
Judge rules Utah law banning undercover farm filming is unconstitutional - SwellJoe
http://www.ksl.com/?sid=44934322&nid=148&title=judge-strikes-down-utah-law-banning-undercover-farm-filming
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burntrelish1273
Ag-gag laws are legitimized, crooked censorship.

The meat processing industry is still extremely insulated, but let's hope this
gets chipped away to reveal their secrets. This is one of the reasons
undocumented immigrant labor is exploited: they generally won't say anything.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/21/us/meatpackers-profits-
hin...](http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/21/us/meatpackers-profits-hinge-on-
pool-of-immigrant-labor.html)

[http://www.meatpoultry.com/articles/news_home/Business/2013/...](http://www.meatpoultry.com/articles/news_home/Business/2013/04/Journalist_goes_undercover_at.aspx?ID=%7BD8E5B081-04D6-4254-880C-7166E0587A61%7D&cck=1)

See also: SHowing Animals Respect and Kindness (SHARK) to see what happens to
those whom film use drones to legally film live caged animal shoots and other
embarrassing/horrible human-animal interactions.
[http://sharkonline.org/](http://sharkonline.org/)

~~~
rayiner
> The meat processing industry is still extremely insulated, but let's hope
> this gets chipped away to reveal their secrets.

If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.

~~~
ch4s3
The meat industry isn't a person, it's an industry. It shouldn't be able to
hide practices that endanger human health and safety. This isn't a privacy
issue, this is about protecting the ability of whistleblowers to speak out.

~~~
ethbro
Devil's advocate from the other side: commercial farming and animal slaughter
is a messy, ugly business to a lot of people. You could easily film an ethical
operation and edit in such a way that people are shocked (shocked!!) that
their steaks had eyes and felt pain.

So even without "human health and safety concerns", there are valid reasons
for not showing graphic details.

That said, I absolutely think enforcing ethical animal treatment through
public pressure on factory farming trumps right-not-to-know.

~~~
cageface
If people aren’t comfortable watching animals being slaughtered maybe they
shouldn’t eat them.

~~~
riffraff
People should know how the meat industry works but this reasoning seems
extreme.

I am not comfortable watching women give birth, that doesn't mean I shouldn't
have children.

~~~
mikeyouse
I think this is confusing the availability of video with the forced viewing of
video.

If you're not comfortable watching a woman give birth, you can choose to avoid
the many thousands of available videos. You don't have that option with
factory farming methods.

Nobody _wants_ to watch animals being slaughtered on an assembly line, but
they should absolutely have the option to see what happens with their food. I
don't think there's any moral room for "It would be disgusting and probably
harm their business, so we shouldn't film it."

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westnortheast
This is great news for those that try to work to improve conditions for farm
animals. Collecting this footage is already risky as it is (violent
retribution is not unheard of), but remains a crucial tool in convincing
people that factory farming (ie, more than ~95% of animal agriculture in the
US) continues to treat animals brutally and inhumanely.

~~~
sametmax
Besides that, if some business doesn't want to show you something, it's
usually a big red flag that everyone should know about it. Business are not
people, they don't have genitals to hide, they should have as little privacy
as it's commercially and ethically viable.

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downandout
Isn't trespassing, regardless of what you do once you are on private property
without permission, already illegal? The video would just be evidence of the
crime the person doing the filming committed by being there in the first
place. It seems silly that there would need to be a separate law for this.

~~~
trhway
well, a violation of a minor law as a necessary step to stop bigger and much
severe crime ... Or imagine somebody is having what looks like a heart attack
and is falling onto a somebody's lawn, ie. private property, from the sidewalk
- stepping onto the lawn to help would technically be the crime of
trespassing, wouldn't it?

~~~
downandout
Actually, there are protections built into the our system of justice for
incidental violations of the law like this where there was no criminal intent.
Killing someone with your car is a potential violation of a whole host of
serious statutes - potentially all the way up to first degree murder. But if
it is determined to be an accident and there aren't other factors
(intoxication, extreme negligence, etc.)...you cannot be prosecuted for that.

------
alexjray
What is everyone talking about, this is good; free speech is a crucial part of
our democracy.

you can put up no trespassing signs, thats legitimized. Encroaching on free
speech however is not.

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paulddraper
I'm a Utahn, have lived next to several farms/butcher operations, and have
slaughtered my own animals.

I don't understand how trespassing on other people's property could be
anything _but_ illegal.

Yes, yes, I've heard the retoric that the industry has bad guys and bad guys
don't have rights. (So stop using encryption all you bad people!)

But that can't be the real reason, right? The KSL article is pretty brief.
Anyone know the reason it was ruled that trespassing isn't trespassing if it's
on a farm?

~~~
bediger4000
Trespassing is illegal. I don't think that's what the judge ruled on. If
someone trespasses, they should be penalized for trespassing.

