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Webcomic Author Deemed a Terrorist Threat
CaptainCarrot writes "Writer/IT contractor Matt Boyd, formerly the man who made up the words for webcomic Mac Hall and who now does the same for his and Ian McConville's new comic Three Panel Soul, was recently fired from his government job. His conversation with a co-worker about a gun he intended to buy for target shooting was overheard by someone in a nearby cubicle. As it was unfortunately the day of the Virginia Tech shootings, the eavesdropper panicked and reported him to management. That was bad enough. But when he used the comic to document the meeting where the reason for his firing was explained, he was visited by representatives of local law enforcement investigating him on suspicion of making a "terroristic threat" using the Internet. No charges have been filed. Yet. FLEEN interviewed Matt about the incident."
The term "terroristic threat" has been around a long time, and has nothing to do with "terrorism" or a "terrorist threat", as it is used in the vernacular.
The term and legal notion of "terroristic threat" has been around for a long time, and has nothing to do with the "war on terror", 9/11, the Bush administration, or censorship.
Also, he is a contract employee who can be released at any time for any reason, even moreso than a normal at-will employee who also can be released at any time for any reason.
Even Boyd himself in his interview correctly notes that "a terroristic threat is an old legal concept".
He is also not charged with any crime (though technically he could be), but that's always true. He says the "detectives at least seem satisfied" that he was "harmless", and showed samples of his work to one of the detectives.
It would be better to read his interview, instead of believing someone thinks this has anything to do with "terrorism" or a "terrorist threat" (no one does; remember, "terroristic threat is a legal concept that has been around a long time).
Actually, I take that back. There are people painting this as allegedly being thought of as "terrorism". It's people who want to get all indignant about it.
By the way: anyone who thinks Virginia Tech could have "prevented" this shooting somehow, this is exactly what you get.
Matt Boyd Matt Boyd
Watcha gonna do, whatcha gonna do
when they come for you
Matt Boyd, Matt Boyd
Watcha gonna do, watcha gonna do
when they come for you
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
Regardless, the comic was at worst a vague veiled show of frustration against the establishment, not a threat to man or corporation.
As someone who is part of the organization of another major webcomic, things like this are frightening. I like to keep my jobs, personally.
Unless you know everyone around you, this probably isn't an appropriate conversation for the workplace, which Boyd says is a verbatim transcript of what got him fired^H^H^H^H^Hreleased from a contract position that he can be released from at any time.
.22 to kill them, and then makes light of it to the point where someone got scared again. Do you think the police are monitoring his comic? Someone obviously complained, and it's the police's job to follow up, who then determined he's not actually a threat, according to his own description of the meeting with the detectives.
And this, even if joking, is probably not, all things considered, the wisest response. Only he, or people who know him well, knows he's not serious, frankly. Yeah, it's funny. But he already got fired for talking about how many times you'd have to shoot someone in the face with a
Can we find something else to get all in a huff about? I'm sure there's another story we can run about how the 2004 election was stolen.
"Fleen: Okay, on a scale of one to ten, are you more a) pissed; b) surprised; c) depressed by this turn of events?
Boyd: Gonna have to go with b) surprised."
I'll go with d) confused...err... 4) confus... 10) conf.. I dunno
It gets kind of ridiculous.
If the VT shootings hadn't happened, this whole episode wouldn't have happened.
If nobody read his comics, this whole episode wouldn't have happened.
There are many reasons that this episode shouldn't have happened, but people are afraid and over-react to 'err on the side of caution'. For many, better safe than sorry is the catchphrase of the week. They don't stop to think, or try to figure out what might be the level headed way to handle things.... like ask why they are talking about guns at work!
Now, why is it that the US in particular is so fearful? That is the better question, not 'is this guy going to shoot people?' For fscks sake, my retired mother has a 9mm which she uses at the gun range. I don't think that anyone will fear that she is a terrorist. Why should people think anyone that talks about guns is going to go on a killing rampage. If they were going to go kill people, the probably wouldn't be talking openly about guns!! There are millions of guns in the US and save for a few whackjobs, they generally are doing no harm to anyone. (street/drug/mafia crimes not counted) The point is that not everyone with a gun is a murderer. Not everyone from the middle east is a suicide bomber in training.
