Posted on 06/10/2015 5:18:06 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The Libertarians are up in arms this week after the Justice Department served subpoenas to Nick Gillespie’s Reason Magazine over comments left on their web site by anonymous readers. The commentariat buzz in question erupted over an article dealing with the life sentence imposed on Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht. This has prompted some outraged cries from observers such as Bloomberg contributor (and former Reason editor) Virginia Postrel, who described the move as stomping on free speech. Powerline’s Steven Hayward (coincidentally also a former contributor to Reason) wonders aloud whether the Justice Department attorneys are just stupid or possibly working in league with Rand Paul.
When we look a bit deeper into the details of the case, however, the outrage might be just a tad premature. The comments in question seem to go a fair ways beyond the normal opinions – or even blatant trolling – that you find in comment sections across the web. Keep in mind that the subject of their ire is a federal district judge. And the “criticism” of her included suggestions that she be fed into a wood chipper or taken out back and shot.
The question here is whether these nasty missives constitute a “true threat” to the life of the judge. For a reliably expert look at the situation, we can check in with Ilya Somin at The Volokh Conspiracy for the details. He and Ken White start off by concluding that it’s probably not a case of a true threat, but rather the typical, acidic venom which is frequently spewed by upset, anonymous readers.
For reasons White explains, the comments almost certainly do not qualify as “true threats” against the judge. They are, rather, the kind of nasty and stupid vitriol that is all too common in anonymous comments on the internet. For example, one of the commenters wrote that “judges like these… should be taken out back and shot,” another opined that “I hope there is a special place in hell reserved for that horrible woman,” and a third replied that “I’d prefer a hellish place on Earth be reserved for her as well.”
Nasty stuff, indeed. To put it mildly, comments such as these are hardly valuable contributions to public discourse. But if federal prosecutors investigated every similar anonymous comment on the internet, we could probably devote the entire federal budget to hunting down these types of blogosphere trolls, and still not find them all.
Fair enough. But he goes on to note that you can’t just turn a blind eye, either.
White also notes that, under current judicial precedent, federal prosecutors likely have the authority to seek a subpoena in cases like this. But even if this practice is legally permissible, it is still ill-advised. In addition to wasting substantial resources that could better be devoted to investigating real crimes, it is unlikely that this power will be used in an even-handed way
Both Somin and White go on to talk about the potential “chilling effect” on free speech and I won’t discount that entirely, but we seem to be rushing past a few key points here. First and foremost is the fact I pointed out above. We’re talking about a federal judge here. And while it would be nice to pretend that our system of justice treats everyone in the nation as a society of equals, we all know that’s not true. You can make threatening sounding comments like that about the idiot who cut you off in traffic or one of the writers here at Hot Air, (thanks, guys!) and you probably won’t find the Men in Black knocking on your door. But if you write anything that sounds like a threat against the life of the President, you’ll find yourself in line for some very special attention. There’s a reason we ban anyone here who does that and this policy is fairly uniform across the professional side of the web.
Further, there’s actually a valid reason for this. Taking any human life is evil, but when you go after an elected official, a cop or a judge, you are attacking the system of justice and the rule of law which keep us from falling into anarchy and oblivion. It’s a serious thing and law enforcement treats it as such.
I also have to wonder how much some of these protests are grounded in the way we tend to poison the well of free speech protection based on who the speakers are threatening. Would we all be rushing to the defense of both the magazine and the rights of the commenters making the threats if they were implying that they were going to go chop off Pamela Geller’s head? Assuming the writer turned out to have no history of violence, is that just free speech? Or were they possibly on the cusp of having been turned to the dark side by jihadist web sites and videos? That’s a pretty tough call to make for the layman, but would you deny the DoJ the chance to figure out who they were and how serious there intents might be?
Apparently the Silk Road founder is a rather sympathetic figure in Libertarian circles. (And that’s for reasons which completely escape me.) But that shouldn’t matter. If you did some digging I wouldn’t be surprised if there had been threats from enraged community organizers leveled against the judge who found Officer Brelo not guilty in Ohio last month . And if there were, should we decry a subpoena issued to investigate the people penning them?
Threatening to feed somebody into a wood chipper isn’t free speech. And every once in a while the person writing it will actually turn out to own a wood chipper. Perhaps we shouldn’t be setting our hair on fire over these subpoenas just yet.
