NJ Blogger Fights for Anonymous Free Speech

Ponca City, We Love You writes "A New Jersey blogger is fighting for his right to blog anonymously and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has asked a Superior Court judge in New Jersey to preserve the blogger's free speech rights as he faces legal threats from local government officials. On June 13, 2007, the New Jersey Township of Manalapan filed a malpractice suit against its former attorney Stuart Moskovitz, alleging misconduct regarding the Township's purchase of polluted land in 2005. The decision to file suit was met by a lively debate in the regional press and among local bloggers. One blogger who was particularly critical of the Township was datruthsquad. Attorneys for the Township issued a subpoena to Google demanding that the identity of this anonymous critic be turned over, along with datruthsquad's contact information, blog drafts, e-mails, and 'any and all information related to the blog.' Despite repeated requests from EFF to explain how this could be anything other than an attempt to out a vocal critic, attorneys for the Township have refused to withdraw the subpoena and informed EFF that it can go to court to object to the subpoena. In a motion to quash the subpoena, EFF has asked the court to block the township [PDF] in its attempt to uncover the identity of 'daTruthSquad' and allow the blogger to continue to write about this or any other issue without being forced to identity him or herself."

Comments

END MODERATOR ABUSE

[Taco Meat]

I have again been the victim of moderator abuse http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=366293&cid=21424075. MOD me up to correct this injustice.

Too many moderators use Insightful as "I agree". Too many moderators fall for unoriginal groupthink and mod it up. People complain about trolls, but the REAL line noise on slashdot comes from the posts modded +4 or +5 that contribute NOTHING to an intelligent discussion. You can't filter that out, and even if you have your thresholds set high, you still see all the stupid stuff that you've already seen. That's why digg sucks and will never be anything but a place for 1338 high-skool haxx0rs. And it's happening here. So I used this account to call shenanigans on sucky posts. I getted modded into oblivion for pointing out truth. I guess that's how it goes. Most of you are a bunch of mindless sheeple.

One way to fix this: I think Slashdot should give IQ tests to all would-be moderators. That would ensure most of the ramshackle pseudo-intellectuals who get mod points would be replaced by people who can actually read the moderator guidelines and adhere to them.