Popehat
Popehat is a legal blog by lawyers including Ken White, covering free speech, censorship, federal criminal law, and legal threats.
What HN says
Commenters call it consistently good, praise its commentary on the Prenda Law case, and point to Ken White as a useful lawyer to contact.
Stats for nerds
432HN people shared it
245linked in comments
7.1Kstory points
Jan 2024last shared
Top posts on HN
- 1NSA Codebreaking: I Am The Other1 person · 450 points · first shared 2013 · 114 comments on HN
- 2Cops: We Need Rights More Than You, Citizen2 people · 411 points · first shared 2015 · 163 comments on HN
- 3Our fundamental right to shame and shun the New York Times5 people · 405 points · first shared 2022 · 581 comments on HN
- 4DoJ's Gag Order on Reason Has Been Lifted1 person · 383 points · first shared 2015 · 101 comments on HN
- 5Judge Wright issues Prenda Law order2 people · 350 points · first shared 2013 · 82 comments on HN
- 6DEA Orchestrates Disinformation Campaign to Conceal Surveillance Powers2 people · 349 points · first shared 2015 · 133 comments on HN
- 7The Fourth of July2 people · 329 points · first shared 2020 · 300 comments on HN
- 8Reminder: Oh, Won't You Please Shut Up? (2011)11 people · 266 points · first shared 2015 · 209 comments on HN
- 9How Secure Channels Attempted to Intimidate a Critic and Failed Spectacularly1 person · 253 points · first shared 2015 · 26 comments on HN
- 10Prenda Saga Update: John Steele Pleads Guilty, Admits Entire Scheme1 person · 239 points · first shared 2017 · 88 comments on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
- acomarNov 2023
> How do we know it's automatic without knowing the quality of each request?
what purpose does the filter serve if it allows virtually all requests through? your response amounts to "trust the FBI, they don't need oversight".
> I think the FBI understands the process and doesn't send flimsy requests in the first place.
I would love to see your evidence for this.
> If it's a rubber stamp, why are any rejected?
because those requests were egregiously bad?
warrant approval is bad across the board, even when the requests are public[1]. what reason do we have to assume they're better when they're sealed? "the FBI is self-regulating" doesn't pass muster when we can see the warrant requests they put forward and get approved when the details are public.
[1]: https://www.popehat.com/2014/07/15/warrants-bulwark-of-liberty-or-paper-shield/
- jessaustinJan 2021
Please educate yourself:
After Holmes' opinions in the Schenck trilogy, the law of the United States was this: you could be convicted and sentenced to prison under the Espionage Act if you criticized the war, or conscription, in a way that "obstructed" conscription, which might mean as little as convincing people to write and march and petition against it. This is the context of the "fire in a theater" quote that people so love to brandish to justify censorship. [0]
Every time this stupid meme reemerges, it serves only to identify people who have no idea what they're talking about.
[0] https://www.popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-hackneyed-apologia-for-censorship-are-enough/
- ashtonkemJun 2021
Yeah, that's what I expected, a proposal to silence the speech of some people to protect others. Maybe you haven't thought enough about free speech, not me?
I think Ken White covered this dichotomy best, in this case a few years ago over a guy name Pax who got fired for his intemperate speech. See below.
> The foundation of "witch hunt" rhetoric is the notion that some free speech (say, Pax's) is acceptable, and other free speech (say, the speech of people criticizing and ridiculing Pax and his employer) is not. You can try to find a coherent or principled way to reconcile that, but you will fail.
https://www.popehat.com/2013/09/10/speech-and-consequences/
- thaumaturgyMar 2014
Ken Popehat (http://www.popehat.com/) might be worth contacting. Even if he can't help directly, he might know someone who can. He's about the closest thing the internet has to a folk superhero in law; he has a "Popehat signal" (http://www.popehat.com/tag/popehat-signal/) he uses for a "call for pro bono help for online folks who get threatened with bogus censorious lawsuits" (http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1aokls/iama_federal_criminal_defense_attorney_and_former/) and he got involved, at least twice, with a university-area bus company that has tried to silence criticism on Reddit (http://beta.slashdot.org/story/185659).
- deogeoSep 2019
Real anime fans (and Scotsmen) view dubs with, at best, open hostility, so they would have no motive to defend Mignona.
But it is hilarious how the article only describes as a "free speech advocate" someone making a mean comment. But all those 1st amendment lawyers fighting against the silencing (including the "we must allow Nazis to speak" Ken White [1]) don't make the cut. Somehow, only the side making censorious legal threats gets associated with "free speech".
It would be difficult for me to have a lower opinion of these journalists.
[1] https://www.popehat.com/2017/04/18/the-seductive-appeal-of-the-nazi-exception/
- throwaway09223Feb 2022
I used to mostly read on my commute and it's been a few years, but the most approachable is probably https://abovethelaw.com/. It has quite a bit of fluff and humor mixed in.
Popehat is usually quite good, especially when there's some kind of nonsense narrative going around. Good debunking explainers https://www.popehat.com/
Volokh conspiracy has very good analysis of current events as well: https://reason.com/volokh/ (was at WaPo, was independent before that. I haven't read it in a while)
There's a lot of other really great stuff around as well, like the lw blog collection: https://www.lw.com/blogs