Bad DUI Advice and Internet Anonymity

 Posted on August 01, 2008 in Uncategorized

I refuse to give them any link love, but google "it could also be used as presumptive evidence against you". You'll see a link to a site that implies pro bono help for people charged with DUI in Houston. What the site is, apparently, is some sort of link farm. The owner (my2305@yahoo.com) aims, I gather, for people searching for "Houston DUI Lawyer" and such to come upon this pseudoblog and click on the Google ads in the margins. She makes a little money for each click.Unfortunately, the advice she gives:

On the other hand, you must not refuse to take the breath test becausethat will lead to automatic suspension of your driver's license and itcould also be used as presumptive evidence against you and could carryadditional civil or criminal sanctions.

Is really bad. (Refusing to take the breath test does not lead to automatic suspension of your driver's license. It can't be used as "presumptive evidence against you". It doesn't carry additional criminal sanctions.)I'm pretty sure that no Houston lawyer who has actually handled a DUI case would write this, but might anyone happening upon this see it as serious advice?I'd like to think that my2305's anonymity would militate against anyone actually taking her advice seriously. It'd be nice if the internet community's ability to discriminate good information from bad were better than that of the Minneapolis Police Department but, judging from the number of anonymous blog commenters we see who seem to expect their ideas to be taken seriously, I don't have a lot of confidence that the internet's standards of reliability are high enough to keep people from making bad decisions based on anonymous information.