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.

Comments

Behind 7 proxies

[Anonymous Coward]

The only 'bonus' these criminals [the Sheriff's Department officers] are likely to see could be a bullet to their apparently empty skulls.

Re: Behind 7 proxies

[Anonymous Coward]

Most comments like this are just frustrated people venting but sometimes they really are signs of a threat. People who are serious about shooting a pig do not normally say so in public. Sadly our governments are guilty of many of the things they are accused of, and so scared the public will find out, they will make you a criminal to stifle your right to say it.

Re: Behind 7 proxies

[omnichad]

The comment says that someone will probably do it. That's not a threat. If I say that "if Trump is elected President, he'll probably be shot", that's a prediction - not a threat. It's completely protected speech.

Re: Behind 7 proxies

[nbauman]

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."

So....

[Mashiki]

So it looks like "homeland security" should be renamed STASI/NKVD/etc. They appear to be going after people for wrong-think, just like other state security apparatus of yesteryear in various communist countries.

Hyperbolic Commenter TM

[PopeRatzo]

This is the worst thing that ever happened of all time. When I'm president, I'm going to make subpoenas so massive it'll make your head spin. They will be tremendous, tremendous subpoenas.

Re:Hyperbolic Commenter TM

[Dunbal]

And Mexico is going to pay for them!

Re:Hyperbolic Commenter TM

[Cytotoxic]

You guys are all funny and stuff... but let's take a moment away from the snark about a donut-head reality-TV dip-weasle who isn't in charge of anything and recall that this is a story about our actual government running around stomping on your liberties and the constitution right now. Not in some Trump-ruled dystopian future, but in the Patriot Act present. So if we want to spew some snark toward the top of the executive branch, let's look to the guy who is actually in charge.

Very few people in government seem to have any interest in protecting your right to privacy online, or your freedom of speech. Getting deflected into a Team Red vs. Team Blue side-show does nothing to help rein in our leadership. It only provides a distraction while they continue to chisel away at your freedom.

Some of you jokesters are old enough to be able to recognize just how dystopian the present is. You don't even have to go all the way back to black-and-white TV to find an era when "show me your papers" was a popular meme for showing a horrible totalitarian regime. The idea of a government that is always watching its citizens was the cardboard-cutout villain in every action movie and TV show.

And here we are, less than half a lifetime later with a national government that will send agents to initiate a secret investigation about some loudmouth troll on the internet - threatening anyone who even mentions the fact that the government is snooping around with jail time. Holy crap, have we lost our way.

You guys are smart enough and well-informed enough that you should be leading the cries of "to the woodchippers!" instead of laying it off on some doofus who is not only not in power, but is never going to get elected to anything.

Re:Hyperbolic Commenter TM

[Antique Geekmeister]

> Some of you jokesters are old enough to be able to recognize just how dystopian the present is

Some of us are old enough to recognize how much better it's gotten. I'm not quite old enough to remember the McCarthy era, but I do remember the hippie movement and the anti-war protests of the 1960's, and abuses of federal and police power during that era. Technology has made broad searching easier, but it's also made publicly reporting the abuses easier.

The war on drugs asset forfeiture cases are a source of funding for police departments, both honest and corrupt departments. They're a very real problem for honest citizens. But the ability to get information and find out the relevant laws, to fight it in court, has improved tremendously during my adult lifetime.

Steal my money

[krray]

Steal my money under asset bullshit and I may very well put a bullet in your head.

Why even keep logs at all?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you offer anonymous comments? Tell them the IP address is 127.0.0.1 and that's all you know.

Re:Hyperbolic you say

[Anonymous Coward]

Banditry is normally punishable by death. Civil asset forfeiture is banditry.

Since when is speculation considered a threat?

[jenningsthecat]

The original Techdirt comment:

The only "bonus" these criminals are likely to see could be a bullet to their apparently empty skulls.
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.

WTF? Digger is simply speculating that the victim of the forfeiture proceeding might be pissed off enough to go after the terminal kind of revenge. That seems like a reasonable speculation to me, and does not constitute a threat.
However, perhaps more to the point is the comment Digger posted immediately prior to the one quoted in TFS:

Everyone on the government side of this should have grand theft and / or larceny charges filed against them, and double the jail time as it is a slam dunk case.
They did not follow proper procedures, they no longer have the protection or immunity to prosecution normally afforded to government agents.
By failing to follow procedure, they've shown their true colors and should be treated as the criminals that they are.

I suspect the DHS, and whichever other TLAs and LEOs stepped on their own dicks in this case, are more upset about the comment Digger posted first, and are only using the one he posted next as a flimsy excuse to go hunting. Frankly, if they really believe Digger poses or is connected to a threat, then they might as well be the Keystone Cops. And if they DON'T believe in the threat, then they're bullies and thugs. Either way, they all need to be dismissed and barred from any further government jobs.

Re:Hyperbolic you say

[Aighearach]

Yeah, hyperbole saying he'll burn in hell or something is one thing, but threats of violence are not automatically hyberbole. Simply [secretly] not planning to do it, and just saying you will, is not an attempt to communicate exaggeration.

Hyperbole is an exaggerated comment not meant to be taken literally. If you straight out say something threatening, without any clear exaggeration, then it isn't obviously hyperbole. I'm not sure what the source of the "hyperbole" claim even is. Techdirt, I guess? The comment may or may not have been a poorly executed attempt at hyperbole; or it might have been a threat. My advice, if you're making comments that involve the police, and violence, make a clear exaggeration. Don't just deadpan a threat and rely on people trusting that you're a good person and so it just must have been exaggeration.

Threatening to send Voldemort or a Klingon Bird of Prey to wipe them out, that is clear hyperbole. A "bullet to their... skull" is just not obviously hyperbole, especially in the context where firearms are commonly possessed, and in fact a constitutional right. If somebody said that about me, I'd have to start carrying inflatable ninjas in my pocket for protection.

And if you run a website that has comments, expect to get some subpoenas, especially if you don't delete, redact, or otherwise squelch comments describing violence in the context of real humans.