Libertarian magazine and weblog Reason hasn’t been able to talk about — or even acknowledge the existence of — a gag order set in place after a grand jury subpoenaed to learn the identity of some people who commented on one of its stories.
But the magazine successfully persuaded the U.S. Attorney’s Office to lift the gag on June 19, and Reason’s Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch wasted no time in dissecting their strange ordeal.
You’re probably familiar with the story by now: Gillespie posted a blog critical of a judge’s harsh sentencing of a man convicted of selling contraband over the Internet. Most visitors agreed with Gillespie’s take, and they shared their disapproval of the judge’s heavy hand in the comments section that accompanied the article.
A few commenters said some generally violent-sounding things about what ought to happen to judges like District Judge Katherine Forrest, who handed former Silk Road operator Ross Ulbricht to a life sentence.
Reason recounted the offending comments last week:
U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara subpoenaed all of the identifying information we had about the authors of such comments as, “Its (sic) judges like these that should be taken out back and shot.” And, “Why waste ammunition? Wood chippers get the message across clearly. Especially if you feed them in feet first.” This last comment is a well-known Internet reference to the Coen brothers’ movie Fargo.
The subpoena also covered such obviously harmless comments as: “I hope there is a special place in hell reserved for that horrible woman,” and “I’d prefer a hellish place on Earth be reserved for her as well.”
The comments are hyperbolic, in questionable taste — and fully within the norms of Internet commentary.
It’s worth stressing that, under established legal precedent, Reason.com (like any other website) is generally not legally responsible for reader comments posted at our site. Still, the chilling effect on Reason and our commenters is tangible. It takes time, money and resources to challenge, or even simply to comply with, such intrusive demands.
That last paragraph is crucial. Law enforcement doesn’t have to charge you with a crime in order to extract its pound of flesh. And government agencies enjoy broad powers of selective application when deciding where to aim its legal powers.
Gillespie opened up a bit more about the affair Thursday in an opinion piece at The Daily Beast. He persuasively argues that the government’s handling of the case — indeed, its targeting of Reason in the first place — had nothing to do with an urgent concern for Forrest’s safety, and everything to do with muzzling its critics.
Nobody at Reason is in legal trouble; they were only asked to comply with a court order nobody at the magazine saw coming. Sound like no big deal?
“Getting a subpoena is like ‘only’ getting arrested. It’s a massive disruption to anyone’s routine and should be reserved for moments when, you know, there’s actually something worthy of serious investigation,” Gillespie writes:
[H]ere’s the thing us non-lawyers might think of first: To the extent that the feds actually thought these were serious plans to do real harm, why the hell would they respond with a slow-moving subpoena whose deadline was days away? By spending five minutes doing the laziest, George-Jetson-style online “research” (read: Google and site searches), they would have found publicly available info on some of the commenters. I’m talking things like websites and Google+ pages. One of the commenters had literally posted thousands of comments at Reason.com, from which it is clear that he (assuming it is a he) is not exactly a threat to anyone other than common decency.
But that’s your tax dollars at work, costing a reputable, award-winning website — albeit one that is sharply critical of government when it comes to snooping in the boardroom and the bedroom — time and money to comply with a subpoena for non-threatening readers. Even worse, the feds are doing the same to readers who may or may not have any resources to help them comply with legal proceedings that can go very wrong very quickly.
Gillespie also points out something that understandably doesn’t occur to a lot of people: not every media outlet shares these kinds of stories, post facto, with the public:
[C]hew on this: You’re only reading about this case because the subpoena became public after we disseminated it against the government’s wishes (and before it could get a gag order against us), and because we later got the gag order lifted. There’s every reason to believe that various publications, social media sites, and other platforms are getting tens of thousands of similar requests a year. How many of those requests are simply fulfilled without anyone knowing anything about them?
And he’s only talking about “legitimate” subpoenas that emanate from the judicial system we know. Add to that all the secret subpoenas (and the mandatory gag orders that accompany them) the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court issues every year, and it’s a wonder that media employers don’t just dismiss those on staff who most loudly criticize the government. Getting rid of those types would make for a lot less hassle.
The post The Feds’ subpoena, gag order in Reason case were all about stifling dissent — not saving lives appeared first on Personal Liberty.
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