> In Texas, you can sue anyone who aids and abets a woman who attempts to get an abortion for $10,000, which is enough to get someone to trick someone into installing malware on a phone.
Anecdata for people who think this is unlikely: my wife had an issue getting unclaimed property back from the state of Texas and hired someone who advertise the ability to help. She turned out to be a bulldog with a ton of knowledge of the necessary bureaucracy. She put hours per week into it on our behalf for months, through many rounds of filing paperwork and then hounding bureaucrats on the phone by telling them exactly how and why we could sue if they ignored it. She did all that for a cut that was a fraction of the $10k abortion bounty. The $10k might seem like a symbolic gesture, but it will spawn a cottage industry of bounty hunters. No doubt most of them will be ideologically excited wannabes who quickly give it up, but some will be dogged and effective and will cultivate an expanding repertoire of skills. It's a terrifying prospect.
There will be many, many people who never previously entertained the idea of getting involved in serious criminality who now need protection from the prying eyes of the state and their fellow citizens. To look at it from a cold and opportunistic viewpoint, this could change the public perception of digital privacy from being just for dangerous creepy people to something that everybody should value.
To add to this: the whole point of the private right to action is so that anti-abortion groups can target individuals in order to create precedent-setting cases. This is a mechanism that is designed to be used by well-funded groups. The threat model here isn’t some rando deciding they want to sue you, it’s a team of determined lawyers that absolutely will take your case as far as they possibly can.
> the whole point of the private right to action is so that anti-abortion groups can target individuals in order to create precedent-setting cases.
Fairly sure this is wrong. The point was to create a mechanism to sue various people "in orbit" around an abortion without involving state officials. This was supposed to "immunize" the process from any Roe v. Wade-related block.
With Roe v. Wade now struck down, Texas can basically do whatever "it" wants w.r.t abortion, and the federal government cannot intervene. SB8 at this point is possibly (just possibly) a way to reduce state spending on abortion legal cases, but not much more beyond that.
It's directly (and I believe explicitly) modelled on the Americans with Disabilities Act. The ADA creates a model in which private citizens can and do bring lawsuits against all types of organisations for any type of harm they can define.
This has spun out a cottage industry of disabled people who's full time occupation is visiting everything from websites to restaurants, being harmed and bringing lawsuits. While that may sound like a bad thing, it is in fact a very very cost effective way of enforcing the law quite effectively without bureaucratic bloat. Strangely, it's been quite successful. The history of why this decision was made is very interesting.
For all your devs, this is why large American companies care so much about accessibility on their websites - because it creates an almost unlimited liability on their end if you do it badly. Companies now scan websites for accessibility as soon as they're launched, then others will buy the set of companies which 'fail', then visit those sites in order to be harmed. It's an interesting little cottage industry which keeps legitimate disability rights enforced quite nicely without too big a government.
The purpose of the private right to action was to get around Roe/Casey prior to the Supreme Court overruling both cases. The law was specifically designed to evade judicial review.
As a private plaintiff, you can typically sue a state official that is charged with enforcing a law in federal court on constitutional grounds. SB8 is written in such a way that state officials are barred from enforcing the law. Thus, it is effectively impossible to challenge in federal court because there is no state official that enforces the law, only private citizens, and thus there is no proper defendant.
My impression is that it fits the pattern of trying to disrupt society and government and create a vigilante citizenry, similar to encouraging people to arm themselves and use their firearms to prevent crimes.
No idea what you're even trying to reference in your second sentence, but the first sentence "community law enforcement" is a red flag in my book. The law creates a fiscal incentive for people to report their neighbors for actions that were federally protected at the time this law was passed. Neighbor vs. neighbor. Citizen vs. citizen. We spend more on policing than any country in the world and yet still need to deputize citizens in a heavily armed state? It's not my neighbor's damn business to know if someone in my household seeks an abortion.
If fiscally incentivizing vigilantism isn't dystopian I don't know what is.
Deputization and vigilantism are antonyms, your framing is incoherent.
An elected legislature sanctioning civil action is "dystopian", but rioting and arson? Intimidating judges at their homes? Laundering a decade of domestic terrorism into universities and district attorneys' offices? Never heard of that stuff!
The discussion was about abortion in the context of digital privacy. You are the one who brought up all of these other things, which have nothing to do with the topic at hand. It's whataboutism and not worth engaging with.
