Idaho law criminalizes secretly filming on farms | Hacker News Reader

Idaho law criminalizes secretly filming on farms

america.aljazeera.com

230 pointskeeshawn134 comments

"Debate about laws governing filming on farms in Idaho started in 2012 when someone hired by Mercy for Animals got a job at a Bettencourt Dairies operation in Hansen and filmed workers caning, beating and sexually abusing cows.

The video was used to prosecute employees at the dairy, and it convinced Idaho’s dairy industry to create a worker training program to help prevent animal abuse. But it also set in motion a concerted effort by the dairy industry to make sure such embarrassing videos weren’t made in the state again."

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Of all things, you would think that the first amendment would protect such a thing, can any lawyer weight on that?

> The measure passed Idaho’s Senate earlier in February to the applause of agricultural representatives who said it would help ensure farmers’ right to privacy.

There is a certain irony in the US that everyone can get privacy, except private citizen.

They probably think that privacy only means the right to not see you dirty secrets all over the news

I consider myself a far left liberal and I certainly don't condone abusing farm animals. However, taking a paying job under falsified pretenses with a made up resume and then spending your working hours secretly filming internal operations for future public release with the sole goal of harming your employer, that is just sketchy. If you believe in the cause so much that you call it war - well understood. But protected behavior? Bullshit. This behavior should have risk of consequences.

It is not protected behavior. Laws like this bother me because there are already ways to go after these people (fraud, falsifying documents, etc...)

If it's in the public interest and exposes crimes and fraud then it's not as bad.

I think what's alarming to me is that these actions by private citizens are necessary in the first place.

If the problem is as widespread as the article seems to imply, then I think the industry should be more proactive and formally implement measures (such as allowing third-party but sanctioned "undercover" inspectors) to identify and address these abuses.

But the cynic in me already suspects why the industry would never go for something like this voluntarily.

It's beyond sketchy. As the "producer" of such a video, you can edit and cut it any way you want. You're effectively using the trust given to you from somebody to make a political propaganda video damaging their interests.

EDIT: I've massively changed my comment because, after thinking this through a bit, the real problem here is that this is a political stunt masquerading as some kind of news story.

Husband beats wife, it's a crime. He should be punished. Neighbor sneaks into house, taping husband beating wife, then publishes it online as part of taking apart husband's run at mayor, it's still a crime, but it's also a political stunt. The two are not mutually exclusive.

So my response here is complex: bad workers get trained, dairy industry gets punished, activists get supported for First Amendment rights to publish -- then punished for invading private property and fraud. It's definitely a mixed bag, and not the good-guy-versus-bad-guy story AJ seems to want to make it out to be.

And yes, there's no doubt the state legislature is protecting the dairy industry, but if this surprises you, you haven't taken a close look at the regulatory state we've been happily creating over the past 50 years. Most politicians would argue, either on or off the record, that this is exactly the kind of thing they get elected to do. This is their job.

So how would you propose someone expose (what they consider to be) criminal or unjust practices? It's only ok if an impartial observer just happened to find themselves in the middle of a commercial farming operation with a video camera?

I get that it sucks for someone to be acting in bad faith toward their employer, but isn't that justified and even necessary when the employer is acting in bad faith toward the populace? Obviously this is what Snowden did - he knew what he was doing, he didn't just stumble upon a pile of documents. But maybe you would describe what he did as sketchy, criminal, and wrong? Many have, of course.

Edit: Well you heavily edited your comment while I wrote mine. But, I don't think the wife-beating analogy is valid, it brings in ulterior motives. In this situation there is no mayoral campaign to derail, they actually just wanted to expose the crimes because those are what they took issue with. Still don't understand your desire to demonize the whistleblower.

Snowden is a hero because he exposed that our political class was lying to us. We make broad exceptions when it comes to the government itself because there is no other form of recourse. If the government is lying to you, you're truly hosed.

Here, all sorts of things could happen to bring crimes to light. A worker might rat out his employer. A news crew could be filming some other story. A civil suit might involve disclosure of practices. The FDA might investigate the farm as part of some food chain issue.

After all, we've created a seriously complex system of laws and enforcement to handle stuff like this. Are we now saying that they aren't good enough? If not, why not fix them, instead of having people sneak around other people's property? And let's not forget, if you let the special group called "people who care about animal treatment" violate property rights, then you'll be doing it for everybody, including people you don't agree with, like perhaps "people who don't want abortions happening"

Nope, there are tons of ways to catch this crime and punish the criminals. Let's use them and enough with the self-promotional I'm-upset-so-I-have-a-right-to-break-the-rules bullshit. No amount of drama here is going to change my mind about the firm necessity of respecting private property in the abstract (meaning assuming there isn't more to the story.)

> A worker might rat out his employer.

