Federal agents track down woman, demand she remove Instagram post about ICE

Streisand!

Maybe you should ask them for an ID to make sure they belong there.

I see they were invited in by the person they wanted to intimidate, so that she wouldn't be alone, and there were no voters present. "Better judgement" would have been to not invite them and to not accept the invitation, but after the fact I could say it's preferable to the alternative. The person who decided to take action against this lady should be fired though.

>Or are you saying people should be free to write whatever they want on social media with no repercussions?

no repercussions from the government, yes, people should be free to write whatever they want

Most countries in the West have higher threshold to arrest someone over social media posts. Some actually much, much higher.

12K is just a ridiculous number and indicates that the UK indeed has a free speech problem. I don't think that in my country there were more like ~ 20 actual arrests over the same problem during the same period.

Even if you agree with prosecuting people for speech, why exactly would you arrest them and drag them to prison/jail? Even here in Europe, this is a sort of offense that usually results in a suspended sentence or a fine, and a physical arrest is absolutely unnecessary, unless there is a good suspicion that that person is going to harm some concrete people at a concrete time.

In a more liberal country, even if prosecution over an utterance takes place, it usually happens without arrests, simply by asking the culprit to come to a police station and explain themselves, later the same in front of a court. There just isn't any need for physical restraining of that person, it is just intimidation.

Saying what you want about the government without fear of reprecussion or intimidation or consequence from the government is literally in the constitution. Very specifically for this situation.

This isn't a "freespeach" argument, this is the actual text of the actual constitution. This is the actual literal reason that line is included in the bill of rights. It is explicit constitutional law that the government cannot punish you for criticizing the government.

There are a ton of exceptions to our right to free speech, but this is not one.

"Typical" doesn't fit with "at worst".

The former may well be as you say, though when I tried to find real stats I was unable to tell what the breakdown of offence was let alone punishments (if someone has an official link, not opinion piece, I'd be interested).

All I do know is that one of the more famous cases is that kind of scale, total penalty being £985 including costs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_joke_trial

Whose gonna call the cops on the cops?

That, in my opinion, is the question of the era for the USA. We were taught that the rule of law prevailed and there are "checks and balances" but it seems like there is no prescibed way to enforce the rules inside the system.

These days, I would guess a "tsk-tsk" is said to them.

The States need to grow a pair and start arresting these agents who break the law.

> what are the consequences if they do it anyway?

State AGs seem to have collectively shrugged. But theoretically, a state charging a federal officer with unlawful conduct is precedented.

The UK case involved him being "lead away" by police and "detained" when he returned and spoke so not really an arrest for holding up a blank piece of paper. Not good by any means, but not quite "for holding up a blank piece of paper". The other UK case was about a threat of arrest if he wrote on the paper - that is under the law that bans protests in Parliament Square. Again, not good, but not for holding up a blank piece of paper.

The facts in your link contradict your post

> Was it against the law for them to ASK

> Yes, it was an attempt to intimidate her

You've answered your own question