It's not even that strong because of the "reasonably believed" bit: they just have to plausibly deny knowledge of precedent explicitly barring their (hyper-specific) action.
My understanding comes from having listened to far too many 'Audit the Audit' videos while doing work. I could be mistaken, this is my understanding of the issue though.
I'm not sure why this would be so given the way precedent works in US courts: since SCOTUS denied cert in this case, none of this applies outside the Sixth Circuit. Even within the Sixth Circuit, it's not clear that the same set of facts should pierce QI as long as the PC can be reasonably justified, an area where courts give police extremely broad latitude.
It's infuriating that this farce is what our legal system hinges on.
Some people are going to be upset, but in the end we can’t live in a “papers please” society with no freedom of expression. You want to cancel someone? Go ahead. You want to socially ostracize them? No problem. All that’s just freedom of association. Reasonable constitutionalists can have no problem with any of that.
But when you start arresting people? That’s a bridge too far. If the supremes say the law is good with this then we need new law makers, new laws, and new supremes just to be sure.
There's a 100% chance that some (many, actually) members of the community would have believed this account to be 'real' ergo, he's impersonating an entire police force.
Ergo, reasonable to think he was 'disruptive' to Emerg. Services.
Here is one of his 'satire' posts [1]
Where is the satire?
I can't even see how that's funny to anyone, but that's besides the point, there's no reason for people to not be certain that it's not real.
Frankly is seems really 'real' to me.
EDIT: Here's a very salient point - I glanced at it and actually missed the specific detail about 'hiring upon passing a 15 question test'. Why? Because even as I knew it was parody, the badge was there, my mind was filling in the blanks. I had to re-read it and 'think about it' to realize that was the 'comedy'. That's part an parcel of why we're not allowed to impersonate police officers for fun.
He is 'impersonating' Emergency services. That's it. That's obviously not appropriate and surely should not be legal.
I suggest the Police were called out of confusion, which is very literally supporting the claims that it was 'disruptive' to their operations.
I'm sad that so many people here seem to think he was maligned, I suggest having a look at what he did.
'Making fun of cops' is obviously fine, this was just someone impersonating the police.
All of that said, maybe people are assuming this was all truly a clear, South Park satire?
[1] https://ij.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Novak-Facebook-Pos...
More broadly - anyone who thinks that this is 'obviously a parody' needs to get out more - meet actual people. Many Americans are not hugely clued in, not up to date with culture, have difficulty reading, hearing, moreover, we're all busy and will misinterpret key items - for example even both of us misread the statement.
My mother has used a 'Web Browser' for 20 years and she doesn't know what a 'URL' is. My father uses 'The YouTube' daily and doesn't really know what a 'Web Browser' is. He clicks on the icon, and gets the videos. That's his understanding.
Phone scammers take advantage of a lot of people, not just the elderly.
But if we put this to the test, and showed this to random people without any context at all, there's a 100% chance that people would believe some of the post are real, and at minimum, literally call the Police to ask what is going on, hence 'disrupting' police.
The case discusses a total of about a dozen calls. If this was enough to disrupt a moderately sized suburban police force in a meaningful way, then I think the issue is larger than just a Facebook impersonation account.
The bar for disruption must be higher, else any call that is not strictly the jurisdiction of the police is grounds for arrest as you're disrupting the services.
Consider a situation where someone runs a parody account about upcoming social events and makes a parody post about an upcoming "baby bbq" and asks residents to find they plumpest baby and bring it for a cookup.
While the account page mentions it's parody, the community members spread the post around without this context
Dozens of people call the police, some even demanding they send officers to stop the bbq, and the police only confirm the post not the account; should the police be able to SWAT the parodist without repercussion?
This gets into way too many edge cases of how much _immunity_ should the police have when performing due diligence. In the actual case, the disruption is arguable, and the urgency of stopping the posts/account was also arguable. That people fall for it is not the point; onion articles from more than a decade ago still get posted as real and get real outrage, so the general publics opinion is not a good bar as it constantly shifts and changes depending on who you ask
In this case there was not a major disruption any more than a concerned parent calling the police because they didn't recognize their neighbor at night.
The police had no urgent need to take action, could have handled this without any police action.
The charge is that the police did not like being parodied and thus used their power to shut down free speech, and now the courts are supporting this.
I think it's a bad choice to not hear this case and the police are in the wrong. They are over reacting and trying to litigate someone into having their rights suppressed.
This is not about 'the specific proportion of disruption' - it's about impersonating police and emergency services.
The 'disruption' is not just measured in 'how many calls and how much that disrupts' - it's a measure of civil disruption and confusion.
"The case discusses a total of about a dozen calls."
This is about a call per hour (!) because of a parody.
First - a call an hour over 'confusion of some web site' is quuite high, and that alone is materially disruptive.
Imagine having a startup, and your assistant is literally fielding a call every hour about some confused granny, immigrant/non english speaker, or other random person? That's a lot.
It's also an indication of now nutty the situation must be and how such a large number of people were confused.
But that's a bit besides the point, because it's clear that the man was ultimately impersonating a police officer to the point where obviously mebers of the community were confused as to the nature of what is going on. That's bad.
Frankly, I can hardly believe what I'm reading about all of this.
