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