Released from a gag order regarding a federal investigation into a silly comment
techdirt.com
techdirt.com
It means the thought crossed your mind with enough strength for you to post it. In almost all cases that's a big nothing, but it's a tiny breadcrumb that might start to look like something if there are a lot of them, or if you were to rant on about it in a thread. Its interesting to think about automating searches for actual threats or patterns that might be indicators.
For an example (a silly one so people don't make a useless tangent arguing irrelevant details), if I for some reason believed that all Chevrolet drivers were fanatics and psychotics, and after someone made a disparaging comment about Chevrolet vehicles, I might say "I wouldn't be surprised if Chevy drivers assaulted someone over this". This doesn't mean I think that should happen, as it's an expression of what I think other people might do. It also doesn't actually express that other people might do this, because my mental model of those people is obviously incorrect. The only thing you can actually infer from that statement is what I think about that subgroup of people, whether I'm one of them or not, and that's just opinion.
> it means the thought crossed your mind...might start to look like something if there are a lot of them
This doesn't make any sense. Thinking about worst case scenarios is normal. The person who is going to rob you is the one person who is definitely not going to tell you in advance that you're going to be robbed.
At the other end of the spectrum, it seems that people who go online and rant about how someone should shoot the President or cut a judge's brake lines or whatever are the least likely to follow through. They aren't exactly the movers and shakers of civilization, more likely just thoughtless kids or random loudmouths. Wasting law enforcement time on nonspecific threats is the sort of thing a government that has too much power tends to do.
Did he not say exactly what he was going to do, then do it?
I don't see what scale has to do with it.
I also don't see how an absolute statement like "The person who is going to rob you is the one person who is definitely not going to tell you in advance that you're going to be robbed." can be believed. It only takes one counter example.
This is a thread about anticipating crimes based on online commentary, something that could absolutely have flagged the Christchurch massacre.
Yes. The point being, he wrote a manifesto, not a vaguely-ominous sounding tweet.
Seems you know this background and motivation well. Since it perfectly fits the definition of terrorism, why won't you call him a terrorist? Is it because he isn't brown?
Beautiful. For anyone not familiar with Mr White, his blog is worth a read. I can't imagine someone I'd rather not face off against as a gov't official making spurious demands.
[0] https://www.popehat.com [1] https://popehat.substack.com
"This website's agitating negative feelings towards the Federal judiciary! Let's tie them up for three months. It'll fester in their staff's minds. Maybe they'll see it's easier to say nothing in future..."
It's intimidation. I hope they push back harder than just writing about the incident. The initial investigation was entirely meritless.
They'd probably shrug both off, but I guess there's an outside chance you get a good judge who sees right through the BS and orders them to fess up.
The article describes what is factually a conspiracy. That’s what the word conspiracy means, it’s just become a word people use to try and undermine people or their arguments without providing any substantive criticism for them. As the commenter does above.
If you are insisting that a conspiracy is a secretive action towards a common end, then the US Marshals and TechDirt are the colluding parties based upon the information provided. The person who made the post is the stated target. That being said, the definition of conspiracy involves illegal or immoral actions. There is no evidence of the former in the article. The latter is largely an individual judgement call, yet there is no evidence that data exchanged hands (simply that it was preserved for a longer duration than it normally would have) so I trouble seeing it as immoral.
Calling or implying that the US Marshals' actions with respect to TechDirt a conspiracy is a large part of the reason why people dismiss conspiracies as fictional.
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/conspire
It’s usually used to describe something secretive, or illegal, or wrongful on some level (and anything can be considered wrongful or harmful depending on your perspective), but that’s certainly not a required condition by definition.
Just about everything the government does is by definition part of a conspiracy. Everything the government does in secret is most certainly part of a conspiracy.
The word has just be morphed into having a seperate implied meaning, where people simply describe something as a “conspiracy” or “conspiracy theory” as a way of dismissing a claim or criticism without actually engaging with it on any level. This article describes a conspiracy fact, and as far as I can tell, none of the facts reported in the article are in dispute.
One of the parent commenters postulates a motive, a claim which is dismissed by suggesting that would be a conspiracy. That response lacks any level of substance whatsoever, because it is factually a conspiracy no matter what the motive.
I am thinking if something HAD happened to that particular judge within 90 days of the comment being posted, they would be VERY interested in having a conversation with the commentor
I don't really think techdirt has much to complain about here.
"Hell, eventually somebody might decide that it’s cheaper to pay a hitman to just cut a brake line or something than go through discovery in that judge’s court."
It was in reply to a story about the founder of Silk Road being arrested for, among other things, hiring a hitman. In the Ulbrecht case, the hitman was a FED and was paid by Ulbrecht after giving staged photographic evidence of a murder.
It looks like they were investigating whether this person was doing anything in furtherance of such a plot beyond just angry comments and wanted them to keep quiet while they investigated.
you think, perchance, they were actually looking at multiple comments from multiple sources presenting a pattern of behaviour by some pseudononymous potential plotter?
people are so self centered and ignorant of these things,.
