this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2026
1071 points (97.3% liked)
Technology
83858 readers
3078 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Sounds like a good way to end up in prison.
I don't think you understand what I'm suggesting.
Sending someone a "This is publically available information readily available on the internet that can and will be abused by people once this bill goes through in conjunction with the type of data that will be leaked from said data collection for ID efforts and it's already dangerous now" isn't the same as sending federal judges anonymous pizza. One is a well understood threat, the other is a demonstration from a constituent reaching out to an elected official.
I'm not saying anonymously threaten them.
You would end up in prison doing this. It would be deemed harassment of a government offical. People have tried this before. They have ended up harassed by police, injured and jailed because of it.
People really do believe that they can fight fascism by just avoiding anything that might get them in trouble.
So I'm going to point out that people have already been harassed, arrested, injured, and killed by law enforcement for protesting in other ways too in this country and historically that has also happened.
A demonstration of why a law being enacted (that uses freely /publicly available information) should not be considered a form of harassment.
Further, if it is then it can be argued in a court of law that if it counts as harassment then the law shouldn't enable it to be more effective which is the point.
Calling, emailing, and writing to elected officials isn't harassment, and explaining the very real dangers of the lack of privacy laws and the results of the lack also isn't by itself harassment. But if you will avoid a protest because you feel there may be reprisals against you for it then you're very unlikely to be protesting in the first place. They have already won in this scenario.
The court won't care. They'll say "I feared for my safety" and the judge will say "prison" (simplified).
You should probably look up the arrest records of civil rights activists and give a good hard think about whether or not you're willing to be the problem in order to enact a solution because we will not prevail on this in the long run without taking some blows.
This countries government has already proven time and again that they will literally kill people who have done nothing wrong in order to get what they want.