LurkersWillLurk's comments

You probably meant FTC, the Federal Trade Commission. But in this case the complaint probably ought to go to the CFPB.

There are multiple prongs to the tort and all of them have to be fulfilled. A reasonable jury cannot conclude that leaking the memo to the media is outrageous conduct beyond all the standards of civilised society. It no longer matters if the defendant acted intentionally; the claim fails and must be dismissed.

> It's especially telling that you, and people who defend him, attribute zero fault whatsoever to the person who actually wrote the memo.

'Zero' and 'whatsoever' are simply wrong. It's a strawman.

> The "outrage mob" isn't real.

I would certainly characterize the collective behavior of the Google employees as a mob. You can see it for yourself in the exhibits in Damore's suit:

https://www.dhillonlaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/201804...

Numerous employees take the stance that violence is acceptable, as long as it's directed towards hateful people. Numerous employees vowing to shun, ridicule and ignore anyone who remotely suggests support or agreement with any part of the memo. Numerous employees taking the stance that dissent is a violent act for which violence must be returned. Shamelessly of all, a senior Site Reliability Engineer vows to "keep hounding Damore" until one of them is fired.

This is not acceptable behavior for a group of people that are ostensibly at the top of their field. They are not faultless. They share, at minimum, some of the blame.

Of course, if you meant your statement to be hyperbolic, then you are being flippant, and needlessly so.

There is no way a lawsuit like this would survive a motion to dismiss. Intentional infliction of emotional distress requires an underlying wrongdoing, among other things. There was no legal wrong committed when the document was leaked.

I can't tell if you're trying to say that a policy from management is beyond all reproach or if "these things just happen in the real world". Either way, the former shouldn't be true and the latter should be wrong. Of course, correctness doesn't stop anyone from being terminated, but that's not the point.

None federally. In California, "political activities" are a protected class. The extent to which activities and views overlap is almost certainly a messy question of law that I'm not qualified to answer with respect to Damore.

You say this as though it's plainly obvious that it wasn't. The truth is that it depends, and not on whether or not we think his political views are ridiculous.

The causes of action in the lawsuit were unlawful termination on account of political activities (which are protected in California) and sex (which is protected federally). Google made three motions to dismiss and lost all of them. Does that mean Google is guilty? Of course not. All it means is that the claim stated by Damore, if true, could convince a reasonable jury that Google violated his civil rights.

Google would much rather pay out settlement money than risk having an unflattering jury verdict or have to release even more unflattering documents in discovery. I'm sure Damore would rather not go to trial if he could help it as well.

You can't address the business model if you can't explain how you would change how an individual case plays out.

The standard of evidence in civil court is "the preponderance of the evidence". Would you propose changing that standard, so that a debt collector's unchallenged word isn't good enough to prove their case? What exactly do you propose to do about the fact that most people default?

Should we make participation in civil cases mandatory and issue bench warrant when defendants fail to appear? Should we reduce how much income can be garnished so that garnishment is effectively useless? Should we require that every update in the case be personally served by a process server?

The business model would collapse overnight if debtors began challenging creditor plaintiffs en masse. I don't see how the failure of a defendant who has been properly served to defend their case reflects a systematic failure on the part of the courts or the law.

Can you describe this door? The Pennsylvania AG is pretty good, although probably not as technically inclined.

Many states in the US have laws that specifically exempt colleges and universities from the majority of tenancy protections that regular landlords must abide by.

Can you explain what you mean by "what happened with the US Attorneys"?

To build on this, I don't think the US government sees NSO Group the same way they see foreign hackers. Federal law enforcement and the intelligence community probably see the defensive losses as an acceptable casualty if it means reaping the offensive benefits of NSO's software.

Edit: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/3kxk9j/dea-didnt-buy-malw...

The Drug Enforcement Administration would have bought NSO's software, but it was too expensive.

While I agree with the general premise that the police pay more attention to property crime affecting businesses rather than people, most people that own bikes don't 1) paint them in very identifiable colors, and 2) have GPS trackers built into them to aid recovery.

It's substantially easier for the police to find Facebook's bikes than a regular, unmarked bike; conversely, it's exceedingly difficult to recover a bike that has no tracking or special identifying features.

Calling the "Facebook police unit" - a group of city police officers assigned to the Facebook campus - the "privatization of the law" is quite overblown, especially when compared to the actual private police departments that exist across the United States.

If the residents of Menlo Park don't like how their police department operates, then they can elect new city leadership to change the police department accordingly.

Compare that to university police, which is often controlled by the university trustees. Who elects the trustees? It usually isn't the undergraduates, which comprise the majority of the university's population. Whether it's the state governor, legislature, or alumni, the decisionmakers charged with administering the police power do not answer to those against whom that power is used.

It gets worse with railroad police, which are wholly owned, funded, and operated by private railroad companies, and have national jurisdiction.

The powers of the state should never be in the hands of a private corporation, organization, or university, but what's happening at Facebook isn't that at all.

Here's the Amended Complaint:

https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.gand.241666...

Why should they? If you increase the supply of housing, it puts downward pressure on rent. Am I missing something?

It's also using passive voice.

Consider: "We will terminate your verified status for adding links to one of our competitor's sites."

I mean, I agree. I'm not in favor of "acceptable casualties", I'm just saying that the mainstream opinion is changing.

I don't agree. I would argue that the rise of the victims' rights movement suggests that culturally, the United States is beginning to see the few false reports/convictions as an acceptable casualty to the vast majority of truthful reports.

I mean, we have Marsy's Law being added to state constitutions left and right. One of its provisions is that the victim[1] can refuse a deposition before trial. This obviously conflicts with the accused's right to access all the evidence, does it not?

Another provision limits the amount of time a convicted person can seek post-conviction relief. The goal here is to remove stress from the victim, but again, we have seen many convicted people be exonerated due to DNA evidence, or other evidence that arises after the fact. Again, this is a statement of values - that the deprivation of liberty is less important than the desire of the victim to not feel anxious about the perpetrator's possible release.

[1] I would argue that calling a complainant a victim undermines the presumption of innocence. If you're a victim, it follows that the accused is a perpetrator.

I agree. I feel that the case would have ended up much differently if he had sued in his federal District Court.