Discussion for article #238921
Didn’t they just ban this so-called organization from releasing more video - this happened today.
When are people going to realize that the GOP is using government funding, or tax-free status, to push these ideas.
A couple of dozen lawyers and researchers could put these GOP bastards out of business forever. It isn’t difficult to find wrongdoing. It doesn’t take much to uncover that the Fundamentalists are using taxpayer money to usurp out government.
What do you think abstinence education is all about? Funding Christian groups through the Fed.
What do you think school vouchers are all about? Taking taxpayer money and giving it to folk that then turn around and give it to churches.
These bastards want it both ways, and if we let them keep growing in power then we’ll be in a condition not unlike Germany in early 20C. Prone to fascism, and willing to burn the world down over dogma.
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“These extremists created a fake business, made apparently misleading corporate filings and then used false government identifications to gain access to Planned Parenthood’s medical and research staff with the agenda of secretly filming without consent — then heavily edited the footage to make false and absurd assertions about our standards and services,” she wrote.
So the level of deception went a bit deeper then simply showing up at the door and claiming they were with a research company? The situation isn’t as simple as blaming Planned Parenthood for not “properly vetting” the people they talked to, as those people apparently anticipated and set up a cover to help them get pass said vetting?
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I’d love to ask all the people that up in arms about the idea of fetal tissue donation if they are organ donors.
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Wow, just add some billionaire speech er, money and conservative good old boys and their media and Rethuglican pets can still kinda pull off a half-assed fake scandal…
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Not a lawyer but can’t PP go after these people for slander or something similar? They’re not a news organization or journalists and have little to no prior work so would have trouble proving themselves as such, they’re work is obviously a hit piece meant and is entirely malicious in it’s presentation. Maybe you can’t slander a company, I don’t know, but seems obvious what they’re doing isn’t journalism and should have some sort of legal repercussion.
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What’s really sad is that I don’t believe for a second that these folks give a shit about any born children much less any unborn ones. And born adults rank even lower on their scale.
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CO is, unfortunately, a “one-party consent” state with respect to secret recordings. For anyone interested in learning a little more, this website seemed fairly informative:
http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/recording-phone-calls-and-conversations
I’m still mulling over some other ideas, like slander and libel since the editing willfully and knowingly manufactures a false impression. Truth is generally the defense to those torts, but hey, if they want to keep pushing the envelope in the law with their lawsuits, then we should be too. At what point is out of context quoting noting but an attempt at character defamation and deliberately damaging a business? I’ve certainly said the words “I”, “Like”, “To”, “Eat” and “Babies” before…can someone who managed to record them all just edit a video to string it together and publish it? Here we have intentional editing to create a knowingly false impression, which is proven by the deliberate omission of statements and exchanges contrary to that impression. I think I could slay these motherfuckers in court and run up their fees till the cows come home, even if it’s an issue of first impression. Put these fuckers out of business via legal fees if possible. The problem is that the MSM…particularly folks like Faux News…would fund amicus briefs and report on the lawsuits as though they’re a concerted attack on free speech because they sooooo want to protect their ability to do precisely what I just described instead of reporting the truth.
Also, I’m not terribly familiar with corporate espionage laws, and I’d be interested in that angle if anyone’s got some info.
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More thinking out loud:
18 U.S. Code § 1832 - Theft of trade secrets
(a) Whoever, with intent to convert a trade secret, that is related to a product or service used in or intended for use in interstate or foreign commerce, to the economic benefit of anyone other than the owner thereof, and intending or knowing that the offense will, injure any owner of that trade secret, knowingly—
(1) steals, or without authorization appropriates, takes, carries away, or conceals, or by fraud, artifice, or deception obtains such information;
(2) without authorization copies, duplicates, sketches, draws, photographs, downloads, uploads, alters, destroys, photocopies, replicates, transmits, delivers, sends, mails, communicates, or conveys such information;
(3) receives, buys, or possesses such information, knowing the same to have been stolen or appropriated, obtained, or converted without authorization;
(4) attempts to commit any offense described in paragraphs (1) through (3); or
(5) conspires with one or more other persons to commit any offense described in paragraphs (1) through (3), and one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy,
shall, except as provided in subsection (b), be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 10 years, or both.
