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Linking Dangerously
indole writes "Some /.'ers might remember the story of Sherman Austin, a Californina native who created the "anarchy" website raisethefist.com. Besides posting links to bomb-making instructions, the site caught the ire of the FBI for advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government. Well, approximately 18 months later Sherman Austin, now age 20, has been sentenced to 1 year in federal prison. According to Austin, 'he took a plea bargain because he feared his case was eligible for a terrorism enhancement, which could have added 20 years to his sentence.' Doubleplusungood."
Wilson said he also may not associate with anyone from a group that "espouses physical force as a means of change."
does that include the US government?
I didn't know they can just ignore the plea agreement. Won't that come in handy with terrorists? "I agreed to 1 year, your honor!" "But I don't feel like it. You get the chair!"
Excuse me while I move to Canada....
"Where quality is like a dead stinking rat - you just can't miss it."
key word being "peaceably";
"links to bomb-making instructions, the site
caught the ire of the FBI for advocating the
overthrow of the U.S. government"
Last I checked...bombs weren't peaceful.
Gibble: Descriptive of an emotional state in which one's mind is scrabbling for some purchase on reality
As I recall, this individual wasn't prosecuted for what he said. It was because he was trying to break into military computers. What did he expect to happen?
C - A language that combines the speed of assembly with the ease of use of assembly.
Sherman said it in his narrative on the site:
"Remember, fascism and a police state doesn't come all at once, it comes piece by piece. How far will we allow it go until we are all locked up in concentration camps."
The government has basically forbid this guy from criticizing the system. I hope that this sends a message to everyone in the same situation to not plead down, and to raise as much hell as possible.
Why is it, that when someone describes in layman terms some basic exothermic chemistry, they are public enemy number 1? Should we hang the acedemics for teaching this chemistry? I am concerned about the wider scale of such generalized concepts in which people are categorized as criminals for learning and retaining knowledge that makes other's feel threatened. From cell phone cloning, to virus generation, to installing NOS on a car, and flying a non FAA Wright Flyer replica. People are increasingly punished for creativity, when they should be punished only for the dangerous and harmful actions they commit. I do not care that I was hit with a rock tied to a stick (tomohawk)only that I was attacked and hit in the first place.
The guy pleaded out for fear of an additional 19 years in the Pen. So the FBI gets their conviction, because of terrorism leverage.
Meanwhile, here in San Diego, enviro freaks burned down a $20 million condo project, and the owner is not going to get insurance because the policy didn't cover "terrorism." Probably 400 people out of work.
When gov't or anyone for that matter plays the terrorism card to its advantage, we ALL lose.
Is anyone going to protest this or try to lobby to get this guy's sentence overturned? Or well, *something*? I had no idea this was going on, but I'm pretty pissed now that I know. This seems totally out of question as a ruling and a punishment, how can they even argue he committed a *crime*?
If anyone knows of something others can do, please post here. I'm too unorganized in my personal life at the moment to spearhead anything, but I'd like to participate if anyone else has gotten the ball rolling. This whole thing makes me feel unsafe in my own country.
It's a strange world -- let's keep it that way
PC niceties are fucking killing this country. Racial profiling is evil, so let's submit 90-year old caucasian women to strip searches, just like that nice Saudi gentleman over there. All in the name of social equality.
9/11 changed the rules. The sooner everyone realizes that, the better we'll all be off. Perhaps this kid would have been just another weirdo with a badly designed website in a past life. But this is another world. Our insistence of making believe that everything is OK and should remain exactly the same is pointless and stupid. Let's get with the program. No, it's not nice to send nice youngsters to jail because of what they said in their website. OTOH, if he wants to overthrow the fucking government perhaps he'd like to move to Liberia or Burma. Those governments provide great infrastructure, defense and civil liberties.
As long as you speak the new speak and waive your flag.
... like the guys who put up the websites with a hit list for abortion doctors and celebrating everytime someone nuked one of them?
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
Inciting people into a violent revolt that thretens the stability of the entire society is not responsible.
Nor is inciting people into a passive complacency that threatens the stability of the entire society. Sometimes you have to throw out the baby with the bathwater, especially if the little runt is a Hitler-baby.