Vigilantism without oversight, checks and balances quickly devolves into posses terrorizing and brutalizing people they simply don't like. The US has a long history of this.
Vigilantism is not the same thing as community-led policing from members of said communities.
That's nice, but none of this has anything to do with "vigilantism." The other guy only used that word because he thought it sounded scary. If either of you knew what it meant you would understand that government-sanctioned action, for example a lawsuit with standing provided by statute, is the complete opposite of vigilantism in its entire definition.
I've never heard that term. Usually, the state has a monopoly on violence and justice - that's a definition of a sovereign state. Law enforcement is performed by police. Not sure where the other stuff you mention comes from.
I've been warned before by dang here on this site not to spew Anti-American propaganda (that was pre Jan 6, I think), but I never did such a thing. When I studied in SF in 1999, I freaking loved it. But I've seen some things since that are deeply troubling. It seems more people are catching up now to what I observed: if you still think that the US is a modern western democracy with reasonable values, wake up. I mean, people hunting other people who need an abortion for $10K? How can you read that and not have a cold chill running down your spine?
> if you still think that the US is a modern western democracy with reasonable values, wake up
One of the quirks, and ongoing debates, of the US is the strong deference to states’ rights. Don’t confuse US law with Texas law. The majority of the population of the United States actually lives in states with abortion laws that are more liberal than what you’d find in the EU, for example.
The state versus federal distinction can be very confusing to people who view US politics through the lens of the worst news stories that come out of every state. The entire US has a land mass and population on the same order as that of the entire EU, and many states have populations similar to that of individual EU countries. We have a single state (California) that has an economy larger than all of the UK combined and almost as large as India.
The United States is big and diverse. We’re going through a phase where federal power is being reduced due to politics and some of the states are doing weird stuff. If you only view the US through news stories and imagine the US as a conglomeration of all of the worst and weirdest news stories from individual states, you’re going to have a very negative view of the US in general.
This kind of reasoning is exactly the problem that the US faces. "It's not really that bad, it's just a few silly states, overall we do know better". First, Texas is a pretty big state, too. You cannot just discount it as not mattering to the overall picture. Second, you are ONE country, you have ONE president. And what the majority of Americans think, doesn't seem to matter when it comes to the law, or to elections. Keep telling yourself that's it's not that bad because it's so diverse, and soon it will be much less diverse than you can imagine right now.
> Second, you are ONE country, you have ONE president.
We also have fifty governors, 100 senators, 435 house reps, nine supreme court justices, and countless state legislators. We do not live in a dictatorship. Yet.
Of these, it's the court that has changed most wildly over the past 8 years.
> soon it will be much less diverse than you can imagine right now.
I think it's possible to say "overturning Roe v. Wade didn't make abortion illegal in California, as your worst case presumption might assume" and still believe that GOP gerrymandering, Supreme Court appointments, and attempted coups are an existential threat to majority rule.
Of course nuance is important when thinking about solutions to the problem. But if a substantial portion of the country (I don't know, is it 30%?) is basically not democratic anymore, you better be quick with coming up and implementing a solution. And how exactly is a solution to look like then without a civil war?
As a point of clarity, those state laws are all passed by democratically elected representatives. Gerrymandering may impact outcomes, but Ds are every bit as good at it as Rs. For example, Oregon's legislative districts are comically gerrymandered by Democrats.
Well said. Definitely agree that it’s a ridiculous to say “well those other states aren’t that big of a deal.”
For the 4.5 million of us in Louisiana, the current laws are a pretty huge deal. But according to him we apparently don’t matter when having a national dialogue.
For the 4.5 million of us in Louisiana, the current laws are a pretty huge deal.
Yes, but the idea that those laws are being imposed on an unwilling population by an extremist minority is wrong. Half of Louisiana residents believe abortion should be illegal in most or all cases (https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/article_4973b4e...), and many in the other half likely support restrictions that weren't allowed under Roe/Casey. This is what democracy looks like, and an example of how democracy isn't always a good thing.
The margin of error is 5.8% I.e. the majority could also be in favor of abortion access. And even if we concede most want it gone, a slim majority does not in any way mean it should be denied to other people. We also need to define “most,” that’s a bad phrasing of the question IMO. For instance, we banned in cases of rape or incest. I’m sure plenty of people who are otherwise against it make a provision for that, but the question makes no distinction about some of those more divisive situations.
The GOP controls this state in a wildly disproportionate way. They passed it because of that, not because of a possible slim majority. We’d have legalized weed if that’s all it took.
