ACORN Sues Over Damaging Video

[spanone]

ACORN, the community organizing group embarrassed recently in a video sting, said Wednesday that it needs to determine whether it has major internal problems, but it also struck back, filing a lawsuit against the people who conducted the secret investigation.

Bertha Lewis, head of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, told reporters in a conference call that ACORN does not support criminal activity and that it thinks the filmmakers should have obeyed Maryland laws. In the state, where one video that embarrassed ACORN was made, the act constituted illegal wiretapping, the suit says.

The videos airing in the past two weeks show ACORN housing counselors advising two young conservative activists posing as a pimp and a prostitute on how to conceal their criminal business.

Lewis said she wants a newly hired investigator to find the organization's weak spots, and she said she will make public the findings. Scott Harshbarger, a former Massachusetts attorney general hired for the investigation, vowed a "robust, no-holds-barred" review that would be "transparent." Lewis said ACORN in the meantime will have to turn away many low-income clients it normally helps with threatened foreclosure or tax preparation.

"We want to be sure that before we start helping people with services that our operation is running well," she said. "It doesn't hurt us financially. It does hurt the poor people we have served for many years."


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/23/AR2009092302285_pf.html

[timeforpeace]

1. Got a bad feeling about this.

[el_bryanto]

3. Why?

I admit that Conservatives have been trying to warn Acorn off of this for a while --> "So ACORN’s legal actions would be its undoing. The resulting exposure would explode into a national story that even sympathetic media outlets could no longer ignore, bedeviling ACORN’s allies at SEIU and even dragging top advisers to President Barack Obama into humiliating legal proceedings." Ken Blackwell's last article I believe, I reviewed at my website --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com/2009/09/should-acorn-sew-fox.html

But Blackwell isn't exactly on ACORNs side so I took it to be a preemptive warning against some very real and unfair damage caused by these fucks. I mean yes, ACORN may have to open up, but so will the pimp and the ho.

Bryant

[spanone]

4. not me, this needs to be in a real courtroom, not the courtroom of faux news

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

14. Most GOPers do too. nt

[ProgressiveProfessor]

2. Going to be interesting how they establish jurisdiction for this

if the people who made the tape are not Maryland residents. Discovery results could be interesting for both sides as well

[imdjh]

5. The client has a reasonable expectation of privacy, ACORN doesn't.

If anything, this might bust the law against recording someone (I believe it pertains only to sound) without their knowledge. These ACORN videos all seem to take place at a front counter, visible from the front door, and not in a private office. I don't see how ACORN can claim an expectation of privacy. Moreover, the nature of the organization is that it is under public scrutiny.

ACORN needs to take their lumps gracefully. They fucked up.

[spooky3]

6. where does it say they are claiming an expectation of privacy, other than

the rights given under the law against recording someone?

[imdjh]

7. A law which says that you can't be recorded without your knowledge, is an expectation of privacy.

One which I don't think actually exists.

As for ACORN, it doesn't really matter what they say, all anyone is going to hear is, "You violated my rights when you caught me doing something wrong."
It's going to get about as much sympathy as a shoplifter complaining that the security officer is a peeping tom.

[spooky3]

13. but the language of the law says nothing about privacy, does it?

It's not necessary to establish that there is a violation of privacy in order for the statute to be enforced, is it?

http://law.justia.com/maryland/codes/gcj/10-410.html

[spooky3]

17. self-delete

[starroute]

8. This is not a privacy issue

It's like when you call a business and get one of those "this call may be monitored for quality control" messages. I googled on it just a bit this morning. At least in some states, if you're carrying a camera openly you're fine, but if the camera is hidden and the person has no idea they're being recorded that's illegal.

[Hansel]

9. When they get done they can sue the Washington Post

Here's the sentence that is at issue here:

"The videos airing in the past two weeks show ACORN housing counselors advising two young conservative activists posing as a pimp and a prostitute on how to conceal their criminal business."

This is what is it should have said:

"The videos airing in the past two weeks show ACORN housing counselors allegedly advising two young conservative activists posing as a pimp and a prostitute on how to conceal their criminal business."

Advising them on how to conceal a criminal business would be a violation of the law. Since no one from ACORN has been convicted of doing this, the Washington Post should say it was an alleged crime. I find it very revealing how much differently the media is approaching this than they would if it was just about any other person or organization. I wonder why that is.

[imdjh]

10. There's a court case in the making. Can you attest to what you see on video?

Scenario:

Joe is on video robbing Hong Kong Deli.
Post writes, "Here is video of Joe robbing Hong Kong Deli".
For whatever reason, Joe is acquitted of robbing Hong Kong Deli even though he clearly robbed Hong Kong Deli.

Has Post libeled Joe even though we can clearly see Joe robbing Hong Kong Deli, but the acquittal creates a legal fiction of his innocence?

[KittyWampus]

11. Scenario: Joe is on an obviously edited tape that apparently shows him robbing a deli.

What the tape really shows is Joe buying a sandwich with the part showing him actually paying edited out.

You seem to be heavily invested in pushing a story-line about ACORN that has been debunked.

Those tapes were manufactured with one purpose in mind and the narrative they tell is a fiction.

[imdjh]

12. Actually, the post you are responding to is academic.

I sometimes need to ask people not to give me more credit for attention span than I am due, and virtually none for deviousness which I don't have the attention span for.

I don't like ACORN, but my last post had nothing to do with ACORN.

[Egalitariat]

16. Can you link to the debunking of the story? Why is ACORN suspending tax services?

[Egalitariat]

15. If they sue WAPOST for libel, all the Post has to do is claim truth -- then play the video

They were indeed doing exactly what the Post said they were doing.