This is just naive. In the places where this happens, such 'ratting out' would incur social penalties from the (local) community. It's better to sweep possibly illegal acts under the rug when the livelihood of the community is (possibly) at stake.

Take Snowden as an example (since it's already on the table). How many people had access to the same information about what the NSA was doing for years, and said nothing? Do you really want the only recourse to be waiting for insiders to come forward?

That said, do we really need more laws here? If "lying on your resume to investigate wrong-doings" is such a generically bad thing, then why is this legislation limited to a specific industry?

> "people who don't want abortions happening"

This is a poor example. What could they possibly exposed to shock the public? That abortions are happening? The whole point of going undercover and releasing footage is to expose something to the public. I'm curious what crimes and/or reprehensible behavior is going on at abortion clinics? Doctors sexually abusing patients? Doctors taking aborted fetuses into a backroom and eating them? I'd argue that if said things were actually happening, it would still be in the public interested even if it was an anti-abortion group that was doing it.

> The FDA might investigate the farm as part of some food chain issue.

Many people believe the government is in the pocket of said industries. It takes a really severe issue (e.g. Mad Cow Disease) to have any significant impact. Just witness how the industry was able to get its own law passed to make it specifically illegal to try and exposed illegal acts behind (their) closed doors. Do you really think that government oversight will work correctly in such an environment?

Well, a lot of people don't have a lot of faith in the institutional processes (cf. Deepwater Horizon, many other regulatory failures), and don't want to wait around for a serendipitous happenstance, that doesn't seem very reliable.

And yeah, there is a fine line between "exposing wrongdoing" and "interfering with legal business operations," and an activist might not always know which side they will fall on, but I would prefer to live in a country where they have some liberty to act on their beliefs.

This isn't very difficult to do.

Take 100K. Hire private investigators to find people who work at the place in question and who are not happy. Pay these people for affidavits stating that animal cruelty goes on. Based on that sworn testimony, go to a federal prosecutor and get a warrant. Take the warrant and gather evidence. Or, start a civil action and begin discovery.

This kind of thing is done all the time. But you know what it lacks? Publicity. Because at the end of the day, that's what activists want. It's not necessarily to stop the wrong, it's to get TV and internet coverage -- just like we see here -- and to use that coverage to raise money, gain attention, create an even bigger movement.

So yeah, I'm all for activists speaking out. Hell, I'll go march with them. But not onto somebody else's private property. They can go jump in a lake as far as I care, no matter what kind of impassioned cause they're thumping their chests about this week.

Look, either civilization depends on the rule of law or we all get to make impassioned speeches about things and do what we want because we believe our beliefs to be so special (more than other people). Count me in as a "rule of law" guy. Otherwise neither you or I are going to like things very much.

>This isn't very difficult to do.

>Take 100K.

Are you serious?

PETA has a $10 million budget for "Research, Investigations and Rescue", out of their $30 million total budget. That's 100 $100k investigations per year they could fund.

Exactly. Whistleblowing is a meta statement about a law. A law by definition can't address whisteblowing no more than a law can bring the idea of a governement of laws to life. They both flow from the same place, the human conscience.

  Husband beats wife, it's a crime. He should be
  punished. Neighbor sneaks into house, taping
  husband beating wife, then publishes it online
  as part of taking apart husband's run at mayor,
  it's still a crime, but it's also a political
  stunt. The two are not mutually exclusive.

You're also ignoring this angle of it:

  Husband is never charged. Crimes are swept under
  the rug. Husband lobbies for a law that
  specifically makes it an extra crime to film
  husbands beating their wifes due to 'invasion of
  privacy.'

Also, your original analogy is flawed. If someone lying on a resume is not the same as someone that is breaking and entering. The analogy would go more like:

  Husband beats wife, it's a crime. He should be
  punished. Concerned 3rd party gets hired on as a
  day laborer, cutting said husband's grass. Films
  husband beating wife through window (for the
  sake of argument, let's say that it's impossible
  to see the windows from public land -- e.g. a
  20-acre estate).

You're also cutting a huge chunk out of investigative journalism. How does one discover what goes on behind closed doors without going undercover? It's not like filming these abuses doesn't already come with risks. If someone is beating an animal to death because (e.g.) it has a broken leg and can't walk, is it really such a leap that this person might severely beat someone discovered to be filming it?

    > You're effectively using the trust given to you from somebody to make a political propaganda video damaging their interests.

Unlike PR? You know, the means by which private companies manipulate their (potential) customers and interested parties into thinking one way or another about their products. How is this different from the political propaganda in any other way than the former serves to further business and the latter serves to further an ideology? I agree that it's kind of sketchy, but I don't agree that companies and ideological organizations shouldn't get to play in the same ballpark.

From what you've written, it sounds like it's not okay go undercover to expose abuse.

I disagree.

It's in the public's interest to expose this abuse, because the activity is inhumane, immoral, and likely illegal.