Unlimited tolerance must not be extended to the aggressively intolerant, because this will destroy the unlimited tolerance. Central philosophical principle of free society. Karl Popper.
Incorrect. There is no such act as "not allowed to exist". Instead, rather than attempt to bury what is spontaneously manifest, we ought lift these bolstered options up and publicly demonstrate to all how they are torn asunder.
The people in those states are your fellow citizens. If you don't care about their well being, then you might as well split now. What exactly makes you United besides a cultish devotion to your origin story and a self image of Freedom Loving that hasn't matched reality since your independence.
The freedom for individual states rights you espouse has always been used for almost exclusively civil right violations.
If you don't do something about that, you are complicit. Now you might say there is nothing you CAN do about it.
But that is the problem. That is WHY the rest of the free world looks at you and says "You are not a democracy."
Because you couldn't change this even if you wanted to.
The last time you tried you came close. You had to fight a war over it but you almost got there. Then you fucked it up during the Reconstruction.
That's clunky grammar then. It's not trivial to context-switch and even use the same word 'large' for it: "We have a single state (California) that has an economy larger than all of the UK combined and almost as large as India."
I think it's ambiguous at best.
I’ve spend four years in IL and consider them among the happiest in my life
The US right now is a fucking shitshow. It’s one bad election away from being yet another gunslinging theocracy hating women and gay people. They’d probably switch sides and bomb Ukraine, without necessarily looking at a map.
People talk about the happy and glory years in the US in contrast to what is happening today as if both aren't borne out of the same root cause.
When you don't have regulations, strong federal oversight, high taxes, or invest in social programs, then you can have a fucking excellent party nearly all of the time.
Until the economy tanks or the American Taliban decides their party involves telling you what you can do with your body.
It's a very immature/libertarian way to run a society. Wonderful when things are good. Horrific when things are bad.
The stakes are higher than individual hedonism now, though. American Prosperity is boiling our atmosphere and by the end of the century, excess American contributions to carbon emissions will have killed more people in the 3rd world than Hitler and Stalin put together. This is not an exaggeration. Hundreds of millions will die in Bangladesh and India from rising seas and heatwaves because Americans wanted the freedom of the house, the picket fence, the 2 F150s, and the 2 hour commute, and Next Day Shipping From Amazon for All The Things.
Well if Trump or his followers get the top seat again, Ukraine, and with it half of Europe is fucked. He was pretty clear about that.
With this, steep decline in US power projection is inevitable, I mean you can't lose half a billion big rich western population almost 100% aligned with your values.
You say that but where are they going to align themselves to? China? The US benefits by having a lack of good competition. Things would have to get extremely bad for the rest of the west to dump the US. Word on the street is that Trump is going to announce a run for 2024 as a way to get ahead of his rivals. He has a reasonable shot at winning barring unforeseen circumstances. You can't dismiss the odds given how incredibly poorly the Democrats have messed up their two years since taking office.
I feel that if given another Trump win, the rest of the west will be forced to remain in another holding pattern for four years and suffer whatever consequences occur hoping that four years later things improve.
On the short term that sounds about right. Still I would guess that if the EU and US relations would go from more of a culture friendship to a strict transactional nature that would have big consequences. The EU would try to be more self sufficient and for one import less from the US. The EU would probably try to find closer relations to countries with semi big military, totally guessing here India, South Korea, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Turkey. NATO would of course start to look more shaky and the idea of an EU army more of a possibility. Maybe even a new NATO would form without the US?
I could see the EU being more self sufficient. But at the same time it will be difficult given that they have a serious population decline. You need that population to grow the GDP. Furthermore some essential industries seem to be completely abandoned by the EU. (Looking at competitors to the FAANG companies).
>The EU would probably try to find closer relations to countries with semi big military, totally guessing here India, South Korea, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Turkey.
This is assuming they have the capability to project forces anywhere in the world which given these countries you listed, feels unlikely either now or in the distant future.
I hadn't thought about this, but you are right. Hell, they don't necessarily even have to be immediately targeted attacks bounty hunters. Try to perform attacks in mass to read personal messages/e-mails of people, use filtering to try to find messages of people discussing getting abortions, and then parallel construct a innocent sounding story to use in court. With 10k per success, you really don't need that many hits to start making big money.
Also, I personally know many old people who use a device just for managing their finances as they are inexperienced with security and fear their main device might get hacked.
