
Google+ invite lands man in jail - fridek
http://www.fastcompany.com/3024452/google-invite-lands-man-in-jail
======
jellicle
Judge: do not contact this woman.

Man: {apparently continues harassing her}

Police: {enforce}

Not seeing what the problem is here. The question of whether he actually did
attempt to contact her is a fact-based one for the courts...

Similarly, if the woman receives a phone call with heavy breathing from the
man's home phone number, it's certainly possible that he didn't do it: perhaps
someone broke into his house and called her. He can certainly argue that in
court.

~~~
einhverfr
> Similarly, if the woman receives a phone call with heavy breathing from the
> man's home phone number, it's certainly possible that he didn't do it:
> perhaps someone broke into his house and called her. He can certainly argue
> that in court.

And all he has to do to win is raise reasonable doubt. Get a friend to say "I
did it as a prank, and he told me not to." No restraining order violated.

~~~
rmc
Sure, but you've have to prove it in court. The criminal justice system is
used to sorting out claimed alibi's. I'm doubtful you have discovered some
novel hack to the justice system.

~~~
einhverfr
No. That's not how it works. They'd have to prove you wrong. "I didn't do it"
is not an affirmative defence.

------
tluyben2
I watch American tv shows and movies and am well aware of restraining orders
but thought it was something very rare and almost never happens; now I read
this. Is it _that_ normal to get one 'after a breakup'? I have never heard
anything like that in my country except for hardcore, life threatening
criminal situations. Is it that easy to get one there and you actually get
rounded up and hauled to a cell for violating while you are just 'contacting'?

~~~
pervycreeper
(IANAL) Restraining orders are usually granted without requiring any evidence,
aside from the testimony of the person requesting it. I believe it is a common
strategy for (especially) women to exploit this in order to gain some sort of
advantage over their partners following a breakup.

~~~
king_jester
> I believe it is a common strategy for (especially) women to exploit this in
> order to gain some sort of advantage over their partners following a
> breakup.

Perhaps the reason why women seek TROs and ROs is because they are much more
likely then men to be the victim of physical assault, stalking, harassment, or
murder from their partners or former partners.

~~~
adekok
> they are much more likely then men to be the victim

That's the common belief. How do we know it's true, and not a "just so" story?

My investigations into this led me to CDC reports (and others) showing that DV
/ IPV was largely 50/50\. _Harm_ was more often done to the smaller partner
(i.e. women). But women also tended to use more weapons in their attacks.

These reports aren't hard to find. Most people don't look.

~~~
king_jester
I'm not sure where, you looked, but the best collection of CDC reports I could
find are here:
[http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/intimatepartnerviolenc...](http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/intimatepartnerviolence/datasources.html)

In particular, from the key findings sections of the report from the National
Violence Against Women Survey:

"Women experience more intimate partner violence than do men: 22.1 percent of
sur- veyed women, compared with 7.4 percent of surveyed men, reported they
were physi- cally assaulted by a current or former spouse, cohabiting partner,
boyfriend or girlfriend, or date in their lifetime; 1.3 per- cent of surveyed
women and 0.9 percent of surveyed men reported experiencing such violence in
the previous 12 months. Ap- proximately 1.3 million women and 835,000 men are
physically assaulted by an intimate partner annually in the United States."
[1]

[1]
[https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/183781.pdf](https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/183781.pdf),
page 6 under Key Findings

Further, women are more likely to be murdered by their partners than men. Safe
Horizon's has a basic fact sheet that is pulled from sources at the bottom of
the page: [http://www.safehorizon.org/index/what-we-do-2/domestic-
viole...](http://www.safehorizon.org/index/what-we-do-2/domestic-violence--
abuse-53/domestic-violence-the-facts-195.html)

------
philbarr
I have a friend who works the emergency telephone line and is getting
increasingly frustrated with calls regarding Facebook. A typical call will
have the caller complain that, "[person x] has written something horrible on
my wall!" So he says, "hang on? They've written _on your wall_? So you're
_friends_ with them?! Just un-friend them!"

In fact in a recent review he was told off for groaning loudly on the
telephone when someone mentioned Facebook.

However, you can see that if Google+ continues with it's desperate push for
market share like this, there will be more and more instances like that in the
article. People really won't know how to properly eliminate others from the
online social lives, as easily as just "un-friending" them.

~~~
sedha
G+ did nothing out of the ordinary here (if indeed it did anything, there is
plenty of guess work in that post) Facebook friending and Twitter following
have landed many a person in jail, none of these services got this sort of
blame for it.

