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?
Because these twerps mouthed off about a judge.
Last week, a source provided me with a federal grand jury subpoena. The subpoena1, 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.”
The “chat” in question is a comment thread on Nick Gillespie’s May 31, 2015 article about Ross “Dread Pirate Roberts” Ulbricht’s plea for leniency to the judge who would sentence him in the Silk Road prosecution. That plea, we know now, failed, as Ulbricht received a life sentence, with no possibility of parole.
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:
Read the whole thing, especially pay attention to this little exchange
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:
The Government hereby requests that you voluntarily refrain from disclosing the existence of the subpoena to any third party. While you are under no obligation to comply with our request, we are requesting you not to make any disclosure in order to preserve the confidentiality of the investigation and because disclosure of the existence of this investigation might interfere with and impede the investigation.
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.
They will target political speech.
Does that make you feel safer?
The IRS took point in the 2012 election cycle to muffle or shut down speech that Obama and Friends found inconvenient to their Fundamental Transformation Agenda (aka naked power).
Regardless of who finally runs as GOP nominee, count on other alphabet agencies to look at tossing subpoenas, investigations and any or all administrative actions against any independent, non-Leftist organization supporting issues that may annoy Hillary.
And the media will be right there with the cameras and headlines to help.
It is often said, “we are a nation of laws, not of men.” That is true, provided that citizens accept two things. The first is the concept of finality, where people agree to live peaceably with the resolution of disputes, whether civil or criminal. That requires the second thing: a belief that, regardless of the result, the process was fair and applied equally without regard to the identity or opinions of the disputants.
Sadly, more and more we are seeing the erosion of those beliefs, and it begins when the the process becomes a tool or a means to achieve a political or social end and not merely a mechanism for achieving finality in the resolution of individual disputes.
Process as display, media as grooming.
…“we are a nation of laws, not of men.”
Time Was
The Rule Of Law died some time ago.
It had been ailing for quite a while, but The Jarrett Junto put it out of it’s ‘misery’, once and for all.
We have been living in a post-Constitutional nation, where The Rule Of Whim is now the ‘Law Of The Land’.
What Popehat describes is not surprising at all. If the side of Good prevails in this particular case, that will be the surprise.
Yet, it will only be a fleeting moment of Sanity in a world gone Mad, turned upside down.
The American Republic is dead – get used to it and accept the Reality. Any talk of The Rule Of Law is pure Nostalgia in America these days.
THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS!
And how many websites may take a look at this and decide that removing user commenting entirely is the safest route to go?
After all, if you want to comment on an article, you can just go back to sending a Letter to the Editor like we used to do. Don’t like it? Start your own damn blog and comment there…
Does that mean the peanut gallery is no more than ordinarily stupid? Because I’ve never foiund the writing to be particularly clever.
It’s only clever, Ernst, if you think the height of wit is to be found in the Sarcasm of Nick Gillespie.
a.k.a Goth Fonzie
**** UPDATE BY PATTERICO: While I agree with Dana and Ken White that this is overreaching and troubling, I also think many of the comments at Reason are reprehensible.
A comment like “Its judges like these that should be taken out back and shot” may not be illegal, but I have no desire to associate with people who make comments like that.
I have already deleted one comment in this thread to that effect (by happyfeet), and I ask JD to keep an eye out for others and zap them when he sees them. ****
Repeat offenders will be banned, and there’s no First Amendment violation in that.
**** …them.
****Repeat offenders will be banned, and there’s no First Amendment violation in that. ****
I swear, if Frey talked politics with my 85 yo dad he would stroke out. When I was just a little boy in the 60’s I remember the old man yelling at the TV about biased reporting and bad judges that by rights shouldn’t see the sunrise. His answer for rioting hippies was a Huey gunship. He had no qualms with the judicious use of nukes to kill the enemy. Quite the firebrand, though he has mellowed.
Anyway, some people are delicate I guess. Interesting JD is sounding like a right hand man at Pat’s place…
By the way, where is McGehee? He had that magnificent post with the take on Stairway to Heaven, and I haven’t seen him since.
Geoffb has been missing too.
These are sad developments…
The problem these days is that hardly anyone who needs to be shot ever gets shot.
Ferinstance, I’m amazed that Jon Corzine stole $1B of other people’s money, and not only has he not been charged with a crime, no one he robbed has sought ‘extra-legal’ forms of justice.
Good call on ‘their’ part: turn America into a nation of gutless wimps first, before busting out the really mind-numbing levels of corruption and abuse.
CPS departments, too. You hardly ever hear about anyone shooting one of those up, let alone feeding them into a woodchipper one by one.