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Additional words : t h e H E L L o u t t a t h e m
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I'm really starting to get worried about our government, and the common American. All of this terrorist crap is turning into one big witch hunt. I don't like my neighboor, maybe I should report him and have the men with the black bags take him awawy...
"Terroristic threat" != "terrorism" or "terrorist threat"
.22. Someone who probably doesn't know him personally at all (or at least well) overheard this and reported it. On the day of the biggest mass shooting in the US to boot (which was admittedly why he was even talking about it in the first place).
It's not the "US" that's fearful. Someone overheard him talking about how many times you'd need to shoot someone in the face to kill them with a
Then he got released from a position that he can, as a contractor, be released from at any time, for any reason.
Then he humorously recounted his "firing" the next day in his comic, which someone felt threatened by, and which they reported to the police. It is, in turn, the police's job to follow up on such a complaint, which they did, and after which he himself said the detectives determined that he wasn't actually a threat, and viewed samples of his work.
And yeah, there were a bunch of things that coalesced to make this happen, but all that means is that actions have consequences, and no matter how unfair you might think they are sometimes, it doesn't make it any less true. The government didn't do anything to him, he is not charged with any crime, and no one "censored" him (as is especially evidenced by the fact that the comics are exactly where they've always been: still up on the web).
Come back down to reality, here. Whenever there's a school or workplace shooting, everyone always rants about the "warning signs" and "why didn't anyone call the police when they guy was talking about shooting people in the face on the phone the other day?" (and NO, no one will necessarily know that he's joking, especially if they don't know him personally - that's stupid to talk about in a setting like work at all, much less one where you don't know everyone around you personally).
Will the real terrorists please stand up? Yes, you, the one who intentionally works to incite fear in people. And you too.
I'd be interested to hear the NRA's response to this.
This type of thing has been going on since at least the Oklahoma City bombing and I assume it wasn't new even then.
Back then I had given a friend that is interested in making primitive weapons a printout on how to make his own black powder. This was a day or two before the Oklahoma City bombing, he had another friend at work (on of the national labs) that did the same thing and brought it in to him - this was the day after the bombing. A co-worker saw it laying on his desk and decided he was getting ready to blow everything up, called the FBI, and started about a two month long investigation. Obviously it led nowhere.
A few years later someone in our college set off an "incendiary device" (the detectives later told me it was acid and aluminum foil in a plastic jug) and I was, once more, investigated for all sorts of nice things. Again, nothing came of it as there was nothing there. I do not recall now what they accused me of, I assume it would now be "terrorist" but back then there was some other hot-button label for it.
And you might as well have been whatever the most despicable thing you can think of if you were in a gun club during the mid-90's and the great crusade against "militias" (not to mention almost every single incident was somehow their fault). There was almost no one anywhere defending you then - you were an evil gun-toting maniac. It was MUCH more endemic than the current "terrorist" thing - and at least there *are* terrorist out there that want to do us harm even though we are over reacting.
After any event there are people that fly into a panic of stupid things, call someone, and it gets all blown out of proportion. Most law enforcement thinks it stupid and - like the Duke non-rape case - you will sometimes get a political position decide it is time to show the people they are "doing something" and you get to be the one screwed. If you are unlucky you get Nifong as the prosecutor, this is the local prosecutor being an ass.
------- Sorry about the spelling, I suffer from two problems. Dyslexia makes it difficult to spell well, lazy makes it
everyone is a terroristic threat, except those who aren't.
Oh I feel so much safer now....
Surely he has a case for unfair dismissal...
If guns are legal to own, then they have absoloutely no right to fire him for buying, or intending to buy one.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
...and here we are back in the McCarthy era again.
Has anyone called him a communist yet?
immediately after columbine, back when I was in middle school (I guess that was quite a while ago) I remember a lot of kids getting expelled because for no particular reason other than that they were problem kids, had ADD, were loners, acted out a little, etc. If they made the administration nervous, they'd chuck them out the door. School and government bureaucrats tend to fear people who stick out more than anyone else.