He claimed to be an anarchist, but advocated replacing the United States government with one that would be much more oppressive and totalitarian.
Advocating political change is what freedom of speech is all about. If you haven't got that, then your current government is not worth preserving.
But the US isn't European. It broke away from that through a violent overthrow of the current (European) government. The 1st amendment was put there because the people who wrote it knew that systems get stale and governments get corrupt. It's there specifically to protect the ability to criticise the government. While I don't personally advocate the overthrow of the whole system, I'm in favor of electing someone else to run the country right now. If enough people feel oppressed enough, they should be able to advocate that revolution. Meanwhile, this is the kind of oppression that does lead to a revolution.
I call troll...
Europe has been home of dozens of violent revolutions over the years. Just talk to the French to start with. You can move on to other countries when you are done there.
What is the end result of these revolutions? Social progress. The eventual overthrow of tyrants and the establishment of democracy has generally improved the quality of life.
Yes, people die during violent revolutions. People are jailed. In the long run, though, if enough people believe that a violent overthrow of the government is called for, it almost always means that the people will be better off after the revolution.
The U.S.'s freedom of speech was set up to allow all degrees of discussion, from political commercials to lobbying to advertising to calling for a violent revolution to overthrow the government.
Remember - the same people that wrote the First Amendment just got done with a violent revolution.
This does not mean that the government should stand idly by while people violently revolt. The government has a responsibility for self-preservation. However, talking about a violent overthrow should be completely allowed.
- (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman
Another mature thing to do would be to ban knives, utensils, cars, cleaning chemicals, scissors, staplers, power tools, airplanes, etc. to preemptively avoid spreding those kind of things so that they don't fall into the hands of idiots.
Guess what? No matter how much you ban or censor, idiots are still going to find a way to kill themselves or others.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
I would find it disturbing if this guy was arrested for posting the information himself. Regardless of the information posted, he hasn't actually committed a crime, nor from what I understand was he in a position encouraging others to perform violent acts. I'll draw a parallel to the likes of the Ku Klux Klan - what they believe and stand for is reprehensible, and they most likely discuss desires to physically harm others of racial minority status. However, talking and doing are two different things. There's a distinction between having a violent impulse and acting on it. If the government launches pre-emptive strikes on our freedom of speech in order to prevent future crimes, they have effectively set a precendent for the erosion of personal freedoms and liberties; once the rust has an 'in', it's only a matter of time before it consumes the body of its host in its entirety. Now, without a doubt, such pre-emptive strikes do indeed prevent crimes and save lives. It comes down to a choice of the society we wish to live in. Would one rather exist in a country where the government keeps a tight fist on all of our actions and communications, secure in the knowledge that violence has been reduced to near-non-existant levels? Or does one value freedom over life and live in a country where occasional acts of violence occur, but the dissemination of information and unhindered distribution of ideas reign free? In this age of the Ashcrofts and Patriot Acts, our historic battle cry of 'Give me Liberty or give me Death' seems to have already rusted away.
The government has basically forbid this guy from criticizing the system.
See, I think there's a difference between "criticizing the system" and advocating the violent overthrow of the government and providing instructions on how to create weapons that will help you accomplish that goal. Do you honestly think this guy was locked up for merely saying "I disagree with this administration?"
I invite you to read that page.
Here's a quote that defines just how many of your rights have been looted from under your ignorant feet
Fourth Amendment? Who needs it, certainly not the helpful Government. They'll never abuse this power, only use it to fight Terrorists! Oh, and Drugs! Oh, and they'll use it to Save The Children!
So you think that a Disorderly Conduct and Unlawful assembly charge warrants a ONE YEAR sentence?
Do you believe that the US WEF protesters were trying to commit sedition?
There is a huge difference between opposing certain policies of a government and attempting to overthrow it. ( A ridiculous possibility in the case of the US ).
That's a very valid point, but I think everyone has to admit that there is a slippery slope for freedom of speech. Our country has a tradition of civil disobdience, and it wasn't all peaceful. I'm wary of any government which is so worried about being overthrown. Earning the respect of the majority of citizens is the way to stay in power, not locking people up for distributing already widely available information.
ah yes. violent revolution has no place in america.