When adding someone to your circle they get an email notification, same as
when you follow someone on Twitter they get an email telling them that, But
suddenly in G+ it's 'aggressive'?! sensationalism and blaming one service for
something that is done by all and is mainly innocuous is bad form.

And for the record G+ doesn't bulk send invites to all your contacts that just
misinformation and FUD spreading.

~~~
fuzzix
> "And for the record G+ doesn't bulk send invites to all your contacts that
> just misinformation and FUD spreading"

Does it ever send individual invites without explicit and clear consent or
without explicit action by the user?

------
atmosx
Do we know if Google+ invites are sent deliberately? I think on Facebook you
can prove who sent a friend request.

That said, being arrested for a friend-request is silly. She could just
block/ban/reject the request and no harm done.

I would like to know the name of judge or prosecutor(?) who accepted a Google+
friend request as _breach of restraining order_. I get the very strong feeling
that judges/prosecutors and lawyers loose common sense the minute they start
practicing.

~~~
rayiner
A restraining order means no contact, period. Life isn't kindergarten. Just
because it's "online" doesn't mean that kindergarten rules apply. "No
touching" doesn't mean "let's see if I can get away with just touching you
with one pinky." A friend request, even if easily rejected, is definitely
contact, as much as a text message or a phone call (which can also be
blocked). The issue isn't how easy it is to block, it's whether the person
under the restraining order tried to initiate contact with the person being
protected by the restraining order.

~~~
xtirpation
You're right of course, but I struggle to view the world in such a black-and-
white manner to be honest especially when there are black boxes like in play,
Google+'s source code in this case.

How much proof would have to be provided that the Google+ invitation was sent
deliberately by the user? Sworn testimony from a Google employee? There can of
course exist bugs that send invites erroneously that nobody knows about.
Revealing of the source code and analysis by experts? Unknown bugs can still
exist, especially in systems as large as Google's.

Stepping back from this particular case, what about apps that scan your
contact list and automatically send invites and/or messages?

These situations aside, it's far too easy to accidentally send an invitation.
Hell, I don't doubt that many people reflexively agree to prompts on websites
they think they're familiar with. Of course the argument can be made that
people with restraining orders must be more careful, but it just doesn't seem
sane to me that people can get jail time for clicking a button on a prompt
that most people wouldn't think twice about.

~~~
DanBC
When someone has taken a restraining order out you've lost your rights to
shades of grey.

The order is designed to be black and white to provide clear, firm, boundaries
over which you will not pass. Before the restraining order there are several
levels of allowance which let people obey the spirit (no contact) or to
experiment with boundaries.

When under a restraining order you need to take special steps to ensure
complyance.

~~~
knorby
What if it was a spam email from a bot impersonating Google+? I occasionally
scan my spam, and it doesn't seem out of the question. Once printed out, would
you be sure that all judge/prosecutors would notice or want to notice?
Restraining orders don't come out of the blue, but there is plenty of reason
to avoid sending someone to jail because a no-content email contained their
name.

~~~
DanBC
That would be an awful situation to be in.

I very much hope that someone in such a situation would be able to submit some
evidence showing that it was not them that sent the message. Unfortunately,
suing for wrongful arrest takes tome and money and might happen after the
person has spent time in prison and lost jobs etc etc.

Do you know anything that can reduce the number of spouses being murdered or
hospitalised by their spouse, and that could reduce the need for court
procedures, and could reduce the miscarriages of justice, and that would cost
less than the current system?

I'm not being facestious either. UK has removed legal aid for famy court
proceedings and so people have to muddle through this with no legal
representation. It takes ages and is weird and stupid.

------
tjgq
The article focuses mainly on whether the man did indeed send the Google+
invitation to his former girlfriend. It seems to me that the actual troubling
question is whether sending a Google+ invitation can be considered a violation
of a restraining order. The bar is far too low when receiving a single
inconsequential message that you have full ability to ignore can be considered
a form of harassment.

~~~
buro9
A restraining order is against any form of contact.

You (and I) don't know the circumstances that led to the restraining order.
There may have been violence, intimidation, harassment, abuse. This may even
form part of a consistent pattern of abuse.

The woman in this case may feel so traumatised by any reminder of her ex, or
contact from him, that the act of receiving an email from him (on his behalf)
may actually be deeply upsetting and disturbing. It may undo any efforts she
has put in place to move on with her life, and restore her to the place of
being abused.

If a court has put in place a restraining order then there is no acceptable
basis for the ex to contact her. Including whether that contact is via an
automated email on his behalf.

I'm with the v̶i̶c̶t̶i̶m̶ court on this. Someone is to blame, and the bar
isn't too low. I do think that a decision like this will cause Google to
evaluate the impact of any automated emails.

I also think that if you get a restraining order against you it's not enough
to lazily avoid contact with the other person, you should proactively ensure
that you do not contact the other person... so purge your address book if need
be, the court has made it your responsibility to not contact the other person.

