2015.46: Boom Goes the Thoughtcrime.

 Posted on March 09, 2015 in Uncategorized

Whether he wrote DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER, or whether he refrained from writing it, made no difference. Whether he went on with the diary, or whether he did not go on with it, made no difference. The Thought Police would get him just the same. He had committed - would still have committed, even if he had never set pen to paper - the essential crime that contained all others in itself. Thoughtcrime, they called it. Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed for ever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you.

George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Today I got word that a district judge in Montgomery County, Texas held unconstitutional the "posession" portion of Texas's Fraudulent Use of Identifying Information statute. By criminalizing the possession of information (including knowledge) combined with the intent to harm (which is a constitutionally protected intent) or defraud the State has created a thought crime.

in Texas, unlike in Oceania, we are free to daydream, to intend to defraud as long as we do not act on that intent. The statute that creates a thought crime is unconstitutionally overbroad under the First Amendment: "Whatever the power of the state to control public dissemination of ideas inimical to the public morality, it cannot constitutionally premise legislation on the desirability of controlling a person's private thoughts." Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U.S. 557, 566 (1969).