In context it's kind of hilarious because our school had a problem with gang violence (it was the suburbs and middle school, so this wasn't exactly the stuff you see in the movies, but it was pretty bad), that the administration more or less ignored.
His "interview" with the detectives will now show up on every background check, which are common with job applications, whether disclosed or not, so his ability to earn a living has been compromised. He will also end up flagged for airline travel, be abused and humiliated by TSA every time he flies, so his freedom to travel has been compromised. It is possible that his passport, if any, could be revoked or refused renewal, as well. The grounds for that are not disclosed, so it's hard to tell. Apartment rental agreements also often include background checks, so he may not be able to live where he chooses. This man will be "punished" for the rest of his life, regardless of whether he is ever arrested, or not. Even if he is arrested and is judged "not guilty", the record of his arrest is not expunged, nor is his cost of defense reimbursed, so he is still punished. Meanwhile, the persons who set this upon him walk unimpeded. If there were any justice, they would rot in hell for violating the Commandment against false witness.
...), should we all stop having them? Get over it.
"Better safe than sorry" is an expression of cowardice. Life is a series of risks beginning with the genetic selection at conception. Given the odds that some child conceived, somewhere, will have a genetic defect (not to mention prenatal difficulties, post-natal trauma, disease,
Let's face it, ideas and presumed intentions are becoming criminal. George Orwell called it.
We are all just people.
he had it coming.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
In many government agencies, a large percentage of the new people in upper management are hoplophobes. They've never served in the military or lived in an area where gun ownership is common and accepted. They've probably never touched a firearm in their whole life. This causes problems when they are asked to make rational decisions about personnel or firearms policy and their kneejerk reaction is that "guns are evil" and "all gun owners are potential mass murderers". Instead of thinking, they let their fear dictate their actions.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Matt doesn't draw them, Ian Mconville draws them. www.machall.com
Sounds like you need some sort of timeout on how long this sort of stuff hangs around. In the UK convictions (except in certain situations) expire after a while. And he wasn't even arrested. How would that end up being noticeable when he's flying? And when he's renting etc - do members of the public have access to police records so that every chat is noted? Can I just phone the police in the States and pretend to be a landlord/prospective employer etc and find out every time you've been pulled over for having a faulty brake light?
...), should we all stop having them? Get over it.
> Given the odds that some child conceived, somewhere, will have a genetic defect (not to mention prenatal difficulties, post-natal
> trauma, disease,
No, but we should investigate potential threats to my safety. That's sort of what I pay tax for.
Also, he is a contract employee who can be released at any time for any reason, even moreso than a normal at-will employee who also can be released at any time for any reason.
Only within the terms of his contract. Sorry, just couldn't resist after you made "contract" italics and got all righteous. "Contract employee" does not mean "company's little bitch", and in fact, a contract worker can have more protection from sudden termination. Most of us are "at will" employees, and simply having something in your contract that prohibits your employer from firing you for no reason, gives you more rights. If worded reasonably (ie not "I AM UNFIREABLE FOR A YEAR!"), you MAY get that concession.
If you don't like being an at-will employee: get fired for no reason, sue, and get it far up enough to MAYBE be heard by the supreme court, because they're the ones who set the horrendous precedent in the first place. You don't have a prayer of getting legislation even presented, much less making it past committee, because of all the lobbying.
Please help metamoderate.
This whole mess proves that America doesn't care about security. But it does show that the securrorists have won.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
... I can only advise him to first obtain legal counsel to seek to address his firing, if he really wants to. The NRA can be asked to assist, but frankly, as others have pointed out, his being a contractor diminishes his chances of getting his job back, since he can be released for any reason whatsoever. And to pursue the point further, would he really want to go back to that job?
/. while at work :-). These are balanced against freedom of speech... and that's about it. Technically, it has nothing to do with the right to keep and bear arms. IMO, his options are pretty limited, if non-existent, and the success path is not clear.
