The moment governments start treating online criticism like a criminal threat instead of a public complaint, trust usually gets worse, not better.

For fucks sake, include the country unless it's a well known major place.

Are we going to start arresting people who publish lies on social media as if they're news?

I'm pretty sure that the reason we haven't done so is something called the First Amendment to the US Constitution, which guarantees free speech and freedom of the press.

If they're going to arrest people for lying, the city of Trinidad, Texas, should start with people who lie the most and make the most severe lies, like Donald Trump and many of his top officials.

Texas

The update is that the grand jury no-billed her case yesterday, meaning that they did not find enough evidence to indict her with this criminal charge.

Inasmuch as the city is not denying its water quality problems, plus the amount of effort being put into silencing her, I think it is likely that she did not lie at all and that there really are people who were hospitalized with inexplicable gastrointestinal illnesses that they have chalked up to being related to the water.

The problem is that to prove, legally, that the two are related, both the suspected illness-causing pathogen that hospitalized these people AND the water have to be tested and matched, both for the pathogen and the timing (was it demonstrably in the water at the time they got sick?) AND those interested in proving causation have to have access to all these test results, not just their own medical test results but also those of any water management tests, and this is something the city and its water management people can easily block at every step.

Lawyers know that, citizens don't. And that's how these bright officials of the City of Trinidad, Texas thought they could shut this woman up via legal means: correlation does not prove causation, and she is alleging causation, hence criminal charges. But even a grand jury refused to indict, meaning whatever the city brought against her was weak indeed.

Somewhere in this world, Barbra Streisand is singing. People have their own medical records and everyone there can turn on a tap, so I bet someone proves that shit now.

And there's no reason to believe that she'll win that suit, no matter what the law and facts say.

Police Chief Gregory was not present at Tuesday's meeting.

Is it a data center or oil drilling poisoning people.