(b) Any organization that commits any offense described in subsection (a) shall be fined not more than $5,000,000.
#Got any good corporate law contacts/sources, TPM?
Interestingly, a subsequent section requires forfeiture of any proceeds from the crime. I am wondering whether that would apply to donations to this organization. For example, they get fined $5M and people try to pony up the dough on their behalf via crowd funding and wealthy donors…would that be “proceeds” such that these fuckers and all the fuckers who tried to help them avoid punishment forfeit the “donations”?
The problem, of course, comes down to the definition of “trade secrets,” but I’m no expert in the field, so I can’t answer that.
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Lastly, of course, what about HIPPA violations related to photographing/veideo-taping these research specimens?
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Republicans are hypocrites. They pretend to be against fetal tissue donations, but would not turn away any research from it to save their loved ones. Also, if you looked into the owners of fetal tissue research companies I am sure you will find some republicans.
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Can we please have stings of conservative organizations?
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I am kind of amazed at the comments here. This is not about legality of what was presented. This is a PR disaster for Planned Parenthood. Have they fired the morons who had these discussion of selling baby tissue while drinking a fine dry Chardonnay? I have contributed to PP for 20 years. I support them, 100%. I also want to see heads rolling there. If you were so stupid as to discuss this while at a wine tasting, you should not be at PP. Period.
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There were no trade secrets involved here, that is not an issue. It’s common knowledge that fetus parts are sold. The only possible violation is how the videos were obtained (misrepresentation, trespassing, etc.), and it’s possible that was not a crime. I’m sure Planned Parenthood’s lawyers are exploring all of that.
The problem is that although at this point it appears PP did nothing illegal, there certainly were some people who acted very unprofessionally and sophomoric. In fact a few have been fired, and PP is even committing themselves to better training. I have no problem with PP getting rid of unprofessional clowns who joke about fetus parts. That’s like a surgeon doing a leg amputation and saying “hey, the dude is fat anyway, he’ll probably move faster in a walker”. Or the NORAD guy on 9/11 joking about “well, last time I fly United” after a plane had just crashed into WTC (yes, that happened). Not illegal, but idiotic.
The important thing is that PP did nothing illegal. Once that is verified, those videos mean squat. Yes, if they can show a crime was committed while they were obtained, that’s even better. But if what comes of this is PP getting rid of some very unprofessional people, while proving they did nothing wrong, that actually helps them. What also needs to be made more known is that about 3% of PP’s activities concern abortions. That’s a tiny percentage overall, and the rest of what they do most Americans, including a lot of Republicans, are fine with. Then sell the fact that the more birth control that is used, the less abortions there will be. As Hillary said, one of the primary goals is to minimize abortions, and most people are for that.
This will be the new normal in the right wing. Coordinated political attacks with faux doctored evidence to gin up manufactured outrage. It works well for them. They did it with ACORN to great success. Now they’re turning it on their other white whale.
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Why no Federal Investigation into this?
Where is the DOJ on this?
The list of things they have ADMITTED to doing has at least 3 felonies in it.
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We must defund Planned Parenthood to stop paying for their abortions!
Oh, wait. We already don’t pay for that. The things we’d be defunding are pap smears, breast exams, sex education and birth control. We’d stop funding things that are unambiguously good.
Which, sadly, is exactly the sort of things that Republicans hate paying for.
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“These extremists created a fake business, made apparently misleading corporate filings and then used false government identifications to gain access to Planned Parenthood’s medical and research staff with the agenda of secretly filming without consent — then heavily edited the footage to make false and absurd assertions about our standards and services”
So despite the fact that those responsible for these videos set up a fake business, filed fraudulent corporate papers, used false government identification, and then heavily and deceptively edited all the material they gathered, you are blaming PP personnel for having a business meeting over lunch? And you call that your “100%” support?
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So it occurred to me as I was reading this that, in most agricultural states someone who made and released the same kind of video from inside an animal feeding operation or slaughterhouse or meatpacking plant would either be on the lam or in jail. But using false documents to get inside a planned parenthood is apparently no problem. It’s just women’s health after all, nothing as important as animals destined for the table.
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Yes, absolutely. They KNEW that they were targets. The person in the video should be immediately removed from PP.