This situation is problematic for him from several angles: posing a terroristic threat, creating a hostile work environment, not to mention goofing off and talking about your hobby wasting company time (you know, like cruising
Generally, I advise my students to limit discussing this very fun hobby to when they know they can talk without being overheard. This is not an attempt to censor folks, but a recommendation to be prudent, realizing that not everyone shares our enthusiasm, and that sadly, there is an aura of fear that grows among the more fearful when firearms are casually discussed.
Fortunately for me, where I work, many of us are NRA members and we have been told that people feel safer with us around. I take it as a compliment, and do my best to educate the ignorant but willing to learn (but then again, there are those who choose to remain ignorant, and you can only go so far with them). I specialize in teaching those who've never held a firearm before in their lives.
Science never settles, never rests.
> In the UK convictions (except in certain situations) expire after a while.
But the records are kept forever. "Never know when you might need them." What do you think happens to all of the motorway and street-corner camera and sound records? Automatically purged after no crime is reported for a year, or something?
> How would that end up being noticeable when he's flying?
TSA is a government agency. He'll be pulled from the security line for "special attention", if he's (a potential terrorist, remember) allowed to fly at all.
> And when he's renting etc - do members of the public have access to police records so that every chat is noted? Can I just phone the police in the States and pretend to be a landlord/prospective employer etc and find out every time you've been pulled over for having a faulty brake light?
Through licensed civilian investigators, yes. I did a contract for a computer security company that (reasonably, IMO) did a background check. Since the contract was executed in California, I was entitled to, and received, a copy of the results.
> No, but we should investigate potential threats to my safety.
How could any person with functional faculties regard this as a threat?
Even if so, the investigation itself triggers so many unconscionable consequences for the subject that it makes the rest of the citizenry complicit in state terrorism (mild in this case, so far, but an endpoint in the range of actions to the torture and murder of the presumably innocent until proven guilty that are all justified by the same excuses).
First of all, from my understanding (IANAL) of the law, assault would require that the comments be directed at a particular person. The person in question was eavesdropping on the conversation, and therefore could in no way be construed as a potential target of the comment -- and that's forgetting the context of the conversation, which was obviously "I don't want a weapon, I want to shoot targets, so I bought a weapon that's harder to screw up and kill someone with."
Sorry, you've got to have a screw loose to construe that conversation as threatening, assuming that the quotes are accurate.
Secondly, I've heard worse in the workplace on many occasions, and we all laugh and move on. If you're so scared of your own shadow that you can't stop and think about it for a minute before running to mommy, then you're part of the problem, not the solution. You are what the real terrorists are trying to create.
--S
-- sigs cause cancer.
The funny thing is that the real terrorists will laugh at him being searched by TSA.
As a poster above mentioned, the securrorists have won.
No, seriously, I just come here for the articles.
McCarthyism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism looks likes its alive and well in the Good'ol USA
There's nothing a good lawsuit can't fix!
you had me at #!
People who are afraid are generally the bigger problem, not just with guns, but with anything. Fear is unreasoning.
In the case of guns, people who were brought up in areas where they were normal (I am not talking inner cities...), are generally taught firearm safety and respect for weapons. They are tools, like chainsaws, sticks of dynamite, kitchen knives, and scalpels. They all have their uses and their dangers. People who hate guns and are afraid of them do not see them as tools (for any use) and do not see any other side than fear.
I respect people who do not like guns and want nothing to do personally with guns, just as I respect vegetarians (especially as I was one for a while). I respect people who are concerned about guns, crime, and gun safety. I do not respect people who hate guns, who hate omnivores, who are rampant homophobes, etc. There are a lot of those around. Oddly, a lot of the people who hate guns, seem to want to enforce a ban of them *with guns*. I don't think they understand the disconnect. Why is Policeman Bob a priori and *always* more trustworthy than Farmer Joe? Why think Policeman Bob is always going to be closer to hand when someone else with a gun shows up? They weren't there at VA Tech. Guns exist. Hating them doesn't change that. Learning a bit about them at least provides an understanding of the problem and might be a small piece of the solution.
Note, that on the other side, it is not "gun-lovers" that is a problem, it is people with other kinds of unreasoning fears, such as (rabid) fear of government oppression, rabid racial hatred, rabid isolationism, and extreme fundamentalism. Poking the beehive with a stick (actually oppressing them) just makes things worse. There are actually reasonable people in the middle.
