It's good to be rich
 

There will be a day the top 1% will be run off a short pier by a torches & pitchforks carrying mob. SMH

Sadly, that day will not come in my lifetime.

Stop giving me false hope.

(in before move to OT)

If you are against the rich why watch MLB or even buy OOTP. Part of the money you give to OOTP goes to MLB.
I do not care how much other people make, that is just jealousy. I just care about how much I make and if I can provide for my family and have some disposable money to buy luxury items like an iPhone or go watch a ML game once in a while.

This. I once hated the rich. I realized my passions are better spent elsewhere.

don't worry....many are not rich...they are posers.....playing the system of Debt debt debt and more debt....bankruptcy (big deal) and do it over

If Kraft wasn't rich nobody would have any interest in the tape. You don't see news organizations clamoring for the tapes of any of Orchids of Asia's other clients.

I don't hate the rich. I hate the favoritism the rich get. If this were Julio Fernandez-Rodriguez w/his public defender lawyer bringing up these ticky-tack technical objections, his defense would have been thrown out of court. But since he's Thurston Howell the Third w/his attorneys Boye, Cheatum & Howe, the judge finds a way to throw out the evidence. This is no different than changing strike zones or tilted courts. CALL IT BOTH WAYS. If the police have to dot every i & cross every t for Big Daddy Warbucks, then make them do it for Joe Public. Justice shouldn't come with a price tag.


EDIT: It's just the absurdity of it all. Basically, because the police filmed people doing nothing wrong (somehow violating their rights?) it meant they can't use the tapes that show people breaking the law. Was the police supposed to ask the johns like Kraft to set up an appointment with the cops so they could have the cameras ready?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't the police have to get approval to do this in the first place? Sort of like a wire tap? All conversations aren't going to be criminal, they're just waiting for the right one. Why is this any different?

They got a warrant. The "problem" was some taped customers came and got legal massages. That was somehow a violation of the warrant according to the judge.

To me, that is a "violation" of the innocent's rights. Not the guilty. The innocent would have reason for complaint, but the guilty shouldn't be able to take advantage of that.

If a home security camera happens to capture a man kidnapping a child on the street, is that video inadmissable in court because it also taped drivers going about their everyday business?

It is a tricky situation. Doing some reading, in a previous case, the videos were thrown out because the police kept watching instances when it was clear that a simple massage was occurring. In this case officers were instructed to minimize screens as soon as they deemed that there was nothing illegal happening. Apparently this judge did not think that was enough. It may well get appealed by the prosecutor, so it is not yet a done deal.


It is not the same as a home security camera because people in public areas have no expectation of privacy. I for one am not willing to abandon my rights to privacy easily, so I understand that some limits need to be in place. I do not want to be watched/taped getting a massage or spending the night in a hotel on the excuse of "if you aren't doing anything illegal it should be OK."

mel brooks: "its good to be the king"

I understand and I agree with you. But what I don't understand is how it gets Kraft out of it? They're either allowed to tape or not. It's not possible to tape only illegal activity. That's not how it works. Tapes are not sentient beings, they're tapes. They tape everything. This has to be known to everyone.

Exactly! If innocent people want to sue to destroy their tapes, fine. But the guilty shouldn't benefit. Teacher wants to know who ate her Cheetos, she examines the class for orange dust, finds the culprit, but can't discipline him/her because she looked at the other innocent students. That's insane!

From what I understand of how this was done, it was not a continuous taping of every room all the time, which would almost certainly have been disallowed.


Cameras were manually monitored, with multiple rooms involved. If the activity appeared to be benign, the operator was supposed to minimize the screen, if it appeared to be criminal, then they would record on that camera.


The taping in a previous case had been thrown out because the screens were not minimized when non-criminal activities were involved, so the officers were instructed differently in this one, but the judge who ruled on the recent case did not think that was enough.


I have mixed emotions on this case. I believe strongly in the right to privacy, and I also think that there is a strong argument that prostitution should not be illegal. The old line about prostitution being the only time it is illegal to sell something that it is legal to give away.


At the same time, from a less ivory tower viewpoint, there is no question that prostitution in the real world leads top a lot of abuse of women and also human trafficking, so I am torn on this point.


While I am no fan of Robert Kraft, and certainly no fan of preferential treatment of the wealthy, I am not sure that this is the case here. Kraft was one of 20+ persons charged who were challenging the taping. Kraft almost certainly had the highest paid legal team, he is also the only person who has been made a laughing stock nationally. There was going to be a challenge to the evidence even if there was not a fish as big as Kraft involved, we just know about it because of him.


In the end, I am interested in how this turns out as much for the discussion of the privacy/prosecution balance point as for the snarky amusement of a holier than thou NFL owner paying to be serviced.

What is your right to privacy when you leave your house and enter a business? If it is absolute then you can never tape or tap anything. Because even if you have probable cause there will always be mundane conversations and legal activity that you sift through.

I'm not sure what this judge expected. What else could be done? If they didn't actually record the legal, and recorded the illegal, what else could be done to minimize the invasion of privacy?

There are a number of businesses that one still has a right to privacy, in particular ones that offer private services in private rooms, hotels, doctors offices and, I would think, massages.


I don't know what the line should be, and how well that line was managed. As I said, they were instructed to minimize feeds that did not appear to be leading to illegal activity. We do not know the actual testimony given in the hearing. Did the police follow this instruction properly? I do not think it is cut and dried and I will be interested to see if the prosecution appeals it and on what grounds the evidence ends up being allowed/disallowed. I tend to lean to the side of the protection of privacy, but the last 30 years or so, SCOTUS has been allowing more and more intrusive methods, so I don't know how this will end up.

Ok. I get all this. But why does being slightly more intrusive than they were supposed to be automatically absolve those that participated in illegal activity? I can understand if what the police did was without a warrant or approval. Then all gets tossed. But this doesn't seem to be the case. What I see is people that weren't doing anything illegal may have a case.

That's the point I'm not getting as well.Calibration of a hwy patrolman';s radar gun shows it to be off 5 mph. That means any one ticketed for driving 60 MPH or less has a right for complaint. But if they were caught doing 90, that still doesn't mean they aren't guilty.

I, for one, am not willing to forgo my rights, just because I am innocent. I think those rights are important. If the police think that a crime is being committed in my neighborhood, they can't just get a search warrant to search every house in the neighborhood. To me, that is more akin to the case here.


If the police are going to intrude on innocent people, which they would have to do in this case, the reason for the intrusion must warrant it and the amount of intrusion must be minimized. In this case, one judge, at least, did not think that they did so.


I do not believe in blithely abandoning my civil rights and I am glad that the judicial process looks out for them.