When to POST ANONYMOUSLY

Mahan Atma

Mahan Atma

Bluelighter
Joined
Aug 17, 2002
Messages
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When and How to POST ANONYMOUSLY

If you are going to discuss:

1) any sort of illegal activity you or your friends may have engaged in;

2) any potentially illegal or incriminating activity you or your friends have engaged in; or

3) a pending prosecution, arrest, search or interrogation of yourself or your friends,

then you should POST ANONYMOUSLY. Because believe it or not, we have had reports of people in this forum having their posts used against them by the police.

Posting anonymously is easy. If you are logged in to BL under your usual account, just log out, and start a thread in the Anonymous Posting forum. A moderator or administrator will move the thread to Legal Discussion.

CLICK HERE TO ACCESS THE ANONYMOUS POSTING FORUMhttp://www.bluelight.ru/vb/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=153
* Don't forget to LOG OUT before posting
 
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we have had reports of people in this forum having their posts used against them by the police.
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Wouldn't this be considered hearsay in court?
 
I don't think it's hearsay if it's something you've written in the first person. If you are giving your account of something and phrase it as "I/we did" wouldn't it be the same as if it was recoreded (audio) and replayed in court?


(Good question AfterGlow)
 
AfterGlow said:
Wouldn't this be considered hearsay in court?
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Statements you make yourself can be used against you.

There's a huge thread on hearsay somewhere. If you're really interested do a search for it.
 
Hey Legal Mods,

I noticed you wanted a single anonymous user to have cats in here post under.. you could just make up a user like "Legal Anonymous" with password: "password" or something and have people use that. it wouldnt be as cool as slr anon but it'd be similar

just a thought :)
 
^^^ The admins don't have to give up anything without a court order, and given the location of the server, that would be rather difficult.
 
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Symmetrical Daze said:
Wouldn't the admins have to give away the user's IP address? Just how safe is our identity?
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Bluelight does not log IP addresses. :)
 
I have heard second-hand reports of people who were under investigation being presented with posts they had written on the internet by the police. I have not however heard about them being used against them in court. I think it would be really hard to prove that it was the suspect doing the actual typing under that username in the first place. Unless someone admitted to it without thinking. It would be even harder to prove it was them typing based on an IP address alone. I think the police need a court order to present to the suspects ISP in order to locate the actual physical address of the computer. The recent crackdown on filesharers should provide this information. If anyone is worried about these things, they should just connect to the internet thru a public proxy, effectively masking their IP, and allowing for anonyomous surfing. And even that is only nessesary if they have a static IP. A dial-up connection, f.x., provides a dynamic IP number that changes each time you log on to the internet.
 
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Used against you in court -- maybe, maybe not.

But they most certainly can be used by the police. It's happened in this very forum. Isn't that bad enough?
 
Mahan Atma said:
Used against you in court -- maybe, maybe not.

But they most certainly can be used by the police. It's happened in this very forum. Isn't that bad enough?
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How were they used by the police in that instance?
 
just don't say your real name and don't give specifics. pretty smart to do anyways. if our IP's aren't logged. then a screen name has no relation to you unless like i said you give your name online which is stupid.
 
Update: Anonymous posting has now been turned off for Legal Q&A. Anonymous posts should now be made in the Anonymous Posting forum. A staff member will move your comments to the appropriate place.
 
For goodness sake people, DO NOT list certain specific information about any sort of "activity".

E.G., it is not necessary to list the city or county you were arrested in, unless it is specifically needed. Since criminal/penal codes are nearly always the same across a particular state, a specific locale is not usually relevant.

And do not assume that by posting anonymously, is complete protection.

It has been said many times, but apparently not enough, do not incriminate yourself.

Also, remember, the internet is the "information superhighway". It is quite simple to peruse the local newspapers, the D.A.'s site and other law enforcement agencies to find press releases or newspaper articles to determine your identity based upon the facts related to your matter.
 
So, let's say that a person has, in the past, on a message board such as this one, said things which could be considered incriminating. Could that person go back to that message board and post a message like, "Actually guys, I made all that up. It's total bullshit. It's a story I heard from my buddy," and then avoid any future consequences?
 
saying thing on a message board is far from proof you did anything, hell if anyone dried to prosecute you for it all you'd have to say was "that wasnt me posting on that name" or "I just wanted to seem cool in the board". The only thing you could possibly be worried about is the cops using the info you gave on the board as evidence against you and in aid of getting warrents and starting the investigation against you.
 
I work in a law firm and we had an ex-employee breaking into our email database...reading attorney-client material and sending emails from email addresses within the firm.

We could not press charges on her, even though we knew it was her. She was coming into our system from her new law firm (from her particular work station), from her home computer, and several of her friends (ex employees) were doing the same. We could not prosecute her because, although our database had hits from her IP address it is impossible to prove that she had actually logged on to our database. Techically, it could have been anyone...although unlikely...it could have. Unfortunetly, it's not the events that occurred but the events that can be proved or disproved in court! :)
 
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