Posted on 06/08/2015 4:32:55 PM PDT by Skepolitic
The United States Department of Justice is using federal grand jury subpoenas to identify anonymous commenters engaged in typical internet bluster and hyperbole in connection with the Silk Road prosecution. DOJ is targeting Reason.com, a leading libertarian website whose clever writing is eclipsed only by the blowhard stupidity of its commenting peanut gallery.
Why are the government using its vast power to identify these obnoxious asshats, and not the other tens of thousands who plague the internet?
Because these twerps mouthed off about a judge.
Last week, a source provided me with a federal grand jury subpoena. The subpoena1, issued by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, is directed to Reason.com in Washington, D.C.. The subpoena commands Reason to provide the grand jury "any and all identifying information"2 Reason has about participants in what the subpoena calls a "chat."
The "chat" in question is a comment thread on Nick Gillespie's May 31, 2015 article about Ross "Dread Pirate Roberts" Ulbricht's plea for leniency to the judge who would sentence him in the Silk Road prosecution. That plea, we know now, failed, as Ulbricht received a life sentence, with no possibility of parole.
Several commenters on the post found the sentence unjust, and vented their feelings in a rough manner. The grand jury subpoena specifies their comments and demands that Reason.com produce any identifying information on them.
(Excerpt) Read more at popehat.com ...
Whether one agrees or disagrees with the Ulbricht sentence, this should be disturbing.
I've certainly read FR comments about federal officials that were just as rough as those on the Reason website. The fact that neither even comes close to being a genuine threat evidently will no longer stop the Feds from harassing and potentially prosecuting those who would exercise the freedom to engage in hyperbolic rough speech.
The article has links to the subpeona and other relevant information.
I’m not hard to find on twitter. I’m the one who calls Nancy Pelosi a syphilitic toad rectum.
More and more tyrannical every day.
Could FR be next with a similar Grand Jury Subpoena?
Hope JimRob tells them to pound sand and has the system rigged to zero-write the drives and then pass them through a shredder.
The Founders would have played felony poker with the persecutor...
That's outrageous! You owe syphilitic toad rectums everywhere an apology.
Their goal is to silence dissent. They even want to make it a crime if you disagree with them.
Remember Free Dominion.
One radical Leftist got FR’s sister site to shut down permanently.
That was just one activist in a foreign court. Imagine now in this country, someone with the power of a nation-state at their disposal.
Whatever happened to the separation of church and state?
Curious, Barney Frank may start following your tweets.
Someone makes a threat to kill someone, and they shouldn’t be surprised if the authorities try to determine if the threat is credible or if it is just a pasty faced internet cowboy hiding in his mother’s basement spouting off from behind an anonymous screen name.
Based on the threats posted at your link, the subpoenas appear to be justified.
Show a bit of integrity here. The four before the fifth one that you referenced go a good bit beyond that.
No.
“True Threats” are those threats that are outside the protection of the First Amendment; they are not mere political hyperbole or bluster. For instance, in 1967, when Mr. Watts said that if he were drafted the first man he’d want in his rifle sights was President Lyndon B. Johnson, that wasn’t a true threat: it was conditional political hyperbole. In other words, it was mere angry bluster of the sort no reasonable person would take to be a serious threat.3
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/394/705/case.html
Watts v. United States
394 U.S. 705
Petitioner’s remark during political debate at small public gathering that, if inducted into Army (which he vowed would never occur) and made to carry a rifle “the first man I want to get in my sights is L.B.J.,” held to be crude political hyperbole which, in light of its context and conditional nature, did not constitute a knowing and willful threat against the President within the coverage of 18 U.S.C. § 871(a).
Certiorari granted; 131 U.S.App.D.C. 125, 402 F.2d 676, reversed and remanded.
I’m interested in seeing how these millennial libertarians respond. Do they have the courage of their convictions, or do they fall in line and do as they are told?
Way back we had a Freeper get a visit from the Secret Service for a foolish remark.
Can’t make threats.
Define “threat.”
We’ll have to start using smoke signals. No, I’m not kidding.
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