2 1337 4 u!
Snuffing out pension funds are more than compensated by campaign contributions, in addition to handsomely paid do-nothing retirement consultancy postitions.
So did your founding fathers. Fucking Americans.
That's actually not true at all. The Founding Fathers were all for violent overthrow of governments, so long as the government in question wasn't a good one. Remember, they actually went and did that. In the Declaration of Independece, they wrote: This is why they included the second amendment in the Bill of Rights of the Constitution; in the minds of the Founding Fathers, the people should be able to take up arms against an oppressive government if necessary.
Well, the door was open...
EVERY anarchist supports overthrowing the (and every) government. This establishes precedent for supressing all of them (more; did you know it's illegal for a foreign anarchist to enter the country?).
And as for protesting, well, one, it says he was arrested, not convicted, and two, there's a bit of a difference between civil disobedience and throwing bombs.
18 USC 842 (p)(2)(A) IS a violation of the first amendment. The fig-leaf of "with the intent that..." is a bunch of hooey.
--Fesh
Kill -9 'em all, let root@localhost sort 'em out.
It is, however, illegal to urge people to break the law, and advocating the violent overthrow of the government certainly falls in that category. It is not incompatible with freedom of speech in any of the usual ways. Arguably, advocating the violent overthrow of a democratically elected government ought to be deeply, deeply repugnant to a free society in a way that advocating the overthrow of autocratic governments is not. Part of the point of democracy, after all, is the regularly scheduled non-violent overthrow of unpopular governments at the polls.
Had the defendant in this case merely presented bomb-making information, he probably could have gotten off on First Amendment grounds, but by stepping outside of what the First Amendment protects, and being dumb enough to do so during a national panic, one year in prison is not all that outrageous.
If enough people feel oppressed enough, they should be able to advocate that revolution.
As a practical matter, if you are really being severely oppressed, advocating revolution is a great way to be unpersoned. In the event of real oppression, you need to fight a revolution, not cut-and-paste crap from the Anarchists' Cookbook to your website. At present, however, most real oppression being conducted by the US Government is happening outside of its borders.
Meanwhile, this is the kind of oppression that does lead to a revolution.
Piff. This is the kind of routine law enforcement that leads to stupid bumper stickers.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
It's all about context. He didn't say "here's how to make bombs, if you're interested", he said "let's overthrow the government, and a good way to do that is if you make your own bombs! Click here!"
I don't see how that isn't protected speech. Lets be clear here. He wasn't plotting with particular individuals to carry out an act of terror or violence. He was saying that this goverment sucks and should be overthrown -- by violent needs if necessary. And should anyone think that's a good idea, then here's some information on how you can forward those aims.
Now I don't think what he's proposing is a good idea by any stretch of the imagination. I'm a liberal democrat by persuasion, not a revolutionary anarchist. But the one thing I'd always admired about the USA was the way that political free speech is protected by the constitution and if anything counts as political speech, this guy's website does.
The effect is that he's not providing the information out of general interest but he's intending that the information be used to create tools overthrow the government. Big difference there.
Perhaps that's true, but it isn't a difference that I thought was prohibited by law. Americans in this forum often go on about how you need the right to bear arms in case of a tyrannical government. This case makes it pretty clear that even if you actually *had* a tyrannical government, the right to bear arms would be somewhat pointless because the ability to discuss with others the need to use them would render you liable to arrest and imprisonment.
First of all, speech advocating "regime change" is obviously political speech, whatever else you may say about it. Second, the courts have been clear that "incitement to violence" is a pretty high standard; they have made the distinction between advocating violence and instigating it, or between abstract doctrine vs. action. The Supreme Court has said pretty clearly that the danger that is created by the speech has to be likely to cause an immediate breach of the peace. It is hard to see how a website could do that, no matter what it advocates. This case is a clear violation of the first amendment protection of political speech through intimidation of the defendant.
I submit this story hours ago, and it's rejected.
/.
/. needs a change of editors. The /. community is ok, and the OSS/Linux-centric stories are often valuable, at least for OSS/Linux advocacy. It's a good digest.