It's not uncommon for journalists to go undercover to uncover the truth.

I draw the line at illegality. Activists filming distasteful but legal processes are sketchy. Activists filming animal abuse in cases where the government turns a blind eye should be encouraged. Ideally the government would perform this function, but I don't see that happening.

That is what is wrong with this situation, someone with a camera chooses what to show or not show maybe there was an accident, maybe an inexperienced new employee or some technique that seems cruel but is necessary (de-horn, castrate, shear wool, horse shoes) but the film maker from a city finds disturbing.

For example near where I live there is a "slaughterhouse" that use the same techniques as other similar slaughterhouses but the one near me gets a lot of press and outrage.

The slaughterhouse I refer to is open to the outside it's on ice and it's seals not cow, bulls, pigs or chickens but it's the same process a bash on the head and then chop up the carcass. It just seems worse due to red blood on white ice and being out in the open not in a building.

The goal isn't to "harm the employer", the goal is to expose their behavior. If exposing your "internal operations" harms you, the problem isn't person doing the exposing, the problem are the "internal operations".

I find it fascinating how everytime someone makes scandalous practices public, people come on the scene to condemn the people who go to the public.

If there is no legal way to publicise abhorrent practices, we must break the law. Especially if "breaking the law" is something as harmless as lying on a resume.

This: "Illegal looking" law could be expanded later on to require hardware shutters on a persons eyes. So when they step on a farm, a machine checks to make sure your eyes are completely covered.

Then later on, we may also have to make sure that the person visiting a farm also cannot hear, or smell, or touch, or taste. When you set foot on my property, any data you collect is not admissible in court.

This could be a good thing. I want to make it illegal for people to collect any kind of data of what I do on my property. If you want to come see, then you'll have to talk to my secretary and pay a million dollars for an exclusive interview.

> This could be a good thing. I want to make it illegal for people to collect any kind of data of what I do on my property. If you want to come see, then you'll have to talk to my secretary and pay a million dollars for an exclusive interview.

Become rich; purchase laws like this one from politicians. Your dream is reality!

How does this play with the current whistleblower laws? Presumably longstanding employees would be protected. Where do you draw the line?

It strikes me as an added thought crime. If I get a job in an ag business and after I get there am witness to moral, ethical and legal violations will I be subject to criminal prosecution because they claim I had prior intent? How do they prove that? That I am vegetarian? Seems like an easy way to persecute/prosecute the messenger.

To you and the other commenter:

But how is that different from a journalist making the same thing?

If it was false or showing the farmer having sex with his/her wife/husband/alien living in the attic, it would be understandable to ban it[0], but showing a number of abuse and the lack of oversight of a large company doesn't strike as particularly reprehensible.

[0] Amusingly, these kind of things are NOT banned. Cue all the leaked sextapes of celebrities and those websites by Hunter Moore.

If by 'harm your employer' you mean 'expose the illegal, immoral, unethical, and unconscionable actions of a corporation and its employees', then I think myself and the vast majority of Americans are all for protecting that speech.

Which is worse: taking a job under false pretenses, or abusing animals?

The balance of the good seems clear to me.

Two wrongs do not make a right.

FWIW however, I am a big proponent of exposing animal cruelty.

I think that's an extremely childish level of morality.

Do you believe morality is universal or relative?

I don't see how "taking a job under false pretenses" could even be considered an indictment in the context of at-will employment. The new employee is clearly doing their job, or they'd have been fired right away and escorted out. They just happen to have an internal motivation other than the paltry wage.

I think you raise a valid point. Is there room in a Society of Laws for whistleblowers and warriors of conscience?

Indeed, what do animal rights groups feel on this? No law is going to stop me from treating fellow humans with respect, and according that same respect to all life forms reliant on Humanity. I would not own slaves regardless of the Law [New England blood, we don't do that shit]. I would not litter if it was mandated by ordinance. I will not hate another religion or culture because our Dear Leader says they are evil.

As reprehensible as the abuse was, this not a First Amendment issue: farms are private property.

It's the same way you can throw someone out of your house for saying things you don't like and they can't claim their First Amendment rights are being violated.

Can you currently convict someone of a felony for lying on their resume?

You really shouldn't comment on an issue you know nothing about. The Ag-Gag laws have nothing to do with private property or private rights of action, they are felony criminal laws criminalizing certain kinds of speech, and there's currently at least one Constitutional challenge filed by a plaintiff who was arrested and charged with filming a farm from public property.

My first amendment rights would be violated if I was arrested and jailed for a year for saying something in your house you didn't like.

Yes, they would. What's your point?

You claimed it was the same. It isn't because there's a year's jail and a $5k fine involved, thus making it a constitutional matter, not a private one.

I think you should work on your reading comprehension.

I said someone throwing you out of their house because of something you said was not a First Amendment issue, and it's not. I don't recall saying, or implying that a homeowner has the ability to jail someone or impose fines. If you are aware of that being the case, I'd certainly be interested in citations.

