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Comment by randallsquared | Hacker News Reader

Conspiracy to commit a crime is typically not included in protected speech. Whether you think that's happening here will depend mostly on what side you take, I suspect.

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https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-1/

Are you pro or against this?

18 U.S.C. § 372 - Conspiring to impede or interfere with a federal officer

Freedom of expression does not include freedom from prosecution for real crimes.

You keep commenting to cite this statute when you clearly have not actually read what it says. Peaceful protest is explicitly protected by the first amendment.

The statute defines a crime that is distinguishable from peaceful protest/1A. You are free to interpret that however you like in relation to what is occurring.

“ If two or more persons in any State, Territory, Possession, or District conspire to prevent, by force, intimidation, or threat, any person from accepting or holding any office, trust, or place of confidence under the United States, or from discharging any duties thereof, or to induce by like means any officer of the United States to leave the place, where his duties as an officer are required to be performed, or to injure him in his person or property on account of his lawful discharge of the duties of his office, or while engaged in the lawful discharge thereof, or to injure his property so as to molest, interrupt, hinder, or impede him in the discharge of his official duties, each of such persons shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six years, or both”

Interesting. Donald Trump would be a criminal under this rule because Jan6.

Trump’s speech does not meet that standard. It lacked coordination, targeting, or intent to physically interfere. The Minnesota case is different because it includes coordinated dispatch, targeting of ICE activity, and sharing de-arrest material with the stated intent to impede operations. That coordination and intent is the legal difference.

Interesting that there would be people on a "side" that think there was a conspiracy to commit a crime. What crime?

Interference with a law enforcement investigation?

18 U.S.C. § 372 - Conspiring to impede or interfere with a federal officer

This refers to physical impediments. Spreading legal information is not an impediment, it is free speech. If all info could be interpreted as impediments to federal officers then phones, the internet, the human voice, etc would be illegal

> This refers to physical impediments. Spreading legal information is not an impediment, it is free speech.

Yes, but physical impediments are physical impediments. The protesters have been repeatedly seen to impede, or attempt to impede, ICE physically.

No, they are organizing legally, of course there will be bad actors, but blocking an agent out of bad faith is certainly less of a crime than a bad faith ICE agent killing someone for their assumptions

In this case conspiracy is using communication to coordinate illegal impediment.

Communicating to protest in a legal way is a civil right

It's a crime.

What do you have against crime?

Nonviolent political action is often criminalized.

In the fascist's mind, anything that isn't supporting Dear Leader's vision of "greatness" is a crime.

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