The average person does not make a cost-benefit analysis for things like this because that would require admitting that the question is complicated, or must result in some risk of death. Instead they silently drop the cost half of the equation by telling themselves that 0% risk of death must be possible, and rationalize away the costs of such a delusion by ignoring cases like this, or figuring that the victim must have deserved it somehow (with the silent assumption that nothing like this could ever happen to them or their loved ones).

In recent years Obama justified various state excesses by saying something like "You can't have 100% security and 100% privacy." My immediate thought was, "Well, that's vacuously true, because you can't have 100% security ever."

I think it's more that most people operate on the (apparently mistaken) assumption that the police are here to __protect__ us, and to find out who is guilty, while also exercising discretion and not prosecuting people who, paraphrasing the article, meant no harm but acted like an asshole. Thus, people figure that it's "better to be safe than sorry", and assume that the police and justice system will Find The Truth and sort things out.

Unfortunately, that's not the case: the job of the police seems to be to make a case, and when combined with the plea bargain system we have, it's basically a game of "how can we convict this guy".

Do I think investigation was warranted? Sure. But it definitely seems like overreaction to treat this as a valid terrorist threat, rather than a kid (or adult) saying something mean and flippant.

I also find it hard to believe that Facebook was "unable" to give details of the conversation. If the defense believes that the context (unshown in the screenshot) is important, I am surprised they can't subpoena the entire history of his actions in that timeframe, or of the threads he was posting in over that 48-hour period, and have an expert witness collect and show the context they say is so important.

IANAL and I am not 100% sure which part of the Stored Communciations Act covers the private messages. But either they need a search warrant or they just need to subpoena them (depending on which section applies). I suspect a search warrant is required for content but not 100% sure.

Now if they needed a search warrant (which is quite possible, if this was treated like email and less than 180 days old), then it is quite possible they asked for one and got laughed at by the magistrate.

More to the point, it seems that the police must skew towards that attempted 0% risk, which is what starts snowballs like this.

I find it ironic that with all of the talk flying around about nothing being private, a facebook conversation that would potentially exonerate this guy can't be dredged up.

It's hard for me to crystallize my thoughts on what needs to happen here, because the details, have up until this article, been incredibly confusing and contradictory. At the last report, this conversation took place within League of Legends itself. Apparently that wasn't the case. What other details about the information the jury had access to do we not know?