Your sloppy writing doesn't help.

I would suggest that the issue is that animals are not property. They can't just do what they want with them and get away with it.

This is similar to the tort of public disclosure of private facts. (Libel protects me against you lying about me, but this tort protects against you publicizing my strange hobbies or sexual practices or other private practices so long as, and this is huge, there's no public interest).

I know Idaho was a late adopter to the tort, while many other states committed the tort to statute. They may just be coming around.

The best argument for harmonizing it with first amendment law is in a Yale Law Journal note from 1973:

> [F]ree speech is protected not for some intrinsic value of speech but because it is a necessary condition for the making of informed decisions about matters of government, decisions which all citizens in a democracy are called on to make....He who performs his listening and deciding functions in a glass house is coerced by public opinion, whether anyone is actually looking in or not. If every magazine he reads, every rally he attends, every person he speaks to might somehow become a matter of public knowledge, he would feel inhibiting pressure.

David B. Roe, "Privacy in the First Amendment," 82 Yale L.J. 1462.

That said, some facts aren't merely private matters. If leading public figures are violating the law or lying to constituents or abusing their family, the public has a right to know.

Farmers abusing animals is at least slightly harder, because whether or not that's a matter of public concern hinges on the conclusions we've made about animal rights. If we live in a world where animals are robotic automatons deserving of no relevant moral consideration, then these are probably private, embarassing facts that don't bear any exposure. If we live in a world where the pain and suffering of animals is valued very near as to the pain and suffering of humans, ie, heeding Peter Singer's allegations of "speciesism," then these are absolutely 100% public facts.

We don't live in either of those worlds though. We live in this messy, complicated, in between world where we are still trying to figure out where animal rights rank between those two extremes.

Probably the best argument that these are public facts would note that outlining the actual practices under consideration (ie, literal animal rape and torture) help us determine which part of that spectrum we're in, because it helps animal rights activists note that their depictions are not absurd hypotheticals.

Probably the best argument on the other side is a claim that footage is cherry picked out of a much larger sample, that this activity happens exceedingly rarely, and the footage is closer to malicious slander or misrepresentation. (Not sure if that's true, but if it is, it would be a relevant consideration.)

DISCLAIMER/DISCLOSURE: i am not a lawyer. i am a near radical animal rights couchtavist.

Aren't there Federal statutes that lay out what animal abuse is? I know the Law views animals as property, but in regards to dogs,cats, etc. there are rules about how you treat them. Do bovine, equine, and poultry animals not fall under these protections?

Obviously i could be completely off base...

The federal Animal Welfare Act specifically does not apply to farm animals, and many state statutes also make specific exceptions for agricultural operations.

Cf. http://awic.nal.usda.gov/farm-animals

Thank you for teh link.

Thanks for providing your input!

> That said, some facts aren't merely private matters. If leading public figures are violating the law or lying to constituents or abusing their family, the public has a right to know.

Is the "Public right to know" a high bar to pass? Would the footage be legal if for example, the farmer has said its meat was "100% without animal cruelty" or if animal cruelty was detrimental to the meat?

> Is the "Public right to know" a high bar to pass? Would the footage be legal if for example, the farmer has said its meat was "100% without animal cruelty" or if animal cruelty was detrimental to the meat?

Oh, big warning. I'm using a general common law tort to interpret a new criminal statute, but only to talk about social fairness involved in policies in a really generic, high level way. Much of my analysis won't apply at all to violations of this statute. You've hit on exactly one such area.

I don't know the extent of any "public right to know" exception to this law... I was really just laying out the social considerations at play on both sides when considering a law like this. That was probably really confusing.

If you're talking about the tort, the strength of that bar is probably highly dependent upon your jurisdiction or even your judge. No idea.

EDIT: The lack of a provision to allow publicly relevant facts, however the legislature defines those, may hurt the law's chances under first amendment analysis, as Zak points out. May bump any review up to something called "strict scrutiny" (which in practice almost always means the law fails). Criminalizing the "collection" of information instead of its release may inoculate the law from some challenges, but I'd still like to read more privacy case law before making a call on that (that's probably the single biggest question here, I'd love pointers here from anyone who has done more privacy research.)

Fantastic response.

I just want to say though that wrt

> ...are violating the law...the public has a right to know.

There may not be a legal obligation for the public to know, if no violation of the law has occurred, however just because something isn't illegal, does not make it right (abusing animals)

I know that reasoning does not hold from a legal standpoint, but without standing up to unjust laws, the civil rights movement, or marriage equality, and even gender equality would have been severely hampered.

I definitely agree. I believe that most legal theory follows your intuition on this, sorry if I was unclear. Violations of law by public officials was my lowest bar.