/. is promoting its supremely lame subscription service. Brilliant.
Meanwhile there's very little news appearing on
Now hours later that same story is approved, and appears.
But over the last year I've noticed the rate of new stories has gone down, while at the same time
Now, mod me down. Some of the moderators are as useful as the editors.
Enjoy.
.sigs are for post^Hers.
This kid was demonstrating illegally (not a big deal), and it turned out he was wanted by the FBI for his website (still probably not too big a deal). The kicker came when they searched his parent's house and found bomb making materials.
Once you start caching explosives, the equation changes somewhat.
Ghandi, Martin Luther King, and Jesus were all a) right :), and b) decidedly non-violent. This kid was a crackpot, pure and simple.
Disorderly conduct or unlawful assembly are not felonies.
.sig in here now, I could be arrested and convicted to 20 years in prison]
He was convicted for a felony.
Nothing I read in the CNN article said he was convicted for anything else but providing links to sites that, among other things, had bomb making instructions.
The CNN article did NOT say he was advocating the use of bombs against the federal government.
Now, in typical hack-journo way, the CNN article might have failed to mention all the facts about this case, but if I have to go with the information provided by the CNN article, he was convicted of expressing unpopular thought.
There's probably more to the story, but if you RTFA, as you instruct, one can only assume John Asscroft is yet again managed to stiffle the freedom of speech in the name of national security.
[I will resist the temptation of putting my usual
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
Whoever wins the war would decide. If things got bad enough (as they did in the late 18th century and again in the middle of the 19th century) that a large-enough group of people start acting together to overthrow the government, they're hardly going to lock themselves up for advocating a violent overthrow of the government. OTOH, the odd crank or two (like the subject of this article) isn't likely to draw anywhere near the numbers of people needed for anything approximating a successful "revolution." He would've been better advised to work within the system. (He probably wouldn't have found adequate support for his radical views even that way, but at least he wouldn't be moldering away at Club Fed for the next year.)
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
All that being said, the whole debate [...] is a moot point - the 'gentleman' in question VOLUNTARILY gave up his right to a trial and plead guilty...
Well, voluntary is a funny word. If I hold a gun to your head and ask for your wallet, and you give it to me, I haven't actually hurt you. You voluntarily gave your wallet to me. Of course, that 'voluntary' action was made under serious duress, hence it's not actually voluntary.
Now, if the FBI decided to charge me with a completely bogus crime, then said, "Plea now, or we'll make sure you get ass-raped by a rotating array of big, angry men every day for the next twenty years" -- well, suffice to say, I'd plea bargain.
When the government's got your nuts in a vice, you don't have very far to run.
In case you don't realise, this is where the police make up some plausible sounding stuff, go to a friendly judge and get him to rubber stamp it. Then they execute the warrant in an attempt to find some real evidense that will stand up in an actual court. In this case despite removing all the computers, books, and documents in his house they found nothing. Which is why he wasn't immediately charged with anything. In the end they were forced to fall back on the linking to information on explosives (18 USC 842) and scare him with threats of 20 years in jail into pleading so they never had to present any evidense at all. He has only been convicted under 18 USC 842 and therefore I think we can safely assume that the computer fraud stuff was just something they used to pad out their search warrant with. This is purely an issue of free speach (linking to information the US government doesn't like) since that is the only thing he has been convicted of.
You're right that not all civil disobedience was peaceful. Its also true that there was a great deal of civil disobedience that was very noble in aim. There was also a great deal more that was, in the parlance of our Pres, evil.
In most parts of the country it is now illegal to burn a cross. This is because in most cases the burning cross was effectively a death threat. It was speech, and might even be considered protected political speech under some circumstances, but it is also intended to dissuade people from excercising their rights through acts or threats of physical harm.
