Man vs. Image – The Curious Case of Kurt Eichenwald

originally posted by: DBCowboy
a reply to: scraedtosleep

People can and will use this to promote censorship.

So what? We are free to promote things if we wish. You always seem so afraid DB. I promise you no one is going to take your freedom to complain away because of this weirdo going to jail over assault.

a reply to: scraedtosleep

You're right.

People can promote censorship all they want.

a reply to: MotherMayEye

Nice attempt to make this something partisan and political. Since I am not a Trump supporter, I don't think your hypothetical applies to me or even makes sense.

This is already political given the reasons behind the attack. If you say you're not a supporter, I'll take you at word and my apologies.

As far as I know, there are no criminal statutes against wearing strobes lights. Did you read that? A CIVIL complaint. Not a criminal one. A CIVIL COMPLAINT. It would be an issue for CIVIL COURTS.

There's no criminal statute against swining a knife in a stabbing motion but if you happen to be doing it into a person's chest and it's not an act of self-defense on your part, you'll be facing criminal charges. There's no criminal statue against blowing peanut dust from your hand either but again, if you walk up to somebody you know has a peanut allergy and blow that dust into their face to cause an allergic reaction, you're going to find yourself facing criminal charges.

Should I have put CRIMINAL CHARGES in caps for emphasis?

I'm trying to understand why you don't see deliberately and with malice, causing a person to have a seizure, is not assault? Are seizures not serious in your book? Do you not see inducing a seizure as an assault? What if it was done with a substance of some sort? Would it be assault then?

Or is it because only a small percentage of the population is affected by this type of epilepsy?

I'm honestly curious what the rationale is here.

originally posted by: LesMisanthrope

originally posted by: scraedtosleep
a reply to: LesMisanthrope

You can harm people with images.

You can cause emotional harm.

And a seizure is physical harm being caused because of an image.

No you cannot.

Again, this is assuming he even had the seizure in the first place. His wife, for some reason, had the time to tweet "This is his wife, you caused a seizure. I have your information and have called the police to report the assault". Why? I have a sneaking suspicion that all of this is a ploy to settle a twitter spat.

And that's why there will probably be no civil complaint, ever. The victim cannot prove any injury.

It's just a weird criminal investigation that makes me wonder why it even exists.

originally posted by: theantediluvian
There's no criminal statute against swining a knife in a stabbing motion but if you happen to be doing it into a person's chest and it's not an act of self-defense on your part, you'll be facing criminal charges. There's no criminal statue against blowing peanut dust from your hand either but again, if you walk up to somebody you know has a peanut allergy and blow that dust into their face to cause an allergic reaction, you're going to find yourself facing criminal charges.

Because the 'bodily contact' part of those scenarios constitutes criminal assault/battery.

Reading more on this...

The charges really, really talk about how dramatic this seizure was, BTW. Eight days of effects, or so he has reported. Pooping and peeing on himself....

But did Kurt Eichenwald get medical care for it? I'm not finding that.

Honestly, sending a strobe gif to an epileptic is not like shooting a gun or swinging a knife at them. The chances that they will suffer any harm from the gif are far less than the harm that they might experience from a gun or knife.

Strange criminal case, IMO.

a reply to: MotherMayEye

That's because in most instances, causing bodily harm requires some sort of contact. It's a pretty arbitrary standard. Shooting doesn't require bodily contact by the person. The projectile does causes the harm. The argument I suspose could be that the projectile makes contact? What then about a laser? Could it be a crime to say... cut somebody in half with a laser? Would it make a difference if the laser was remotely controlled and the assailant was 10 miles away?

How could you make that work under your standard? After all, a laser is just a particular arrangement of protons emitted from a light source. A strobing light is a pulsing pattern of photons emitted from a light source.

I don't believe the instrument is necessarily important. It's really about the intent to do harm and the harm that is caused.

a reply to: MotherMayEye

Twitter was rough on him at the time. This was immediately after his appearance on Tucker Carlson, and he was at the time in an online argument about his appearance. I have to give him the benefit of the doubt, because to do otherwise might be too cynical, but the possibility he is faking a seizure in order to get revenge or deflect from his excoriation, is there.

originally posted by: LesMisanthrope
a reply to: MotherMayEye

Twitter was rough on him at the time. This was immediately after his appearance on Tucker Carlson, and he was at the time in an online argument about his appearance. I have to give him the benefit of the doubt, because to do otherwise might be too cynical, but the possibility he is faking a seizure in order to get revenge or deflect from his excoriation, is there.

I'd give benefit of the doubt in a civil case where the 'preponderance of evidence' is the test. I wouldn't in a criminal case where 'reasonable doubt' is the test.

a reply to: LesMisanthrope
a reply to: MotherMayEye

Probably should have addressed this earlier but the actual charges are for "cyberstalking" not assault.

The actual statute isn't mentioned in the release but I believe it's 18 U.S. Code § 2261A - Stalking

(2) with the intent to kill, injure, harass, intimidate, or place under surveillance with intent to kill, injure, harass, or intimidate another person, uses the mail, any interactive computer service or electronic communication service or electronic communication system of interstate commerce, or any other facility of interstate or foreign commerce to engage in a course of conduct that—

(A) places that person in reasonable fear of the death of or serious bodily injury to a person described in clause (i), (ii), or (iii) of paragraph (1)(A); or

(B) causes, attempts to cause, or would be reasonably expected to cause substantial emotional distress to a person described in clause (i), (ii), or (iii) of paragraph (1)(A),

shall be punished as provided in section 2261(b) of this title.

