> Update (~4pm ET): Mid-afternoon on Friday, August 7, the Essex County Prosecutor's Office dropped its cyber harassment charges against all five defendants, the Asbury Park Press reports. These charges stemmed from an incident involving a Tweet attempting to identify a New Jersey police officer. Our original story on the situation appears unchanged below.
Sometimes a little publicity is all the defense you need.
Worded as such it does appear threatening. If someone tweeted that about me I would feel worried about my personal safety and that of my family. The law specifically states that placing a reasonable person in fear for their safety via online communications is a crime.
If you're going to request personal information for a legitimate reason then you should word it in a non threatening manner.
"...it's also a request to identify a police officer, which has legitimate purposes."
And given the context of calling a police officer a "bitch", do you think the requester was doing so to accurately file a complaint... or doing so in the hope that armed with the cop's identity, somebody would engage in harassment of that man and/or his family?
Being charged with a felony for the tweet is absurd.
But painting this as an innocent request for information is almost equally so.
"Identify this public servant" isn't against the law. I for one want strong third party oversight of our police from the public and from journalists. Police should be identifiable and although they didn't phrase it very nicely, the request isn't illegal.
Yes and can they sue for this too? Not sure how it works but this does sound it is like creating unfair stress for people to have to now defend themselves because they retweeted something or expressed an opinion on twitter.
I have the impression that being charged with a crime has permanent consequences even when it is rapidly dropped.
There may be rules about how people and organizations aren't supposed to hold it against you, but if records are retrievable then it won't go away.
Someone with more legal knowledge might chime in, but I feel like I've seen questionaires asking something like "have you ever been arrested, charged, or convicted of a crime..."
It's like in court when the judge tells the jury to disregard something, can they ever really do that 100%?
Sometimes a little publicity is all the defense you need.