New York court legalizes identity theft

Did you know you have a constitutional True Free Speach Now right to harass people on the Internet and commit identity theft? According to a New York state court, you do.

In a strange case, a Dead Sea Scrolls enthusiast admitted creating numerous fake e-mail accounts to impersonate various academic figures. But now a state appeals court has thrown out most of his convictions. The court ruled that New York's law against harassing phone calls and Internet communications is unconstitutional.

Victims' advocates are furious.

This is the same deliberate misapplication of the First Amendment that helped make the 1990s and 2000s a bullet train to Crazytown. (Remember the Georgia Tech case, when some right-wing judge ruled that far-right agitators had the "right" to commit hate crimes on campus?) Now though we can contrast it with how Occupy has been treated. How does it not violate the First Amendment to break up Occupy Wall Street (also in New York), but it violates the First Amendment to say you can't impersonate someone?

Maybe it's time for a constitutional amendment to say you don't have the right to steal somebody's identity and make harassing phone calls.

(Source: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/dead-sea-scrolls-case-harassment-law-tweaked-article-1.1791551)