But even that's imprecise, some violations of law by public individuals might not even qualify as warranting public scrutiny (a speeding record 20 years ago?), whereas some legal activities by private individuals might warrant public scrutiny and get dropped from this sort of tort, it's very case by case.

This is similar to the tort of public disclosure of private facts.

Similar, perhaps, but torts entitle someone to sue for damages and this law creates a new crime for which people can be imprisoned. It also removes the opportunity to argue on a case-by-case basis whether the facts disclosed were, in fact a matter of public interest.

If covert films document violations of the law regarding animal cruelty or food safety, those are matters of public interest by default. This law differs from the tort of public disclosure of private facts in that it still applies when those facts are of legitimate public interest. I doubt it will hold up to a serious constitutional challenge for that reason.

Excellent point.

I should have written, "The considerations underlying this law may be similar to a very different common law tort"... which don't help us predict outcomes in individual cases, might just shed some light on how, if it did survive any First Amendment challenge, how that would happen.

In practice there are enormous differences. And even the First Amendment challenge would be complicated by this being a criminal statute and not having an out for the public interest.

I'm less sure about the effect of criminalizing the collection of information instead of its dissemination. I'm more unsure whether animal cruelty is public interest by default, just don't know the animal rights cases. But, eh, Ninth Circuit, you're probably right, Idaho may have a tough shot.

Farmers might be doing things other than abusing their animals.

Living in a country that went through bovine spongiform encephalopathy and a variety of other animal diseases I think it's a frightening idea to prevent secret filming.

People who want to film secretly will try to do so using legal means as far as possible. They'll get ployed as a worker on the farm, for example. But if secret filming is itself banned those people will turn to entirely criminal methods - breaking and entering. This means that secret filming moves from moderate groups to hardline activist groups.

That is sub-optimal.

And why are farmers scared of their animal conditions being shown? People should be aware of how their food is produced. See "kill it, cook it, eat it" as an example tv series.

I think the issue isn't family farms, most small farmers take their job seriously. The issue is big conglomerate farms that don't want their industrial processes to be aired and criticized, much less have people discover practices that produce tainted and diseased products that might kill people. It's easier to control the fallout when things go bad when there are no pictures, such as in lawsuits.

A lot of people don't understand that "factory farms" get franchised out to "small farmers." Big chicken producers hire farmers to raise their chickens. The smaller farmers take on much of the financial risk, employment issues, etc. So when someone takes video of bad practices on a farm, the responsibility might be on the hired farmer, or it might be on the big agra company that hired him but didn't pay enough for humane treatment and sanitary conditions.

The main issue is that often a farm isn't merely some small farmers property. It's the place where big agra policies are being enacted.

Few people would be outraged if someone smuggled a camera into a big factory to document abuses. Be skeptical of privacy arguments here. This is the equivalent of a big manufacturer contracting out to small sweatshops.

I hope Sergey Brin's artificial meat project will take off soon, there is this constantly increasing demand for cheap meat which has been one of the main reasons behind the increase of factory farms over the years:

http://www.theguardian.com/science/video/2013/aug/05/google-...

My background, I am from Idaho, my father, brother, and brother-in-law are all dairymen, and I worked my dad's dairy for 15 years.

I also know the guy who owns the dairy the film was taken on, and I know quite a few of the people performing the most ageegious acts were fired soon after it was published.

But, as an issue, the film was just published, in the most sensational way they could, and NO effort was made to contact the dairyman ahead of time. The point of making the film was not help, but to hurt, permanently.

The film that was produced, is being used against all areas of the milk industry. The people using it add words to the effect of "this is how all dairies treat their cows". I've already seen it used in campaigns against yogurt and cheese producers.

Also, the debate continues over here about the law. Some dairymen are campaigning to reverse the law and open things up completely. But a big issue is education, too many people in America have never really touched a cow, and think people treat them like a cat.

If you're interested in fixing the image of dairy farmers in Idaho it's probably not a good idea to ban filming on farms. Doing so just makes people assume the worst is happening. If, as you seem to argue, the conditions are not all that terrible, then why not open all diary farms to filming?

I also don't understand why the publisher should have contacted the dairyman beforehand. What purpose would that serve if the video would eventually be published anyway?

People care about where their food comes from now a days, and you're right that the public is ignorant of dairy techniques. However, you can't complain about the public's ignorance of dairy farming while at the same time decrying a publisher for making a move about dairy techniques. Censorship is not an effective means of education. If the dairymen want the public to be better educated then they should open their farms up, or start making their own movies detailing how they raise cows.

Why do we need legislation like this? TFA says "[jail and a fine] for people who secretly enter ... " Do they not already have trespassing laws?

As far as I understand the U.S. legal system, your crimes add up to your sentence. This means that you could nail someone for both trespassing and filming filming at your farm.

Also, potentially render the video they capture inadmissible in some other case. I'm not 100% sure about that, though.

