that is not a protest, that is crime.

halting construction is a protest, not a crime. Protests can disrupt things, and still be lawful. vandalism, sure that's technically a crime. We should definitely use DNA to track down someone who spray painted a bulldozer... three years later... makes sense.

The corporate capture of our government is a crime

I was not there, and I am not up on all the facts, but was there not criminal trespass and destruction of property?

> was there not criminal trespass and destruction of property

On the trespass charges, most the land the protest took place on was on Standing Rock reservation, and used with permission, on federal land and used with explicit permission of the BLM, or on privately owned tracts of land and used with implicit permission in that the deeded landowner did not object to the use and their expressed objection would be necessary for it legally to be considered trespassing.

The destruction of property in this specific incident refers to a handful of people, including US Presidential Candidate Jill Stein, spray painting slogans on the scoop of a bulldozer. The main effect of this action was to protect the scoop against corrosion for a day or so before it was next used and the paint abraded again as it was once before on the first day the bulldozer was ever used after initially bought sporting a fresh coat of paint. Rather than bulldozer vandals from a scientific and practical viewpoint they would be more accurately described as bulldozer protectors.

There is also the issue that the specific land in question off the present "reservation" was acknowledged as being eternally the property of the Sioux people in a legitimate legal treaty ratified by the US Government, and the US Supreme Court has previously ruled that this treaty was legitimate and nothing abrogated it. So the issues of whether the US BLM correctly permitted the protest (they did) or the deeded landowner objected (he didn't) aren't even relevant at all from that legal viewpoint where all the land in question legally still belongs to the Sioux, not just from their own perspective, but from both ratified treaties and contemporary rulings of SCOTUS.

The pipeline did not even cross tribal land. So construction could have proceeded fine if there was no trespassing. Therefore (obviously), there was trespassing and interference with legal construction activities, countered by private security and law enforcement at various times.

Do you really want to live in a country where DNA evidence is used years after the fact to prosecute people for trespass? Bear in mind that DNA only establishes the accused's presence at the scene, and not the nature of any actions taken there beyond the smoking of the cigarette the DNA was obtained from.

Uuuh. No. Did I imply that somehow?

Either I can't write (which is possible) or you can't read (which is also possible), but where did that come from?

In your previous comment where you alluded to trespass. Surely you are aware that mere presence isn't proof of having committed vandalism absent other evidence that would render the DNA identification moot.

I disagree this evidence shows this crime was committed by this person. This wasn't one of the sites where a small organized crew of environmentalist hipsters vandalized a pipeline valve. It was the site of a large, legal, peaceful protest attended by tens of thousands of people. What evidence is there the person that smoked this cigarette committed the crime of "rioting"? There is none.

Civil disobedience wasn't a major factor in the protests.

The pipeline itself wasn't legal. It didn't properly comply with the permitting process. They "smurfed" the applications by dividing the pipeline into a series of tiny unrelated projects in order to avoid the required environmental reviews. Smurfing to avoid regulatory requirements is explicitly prohibited under federal law.

So yes, federal crimes were committed there. No evidence by this guy.

And were there crimes by any protestors? Yes! One woman, a convicted felon, fired a gun while being apprehended by police. It later turned out the gun was planted on her by an FBI informant who had sexually assaulted her, but legally she was in violation of federal law because she possessed a firearm. So that was illegal to be sure. A bit reminiscent of similar FBI operations where mentally deficient and gullible persons are recruited by FBI agents and coerced into plotting terrorists acts that are entirely designed and organized by the FBI.

The main protest acquired permission from relevant federal authorities and movement leaders clearly communicated to protestors that violence, weapons, and drugs were all unacceptable. This was a legitimate protest, not civil disobedience. Though obviously many like to argue it was illegal, and King's Birmingham march as well, and the dogs sicced on protestors and firehoses in Alabama by law enforcement were every bit as legal and justified as the dogs and firehoses deployed against protestors in the Dakotas during this decade.

This is a really excellent breakdown and added several details (like smurfing) that I was previously unaware of, not having had any involvement in these protests. Thanks.

I appreciate your comment. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is the lawyer that really figured out a lot about the smurfing. He talked to us one evening about the legal problems when people had gone to the casino one night because weather conditions were so bad and the casino opened the doors to let people crash on the floor.

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