LF: Department Of Justice Uses Grand Jury Subpoena To Identify Anonymous Commenters on a Silk Road Post at Reason.com

Title: Department Of Justice Uses Grand Jury Subpoena To Identify Anonymous Commenters on a Silk Road Post at Reason.com
Source: Popehat
URL Source: http://popehat.com/2015/06/08/depar ... -silk-road-post-at-reason-com/
Published: Jun 9, 2015
Author: Ken White
Post Date: 2015-06-09 15:25:18 by Hondo68
Keywords: None
Views: 493

The United States Department of Justice is using federal grand jury subpoenas to identify anonymous commenters engaged in typical internet bluster and hyperbole in connection with the Silk Road prosecution. DOJ is targeting Reason.com, a leading libertarian website whose clever writing is eclipsed only by the blowhard stupidity of its commenting peanut gallery.

Why is the government using its vast power to identify these obnoxious asshats, and not the other tens of thousands who plague the internet?

Last week, a source provided me with a federal grand jury subpoena. The subpoena ¹, issued by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, is directed to Reason.com in Washington, D.C.. The subpoena commands Reason to provide the grand jury "any and all identifying information"² Reason has about participants in what the subpoena calls a "chat."

Several commenters on the post found the sentence unjust, and vented their feelings in a rough manner. The grand jury subpoena specifies their comments and demands that Reason.com produce any identifying information on them:

The grand jury subpoena specifies that it is seeking "evidence in regard to an alleged violation of: Title 18, United States Code, Section 875." In other words, the U.S. Attorney's Office is looking for evidence of violations of the federal law against interstate threats. That's the same statute that was at issue in the Supreme Court's decision in Elonis v. U.S. last week, in which the Court decided that to be a "true threat" in violation of Section 875, the speaker must have some level of knowledge or intent that the hearer will take the threat seriously.

Since the comments are about a judge, if they are "true threats" they could conceivably also violate Title 18, U.S.C., section 115(a), which prohibits threatening federal judges.

Second, if they are not true threats on their face, does the U.S. Attorney's Office still have the power to use a grand jury subpoena to identify the commenters?

Third, even if the U.S. Attorney's Office has the power, should it have that power?

"True Threats" are those threats that are outside the protection of the First Amendment; they are not mere political hyperbole or bluster. For instance, in 1967, when Mr. Watts said that if he were drafted the first man he'd want in his rifle sights was President Lyndon B. Johnson, that wasn't a true threat: it was conditional political hyperbole. In other words, it was mere angry bluster of the sort no reasonable person would take to be a serious threat.³

What of these comments on Reason.com, then? I submit that they are very clearly not true threats — that this is not even a close call.

True threat analysis always examines context. Here, the context strongly weighs in favor of hyperbole. The comments are on the Internet, a wretched hive of scum, villainy, and gaseous smack talk.⁴ The are on a political blog, about a judicial-political story; such stories are widely known to draw such bluster. They are specifically at Reason.com, a site with excellent content but cursed with a group of commenters who think such trash talk is amusing.

The "threats" do not specify who is going to use violence, or when. They do not offer a plan, other than juvenile mouth-breathing about "wood chippers" and revolutionary firing squads. They do not contain any indication that any of the mouthy commenters has the ability to carry out a threat. Nobody in the thread reacts to them as if they are serious. They are not directed to the judge by email or on a forum she is known to frequent.

Therefore, even the one that is closest to a threat — "It's judges like these that will be taken out back and shot" isn't a true threat. It lacks any of the factors that have led other courts to find that ill-wishes can be threats. For instance, the Second Circuit upheld white supremacist Hal Turner's threats conviction when he said that three federal judges deserved to die.

There are no factors like that in this case. Consider this purported "threat":

Is it the position of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York that a reasonable reader would conclude that "Rhywun" is in league with the Dark Ones, able to bring into existence a hot place in the afterlife for an errant judge? Ridiculous. If that's a threat, then so is "go to Hell."

So: the government has used the grand jury to subpoena a news magazine for the identity of anonymous commenters who have engaged in political rhetoric that is clearly protected by the First Amendment.