If they think that's bad, they should read the Religion forum here.
You mean was. It was a marketplace on TOR that you could purchase anything from drugs to weapons. Theybused several different endpoint detection methods to de anonymize users.
“Hmmm... I wonder if FR will be the next one...”
I learned to do this in the work environment. I evaluate everything I put on paper or bytes to see how it would look if taken out of context on the witness stand. I think some people are imprudent, especially when wishing the current occupant ill. Some of those could be taken as threats and if the DOJ wanted to shut down criticism the best way would be a show trial of people who made imprudent statements. (We really live in this kind of world now.) Recall that the Muhammad film maker spent time in jail for less than some have done. (Is he out?) We have arrived in Soviet America.
Another “free speech for me, but not for thee” commentary.
That’s a pretty fine distinction you’re making there. Saying the person should be fed into a wood chipper is an incitement to violence, isn’t it? Would a reasonable person consider it a threat if the same poster kept printing similar comments? I think so. This wasn’t apparently just one comment posted in anger.
I was born in a country that fought its way into existence through armed, open rebellion against its political rulers. In that country it was seen as healthy for members of the three branches of government to be regularly reminded that the murder of tyrants was always an option. Judges, legislators and members of the executive branch could feel confident only when acting constitutionally and would live in fear when they didn’t.
That was a great country. I wish I could live there again.
A site I used to frequent allowed both liberals and conservatives to “go at it” with virtually no language filters. The ratio was about 10% conservative and the rest liberals. Although conservatives would sometimes do it too, the MO of the liberals was ad-hominem attack.
Then an interesting thing happened. They stopped allowing fowl language. A lot of liberals ended up getting “temp banned” for a week or a month. The ratio became more like 20% conservative and the rest liberal.
Then the hammer came down. They stopped allowing ad-hominem attacks. You should have seen the complaints. Liberals said things like, “how else are you supposed to respond to the stupid remarks of conservatives”. They were intellectually lazy and felt that “their people” would do what they did: pile on via ad hominem.
But one by one they were temp banned and some permabanned. They could not defend themselves when they actually had to make a lucid argument. It became fun for me. It was like shooting fish in a barrel. But more and more of them just disappeared. The result? The site became about 60% conservative and the rest liberal. And us conservatives were getting “respectfully” cocky about it. We (most of us) knew how to argue. We knew our facts. They didn’t have a chance. They posted less and less.
The site is now gone.
Browser history: Obstruction of justice? Wiping Internet tracks is Obstruction
It is still easily traceable to you, unless you are more careful in how you access that account than I suspect you are.
You adding nuance to the the original scenarios I laid does not change that.
And I stand by the distinction I made.
Thanks.
Murder is evil. Killing someone in self defense is not evil. Killing someone like Hitler is morally good.
That said, would it be OK to kill innocents to kill a Hitler? For example, would it have been morally OK to nuke Berlin to take out Hitler (assuming the USA had the bomb earlier)? The Laws of Armed Conflict try to make sense of such things.
The same “justice” department that allowed the IRS to get away with its crimes and refused to prosecute the black panthers who blocked access to voting sites.
There is not, and has not been, free speech in the USA for 20 years.
I believe you’re right. There’s no such thing as anonymity on the internet—maybe from a typical citizen’s prying eyes, but certainly not from government or experienced hackers. If they want to find out who you are, they can do it. It just depends on how many resources they are willing to use to do it.
It’s yoir IP addy that you have to worry about.
I have never read the magazine but i enjoy the website. Articles from both sides without the DU nutjob bias.
If such show trials were to occur, you definitely wouldn’t want to be one of the showiest offenders. In the school of posting fish, don’t be an outlier, right? Those get picked off fast.
Frankly, I don’t know why someone would even waste their time posting comments about throwing people into wood chippers. Maybe they were venting. I don’t know, but discussion forums are meant for discussion. Those kinds of comments aren’t discussing anything.
The author wrote: Taking any human life is evil...
I wrote that I disagreed with that statement.
It was a simple comment, and I did not think it would elicit pointless rhetorical questions about the moral dilemmas associated with war and/or defeating evil.
I guess I give people too much credit for being able to interpret the meaning of my comments.
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