In the absence of other evidence, I would say that it is unreasonable to interpret it as a threat. I mean, what's next, arresting people for murdering a video game character on the assumption they would do that in real life?
I think we can all recall at least one recent incident of this happening.
also, its more likely the us marshals were trying to connect the dots on more straightforward threats and this comment ended up in the drag net.
so if you think internet threats are a big deal, then the effort going into documenting those potentiak threats are still important and juzt becausw they observed a false-positive dowsnt mean the us marshalls went overboard.
the end basically just confirms there was nothin in that specific comment.
maybe if they dug deeper, like a journalist would, they would illuminate what the actual broader activities were.
If it's a a dragnet, they aren't calling about every single post in under 24 hours of it occurring unless the investigating team is absolutely gargantuan.
Your explanation really doesn't make sense because it's the wrong one.
But I agree: of all the law enforcement oversteps that we see in this country, this case barely registers.
Unless you have tens or hundreds of thousands for a multiyear lawsuit, you're screwed. I recently had a trooper violate my wife's civil rights. I had a lawyer tell me it was a violation, but it wasnt worth standing up for ourselves because the judges don't care about cases unless there was extensive monetary loss.
This brings up a really big point though. If the lawyers don't want it because they can't make money, and the judges don't want it because it's not important enough, then who stands up for our rights? Do we even really have them if they can be ignored?
What would have happened had they not complied?
In this case, they just sent that "preservation letter" and in the letter said not to alert the user: Techdirt (somewhat reasonably) is portraying that as "effectively" a gag order. They didn't go on even to issue a subpoena here, and so they also didn't go get an actual gag order, but it's something they've been known to do.
> where an administrative subpoena authorized by a Federal or State statute or a Federal or State grand jury subpoena is obtained, delay the notification required under section 2703(b) of this title for a period not to exceed ninety days upon the execution of a written certification of a supervisory official that there is reason to believe that notification of the existence of the subpoena may have an adverse result described in paragraph (2) of this subsection.
This would seem to sync up with what the story said:
> With help from Ken, we soon received a "preservation letter" demanding that we preserve for a period of 90 days "any and all records and other evidence, [...] In addition, the letter effectively gagged us, saying that we were not to disclose the existence of the letter "in any manner that could alert the user" of the account.
https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/reason-magazine-subpoenaed-...
Streisand sings again.
All the same, threatening the judiciary is one of the most anti-social things you can do, and should be strictly policed. I don't know if trawling news comments is an effective way to do that, but I'm glad to know they're making an effort. A few false positives (appropriately handled) is a good sign of sufficiently high sensitivity.
Do you have a source for that beyond "the 1st ammendment"? This feels like the kind of thing that has an exception.
I think "inciting violence" is not covered. Certainly, threats are illegal, not sure how veiled those threats need to be to circumvent that.
They have been mentioned several times in this thread, but you should consult Popehat's writings for in depth breakdowns of what is and is not protected speech.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imminent_lawless_action
Pointing at a person during riots and screaming "Kill that muthafucka now" would almost certainly cross the threshold.
Organizing an unofficial Wannsee conference to plan a genocide of $UNDESIRED_GROUP into details would not, even though the entire event would be a hatefest.
The fact that both are going up is not a good sign. It actually really worries ne now that I think about it.
No, it wasn't. That is a quote by Thomas Jefferson in a letter he wrote about Shay's Rebellion - one man's opinion, not a foundational legal or moral principle, and not every founding father agreed with him. While Jefferson was sympathetic to the spirit of revolution that brought Shay's Rebellion about, he also condemned it as having been the result of ignorance. As is often the case with pithy quotes from the founding fathers, the speaker and their opinions are a lot more nuanced than the quote, stripped of all necessary context, is meant to imply[0].
As to whether an increase in political violence reflects negatively on the citizenry or negatively on the ruling class, Jefferson (a member of the ruling class, mind you) would likely have seen it reflecting negatively on the citizenry, as reading the letter in which the "tree of liberty" quote appears[1], it's clear that Jefferson draws a distinction between the necessity for the potential of rebellion and the commission of political violence itself. In fact, just before the quote you provided, Jefferson says the answer to such rebellions is to "set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them," not to support them on principle.
[0]https://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/tre...
[1]https://www.huffpost.com/entry/thomas-jefferson-and-the_b_27...
As a side note, I would also like to see greater protections for “commercial speech”.
One major issue is that everything is considered so secret that you can't subpoena past complaints even if they contain exculpatory evidence. That's right, they will protect the image of the judiciary even if it means letting an innocent person be found guilty. They reason that secrecy is the best way to preserve public trust in the judicial system. As anyone knows, that's just BS - transparency, or at least allowing subpoenas, would be the best way to ensure the proper actions are being taken.
You can probably tell, but I've had some bad experiences with a magistrate and judge recently. Magistrates in my state aren't even required to be lawyers nor pass the bar...