Regrettably, The Government Can Probably Abuse the Grand Jury Subpoena Power This Way

The grand jury's investigative power — exercised nominally on its behalf by the U.S. Attorney's office — is nearly unchecked. It's not like a stop-and-frisk or search; the government doesn't need reasonable suspicion or probable case to use grand jury subpoenas to seek information. In general, one can only challenge grand jury subpoenas when they are irrationally burdensome (like demanding that Apple produce every document about iPhones in its possession) or for an improper purpose (like using the grand jury to improve trial evidence after an indictment has already been returned) or, very rarely, when privacy or constitutional issues are in play.

Reason.com — or the anonymous commenters — could file an action in federal court seeking to quash this subpoena. We know how that would likely come out, because someone recently did it. During the 2012 election cycle a juvenile but prolific Twitter personality named "Mr. X" tweeted “I want to fuck Michelle Bachman in the ass with a Vietnam era machete.” The government subpoenaed Twitter for Mr. X's identifying information; Mr. X filed a motion to quash the subpoena. The United States District Court for the District of Columbia rejected the motion.

The court began in promising fashion by saying that Mr. X had a protected interest in anonymity:

But here's where Mr. X learned the difference between individual rights and government power. The court conceded that the tweet was almost certainly not an actionable true threat:

Yet the court found that the government had a "compelling interest" in investigating all threats, however ridiculous:

The court conceded that this could produce absurd results, but hand-waved that concern away:

Should The Government Exercise Power To Identify Anonymous People Over Clear Bluster?

The D.C. court was right — the government won't start issuing grand jury subpoenas every time someone writes "my husband left underwear on the bathroom floor again; I could just kill him." But they won't because they don't have the time, inclination, or the resources.

Instead, they will use their discretion to decide when to bring their vast power into play to pierce the anonymity of internet assholes (or for that matter, people who may have valid points on political matters but express them in the wrong fashion). That discretion is much more likely to be exercised where, as here, the person being trash-talked is a powerful federal judge in the district of that U.S. Attorney's Office, a judge that the office must appear before every damned day. The power is more likely to be exercised on behalf of establishment political figures, not outsiders. The power is more likely to be exercised when it is consistent with the politics of the administration.

The D.C. court implies that we can trust federal prosecutors to use the grand jury power to pierce the anonymity of political firebrands even when their rhetoric is clearly protected by the First Amendment. That the government will investigate anonymous political rhetoric in even-handed fashion, whether that rhetoric comes from a magazine known to be friendly to the government and its establishment, or one that is, like Reason, prone to question both.

Is A Reference To Fargo, On The Fucking Internet, Something That Should Concern The Government?

In the Coen Brothers film Fargo, some very bad people feed another very bad person into a woodchipper. To destroy his body. This is a famous scene. This is a famous movie. It won academy awards. It's clearly the basis for one of the comments identified in the Reason subpoena. This is the sort of internet comment, a "meme" as the kids call it, that our government is investigating.

It's as though the Department of Justice convened a grand jury to probe the criminal nexus between gun-leaving and cannoli-taking, based on Reddit comments.

A Note On The U.S. Attorney's Office Reaction To My Inquiries About This Story

On Friday, June 5th, the day after a source sent me the subpoena, I decided to call Niketh Velamoor, the Assistant U.S. Attorney who issued the subpoena. My purpose was to tell him that I would not print the subpoena if he could convince me that he had specific evidence demonstrating that to do so would put a life in danger. Mr. Velamoor — who said he could not discuss grand jury investigations, which is the standard AUSA statement — said that it was unreasonable to expect the government to be able to prove such a threat before it identified the commenters. That answered my question on the point.

Mr. Velamoor was suspicious and defensive. At one point he told me that he "believed" that there was a gag order prohibiting this subpoena from being released by its recipients, and that whoever gave it to me must have violated that order, and that he would be "looking into it" and how I got it.

Such gag orders do exist. However, I note that two days earlier on June 2, 2015, Mr. Velamoor signed the cover letter on the subpoena, which contained the Department of Justice's standard language about secrecy:

In other words, two days before he told me that he believed there was a gag order on the subpoena, Mr. Velamoor told Reason.com that it was not required to keep the subpoena secret.

Perhaps Mr. Velamoor misspoke. Perhaps Mr. Velamoor misremembered. Perhaps Mr. Velamoor didn't secure the gag order until after he issued the subpoena.

Or perhaps Mr. Velamoor, bless his heart, was lying in an attempt to intimidate me.

