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| Man may go to prison for sending email to Senator https://gladerebooted.net/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=3058 |
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| Author: | Elmarnieh [ Wed May 26, 2010 2:40 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Man may go to prison for sending email to Senator |
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/2 ... 88798.html When Sen. Jim Bunning complained on the Senate floor in February that he'd missed the Kentucky-South Carolina basketball game because of a debate on unemployment benefits -- a debate the Kentucky Republican himself prevented from proceeding to a vote -- Bruce Shore got angry. "I was livid. I was just livid," said Shore, 51, who watched the floor proceedings on C-SPAN from his home in Philadelphia. "I'm on unemployment, so it affects me. I'm in shock." Instead of just being angry, Shore took action: He sent several emails to Bunning staffers, blasting the senator for blocking the benefits. "ARE you'all insane," said part of one letter Shore sent on Feb. 26 (which he shared with HuffPost). "NO checks equal no food for me. DO YOU GET IT??" In that letter he signed off as "Brad Shore" from Louisville. He said he did the same thing in several other messages sent via the contact form on Bunning's website. "My assumption was that if he gets an email from Philadelphia, who cares?" he said. "Why would he even care if a guy from Philadelphia gets upset?" Bunning might not have cared, but the FBI did. Sometime in March, said Shore, agents came calling to ask about the emails. They read from printouts of the messages sent via the contact form and asked if Shore was the author, which he readily admitted. They asked a few questions, and then, according to Shore, they said, "All right, we just wanted to make sure it wasn't anything to worry about." But on May 13, U.S. Marshals showed up at Shore's house with a grand jury indictment. Now he's got to appear in federal court in Covington, Ky. on May 28 to answer for felony email harassment. Specifically, the indictment (PDF) says that on Feb. 26, Shore "did utilize a telecommunications device, that is a computer, whether or not communication ensued, without disclosing his identity and with the intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, and harass any person who received the communication." The language of Shore's indictment is taken directly from the statute -- there's no description of the actual crime. The Kentucky U.S. Attorney's Office said it's a typical indictment but that the Department of Justice prohibited further comment beyond what's in the charging document. The crime carries a penalty of up to two years in prison and a $250,000 maximum fine. Shore swears he didn't intend to make a threat. He's not sure what he said that crossed the line; he said he doesn't have copies of the messages sent via Bunning's site. He said he thought sending angry letters to Congress was a First Amendment thing. "If I send 50 letters to Congress, is that illegal or is it just me wasting paper?" Harvey Silverglate, a prominent civil liberties lawyer and the author of "Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent," has long argued that vague laws allow the federal government to prosecute citizens for things most people wouldn't consider crimes. (The message of his book's title is that the average person unintentionally commits three felonies a day. "Half of the anonymous Internet comments would" be illegal according to the statute used against Shore, said Silverglate.) "If nothing else the U.S. Attorney has managed to harass a defendant. Now we have to find out if the defendant managed to harass anybody," said Silverglate, who looked at Shore's indictment. "When finally the government is forced by a judge's order to specify what the criminal harassment consisted of, if in fact the words used are quite innocuous and don't by any standard rise to the level of a real threat, it's going to be an example of exactly what my complaint is about." Bunning's office is not involved in the prosecution. A staffer said the office received lots of email over the unemployment issue and turned some over to the Capitol Police -- a common thing for a congressional office to do. It's up to the Capitol Police whether to involve federal or local law enforcement, and up to those agencies to pursue a case. Shore said he's been unemployed for the past two years since losing his job as an office manager. He recently received his final unemployment check, joining the ranks of 35,200 Pennsylvanians and hundreds of thousands of Americans who've exhausted all their benefits. He said he used a credit card to book a hotel room in Covington for Friday. He's particularly alarmed because he's already got a criminal record: In 1995, he and his girlfriend pleaded guilty to 35 burglaries in Bucks County, Pa. The Philadelphia Daily News dubbed them "Bonnie & Clyde": "Their last embrace came in their Northeast Philadelphia apartment. Cops with a warrant did some breaking in of their own and caught the couple, well, coupling -- surrounded by half the booty they'd burgled." Shore said he got out of prison in 1999 and his lived since then with his mother, who is 81. He's afraid his email indiscretion will wipe out his progress, which includes community college and classes at Temple University, where in 2004 he was on a team that won a $2,000 prize in an IT excellence competition. "I'm walking around in my head: jail for email, jail for email," he said. "At this point I'm just looking at my government and going, anything is possible. When do the adults wake up and say, 'This gentleman is just angry and frustrated?' I'm just speechless. Shocked. I probably dropped 10 pounds in a week. To think you turn your life around, you don't do anything wrong after you make a mistake when you were younger..." |
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| Author: | Aizle [ Wed May 26, 2010 2:48 pm ] |