I have not read his website, but most descriptions in the articles listed here seem to indicate he was advocating the overthrow of the US government, and linking to bomb-making instructions. This could easily be interpreted as exhorting people to plant bombs to disrupt, what? Elections? Courts? I vote in a predominantly Republican area. If his friends, or some ELF or ALF types want to discourage people from voting GOP, would they set off a bomb in my precinct? (probably not, becuase mine is not nearly high-enough income to attract their attention, but its a useful thought experiment)
His motives are 'populist' and 'left-wing' and may be aligned with the motives of many here, but his actions are very similar to those of the folks out in western North Carolina who have just recently had to take down their 'Run Eric Run' signs from their front yards. He's not Eric Rudolph, but his actions are only different from some of Eric's supporters if you think along the lines of 'its OK for US, but not for THEM.'
This guy is in one of those nasty little gray areas that make public policy a difficult thing, but I do think its a bit easier to make these distinctions when you realize that 'those harmless kids who want to make the world a better place' are not so different from 'those neanderthal right-wing reactionary muther-f*$kers'. They use a lot of the same rhetoric that this guy uses. Just the book their quoting to justify their actions has a black cover, not a red one.
Remember, I'm not calling this guy Eric Rudolph. And certainly he shouldn't be given a 20 year terrorist sentence - indeed I think the judge was wrong for superceding the prosecutor's recomendation of 4 months. However, this guy was real close to the boundary between harmless and horrific.
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He actually said, "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists." (one reference). By "with us", he was meaning with us against the fight against terrorism.
So your subtle changing of his words completely distorts what he actually said and meant. That would qualify as FUD, or just outright fraud. I would have hoped readers and the moderators would have known better.
SIG:Slashdot: indymedia for nerds.
It is not against the law in the U.S. to advocate the overthrow of the government. REPEAT: It is not against the law in the U.S. to advocate the overthrow of the government.
And what exactly is wrong with violent overthrow of the government? Thomas Jefferson said "The tree of liberty must be regularly watered by the blood of patriots." (to paraphrase) It is the tendency of government to become entrenched and intractable to the point where only violent revolution can make a difference. The USA was a "great experiment" to construct a series of rules (a constitution) that would hopefully prevent the need for violent revolution. Whether you count this experiment as a success or failure, I don't see how in good conscience you can forbid someone to advocate a solution to a problem they percieve.
Why for instance is it ok for GWB to advocate, and actually accomplish the overthrow of an atrocious government that he is not even a citizen of, whereas this fellow cannot even speak what is in his mind the only solution to repair the very government he lives it? The gov't must not have a monopoly on violence. Of all the groups, politicians are the least worthy to handle it.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
(5) he cannot associate with any person or group that seeks to change the government in any way (be that environmental, social justice, political, economic, etc.)
That to me sounds like they're encroaching on rights to freedom of political expression, without fear of reprisal by those in power (going back to federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison).
It's in the same ballpark as some corrupt african states where people either support the government, live as a political exile or face the prospect of being torured and/or killed.
Ok, so nobody is being tortured or killed in the USA (that's what happens in Cuba at Guantanamo, and a whole other kettle of fish), but this man's right to change the government should still be respected. We all have that right, whether we know it or not, we get to vote in another government if the current one makes a right pig's ear of the job.
The right to political activism and peaceful protest should be a given in any country that truly deems itself "free".
I am NaN
Past radical ideas like the end of slavery, female sufferage, social equality for non-whites, unionized labour, paid vacation and abortion rights? Good thing we're so much smarter today that ideas we consider radical couldn't possibly become basic rights tomorrow.
Lets say, a few months ago, you were on one of those trams at an international airport, and you see some guy standing close to you who happened to look Oriental (or is the PC term Asian?), with luggage tags from Beijing on his luggage. This guy is coughing up a storm and not caring about who's around him. Would you suspect him of having SARS or would that be "racist"?
No, I wouldn't, because I would think logically and realize that SARS, even at its peak, was several hundred or thousand times less common than the common cold in Asia. It's called the "common cold" for a reason. The same reason why SARS was not called "common SARS".
You see two Middle-eastern fellows with a rented U-haul truck pulling up to a farming store and buying dozens of bags of fertilizer. Would you call the FBI, or would that be "racist"?