Punishments under section 2261(b):

(b)Penalties.—A person who violates this section or section 2261A shall be fined under this title, imprisoned—

(1) for life or any term of years, if death of the victim results;

(2) for not more than 20 years if permanent disfigurement or life threatening bodily injury to the victim results;

(3) for not more than 10 years, if serious bodily injury to the victim results or if the offender uses a dangerous weapon during the offense;

(4) as provided for the applicable conduct under chapter 109A if the offense would constitute an offense under chapter 109A (without regard to whether the offense was committed in the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States or in a Federal prison); and

(5) for not more than 5 years, in any other case,
or both fined and imprisoned.

(6) Whoever commits the crime of stalking in violation of a temporary or permanent civil or criminal injunction, restraining order, no-contact order, or other order described in section 2266 of title 18, United States Code, shall be punished by imprisonment for not less than 1 year.

Whether or not Eichenwald had a seizure would seem to therefore matter most in terms of whether the max sentence would be 5 years or 10.

a reply to: theantediluvian

Interesting. I don't know much about that type criminal statute so I'll have to look it up.

a reply to: theantediluvian

That makes more sense. The charge of "cyberstalking with the intent to kill or cause bodily harm" is present in the New York Times article, but missing in the DOJ report, which says only cyberstalking. Good point.

originally posted by: LesMisanthrope

originally posted by: scraedtosleep
a reply to: LesMisanthrope

You can harm people with images.

You can cause emotional harm.

And a seizure is physical harm being caused because of an image.

No you cannot.

Again, this is assuming he even had the seizure in the first place. His wife, for some reason, had the time to tweet "This is his wife, you caused a seizure. I have your information and have called the police to report the assault". Why? I have a sneaking suspicion that all of this is a ploy to settle a twitter spat.

You say you can't harm people with images, yet here we are discussing how an image, namely a flashing gif, did cause harm to someone. Can you deny that he had a seizure? Can you deny that if he had not seen the image, which directly caused said seizure according to Kurt and his doctor, whose sender intended that it might even kill him, that the seizure would not have happened? If you say it could have happened without the flashing gif, then you are totally denying medical and scientific findings regarding seizure inducement via strobing lights.

You keep insisting that you can't hurt someone with an image. You can obviously harm an epileptic with a flashing light. A gif of a flashing light can cause a seizure. This is an image that can cause harm, whether harm is intended or not.

Please explain how the image of the flashing light did not actually induce a seizure, thus causing harm.

From what I can see, you can't honestly do so.

a reply to: AboveBoard

I'm kind of torn here, on one hand you clearly have somebody intending to do harm and even potentially kill with an image, but on the other hand it's just an image that is only dangerous under certain circumstances.

If you and I looked at the image, what would happen to us? Probably nothing at all, so is the image really dangerous, or is it only dangerous to certain people under certain circumstances?

What if a man with epilepsy randomly stumbled upon an image that gave him a seizure, would the person that uploaded the image be commiting a crime? The only difference between this and deliberately sending an image is intent. The nature of the "crime" itself is no different - man sees photo, gets seizure.

Is intention enough to consider something a crime? What if I sent you a photo with the intent to kill you, but turns out you're not even an epileptic? Is there a crime being committed?

Now take the same scenario and make yourself an epileptic, and it all of a sudden it becomes a crime even though the nature of the "crime" is exactly the same.

So what's really going on here? Was it really a crime, or is it only a crime because he has epilepsy?

If it's the latter, then that's when lines become blurry, and when the lines become blurry, it's easy to start thinking with bias and emotion.

Physically assaulting somebody in an alleyway or stabbing somebody in the chest is pretty straight forward and there's no way out of those.

Here's a question to ponder - if you and I both sent the exact same photo to 2 different people with epilepsy, both with the intent to kill, but only one of them got a seizure, did only one of us commit a crime?


Hmm..

holy moly what a trash fire of a thread!

"who cares that epilepsy is a Real Medical Thing and this dude literally outright said he hoped it would kill the victim, muh free speech! and anyway what if it's FAKE"
only on ATS.
i grow wearier by the day.

a reply to: AboveBoard
Right? Not long ago people were talking about the emotional assault on Trump's son for that image of him decapitated. Images *apparently* have selective ability to cause harm depending on politics lol...
This walking garbage actually stated his intent to kill, that's the bottom line. As tigertatzen mentioned, premeditated, is the important part!!





a reply to: knowledgehunter0986
Few years ago in Vancouver a guy hit and killed a construction worker and his coworkers were all demanding prison... well investigation showed the driver had no drugs/alcohol, was going under the speed limit, not distracted or anything. He had sun in his eye and a freak accident resulted. He didn't get charged with anything, not even reckless driving. It just genuinely wasnt his fault.

The circumstances definitely play a big role in guilt, in this case intent

This is a total f*ckwad thing,to send an epileptic an image that could trigger a fit.My son-in-law became an epileptic after a brain injury as a child. Rivello was trying and hoping to do harm,what a despicable person.

a reply to: MotherMayEye

He reported that his wife called 911 and they came and took him to the hospital. I saw that in his twitter feed somewhere a while back - sorry, I don't have a link. So yes, he did get medical care for it.

a reply to: knowledgehunter0986

Yes, intention is enough to consider something a crime. Premeditation to do harm, and then following through with it is obviously criminal.

As someone pointed out earlier, though, he's being charged with cyberstalking not assault.

Posting an image with the intent to harm the person you are sending it to, fits that crime completely.

Deadly jokes