| Post subject: | |
That is **** up, assuming that the emails he sent weren't themselves over the line. |
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| Author: | Rorinthas [ Wed May 26, 2010 3:26 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Man may go to prison for sending email to Senator |
too little information to pass judgement. calling 35 burgleries "a little mistake when [he] was younger" leads me to believe he may not be completely honest about the content of these e-mails. |
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| Author: | NephyrS [ Wed May 26, 2010 4:02 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Man may go to prison for sending email to Senator |
Quote: But on May 13, U.S. Marshals showed up at Shore's house with a grand jury indictment. Now he's got to appear in federal court in Covington, Ky. on May 28 to answer for felony email harassment. Specifically, the indictment (PDF) says that on Feb. 26, Shore "did utilize a telecommunications device, that is a computer, whether or not communication ensued, without disclosing his identity and with the intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, and harass any person who received the communication." This is the part that bothers me. He DID disclose his identity- isn't that what signing them with his name and city does? |
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| Author: | Mookhow [ Wed May 26, 2010 4:07 pm ] |
| Post subject: | |
Bruce Shore from Philadelphia signed the emails as "Brad Shore from Louisville" |
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| Author: | NephyrS [ Wed May 26, 2010 4:15 pm ] |
| Post subject: | |
Ah, I missed that, thanks. I saw two B names and missed the rest. |
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| Author: | Diamondeye [ Wed May 26, 2010 4:19 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Man may go to prison for sending email to Senator |
Stupid law. I think we discovered that one already here, didn't we? However, I have a hard time necessarily believing a guy with 35 burglaries on his record, and I'm not sympathetic to his entitlement-wanting ***. |
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| Author: | darksiege [ Wed May 26, 2010 4:43 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Man may go to prison for sending email to Senator |
Diamondeye wrote: Stupid law. I think we discovered that one already here, didn't we? However, I have a hard time necessarily believing a guy with 35 burglaries on his record, and I'm not sympathetic to his entitlement-wanting ***. this, very much so. |
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| Author: | Arathain Kelvar [ Wed May 26, 2010 5:55 pm ] |
| Post subject: | |
yeah, i don't have a whole lot of sympathy for a senator who missed the game to do his job, either. |
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| Author: | Diamondeye [ Wed May 26, 2010 8:45 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: |
Arathain Kelvar wrote: yeah, i don't have a whole lot of sympathy for Me either. |
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| Author: | Hopwin [ Wed May 26, 2010 9:58 pm ] |
| Post subject: | |
He's worried that this might derail his community college work... were he has apparently been working towards an associates degree for at least 6 years? |
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| Author: | Micheal [ Thu May 27, 2010 12:19 am ] |
| Post subject: | |
Night School Hopwin, you can do that for 20 years and not get a degree. |
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| Author: | Hopwin [ Thu May 27, 2010 6:52 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: |
Micheal wrote: Night School Hopwin, you can do that for 20 years and not get a degree. Why? |
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| Author: | Diamondeye [ Thu May 27, 2010 9:51 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Re: |
Hopwin wrote: Micheal wrote: Night School Hopwin, you can do that for 20 years and not get a degree. Why? A combination of lack of effort and stupidity, mainly. |
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| Author: | Kaffis Mark V [ Thu May 27, 2010 10:45 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Re: |
Diamondeye wrote: Hopwin wrote: Micheal wrote: Night School Hopwin, you can do that for 20 years and not get a degree. Why? A combination of lack of effort and stupidity, mainly. Don't forget subsidized financing. |
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| Author: | Roophus Gunthar [ Fri May 28, 2010 4:08 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: |
Hopwin wrote: He's worried that this might derail his community college work... were he has apparently been working towards an associates degree for at least 6 years? I take offense to that! I'm 25, just now with an associates. I went on and off toward my associates since I was 18. Now, I'll admit I changed directions in life a couple times, stopping school entirely for some of that, taking only a class or two at a time. Still, that doesn't make you a bad person. 
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| Author: | Hopwin [ Fri May 28, 2010 6:55 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Re: |
Roophus Gunthar wrote: Hopwin wrote: He's worried that this might derail his community college work... were he has apparently been working towards an associates degree for at least 6 years? I take offense to that! I'm 25, just now with an associates. I went on and off toward my associates since I was 18. Now, I'll admit I changed directions in life a couple times, stopping school entirely for some of that, taking only a class or two at a time. Still, that doesn't make you a bad person. Lol I took about the same amount of time for the same reasons  But then again I didn't rob 35 homes. Just seems a disingenuous argument.
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