I think 'online' - people take academic positions that are detached from reality.
Coupled with HN's obsessive libertarian/hacker streak, and you have an entire thread taking an absurd position, supporting a who's impersonating police, causing obvious confusion in the communnity.
"The police had no urgent need to take action"
? They are literally getting a call an hour about some confusing over their online presence. They absolutely have to respond. This is not just some 'civic office' thing it's the frigging police aka 'emergency services'.
"The charge is that the police did not like being parodied"
No, there was someone impersonating the police wiht a whacko account - you can't do that. Legally, morally, pragmatically.
I'm sure this guy probably thought he was just 'being funny' which is fine, and I think they should have just told him to put 'parody account' on the posts so that people knew it was a parody and that would be the end of it.
If you want to find out how this works, go ahead and do the same to your local police. Make a 'parody account' (that looks identical to the real one) and really push the boundaries of what you think is 'free speech' and put out some seriously dark humour about specific individuals.
Then see what happens.
Again - a legit pardoy without confusion, 100% fine, but this guy should have the self awareness to realize what he's done. But instead he's trying to be a victim, claim that he has arbitrary rights to do things he shouldn't do, to make himself the center of atteniton and rake in a few million dollars.
He should have apologized and changed the account.
Also FYI I don't see why the police should have put this guy in jail, he shuld have been out on bail at minimum while it got cleared up. Frankly he should have been just told to 'take it down or mark it as pardoy' and that could have been the end of it right there.
If he opens a true parody account that is labeled as parody and then he gets into trouble, we can take up the discussion again under the premise 'cops won't allow parody'.
You can't to have it both ways and you don't seem to understand legal definition of ompersonation -
Impersonating is intentional effort to blend inm Parody is making jokes that stand out.
Just because you dont get the joke or are not clued in, does not suddenly give the joker Mens Rea and make him an impersonator. It's your problem, not the joker's.
If people read about your police force helping pedophiles, and it sounds like something the police would do, that's their problem.
> The 'disruption' is not just measured in 'how many calls and how much that disrupts' - it's a measure of civil disruption and confusion.
Oh man there is so much social confusion, so many people to jail.
Lets start with journalists that write about drone strikes killing innosent people. The government said any male over 16 is 'enemy combattant' and these journalists are creating social confusion.
Now, 9/11 truther? Causing confusion, straight to jail. You think enchanced interrigation at guantanamo is torture? Confused, straight to jail. Dont support war in ukraine? Confused, straight to jail.
You wrote an article about how FBI groomed autistic people into planting a fke bomb so they could arrwat them as terrorit? Super confused, life sence.
The appeals court touched on this issue specifically to say that (a) police reasonably inferred probable cause from this, but (b) the standard is "reasonable reader" rather than "most gullible person on Facebook", so (c) it's definitely protected speech.
Besides, he was acquitted. Prosecutors actually took this nonsense to trial and failed to convince a jury of your conclusion.
It's ridiculous, all of the poeple here defending this.
Literally a call an hour to the police station, among the small number of people who saw the site just in the first few hours, and actually decided to make the call? That's clear evidence that enough people in the community were confused, and conclusive evidence of material disruption.
Moroever, I think the most 'rational' conclusion given the situation would be that the Facebook page was hacked, not that it was a fake account - that's what I would have inferred without doing much research.
The lack of understanding of basic communications here as well - it's as though people on HN don't know anyone outside of their bubbles.
Go into your community and meet some actual people. Old people, less educated people, migrants, people with disabilities. Just hop on the bus and start up a convseration with a random person to see what 'average' is.
Moreover, there is the problem of the 'authority of the brand' aka the emblem itself.
If a police officer came to your door, presented a badge and then started doing some whacky stuff, how long would the average person hold out before being sure it was a farce?
The badge/brand itself is a marker of credibility which makes the participant have to assume a degree of validity. Which is the whole problem with impersonating memebers of the justice system.
Let's try an adjacent case:
You dress up as a real police officer, and then start acting like and idiot. Free speech? Why wouldn't the 'average person' know that you're doing satire? Go ahead and try.
"Judge, I knocked on the door in uniform, showed a real badge, and then told the person to do 20 jumping jacks! Clearly every reasonable member of the communnity would know that police officers don't ask you to do 'jumping jacks'!"
It's not up to the community members to have to use their inteligence to do some kind of discrimination, it has to be 'clearly' not a polic officer.
Which is why when the stripper shows up at the door, they don't wear real uniforms.
Let's look at the negative cases:
If it was clearly and obviously legal - then why don't they sell real police uniforms everywhere? So that you can go and be a buffoon for 'satire'?
There should be 100's of web sites that 'impersonate the police' but using 'real badges and branding'.
Let's look at the civil commercial scneario:
How long would you last running around in a real UPS uniform, making a fool of yourself making 'fake deliveries'?
How long would you last using a real UPS/Amazong/McDonal'ds logo/branding on your web site - changing only a few details for fun?
Obviously there'd be liability.
Whether or not that his man was doing 'satire' not is besides the point - he was impersonating Emergency Services.
Go ahead and do exaclty what he did in your own home town / region and see what happens.
HNers are making fools of themselves.