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Homeland Security Wants To Subpoena Techdirt Over The Identity Of A Hyperbolic Commenter (boingboing.net)

Posted by BeauHD on from the first-amendment dept.

Techdirt is in hot water with the Department of Homeland Security all thanks to a commenter known as Digger. Techdirt's Tim Cushing published a story about the Hancock County, IN Sheriff's Department officers who stole $240,000 under color of asset forfeiture. In response to the story, Digger wrote, "The only 'bonus' these criminals [the Sheriff's Department officers] are likely to see could be a bullet to their apparently empty skulls." The Department of Homeland Security then contacted Techdirt to ask whom they should send a subpoena to in order to identify Digger. Masnick is worried the subpoena could come with a gag order. "Normally, we'd wait for the details before publishing, but given a very similar situation involving commenters on the site Reason last year, which included a highly questionable and almost certainly unconstitutional gag order preventing Reason from speaking about it, we figured it would be worth posting about it before we've received any such thing," Masnick writes.

4 of 225 comments (clear)

  1. Re: Behind 7 proxies by squiggleslash · · Score: 3, Informative
    In this case, the commentator is not a threat (well, not likely, anyway - that is, no less likely to be a threat than you are.) The quote in TFS is incomplete. It ends with:

    The person wronged probably knows people who know people in low places who'd take on the challenge pro-bono, after a proper "cooling-off" period.

    Basically the commentator was alleging that the person law enforcement "confiscated" property from was violent and linked to organized crime, and would probably arrange for a hit on the officers involved if the law doesn't solve the problem for him.

    Not happy about the support for violence, and if I were a moderator I'd have removed or hidden that comment, but the commentator is not a threat to the officers involved. (Well, unless he's a hitman looking for business ;-)

    --
    You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
  2. Re: They _are_ stasi, version vista by l0n3s0m3phr34k · · Score: 3, Informative

    Most of the time, civil forfeiture doesn't even require any laws to be broken. The charges are brought against the property itself, not the owners. Many cases the "charges" against the actual real humans never go through, but the property is never returned without thousands spent in court to get it back. The police often count on the fact that it costs $5k+ to fight them, so they KNOW that anything stolen under that is "free stuff".

  3. Re: Behind 7 proxies by nbauman · · Score: 4, Informative

    I would like to know what sort of level of verbal threat counts as worthy of investigation to the Absolute Freedom Of Speech people.

    TechDirt cited 2 cases to justify their belief that Digger's statement was rhetorical hyperbole and not a true threat.

    https://www.techdirt.com/artic...

    https://scholar.google.com/sch...
    Rankin v. McPherson, 483 US 378 - Supreme Court 1987

    After hearing of the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan, a black employee of the Constable of Harris County, was fired for saying,

    "yeah, he's cutting back medicaid and food stamps. And I said, yeah, welfare and CETA. I said, shoot, if they go for him again, I hope they get him."

    The Supreme Court decided that the Constable's office could not fire her for making that statement.

    https://scholar.google.com/sch...
    Watts v. United States, 394 US 705 - Supreme Court 1969

    petitioner was convicted of violating a 1917 statute which prohibits any person from "knowingly and willfully . . . [making] any threat to take the life of or to inflict bodily harm upon the President of the United States . . . ."[*] The incident 706*706 which led to petitioner's arrest occurred on August 27, 1966, during a public rally on the Washington Monument grounds.

    According to an investigator for the Army Counter Intelligence Corps who was present, petitioner responded: "They always holler at us to get an education. And now I have already received my draft classification as 1-A and I have got to report for my physical this Monday coming. I am not going. If they ever make me carry a rifle the first man I want to get in my sights is L. B. J." "They are not going to make me kill my black brothers."

  4. Civil forfeiture by fyngyrz · · Score: 3, Informative

    Also, assuming someone does up and spend (at least) $5k to get some lesser amount back, the perpetrators know that nothing else will happen to them. There's no penalty for trying, so hey, why not try?

    Informative graph: Civil forfeiture in the United States amounts to billions of dollars every year.

    --
    I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.