I may be wrong but I think in some places trespassing is only prosecuted if you also commit another crime while doing so.

It's not trespassing if you're an employee of the farm.

We need to wait for a proper first amendment challenge to this before assuming this law will hold up in court. There is a lot about this law that could be challenged on first amendment grounds.

I grew up on a beef farm in Idaho, a family business. I have some opinions about this.

1) I don't believe animal cruelty is okay. 2) If someone is abusing an animal, they should be prosecuted by the law 3) I find that many people have no idea the conditions or actions that are required to raise large animals. Some practices may seem cruel to the unknowing bystander, but are, in fact, practices to help maintain the health of the animals, the safety of the workers who manage them, and provide a product that we, the consumer, will enjoy.

As for this bill, I believe that it shows a serious flaw in the way we raise and produce food in the United States. The demand for low prices have resulted in an attempted mass production of animals.

This bill does make it appear that these farmers are guilty of something wrong, and they're trying to hide it. That may or may not be the case. I do know that if they are doing something wrong, there are legal avenues in place to investigate and prosecute the wrong doers.

A beef farm is animal abuse and you should be prosecuted by the law.

Text of law: http://www.legislature.idaho.gov/legislation/2014/S1337.pdf

How does preventing filming helps? The cows don't understand a violation of their privacy, but I'm reasonably sure they understand being abused.

The cows aren't the target here: the people who run the farms and don't want their dirty laundry aired are. It's a sad situation.

"sexually abused", can anyone explain this bit?

They are probably penetrated with equipment or tools (e.g., a broom handle) without reason other than to be cruel.

Let's not make up charges without evidence.

Did the poster above you make any assertions?

It's not that hard to look it up anyway: http://www.peta.org/videos/sexual-deviance-and-sexual-abuse-...

(don't watch it)

Well, it's pretty straightforward. You do know where the milk you drink comes from, right?

You do know that cows are forcefully inseminated and impregnated (i.e. raped) in order to keep up the production, right?

[I'm not sure why the downvotes are in place just because I'm mentioning a well known fact about how the dairy industry works]

Please don't be obtuse or sensationalize this. You know very well that's not what's being referred to here.

Well, I find it hard to see the difference between "abnormal" sexual abuse and "regular" sexual abuse that is an inherent part of the dairy industry, whether you like it or not.

Are you able to tell the difference between medicine and abuse when it comes to something like endoscopy? Hint: one of them is based around inflicting pain, and the other tries to inflict none.

Edit: Also when you call it 'rape' and 'sexual' I wonder how you would feel about impregnation that completely bypassed genitalia and went though an incision in the abdomen. Assume getting a c-section too if you like.

Endoscopy, fertility treatments, and pregnancy assistance are consensual. Forced insemination is not.

Maybe you haven't been around cattle very much, but it's actually quite rare for them to receive any veterinary care in a "consensual" fashion. They are different from you and I in a number of salient ways.

Do you have a problem with human infants receiving painful vaccinations for which they likewise cannot possibly consent?

Are you saying a cow in heat does not imply consent? If so, what standard should we hold bulls to when they "immorally" act on that signal? Or are you suggesting that rape is okay, so long as it does not involve humans?

I've read that surprisingly many rape victims experience orgasm during rape (which makes it even worse for them afterwards). Would you claim that this also implies consent? Also, looks like you have quite a naive picture of how insemination actually works. Usually there is no bull involved only a vet with a shoulder-lenght rubber glove. Now, does the process of getting bull's semen also count as sexual abuse… I actually think that the notion of "consent" is stupid when tried to apply to animals. We will just twist it however we think acceptable. Cows don't consent being milked or killed for meat any more than they consent for sex with them. I'd happily accept a simple stance "yep, we do use and kill you, we just try our best not to make you suffer more than needed" over militant stupidity of "animal rights" activists.

> Would you claim that this also implies consent?

I'm not seeing the mental leap here. A cow making it obvious that she is ready to mate is equivalent to a woman making it obvious she does not want to mate? Consent implies agreement before the act; an orgasm during the act would not apply.

I'm not even sure if a cow indicating desire to mate implies consent, but that is why I asked the parent's opinion. I'd tend to agree with you that consent and animals do not even mix, but the parent clearly disagrees: Rape isn't even a concept without being able to apply the idea of consent.

> Also, looks like you have quite a naive picture of how insemination actually works.

What gives you that impression? I've spent the majority of my life around dairy cattle and am very familiar with the processes (which may or may not include the use of a bull). I was trying to simplify the argument so that we could have a meaningful conversation without having to nitpick over irrelevant details.

Some people have ethics nuanced enough to differentiate between e.g. a violent sexual assault against a human being and the artificial insemination, with standard veterinary tools, of a "food" animal. Other people do not have such ethics. It's not hard to understand why the two groups might have a disagreement, but it is kind of obnoxious to see that disagreement on HN.