Why would I call the FBI? Two brown guys buying fertilizer, as well as having easy access to fertilizer, is a daily occurrence. The vast majority of the lawn care guys in my entire state are either dark Hispanics (usually Mexicans), Arabs (which, from my perspective, look a lot like dark Hispanics), or some other form of immigrant trying to find cheap work to support their families. Do you call the FBI every time you see a Middle Eastern man at a gas station, because he has access to large amounts of flammable materials that could be used to set fires all over town? I hope not.
SARS and terrorism are both very rare things that don't happen nearly as often as an Asian man having a cold or a Arab buying some fertilizer. Only through the eyes of media hype, racism, or stupidity does a man buying some fertilizer become an act of terrorism. I also find it somewhat suspect that you assume that two Middle-Eastern men buying dozens of bags of fertilizer is suspect, since the last man to commit a terrorist act in the United States using fertilizer was Timothy McVeigh, a white man who was assisted by other whites. Should we worry whenever ANYONE buys fertilizer, or just calm down and understand that ordinary occurrences like people buying fertilizer don't suddenly become abnormal or terroristic acts just because of September 11th?
Nowadays, everyone is so worried about political correctness and not hurting anyones feelings that they are putting themselves and their country in danger. Teachers are being told what words they can and cannot say because they might "offend" someone.
Instead of being told not to say it, did you ever consider that maybe they just think differently from you? I know that some people would like to think that they're in some sort of oppressed, secret majority that thinks that racism is alright and that the racist answer is always a more logical one than an Asian man just having a cold, but a lot of us really don't think that way. We don't jump to race as the first answer, and instead of not wanting to offend anybody by saying it, we just don't even think about it in the first place.
Haymaker is unfamiliar to me right off the bat, so I can't respond on that one, and won't discuss it.
Shays' Rebellion was not peaceful protest, but armed protest. They didn't need to make bombs because they had muskets and/or rifles.
At Kent State, if you wanted to change the number of casualties from a handful to a statistic, the fastest way to do that would be to start lobbing bombs at the National Guard types. The ones who really were shooting over the heads of protesters would have started to take aimed shots, and if they didn't have someone holding a bomb in their sights, then they would have aimed at anyone not running away. And seeing a couple of guys down the line take shrapnel from a pipe-bomb, they probably wouldn't be to careful to check if they were running away.
In the modern government age, a better self defense against government brutality is well-drilled non-violence. You want sympathy on your side, and adolescent displays of bravado don't go over well with the American public (unless you're president). Ultimately if you really feel you're in need of armed resistance, you'd need to do that with a large contingent armed with rifles, not a few guys hurling pipe-bombs or molatovs.
Ultimately pipe-bombs, due to their indiscriminant area-of-effect nature, are most effective in instilling fear in the untrained, rather than breaking the ranks of well-trained police/military anti-riot groups. He's more likely to kill his friends than his enemies. Of course, his motives might be to demonize the cops by upping the death-toll at his rallies. If so, then
You have the right to kill a police officer if they are killing your people, shooting at your protest groups
I assume that you mean that the police officer in question is not being threatened with physical harm himself. There haven't been any fatalities in globalization protests since Italy, and in that case the officer in question was being threatened by a guy swinging a fire-extinguisher. When have live rounds been fired at protesters since Kent State?
Ultimately, his desired methods are too reminiscent of Greensboro (you know, when the Klan managed to 'respond to fire' from some black trade unionists) to gain much sympathy from me.
The 2nd Amendment is essentially the codification of the right to armed insurection, but bombs are bad tactics, and too likely to end up in innocent lives lost.
By the way. If there had been casualties among the National Guard types at Kent State, do you think it weigh on the national conscience like it does? Most people would assume that the bombs were thrown first. The Kent State protesters would have lost the moral high ground, and their deaths would have had half the impact. And there'd be a lot more deaths.
Never cede the high ground. You're out for popular opinion, and there's nothing like a ten-to-nothing casualty ratio to prove the cops shot first. If anyone had taken this guy's advice and started tossing bombs, he'd have gotten a bunch of protesters killed, and be seen to have justified the police brutality in the process.
Still not 100% sure he should have gone to jail, but his words are close enough to an exhortation to violence - a punishible act commonly used by the reactionary right (Klan and Operation Rescue et al) - that good people could disagree on his sentence.
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