The Facebook Comment That Ruined a Life

So, it seems us gamers have to be very mindful of what we post now...

This poor kids makes a comment or two regarding LoL, and ends up looking at 2 to 10
for "A 3rd degree terroristic threat".. wtf??

Gotta love the Nazi Police out there..

"The first reaction occurred behind the scenes, in another country. The 18-year-old Carter had no way of knowing that, while he did grunt work at a drapery shop in San Antonio, a person in Canada saw his comments — posted 60 days after the Sandy Hook school-shooting tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut — freaked out and initiated a 24-hour chain reaction of insanity that would wind up with Carter facing 10 years in prison.

Carter's comments were part of a duel between dorks, and may have had something to do with a game with strong dork appeal called League of Legends. But the actual details and context of the online exchange are, in the eyes of Texas authorities, unimportant. Prosecutors say they don't have the entire thread — instead, they have three comments on a cell-phone screenshot."

Reading the whole thing, imo this kid was set up.

Watch out Gestapo, ima take my (FFXIV) Marauder and chop up some peeps.....
Sheesh.

Makes me glad, sooo glad i live in Australia.
(Not as bad. but were getting there...)

Link: www.dallasobserver.com...

The plight of this poor kid is proof that anything you say can be twisted,turned,taken out of context,and manipulated to be used against you. It's completely shocking to me.

reply to post by ScorpiusMaximus


This is why the nsa spying is a big deal..when people say if you have nothing to hide dont worry..but its when you take whatever you want out of context and turn it around on people....you should be able to say whatever the # you want online....even if its horrific...I fought for my country for 4 years to give people that right no matter how ugly the comments are.

I have to agree, this kids life could be ruined over talking smack? Is that the kind of world we want to live in?

I bet those in authority are just loving it though, this takes "turn in your neighbor" to a whole new level

All I can say is if the NSA or DHS or what ever alphabet agency actually monitors gaming sites that would be considered tame, heck some of the things said to me by children not nearly ten by the sounds of their voices is more terroristic on call of duty than what that guy had to text. Yet again let it be a lesson that anything that someone has a copy of can always come back to haunt you. I once sent a text that had me in a few hour police interrogation 1 text!!!! It happens and its a crazy world always gotta be aware of what you say and send in a world where big brother is always watching and listening.

If we had only listened George, if the book wasn't just considered a work of fiction..........

SaneThinking

I really enjoyed the commenter on the source site who claimed that because they were emotionally upset by someone at the mall yelling "I'm gonna kick your ***es" to an entire store that everyone who says anything mean on the internet should be locked up, even if that means incarcerating "50 to 100 million people." Then topping that off by concluding that should go for children as well, and that they should be locked up with adults.

I know I am not alone in thinking that one day in the not so distant past I woke up in some sort of twilight zone or idiocracy wherein a large majority of the population lost all common sense and reason. I often wonder to myself how people who think like that even get by in society, but then I read stories like this and realize I should be wondering how I get along in our society because its maniacs like that at the wheel.

Truly disturbing. While the kid probably needs a dose of some good old fashioned parental guidance and maybe some counseling (at the behest of the aforementioned parents who should probably be paying more attention to their son who has repeatedly posted suicidal thoughts on facebook), to charge him with terroristic threats is absolute insanity.

We are a nation of screaming banshees with our hair ablaze on a suicidal crash course with the dystopian society Sinclair Lewis and George Orwell tried to warn us about.

Wow, if it only takes a screenshot to put someone away I can go really go nuts getting people locked up. I've made people say the most messed up stuff. All of it under the guise of satire and humour. Two people with really sick senses of humour say the dumbest stuff sometimes.

Even if it's an argument, one person can accuse the other of something ludicrous and they return sending stupid satirical messages like "Oh yeah Im so nuts ima come into your house and eat your baby after making marmalade with your wife's brains."

The other person replies, OMG Please no. Sends it to police and its a case? Huh what?

What happened to mens rea?

Games, I've experienced how they can get you in the doodoo!

A few years back when Unreall (singleplayer) had just been released I was on my phone talking to my mate about what weapons I'd found, I said I'd got a shotgun a rocket launcher and a hand gun.
A couple of days later I'm out front of my house working on my bike and a young kid tells me his dad knows I've got guns!!!
I asked him who his dad was, he said "My dads a policeman" !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Shocked I went and found his dad and asked what the hell was his kid talking about. He laughed and quietly told me my neighbour had reported what she'd heard me saying on the phone. He told me not to worry as the rest of what they reported made it obvious what they'd heard.

I'm so glad I'm in the uk, had I been in the US I'm sure I wouldnt be here now.

I like the british bobby

cosmicexplorer
reply to post by ScorpiusMaximus

 

This is why the nsa spying is a big deal..when people say if you have nothing to hide dont worry..but its when you take whatever you want out of context and turn it around on people....you should be able to say whatever the # you want online....even if its horrific...I fought for my country for 4 years to give people that right no matter how ugly the comments are.

Errr...no... you didn't fight four years for the right of other people to write anything they want on the Internet...if you think that, then your motivation was entirely wrong...I only hope you have stopped fighting...

totallackey

cosmicexplorer
reply to post by ScorpiusMaximus

 

This is why the nsa spying is a big deal..when people say if you have nothing to hide dont worry..but its when you take whatever you want out of context and turn it around on people....you should be able to say whatever the # you want online....even if its horrific...I fought for my country for 4 years to give people that right no matter how ugly the comments are.

Errr...no... you didn't fight four years for the right of other people to write anything they want on the Internet...if you think that, then your motivation was entirely wrong...I only hope you have stopped fighting...

I fought for many things...and peoples rights were one of them...may I ask if you were prior service?

