If posting stupid, inflammatory stuff on Facebook was a crime, I’d be breaking rocks on Devil’s Island for the rest of my days. Ha, what am I saying? I’ve been chucked in Facebook jail more often than I can remember, including being perma-banned.
And it turns out that, in our increasingly un-free times, posting dumb stuff on Facebook can be a crime — with real jail time.
In April 2020, a Texas man named Christopher Charles Perez posted on Facebook that he had paid someone with COVID-19 to go to a local grocery store, and lick items.
That was a really dumb thing to post, especially so early in the pandemic when it was still unclear how serious COVID-19 was.
The post was immature and idiotic, but was it criminal?
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As it turns out: yes. Someone anonymously snitched on Perez, sending a screenshot to the Southwest Texas Fusion Center, a multi-agency spy group. Even though the post was a hoax — Perez hadn’t really paid anyone to get licky at the local bodega — the social media spooks were all over it.
Now, you’d think a dumb hoax about covid would be pretty small potatoes, when Facebook itself admits that its platform is used for human trafficking, drug dealing, terror recruiters, even Mexican cartels hiring hitmen. But, nope — that lot operate with impugnity. Dickhead hoaxers get the book thrown at them.
A San Antonio man was sentenced today to 15 months in prison for perpetrating a hoax related to COVID-19 in April 2020 […] In addition to the sentence, Perez was ordered to pay a $1,000 fine.
In case you thought America’s counter-terrorism agencies were too busy rounding up anyone who so much as waved an American flag at the Capitol on 6 January, the full weight of the Patriot Act was brought down like a ton of bricks on the Facebook nong.
The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, along with Weapons of Mass Destruction personnel, conducted this investigation. Assistant U.S. Attorneys William R. Harris, Kelly Stephenson and Mark Roomberg prosecuted the case.
United States Department of Justice
Remember: these are the same law enforcement agencies who still, so they tell us, haven’t got the foggiest idea why Stephen Paddock murdered 60 people in Las Vegas in 2017.
I’m not defending the man’s actions. I just find it absurd that this is the priority of the Terrorism Task Force.
And if something so minor is considered terrorism, what next?
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Ask the guy who got raided for having an unboxed Lego model of the White House in his basement.
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