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Comment by wildmusings | Hacker News Reader

Should someone be allowed to sneak into a company's building, or pretend to be an honest employee, just to investigate potential wrongdoing? That's the government's job, not private activists'.

If someone wants to walk into your private property and research your operations, you should have the right to tell them to beat feet. If there is a legitimate public interest then the government should create an inspection scheme; there probably should be one but that's a separate debate. But allowing guerilla espionage by activist groups is not an acceptable alternative.

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I sort of agree with you, but the laws overstep what I consider acceptable.

I'm fine with an operation banning employees from filming, for example, and employees getting fired for doing so, or for arresting people for trespassing.

The laws referenced by the OP go further, though, to criminalize recordings that were taken by individuals who were allowed on the property by the owner, and who were documenting what happened. In my opinion, owners have the right to fire employees who violate their policies, and to sue former and current employees for libel, but not to sue former and current employees for distributing recordings of things that actually occurred, when there's no reasonable expectation of privacy (which almost by definition is impossible in a workplace, except for maybe things like medical settings).

I agree with you, though, that if there's a public health interest, the government should create laws regarding that, or at least give authority to DPHs to do that.

This is my thinking as well. It means your hothead animal rights person can't assault your staff, tresspass, visit with fake credentials, etc for a political agenda. Property rights do matter, regardless of the exceptions the left keeps trying to give itself against the non-left.

If this is really a public rights issue and lets assume the entirely of the GOP has been paid off, from POTUS to dog catcher, then where is the Democratic response? Oh right, it doesn't exist, because this is a non-issue outside of extremist views. Its trivial for any political group to start a case and get it to SCOTUS if they believe any of this is unconstitutional. Its trivial for law enforcement to get warrants against these farms if they're violating the law.

I do understand the controversy here, but I think in the end, whistleblowing will always come with some risk. Its a little naive to think it doesn't. I think most people are okay with that because casual whistlblowing becomes office politics, meaningless outrage politics, and endless bikeshedding. There should be a high threshold for exemption to the laws that guarantee our freedom and rights.

There is legitimate public interest as these sites are key components of the food production system. The point that the OP was intentionally making is that the government (via GOP leadership, apparently) has specifically excused itself from creating such an inspection scheme and done so in a way that seems comprehensive enough to understand the alternative paths "guerilla ... activist" scientists could even potentially report on such a matter.

That the government is failing to investigate something cannot be a license to trespassing or lying your way to a private investigation. If you want government action on something, then you have to win in the political process. Taking matters into your own hands and assuming the powers reserved for the government is not acceptable.

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Replying to swashek below since I'm rate-limited: what are you talking about "thought crime"? None of the laws here concern thought or the freedom to publish your thoughts. They ban conducting suriptitious investigations on farms, which necessarily involves either trespassing or deceit in gaining access (e.g. an activist getting himself hired as an employee)

Where do you see ANYthing about trespassing, and how do you interpret ANYthing that either I or the OP stated as condoning it? It was simply stated that trespassing is clearly defined as illegal. Lobbyists have cornered winning in the political process so all we have is our voice, which it sounds like you're trying to take away.

Even as a country of laws (which I support), you still have to be able to admit that said laws are absurd when they are, in fact, absurd. This goes beyond absurd and endangers the populace. You seem more interested in ensuring that we definitively prosecute thought crimes rather than work to change the system which, at face value, appears to place the government as accessories to the wrongful deaths of many of its citizens (keeping focus on this particular topic). As such, doesn't OP have the right to criticize and suspect the government, especially when the government is ostensibly blockading one of those "inalienable rights" of "life ..."

Keep shilling, though!

This comment was fine-ish up until that last line. Please edit it away.

I don't think that the person you're replying to is suggesting that the law should remain as-is. Rather, he's suggesting that the law should be modified via the established political processes for doing so. I'm not sure where you're getting the "thought crime" thing -- even if he supported the ag-gag laws, it wouldn't be thought crime to say so, and he wouldn't be accusing others of thought crime by saying so. This is simply called a "disagreement". It doesn't need to be dramatized.

Of course OP has a right to criticize and suspect the government. Who said he didn't? That doesn't mean OP has the right to disregard property boundaries or to enter a private premises under false pretenses, even if the stated intent is to "prove antibiotics in farm animals are causing human superbugs".

If one believes that the local trespassing laws should be modified to accommodate persons acting in this particular public interest, he should contact his local representatives, or, alternately, run against them and lead the charge himself.

It is probably much easier to convince someone in one of the several government bureaucracies to open an investigation than to get a special exception to trespassing laws codified.

> If there is a legitimate public interest then the government should create an inspection scheme The problem is that the public doesn't always know any better or know what is going on without the undercover folks investigating and making a big deal about it. It would be different if we could trust policy makers to investigate some of the stuff or listen to the science, but at this point (at least in the US), that's not happening.

>That's the government's job, not private activists Sure, maybe it is the government's job technically. Unfortunately, that doesn't always work. In addition to the above, many governement oversight programs are underfunded or have had their power legistlated away. On top of all that, companies aren't always upfront with letting an inspector see the normal daily operations.

Ancedotes I worked as a CNA in a nursing home. They were commonly understaffed. This is fairly common with nursing homes in the state I was in. There was a state agency that checked such things, but it seemed the nursing homes always had a notice when they were going to visit. Suddenly, they had a lot of manditory and voluntary overtime available and stuck to the rules. If the visits were sporadic, more often, and they checked things like logs and historic staffing levels, I'm guessing this would change. I think the only way to get this improved would be for enough private activists to gather evidence from many different places and get state laws changed after making a public outcry.

Ancedote 2 I worked in a food factory for a day or two. Now, they were horrible employers for various reasons, but the facility was clean and there was a lot of focus on meeting food prep safety guidelines. In fact, there were USDA employees assigned to that factory, and they could not run without it. Actual oversight. But food factories might not have been like this had it not been for private activists, and it still isn't perfect. One still hears horror stories in small towns with a meat processing plant, for example, but I have no clue if they are true or not.

>Should someone be allowed to sneak into a company's building, or pretend to be an honest employee, just to investigate potential wrongdoing? That's the government's job, not private activists'.

It was legal for the entire history of the Republic, albeit it was also grounds for civil litigation.

The GOP decided to criminalize it.

"That's the government's job, not private activists'."

Taking a broad view, I disagree. Everything the government is permitted to do is (or at least should be) ultimately by consent of the governed. Anything that is the government's job is only their job because the governed delegated it to them; it is the job of the governed first, delegated to the government. It is private activists' job; the government has simply been tasked with it.

I believe the governed have a moral duty to take back any such job when the government proves unable to properly execute their duties.

The line of "unable to properly execute" is, unfortunately, enormously open to interpretation. Morality isn't easy.

> If someone wants to walk into your private property and research your operations, you should have the right to tell them to beat feet.

To the extent that there is a valid right here, how is regular, generally-applicable civil and criminal trespassing law an insufficient vindication of the valid rights at issue so as to require special additional "ag-gag" laws providing additional privileges to a particular industry?

> Should someone be allowed to sneak into a company's building, or pretend to be an honest employee, just to investigate potential wrongdoing? That's the government's job, not private activists'.

So Upton Sinclair was wrong to go undercover to gather material for his book The Jungle?

In case you're not aware, until the 80's, American law practically encouraged a level of industrial espionage, because it discouraged reliance on trade secrecy and therefore encouraged the dissemination of knowledge. And yes, because it enabled undercover investigations of wrong doing, both the illegal and what ought-to-be illegal.

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