In any case, Mr. Velamoor has provided me with no such order, despite a request.

Whatever the answer, consider this: Mr. Velamoor, and government attorneys like him, will be the ones deciding whether the federal government will use the grand jury to pierce the anonymity of your comments. No doubt in some cases they will exercise that power on genuinely frightening threats. But other times will be like this one, where the government subpoenaed the identity of people indulging in crass but obvious bluster.

If, like most of us, you're a lawyer with lawyer-friends and "a swarm of asshole lawbloggers" (Yes, I have such a swarm, and I'm KING BEE!) willing to stand at your back to defend your right to use silly hyperbole in criticizing government officials, it probably doesn't matter at all.

Or maybe you're nice people. You use the internet to check email, which allows you to serve customers in a better fashion. You never comment on matters of public concern. Your email signature reads:

But some of you aren't. You may have opinions, even strong opinions, but you're lower forms of life, maggots, pukes, nothing but grabasstic pieces of amphibian shit. You aren't lawyers, ready and prepared to defend yourself from the Very Special Hell that is a federal investigation of statements like:

Dumb creatures that you are, you might even write something in the heat of the moment, while commenting on a charged political issue on Facebook, or Twitter, or Reason, without phrasing it properly:

See how far that gets YOU, dumb brute, when you're summoned by a wet-behind-the-ears mutton-headed Assistant United States Attorney to answer to the Grand Jury for the Southern District of New York after your Facebook comment to the effect that Eli Manning should defenestrated through a plate glass window because the Giants are a piece of shit team that will never win another Super Bowl as long as that piece of shit Eli Manning, who should be defenestrated through a plate glass window, is quarterback.

(I have it on good authority that Preet Bharara, United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, is a big Giants fan who frequently attends parties with Eli Manning. Be careful.)

Or how much it will cost you to hire a lawyer to defend yourself against an obviously meritless investigation, for speaking your mind in a manner that no one, except a wet-behind-the-ears mutton-headed Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, who should be defenestrated through a plate glass window for wasting taxpayer dollars on a frivolous investigation of mere internet braggadocio and hyperbole, would read as anything other than mere internet braggadocio and hyperbole. about the wrong people. People like Eli Manning, or a federal judge who issued an incredibly harsh sentence in a very political case?

Or, even if there's no grand jury subpoena to you, what will it cost you when two FBI agents in black sunglasses, with all the warmth and good humor of an unmarked grave, show up at your place of work and tell the receptionist they need to talk to you, in a private room, "just to clear some things up"?

I understand that Reason, on advice of counsel, may not be able to comment on these questions. I invite other journalists left and right to do so, because it can, and will, happen to you. All it takes is one presidential election.

Of course, Reason and "Rhywun" may be under a gag order asserted on the "because I said so" non-existent authority of a wet-behind-the-ears mutton-headed Assistant United States Attorney, for whom a special place should be reserved in Hell, so don't expect answers.

But ask whether that's an internet, or for that matter a country, in which you wish to live.

The subpoena is in the form in which I received it, except that I printed it and re-scanned it and redacted the direct phone line of the Assistant U.S. Attorney who issued it. ▲
The subpoena specifies that "identifying information" includes:
1. Subscriber/Account information, if any
2. Associated addressees, email addressees, telephone number(s)
3. IP addressees associated with the postings
4. Billing information to include credit card/bank information, if any
5. Associated devices connected to the user. ▲
It's a shame the Supreme Court didn't decide what exactly does constitute a true threat in last week's Elonis decision, but that battle will be fought another day. ▲
In the somewhat related context of defamation, many courts have found that statements on the internet are less likely to be taken as assertions of true fact and more likely to be taken as mere opinion or hyperbole. Chaker v. Mateo, 209 Cal.App.4th 1138 (2012) (affirming anti-SLAPP order where online insults were properly understood as opinion; surveying California cases establishing that online expression more likely to be taken as opinion than fact); Nicosia v. De Rooy, 72 F.Supp.2d 1093 (N.D. Cal. 1999) (granting anti-SLAPP motion and motion to dismiss where “readers are less likely to view statements as assertions of fact” in context of web site’s claims of misconduct). ▲

Need to cut funding for the government by about 90%. It's an out of control monster consuming America's liberty. (2 images)