~~~
rjknight
There is no "with the victim" here though. I mean, morally speaking, we are
all with the victim - human decency alone demands that we have sympathy for
their predicament, which is why we have things like restraining orders in the
first place. But the enforcement of the order is done by the police and the
state, and the state is in a position to imprison someone for an act which
they did not commit, which seems to me to be unfair. If Google carries out
automated actions on behalf of its users, without their knowledge or
permission and in a way that they cannot reasonably predict or prevent, then
it seems unjust to punish the user.

You can say that the person should have removed the victim from their
contacts, but it's not even obvious that they would have _known_ that the
victim was on their contact list (basically, anyone you ever email gets added
to it), and even if they _did_ know, they would have no particular reason to
assume that Google would contact this person automatically.

~~~
buro9
I've edited my post.

I side with the court (which is choosing to favour the person who asked for
the restraining order).

It's not been proven that Google did send an automated email. The only thing
the court does know is that an email was sent, and it was "from" the person
who is subject to the restraining order.

If Google did send an automated email (which is unclear), then lawyers should
be updating their advice to the subjects of restraining orders to ensure that
their contact lists are purged appropriately.

~~~
ithkuil
> If Google did send an automated email (which is unclear), then lawyers
> should be updating their advice to the subjects of restraining orders to
> ensure that their contact lists are purged appropriately.

so basically you are saying that when something in the law is not clear, it's
the job of the lawyers to make it sure they give proper advice to the next
person coming into that situation, while the unlucky first person just has to
face consequences?

~~~
einhverfr
> "so basically you are saying that when something in the law is not clear,
> it's the job of the lawyers to make it sure they give proper advice to the
> next person coming into that situation, while the unlucky first person just
> has to face consequences?"

That is a lawyer's job, yes.

On the other hand, it is also our Constitutional tradition to give the
defendant generally the benefit of the doubt on the law (rule of lenity,
reasonable doubt, and so forth).

You can't hold someone in violation of a law he or she could not have
reasonably foreseen.

------
Joeboy
It seems reasonable to me that courts should be able to issue temporary
restraining orders without requiring much evidence, as long as it's generally
understood that that's what happened.

The problem here seems to be that the man was held accountable for a breach of
such an order that was both minimal and unintentional. I would guess that the
law takes this possibility into account, and the police involved probably
should have rejected the woman's complaint as vexatious, if that was the
entire basis of her complaint.

~~~
leephillips
In some states the order will curtail your right to purchase a firearm or,
possibly, to exercise other 2nd amendment rights. Depending on your
circumstances, this might endanger your life. That the courts can eliminate
some of a citizen's rights based on an unsupported complaint with no due
process might not be considered reasonable by everybody.

~~~
Joeboy
I'm not from the US, so that concern sounds bizarre to me.

~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
I am from the US, and that's just a normal gun nut asshole opinion.

------
Suro
Why did the former girlfriend did not block the profile ? Google may have not
advertised this feature but it doesn't look like hard to find...

~~~
RexRollman
Because putting him in jail was more appealing to her?

------
jhgg
I wouldn't be surprised if she mistook the "People you may know" notification
for an from someone add them to your circles on G+.

~~~
icebraining
Well, she and the cops, since she "went down to the local police station with
a print-out of the invitation".

~~~
Jare
I don't think many people can understand half of what Google's UIs are trying
to do or say anymore, even while we interact and use them. I wouldn't expect
your local cops to be more knowledgeable from a printout.

------
fridek
I guess guy added her to his circles expecting a twitter-like model of
following as a means of mild (or not) stalking. It's not that surprising that
she got notified, but it would be great if "never send any email on my behalf"
option existed in social networks.

------
voidr
Just opened up Google+ on a 15" Mac Book Pro in Chrome and all I see is
whitespace and "You may know", "Interesting people and pages" and other
useless crap, what I'm not seeing is _my feed_. Only around 10% of the screen
space is used for things I care about, it really baffles me how Google thinks
that this is a contender against Facebook. They should realise that spamming
people won't make them like their horrible UI.