...from the inside out.
The levels of crazy in the USA just keep skyrocketing. Everything seems to create hysteria, panic, and endless problems for ordinary, innocent people.
The country is fubared.
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Additional words : t h e H E L L o u t t a t h e m
Uh, those are letters. They are only words when they are, like, stuck together.
I hope this helps.
The ticket says Anderton, oh shit... If you don't get google "minority report" and "P K Dick."
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
His interview with police will not show up on any background check, of any kind, anywhere, ever.
He will not be on any TSA, or any other, watch lists (and wouldn't be even if he was convicted of a crime - WTF? Oh, you're one of those people who think "terroristic threat" somehow is equated with "terrorism", even though they're utterly and completely different concepts, and unrelated).
He will not be "punished", for anything, and the only way anyone will know about this is because of the life it will have on blogs, and no one in any official capacity, save for possibly the individual detectives who talked to him about it remembering with their own minds, will have any knowledge of it.
I can't believe how wrong your entire post was, and that it got modded up to boot.
This is long. You may want to skip it. It's kind of a rant.
I honestly have to assume that at least some people who are afraid of guns and gun owners watch a hell of a lot of television. It's also fairly interesting the amount of stereotyping which goes on unchallenged about gun owners and their motivations. In many cases the people who routinely stereotype gun owners are the same ones who get bent out of shape when they, themselves, are stereotyped in some way.
My gun has killed a few hundred soda cans.
That's it.
All of the time and energy that could be spent actually trying to do something to address the completely fucked way this culture has come to regard and often glorify violence is spent in this bizarrely misguided struggle to take guns away from the people least likely to abuse them, and then money and time spent fighting these same efforts - money that could be used for gun safety education or some other effort to address the disturbing turn this country has taken in the past few years. I *am* afraid. I am afraid of the complete lack of ethics or sense of citizenship - by which I mean membership in and ownership of a society - that people seem to feel. I watch people litter and tag their own communities, pissing in the proverbial same river they drink from. It makes no sense to me. I certainly do not think that violence *isn't* a problem or that violence is over-hyped. There's a problem in the US, and it needs addressing - we have become an ugly, decadent culture, somehow...
But the guns follow; they certainly do not lead. If that was the case, we would have had the problems we have now a hundred years ago.
But the tone of this debate isn't helping. I admit that I contribute to it because I get wound up, insulted, and feel threatened sometimes by things I hear others advocate which would directly impact me, personally.
Most disturbing is the sanctimonious "I am so incredibly enlightened" attitude that some people who have an agenda against gun owners seem to have. In particular, this is vexing coming from the Left, who will (rightly) point to the abuses of this administration and its taste for police-state style surveillance measures against its own citizens, the illegal detention of people they refuse to charge with a crime, phony wars fought under completely false pretexts, and so on. And yet they will, in the end, suggest to you that they are entirely comfortable with this government having a completely monopoly on guns. In the end, even the loudest critics of government, would not want to be far from the safety of its embrace. Which is revolting to me, personally, but there it is.
There are people who, even after all of the incompetence, malfeasance, corruption, and crass cruelty of this administration, still trust them more than they do their neighbors. It really bothered me to watch the gun confiscation that went on in New Orleans, even when something that everyone said was impossible happened - and civilization broke down completely. There were few police around at all, but there were enough, apparently, to take guns from homeowners and residents, leaving them at the mercy of looters and criminals. This scenario was, until Katrina, a supposedly paranoid hypothetical that people claimed time and time again would not - and could not - happen in modern America. And yet, it did, and the police did the absolute worst thing they could (The NRA actually sued over this, and won).
If you ask me who we should really be afraid of, it's not peaceable gun owners. It's people who are paranoid and afraid of the freedoms of others. It's not just the serious, organized, politically active gun control advocates either - it's the people who think all homosexuals are potential pedophiles, or people who want to control what you can read or watch or listen to. It's the person in the room who wants all conversations sanitized because someone *might* be offended by something being discussed. Its the busybodies who report their neighbors to H