Ag-gag laws are usually pretty different - they basically constitute prior
constraint of free speech.

~~~
paulddraper
> The Utah Legislature approved a bill in 2012 that made it a class B
> misdemeanor to trespass on private livestock or poultry operations and
> record sound or images without the owner's permission. It also prohibited
> seeking employment with the intent of making those recordings. Leaving a
> recording device for that purpose was a class A misdemeanor. The law did not
> criminalize the possession or distribution of unlawful recordings, but
> focused on trespassing and filming while on the property, according to the
> state.

Ah. So I infer "trespass on private livestock or poultry operations" is still
illegal, but the other formely prohibited actions are now okay.

------
lighthazard
Can anyone explain the justification for not recording? I can only see
positive things come out of it.

~~~
arthur_trudeau
Would you want someone secretly taking video of the most embarrassing,
context-free 5 minutes they could find of your job, and invoking a mob to
attack you on that basis?

These environments, or disrupting their operations because you're trying to
get a sweet shot, can be legitimately dangerous. Discouraging people from
trespassing in search of publicity could certainly constitute a rational basis
for such a law.

It's a neat trick to ask what possible justification there could be and then
downvote the explanation.

~~~
kibwen
_> the most embarrassing, context-free 5 minutes they could find of your job_

The five minutes a day I spend trying to quit vim?

~~~
arthur_trudeau
When your job is, eg, slaughtering pigs, or swearing at engines, or dealing
with abusive customers (or abusive editors I suppose), you might reconsider.

~~~
colanderman
Swearing at engines isn't illegal or morally reprehensible. Animal abuse is.

------
nickhalfasleep
Besides the welfare of the animals, this is also important to the food safety
and health of society to have clear insight into how food is produced.

~~~
briandear
It actually isn’t important that society have clear insight into how food is
produced. What is important is that government enforced the health and safety
regulations.

Does the public have the right to see the inside of the Boeing design lab? The
Ford assembly line? How about a livestream of code being written that runs
medical equipment?

The public doesn’t have a “right” to see that.

The militant vegan crowd would have the most humane slaughter in the history
of the world featuring a cow that lived to a ripe old age eating nothing but
grass imported from a Swiss meadow while listening to the soothing acoustic
tunes of John Mayer – and they’d still portray that as if it were an ISIS
beheading. Because they have an agenda and it isn’t “safety.”

The FDA and the Department of Agriculture have the job to ensure health and
safety. Are we making an argument that they are failing? Based on population
size and geographical size, the US has a very safe food supply.

These documentaries aren’t about food safety, let’s not be naïve.

------
briandear
Yet it is interesting that the undercover Planned Parenthood video guys where
prosecuted. I am curious if the same sort of activists that applaud this
decision also support anti-Planned Parenthood filmers.

The cynic in me would offer that very few activists actually care about free
speech – only that their speech is free. It might seem that we are all
hypocrites to some degree.

~~~
undersuit
>“The public knows the real criminals are Planned Parenthood and their
business partners,” Daleiden said.

[https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2017/03/29/felony...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2017/03/29/felony-
charges-planned-parenthood-film/99767988/)

Abortions are not illegal in the US, nor is receiving a medical consultation
on an abortion. The Planned Parenthood video guys weren't exposing a crime.

------
gweinberg
It seems strange to me that agriculture should be treated differently than any
other industry.

~~~
everybodyknows
Right. If criminalizing exposure of animal abuse in agriculture is okay,
what's next? Extension of the "protection" to equestrian trainers, animal
testing by pharma, and puppy mills?

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divbit_m
Why not just put cameras in farm equipment and tell everyone straight up they
are being filmed? No need for creeping around

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arthur_trudeau
Reporting on legal decisions is garbage when it doesn't even include the name
of the case, or better a pointer to the opinion, so I can read the ruling
myself.

But it seems tenuous to me to claim that the state can criminalize
trespassing, but not trespassing for the purposes of X, or conspiring to
trespass to commit X, regardless of X.

~~~
wtallis
> _" But it seems tenuous to me to claim that the state can criminalize
> trespassing, but not trespassing for the purposes of X, or conspiring to
> trespass to commit X, regardless of X."_

In this case, X is speech protected by the First Amendment. The state cannot
make "trespassing for the purposes of making legal speech" a worse crime than
trespassing in general.

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averagewall
How is it ever legal to break into a business's property and secretly video
the operations? You surely can't sneak into a factory and record their
processes to sell to China. Is it only allowed when it's being used for
protesting, not for stealing IP? Or only on farms but not in factories? What
about trespass law? Non-disclosure agreements for employees? Are those
invalid?

~~~
bdcravens
Presumably this just means that the filming isn't illegal; it doesn't mean
actions taken to film are no longer subject to statutes. You can still be
charged with trespassing, just not trespassing + filming.

~~~
wtallis
The judge explained it thus:

> _In short, the cases cited by the State answer the question of whether a
> landowner can remove someone from her property or sue for trespass even when
> the person wishes to exercise First Amendment rights. And generally, as the
> cases make clear, the answer is yes. But that is not the question before the
> court. The question here is whether the State (not a private landowner) can
> prosecute (not sue for damages) a person based on her speech on private
> property._ [...]

> _In sum, the fact that speech occurs on a private agricultural facility does
> not render it outside First Amendment protection. Nobody disputes that
> owners of an agricultural facility can immediately remove from the property
> any person speaking in ways the owners find objectionable. But if the State
> wants to criminalize the same speech, it must justify the law under the
> First Amendment._