Edit:

Screenshot:
[https://www.dropbox.com/s/4889ilnwfmplu0l/Screenshot%202014-...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/4889ilnwfmplu0l/Screenshot%202014-01-09%2011.42.25.png)

~~~
DominikR
Could you possibly exaggerate any more? 10%? Really?

With the multi column newsfeed on Google+ it's just impossible that you see
less content than on Facebook.

And how does your comment have anything to do with the article?

~~~
chillingeffect
One of the points of the article is that it's hard to tell and control what is
happening on the Google+ interface and system.

Add A/B testing and rollout of new features, utter lack of accountability and
bugs, and probably no one in the world can ACTUALLY TELL if the alleged abuser
actually sent an invite.

~~~
andybak
> One of the points of the article is that it's hard to tell and control what
> is happening on the Google+ interface and system.

I was a little skeptical of that part. Is it really that easy to accidentally
invite someone?

~~~
DanBC
Look at botnet and malware numbers.

Some of that malware is really crude, and pretty much said "you didn't install
any software, but here I am, a bit of software installing itself and asking
you for permission. Be careful, because i could be a virus and do real damage
to your system. So, you know nothing about me, and I could be dangerous. Do
you want to install me?"

See also the numbers of people who fall for 419 scams.

Hell, I don't know how to use the gmail iPhone app; the Facebook iPhone app,
the Reddit mobile site. I come from a generation where you click it and see
what happens. Without a confirmation step that click could now land me in
jail.

What's weird is that Google have the numbers and the skill to test their UI
Changes. The UI must make sense to most people or Google would iterate it.

It makes me feel decidedly behind the apex. Like an old man needing a 12 year
old to set the VCR clock.

------
tehwalrus
hmm, this is an interesting case!

I think it must hinge on whether or not the guy actually acted to cause the
invitation, or whether this was an automatic google thing based on previous
emails between the two accounts.

If it was simply an automatic "add these people from your past emails"
notification, then it seems very unreasonable to hold him to account for it.
Sounds like the defendant needs a witness from Google about how Google+ works
- which will almost certainly be difficult to get!

------
X4
Does that only apply to the USA and UK? That is almost like "thought crime",
when you look dangerous, or have similarity with someone portrayed in the
media as the "bad guy". Can a person "feeling" intimidated by your look or
presence sue you too? That would be ridiculous and put everyone into constant
pressure to "look normal" I think.

------
blueskin_
Moral of the story: Don't use google+.

~~~
Jgrubb
The story was that the "perp" claims he didn't even send the invite, that
Google must've generated it for him. The moral of the story is that you might
be a user of G+ and not even know it.

Read the article before boiling it down for us.

~~~
jessaustin
From TFA, a perfect example of how joining G+ could lead to this predicament:

 _And by default, when someone joins Google+ and that person is in your Gmail
contacts, Google will automatically send you a notification, along with an
invitation suggesting that you "add him [or her] to your Circles to stay
connected."_

In such a scenario, the alleged unrestrained person could be held responsible
for the fact that his alleged target had received emails from him at any time
in the past, such as before the order was requested or before they even "broke
up".

It may well be that there are other scenarios that require even less
interaction.

------
drdaeman
I wonder if restraining orders apply to third parties contacting on behalf of
the restrained person? Suppose, it's violation only if it's proven that the
person willingly made third party to make contact? (Otherwise it's nearly
trivial to put anyone under a restraining order to courtroom, huh.)

~~~
einhverfr
If they did, the third party would have a right to be told about it
proactively and a right to contest it. I am betting there is no jurisdiction
that does this.

------
stesch
BTW: [http://storify.com/joliss/what-happens-when-our-software-
has...](http://storify.com/joliss/what-happens-when-our-software-has-broken-
privacy)

------
DanBC
A similar case happened in uk where a man sent facebook friend requests to
everyone in his email list, which included his ex wife who had a restraining
order againts him.

On mobil so links in a while.

------
Pxtl
_sigh_ , and with this comment thread, Hacker News has completed its
transformation into Reddit. Well, that and the multi-day outage.

So, where to next?

~~~
DanBC
Re-read the guidines about accounts less than a year and Reddit. You're right
about the flood of MRAs from reddit.

But flag the submissions you think don't belong here and up ote the
submissions that do belong here.

------
mseebach
It's about a violation of a restraining order. In other news, taking a step
lands man in jail.

------
DateK
Collateral damage?

------
awk23
I understand what the author is trying to say but there is an awful lot of
"perhaps" punctuating all the G+ bashing he manages to fit in that post. I'm
guessing the relevant evidence will be reveled in court.

Also worth discussing if an invitation email, automated or otherwise, should
be considered a restraining order violation.