This functionality makes a lot of sense in such a case.
Yeah except putting malware on someone's phone is actually illegal, so seems like a pretty bad tradeoff since, ya know, you'd have to mention how you got the data when you sue someone in court.
Police use this sort of tactic (parallel construction) all the time, though: they collect evidence in ways not admissible in court, but use knowledge of that evidence to find new lines of investigation and new evidence that can be admissible in court.
Presumably someone could use malware on someone's phone to know who to target with an abortion-related lawsuit, and then use legal forms of investigation to find evidence to prove that they got an abortion.
The trick of course is that the malware can't be traced back to the police. Otherwise, the parallel construction narrative vanishes, as well as potentially a bunch of previous convictions that were constructed using the same technique -- At least until the conservative supreme court neuters the 4th amendment.
This needs to be the case of course, unless you support law enforcement agencies doing unlawful actions to get convictions.
Isn't the parallel construction narrative that it doesn't matter how you got the information as long as after you get it, you can show a way that you could have gotten it?
Even if the method used was illegal, and found to be illegal in court, the evidence is still admissible iirc?
Ever read Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon? The WW2 part shows a team going through elaborate measures to create a plausible way that the allies can find out what the Germans are up to without revealing that they can read all of their messages. They would tell a submarine to surface at a particular location at a particular time and report what they see, for instance, and the sub crew would have no idea why, to produce a plausible explanation of why some German action was discovered.
Parallel construction often means they hide how they got the original information from the court and from the defense.
No, that’s not how it works at all. You use illegally gained information to find other avenues to get evidence that on the surface look ok.
For example, you use illegally gained access to messages to find out about a meeting at a particular time. Then when the meeting to exchange contraband is happening, “a concerned anonymous citizen” calls in a tip of suspicious behavior and a patrol cop stumbled onto a bust.
The evidence is not admissible. It is considered 'fruit of the poisoned tree'.
Parallel construction only works if you can hide the illegal investigation from the court.
the Court has never ruled on parallel construction. I think it's probably illegal. there was Harding v. United States, but that was a case where someone was accidentally flagged as having an outstanding warrant. intentionally passing illegally acquired tips is probably illegal, the trick is it's impossible to prove and there's no penalty other than getting evidence derived from the tip stricken from the record.
It doesn’t happen “all the time”. The term also applies, and is mainly used, to disguise lawful sources, such as undercover agents.
While there is a problem with US police acting unlawfully, it mostly happens in specific situations. At the federal level, they are much better behaved. And the incentive structure just doesn’t make it worthwhile to break the law
Getting information through an illegal trawl, is an amazingly effective way of working out how to get related information "legally".
Find out from the phone, that they have an appointment at a particular time and place? It's easy to just be there and photograph them, "as part of occasional surveilance" or whatever.
its trivial for well-funded organizations to get around such legal issues when they use something called “parallel construction”
this is when evidence is collected in nefarious and often illegal ways. it is then given to the organization which will weaponize the information. this organization then launders how they acquired the evidence, obscuring the shady way it was originally obtained.
there is no shortage of instances where different groups (including local police) have laundered how evidence was obtained to get around legality requirements for obtaining evidence.. [various links below]
as the above commenter highlights, it’s about to get even more terrifying as incredibly well funded, incredibly authoritarian groups jump into the fray using religion as their excuse.
There are LITERALLY abortion bounty hunters in Texas, who earn money by hounding women seeking abortions and turning them in for profit. I cannot believe the state of this country.
Anecdata for people who think this is unlikely: my wife had an issue getting unclaimed property back from the state of Texas and hired someone who advertise the ability to help. She turned out to be a bulldog with a ton of knowledge of the necessary bureaucracy. She put hours per week into it on our behalf for months, through many rounds of filing paperwork and then hounding bureaucrats on the phone by telling them exactly how and why we could sue if they ignored it. She did all that for a cut that was a fraction of the $10k abortion bounty. The $10k might seem like a symbolic gesture, but it will spawn a cottage industry of bounty hunters. No doubt most of them will be ideologically excited wannabes who quickly give it up, but some will be dogged and effective and will cultivate an expanding repertoire of skills. It's a terrifying prospect.
There will be many, many people who never previously entertained the idea of getting involved in serious criminality who now need protection from the prying eyes of the state and their fellow citizens. To look at it from a cold and opportunistic viewpoint, this could change the public perception of digital privacy from being just for dangerous creepy people to something that everybody should value.