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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.
It should even protect "someone should take care of him." That should be above investigation.
As always, it depends on the situation.
Suppose I list all the evils of a particular person and I encourage others to go kill that person. Someone in the crowd decides to do so. Having said that, I bear a certain responsibility for inciting. Again, free speech does not absolve me from responsibility for the actions that my speech may have provoked.
I do agree, though, that in some ways, it seems we're trying to "pre-crime" these situations. "Oh, he said that and people could take him seriously and somebody might act on what he said and then there'd be a crime, so let's just nip this in the bud by arresting him now."