"The man seen fondling a cow’s vagina in the newly released video eventually spent 102 days in jail."

http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-cow-abuse-v...

Annoyingly, that description is too vague to tell if it's actual abuse or just 'look at me touch a taboo spot'. And I'd rather not watch the video to find out. The fact that he went to jail doesn't clarify, because he did many other things such as jumping on a cow for an extended period.

If you don't watch the video yourself, how can you trust a description to be accurate, and then form your own opinion on whether such acts (and undercover filming of such acts) should be illegal? I watched it, my own take is that it's nothing special in terms of disturbing material. The other video from PETA linked on this page shows more perverse acts but is also not very disturbing overall. The video on meat.org is probably the worst in this particular genre I've seen.

> If you don't watch the video yourself, how can you trust a description to be accurate, and then form your own opinion on whether such acts (and undercover filming of such acts) should be illegal?

What are you talking about? I explicitly said the description is too vague to make meaningful conclusions about.

I guess I should have s/ a / any /. The description may have said "The video depicts a man repeatedly inserting a hot iron into the cow's vagina", which to me doesn't seem very vague, but isn't what happened in that video. "Fondling" is appropriate but as you say somewhat vague. So how are you supposed to know without watching the video?

I was fishing for a slightly better description, maybe half a sentence or so, and then I was going to trust it. The specific case isn't critical enough for me to feel the need to verify by watching an unpleasant video.

At least this doesn't brand people doing this as terrorists, like in some states.

Ahh, the old "let's compare to the worst to make it look OK".

i.e., You know, America's health-care is just FINE, compared to Ethiopia's.

This law is terrible, no matter what you compare it to.

It may sound like a rhetoric question but it is not.

Why is the gov. banning filming? What's in it for the gov.?

One side will say that what's in it for the gov is millions of dollars in campaign contributions from big agriculture.

The other side will say that bad publicity for their dairy industry will hurt the state's economy and cost jobs and tax revenue.

... and yet the third side says that if an entire state's economy is based on sweeping illegal (and immoral) acts under the rug for the 'greater good,' then something is severely wrong.

A farmer's right to privacy, my ass. This law is big agriculture, plain and simple. These Ag-Gag laws are a farce.

This seems a little sensational.

At a minimum, I hope that this means that when violations are exposed, the violating entity is in turn treated as a single, opaque unit it has sought to be: Criminal prosecution for all its members and investors, and fine and jail time for all.

Live by the sword, die by the sword...

This sounds extreme, but I've about had it with such people who want to "have their cake and eat it, too". If you are an ethical, well-run business, your own employees communication as well as your interface with the public keep you honest and efficient.

If you play a part in insisting that all this be "swept under the rug", then you should de facto play a part in paying the consequences. Whether or not you were individually, directly involved.

Meanwhile it's ok to film citizens to "prevent terrorism".

I bet you that Idaho law would still allow filming if you suspected terrorism inside the farm lol

Makes sense. A farm is private property. You don't have the right to come into my house or my place of work and film me. (Even if you suspect I'm doing something wrong) Also makes sense that falsifying a resume in order to do so would be illegal.

There are already trespassing laws which prevent that. This is just plain thuggery.

I don't understand what you mean by "thuggery" here. Can you explain?

1. Trespassing is already a crime.

2. Trespassing here could uncover more serious crimes that are happening.

3. Somebody lobbied a bunch of politicians to make trespassing a very serious offense to deter people from uncovering a more serious crime.

Part 3 is the thuggery.

OK. "Thuggery" seems like a strange way to describe that though since there's no violence involved.

I agree. I couldn't think of any word close enough. I was thinking more in terms of the original meaning of "thuggery"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thuggee

A band of organized criminals.

But what if you are filming from the public street/highway. Surely that should be legal?

This does not follow. Private property is private but you can still commit crimes on private property.

This logic would permit egregious abuse to go on unchallenged behind closed doors because its private property. This cannot honestly be what you are saying?

There is a balance between the laws that might be broken in order to discover a crime. If someone commits a crime with the intention to discover another crime, you seem to feel it is acceptable to ignore the second crime?

It's actually not okay to create precedent that penalizes people that discover your crime, it only makes crimes easier to hide.

To some degree this is what Miranda rights are all about. How does that figure in your ethical map?

No, that doesn't make sense.

If it is considered wrong/unethical to film on private property in Idaho - why would they legislate for a specific industry? Shouldn't filming video on private property be illegal all across the board in Idaho if the problem is about basic rights?

Its clearly a knee-jerk reaction to unfortunate events. But consider: Farms cannot be reasonably secured. Can't prove 'breaking and entering' when all you have to do is park and walk, maybe cross a fence. So they would need some special rules to make them private space at all.