Good grief! Some of things I've seen role-played out in MMORPGs would be enough to depopulate entire groups of people. Heck, I've had characters who could claim sexual harassment or attempted rape.

But there have been articles about how the NSA has been spying on gamers.

I guess the innocent fantasies aren't so innocent anymore.

Now I guess you have to wonder if your erotic roleplay partner is a girl, G.I.R.L. or spook.

Two people have an ego debates outside of public view every day. So what are governments saying you have the same debate on social media and your a potential terrorist. I think this angel is being used like the patriot act was as an excuse to take away more civil liberities and increase unwarranted surveillance.

Doesn't everyone already know that it's video games and backwards rock and roll music that turns children into weapons?

Oh, also, black trench coats, yup, them too and maybe some of those R rated movies.

We should suspend all due process and just drop drone bombs on any suspected instances of backwards rock and roll, video games, and black trench coats.

That'll solve all of America's problems and be money well spent.

/sarcasm

The prosecuter in the case needs to be raped. Perhaps then he will understand that we have far exceeded the previously deemed "To Harsh" Hammurabi's Code.

To sentence this poor kid to RAPED before he even gets a trial? That is Criminal and I truly hope that all the people involved in railroading this kid get what they deserve. We he my child, people would die over this.

the essence of modern freedom of expression in a nutshell.

America was at cold & hot war with communism for 50 years ..protecting us from exactly this!
Soviet Socialist States of America.

This is really really shocking.

How has it come to this?

rigel4
America was at cold & hot war with communism for 50 years ..protecting us from exactly this!
Soviet Socialist States of America.

This is really really shocking.

How has it come to this?

edit on 13-2-2014 by rigel4 because: (no reason given)

A LOT of careful work went into bringing us to this point. But you have to be able to give up everything you thought was reality to fully appreciate the level subversion we're talking about here. Then once and if you do piece it together, you'll find we are also in a corner where we really can't even address it any meaningful manner. They really got us by the kibbies.

reply to post by ScorpiusMaximus


I think it was right that he was reported but not arrested. I mean, seriously... who says things like that on Facebook? Normally, it's deranged people who are about to do something like that. What should have happened is that the authorities checked him out and realized that he is just a kid with nerd rage and zero tact then left him alone.

Saying stuff like that is stupid and you should expect people to be concerned but, in the end, it's not a crime and he should definitely not be facing a prison term. That's how you turn a nerd rage kid into a nerd rage killer.

As a gamer, this really hits home with me. The things people say while gaming are all over the place. I can understand why an average person might be taken aback but in the world of gaming, "crazy" comments are pretty common.

"They found no guns in his house," Flanary says from his San Antonio office. "They found no bomb-making materials." He follows this up with a dash of sarcasm that's not a far stretch from the rhetorical flourishes that put his client in peril: "They didn't find The Anarchist Cookbook. ... They didn't find, you know, a bunch of newspaper clippings on the wall — conspiracy theories...

Errr, yah...

Anyway.

reply to post by cosmicexplorer

And this is why you NEVER talk to the police:

"Never mind the unethical implication and the downright shady nature of the action; when an officer goes and talks to a man who's in jail [and] tells them, 'Waive your right to an attorney because we're letting you go,' or makes that implication, then that waiver is not given voluntarily anyway — and so it's like coercing a confession, from a legal standpoint. ... It's like, 'Hey, if you talk to us, we'll let you go, but if you don't talk to us, you can sit here and rot.'"

Frightened and naive, Carter copped to the comment. Instead of being released, he had only managed to transfer himself to another jail and double his bond. Emboldened by the confession, Comal County authorities moved him to their jurisdiction and secured an indictment on April 10.

In the midst of all the craziness, check this out:

Then, shortly after Flanary requested the bond-reduction hearing, good news came in the form of an anonymous donor who put up the money for Carter's bond.

More good news. Thank [insert entity of choice here] for good, decent people:

Flanary stepped in and offered his services pro bono — something he wanted to do because, he says, "This stuff is messed up."

And check out this garbage:

One of the most striking things about the evidence so far tendered by the state is what's missing: the entire thread — which wasn't on Carter's Facebook page — containing the damning comments. "The state tells us Facebook didn't give it to them," Flanary says.

Flanary believes it's paramount that if someone is criminally charged on the basis of his words, a jury needs to see all the words. In this case, that includes whatever comment precipitated Carter's hyperbolic rant.

"When you're dealing with speech," Flanary says, "... it is absolutely, 100 percent important that the words that you are charging people with are actually the words that they said and not some misrepresentation. And that's what ... this prosecutor did, is misrepresent to the grand jury what he said."

But wait, theres more:

The Comal County District Attorney's Office did not intend for Carter to suffer what happened next, Flanary says, but it was reasonably foreseeable: He was sexually assaulted. "He definitely was not kept safe, " Flanary says. "And that's why it's not good to have innocent 18-year-old [guys] in jail with very, very dangerous people."

And another shining example of our criminal "justice" system:

The damage has been done. And I suspect they know the damage has been done. I suspect that maybe one of the reasons they're holding on so hard is because they fear a lawsuit."

I would guess that somewhere along the chain of authority and responsibility, somebody green-lighted going after this before they realized it was just dumbarse internet game chatter. Because that initial person said "go" other people got involved. Now a bunch of them must be refusing to hit the breaks because they don't want to look like idiots for going after some kid for game chatter. For the sake of their careers, they are pretending that this actually is a serious matter worthy of the time and attention and limited resources of people who are supposed to be safeguarding the country etc, oh and never mind the guy whose life is getting fubared because of it.

So who says "saving face" is just for Chinese people, and a foreign concept to the USA, eh?

One would hope at some point that it all catches the attention of somebody who is in a position to just call bs on the whole thing and put their foot down to stop it, one of those awesome old judges maybe.