Nebraskans Unafraid

Call to Action!

Register your opposition to proposed SORNA changes.
Three communication methods you can use.
Take the time to write an original letter.

Remember the proposed SORNA (Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act) changes that were published in August 2020? We registered our opposition to those changes last fall and then nothing happened. When President Biden took office in January, his administration put all proposed regulation changes on hold.

Now, the proposals are on the move again. Before it is too late, let Attorney General Garland know why he should not sign off on the SORNA changes.

From the ACSOL (Alliance for Constitutional Sex Offense Laws) post on this topic, here are the three methods you can use to share your thoughts with AG Garland:

First, call the U. S. Department of Justice and leave a comment on the agency’s comment line at 1-202-353-1555
Second, send an online message to the agency (the general topic is “message to attorney general) at https://www.justice.gov/doj/webform/your-message-department-justice.
Third, mail a letter to Attorney General Garland at U.S. Department of Justice, 950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, D.C. 20530-0001.

To refresh your memory on the proposals:

Notes from the Handbasket: suggestions for comments on the SORNA rule changes

Make sure your message refers to the proposed regulations published in Federal Register on Aug. 13, 2020, in Proposed Rulemaking, Docket No. OAG 157 (AG Order No. 4759–2020).

Don’t be duped by scammers who call you and demand money

Callers are breaking laws, including laws against extortion.
Do not fall for this scam.
Do not be frightened — law enforcement does not call and demand money.
Cases like these are good reasons to abolish the registry.
Listen to the voice of the scammer at the end of this post.

Law enforcement will NEVER call you on the phone and tell you to pay money to resolve an issue.

That goes for everyone, including people who are forced to register.

Nebraskans Unafraid recently heard from an individual who got a call from a scammer who used the Nebraska State Patrol’s registry to gather information about registrants, whom they call and attempt to extort money.

The scammers are violating several laws, including the law against extortion, when they engage in this bottom-feeding behavior.

In the case brought to our attention, the person who is forced to register received a phone call from a person claiming to be Nebraska State Patrol “Trooper Barnett.” The caller talked about the need for a “secondary” DNA sample. That’s a tipoff: No person forced to register is required to give such a “secondary” sample.

The caller, who used a spoofed phone number to make the call appear to be legit, attempted to frighten his victim by saying there was a felony warrant out, but the whole thing could be cleared up for the tidy little sum of $6,200.

Again: Law enforcement NEVER will call you up and tell you that you can clear up a problem by giving them money. Pay no attention to whether the phone number looks real, because scammers spoof the numbers.

Fortunately, the person who received this call was not duped. He reported the incident to law enforcement, and then to Nebraskans Unafraid.

“This is why the registry should not be public. It made me an easy and vulnerable target,” he wrote to Nebraskans Unafraid. He had the good sense to record the conversations. As a public service and an effort to out whoever is running this fraudulent scheme, we provide the recordings here with personal information bleeped out.

Here is the initial voicemail with the voice of the scammer:

Here is the call back to the scammer:

And here is where the scammer is told to shove it:

If you get a call like this, hang up and call law enforcement.

And remember to tell your state senator this is yet another reason to abolish the registry, which causes harm and protects no one.

Download The Perfect Bad Law and share it with your state senator:

The Perfect Bad Law (1)Download

U.S. Supreme Court Declines to Hear Louisiana’s Defense of a Law That Stamped ‘SEX OFFENDER’ on Driver’s Licenses

The policy imposed an additional form of ritual humiliation without any plausible public-safety justification.
Little evidence that registries do any good, and a lot of evidence that they do harm.
Registries expose people to government-sanctioned hatred and violence.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday, October 4, 2021 declined to hear Louisiana’s appeal of a decision against its 2006 law requiring that people on the state’s sex offender registry carry IDs or driver’s licenses that say “SEX OFFENDER” in orange capital letters. A year ago, the Louisiana Supreme Court concluded that the requirement amounted to compelled speech and could not be justified by the state’s legitimate interest in protecting public safety. In addition to raising First Amendment issues, Louisiana’s now-moribund law illustrates the longstanding tendency to impose additional punishment on people convicted of sex offenses in the guise of regulation.

The registries themselves, which require sex offenders to regularly report their addresses to local law enforcement agencies so that information can be made publicly available in online databases that also include their names, photographs, and physical descriptions, are primarily punitive, exposing registrants to ostracism, harassment, and violence while impeding their rehabilitation by making it difficult to find employment and housing. There is little evidence that the sort of public notification practiced by every state delivers benefits that outweigh those costs. Louisiana’s experiment in ritual humiliation, which branded registrants with orange letters they had to display in every transaction that required producing a government-issued ID, compounded those costs without offering any plausible benefits.

Read Jacob Sullum’s REASON article.