Since we are on the topic of pure speculation about the intention of this law, let's present another theory: it is in the interest of the farming industry to stop animal rights activists from documenting the illegal practices that are sometimes involved in producing cheap meat since it would be detrimental to their business if they were widely known, and they have been lobbying to get this bill to pass not because of ideological privacy concerns, which are already protected by other means.

From your description, it seems like there is no "breaking and entering" to prove. Trespassing, falsified resumés etc., but there are already laws for that, and the laws themselves don't make it easier or harder to trespass.

Agreed;those are the unfortunate events I referred to. Uglyness all around.

And that there is no 'breaking and entering' was actually my point. Farms are not houses; yet still private.

Of course you can't prove breaking and entering if that is not what was done. "Can't be secured" means only that they want a large space free from scrutiny without paying to properly secure it.

This is like legislating to make URL modification illegal 'hacking' and justifying it by saying programmers are too expensive.

If our society wants people to have stronger protection for large unsecured areas, they it should apply to all such areas.

Aren't farms about it? What else? National parks? They already have special rules.

> Farms cannot be reasonably secured.

Correct, it is an inherently non-private location, and therefore not entitled to any "privacy".

Private property is illegal to put under surveillance, right? That's privacy.

No, wrong. Utterly wrong. "Private property" means "not owned by the public", not "hidden from view". Where do you get your ideas on the law? They have no resemblance to reality whatsoever.

Anyone can put under surveillance anything visible from anywhere they're allowed to be. Kids, cats, and cops alike, no permission, no warrants, nothing.

I agree that a law which wasn't as specific would be better.

It's not about your house. This law concerns farms only.

A farm is Somebody's house. I live on one for instance. While we don't torture animals, keep your cameras out of my space anyway thank you.

Way to miss my point, which is that this law concerns farms specifically and not homes or workplaces in general. I assume that you deliberately misinterpreted me, so what point are you trying to make?

That 'your house' sounded like belittling the parent post. Just sticking up for farm residents. Clearer?

I didn't mean to belittle the parent. "My house" was his example. His argument obviously wasn't that he is living at a farm specifically, but that private property should be protected in general, which i whole-heartedly agree with, but doesn't really support his stance on privacy laws that concern farms only.

> A farm is Somebody's house.

and a food-production facility too? subject to USDA inspections and a whole set of regulations, being that what comes out of it has direct impact on public health?

Certainly there should be provisions to protect the privacy of the people living there, as there should be ways to ensure that also the public good is served and protected.

For someone who doesn't torture animals, you're awfully worried about somebody seeing how you treat them.

Your farm is not a house, it is a farm. A house that might happen to sit on the same land parcel is of absolutely no interest to anyone. Your private life simply is not that interesting.

Your commercial operations, which occur outside the house, are an entirely different matter.

Yeah the old "If you aren't doing anything wrong you have nothing to worry about" argument. Used by everybody since the SS. And now the NSA.

If you're worried about farm operations being recorded, you really must be hiding something. There is no privacy interest here, it's a commercial workplace subject to regulation and inspection, and this is one of the reasons. If you're doing it right, you should welcome the scrutiny as a competitive advantage.

Instead, you're so deathly afraid of it that you think you need to apply something even stronger than the extraordinary privacy protections afforded to homes to your place of employment by criminally punishing your employees for gathering evidence of your wrongdoing.

That is an insane leap unknown to the American legal tradition. You simply do not have a legitimate interest in preventing lawfully-present individuals from reporting your illegal activities.

If, in your place of work, you are doing something illegal in the production of a product intended for public consumption, then it seems that the calculus would change.

My hypothetical rape dungeon is private property, too. I would expect my right to privacy is trumped by the general public's right to not have horrifying crimes committed.

If you run an operation like this and someone blows a whistle, they should be legally protected, not prosecuted.

If I stumbled upon you committing a crime in your rape dungeon, recorded and made videos of it public, I would fully expect negative consequences to come my way. For one, the victim probably doesn't want those images shown to others. It seems to me that the more logical course of action would be to report you to the police and let them deal with it, not try to shame you in public.

The victims in this case are cows.

And, more often than not, the owners who happened to hire a bad employee. Sure, there should be repercussions for the choice to hire the person, but realize it is not always obvious who is bad without hindsight. It is embarrassing to have hired a programmer who botches your application, and it is equally embarrassing to have hired a farmhand that abuses your animals.

I wonder how Google/Facebook/Microsoft would react if people started posting videos of people writing bad code while on the job?

If you don't agree with this, consider signing the ag-gag petition - http://ag-gag.org/

War (possibly a world war) is breaking out in Eastern Europe, and the top story on hacker news is about cows being caned on farms in Idaho...

If you're coming to HN for news about geopolitical world events, you're gonna have a bad time.

War (possibly a world war) is breaking out in Eastern Europe, and the only means warineurope has to do anything about it is by creating a new hacker news account only to point that out on a completely unrelated topic.

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