Editor of 'Reason' Discusses Federal Subpoena To Unmask Commenters 144
mi points out an article from Nick Gillespie, editor of libertarian website Reason, who was recently asked by the federal government to provide identifying information on anonymous commenters from one of the site's blog posts. Not only was Reason issued a subpoena for the commenters's identities, but they were also placed under a gag order, preventing them from even mentioning it to somebody who wasn't their lawyer. Gillespie says the comments in question were "hyperbolic, in questionable taste–and fully within the norms of Internet commentary." He continues:
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."
Fairly clear (Score:5, Insightful)
It's fairly clear that either the whole incident was specifically meant to cause a chilling effect or that the feds can't be trusted with permanent markers or grown-up scissors, much less the ability to obtain a gag order.
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I'm a bit puzzled by this. Reason has no responsibility to police its comments, so the govt leaning on them won't push them to do so. It could send a chilling effect among internet commenters, but only if people knew about it, so what was the gag for? they could have legitimately wanted to investigate these particular people, but that wouldn't have held up. one possibility is a hissy fit by the judge who was the author of the article.
Re:Fairly clear (Score:4, Informative)
* (Agammamon 5.31.15 - 10:47AM) Its judges like these that should be taken out back and shot.
** (Alan 5.31.15 - 12:09PM) It's judges like these that will be taken out back and shot. FTFY.
To quote Telly Savalas, while playing Kojak and answering to someone who feels threatened by him: "Greeks... they don't threaten - they utter prophecies!".
To quote you: "[...] so what was the gag for? they could have legitimately wanted to investigate these particular people [...]" - i think that is the reason.
Re:Fairly clear (Score:5, Insightful)
here's the problem though. there's nothing remotely illegal about the statements that were made. almost all speech is protected under the first amendment, especially speech about political matters. There are some specific exemptions, including making imminent and specific threats. So something like, "I'm going to go to this judge's house at X address on Y date and do this thing". The commenters didn't do that.
So it's clear on its face that the comments are free speech and not actionable. so why was the govt looking into taking action? that is the question mark.
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here's the problem though. there's nothing remotely illegal about the statements that were made. almost all speech is protected under the first amendment, especially speech about political matters.
I am Greek, i am not so informed about the first amendment, i know very well that in the USA free speech is respected and protected more than anywhere else in the world (much more than Europe for example), but...
There are some specific exemptions, including making imminent and specific threats. So something like, "I'm going to go to this judge's house at X address on Y date and do this thing". The commenters didn't do that.
...you mean that the phrase "It's judges like these that will be taken out back and shot." should be taken like... what i quoted from Telly Savalas ("Greeks... they don't threaten - they utter prophecies!")? Hmmm... as a Greek i must inform you that my fellow Greek Telly Savalas WAS making a threat!
Re:Fairly clear (Score:5, Informative)
I agree, they seem over the top. but imma provide a bit of knowledge, maybe you'll find it interesting. Much of 1st amendment law is controlled by a landmark, precedent-setting case, brandenberg v. ohio [wikipedia.org] which laid out definitions like "imminent threat exemption." This superceded the often-misunderstood "fire in a crowded theater" idea from the 1910's. The three components of the "brandenberg test" are intent, imminence, and likelihood. The troll comments fall short of imminence and likelihood, at the very least.
A question for you, no trolling, what's it like in Greece with the fiscal stuff? is everybody freaking out? is it like being on an out-of-control freight train?
Re:Fairly clear (Score:5, Informative)
I agree, they seem over the top. but imma provide a bit of knowledge, maybe you'll find it interesting. Much of 1st amendment law is controlled by a landmark, precedent-setting case, brandenberg v. ohio [wikipedia.org] which laid out definitions like "imminent threat exemption." This superceded the often-misunderstood "fire in a crowded theater" idea from the 1910's. The three components of the "brandenberg test" are intent, imminence, and likelihood. The troll comments fall short of imminence and likelihood, at the very least.
Very interesting link - it supports my claim "in the USA free speech is respected and protected more than anywhere else in the world (much more than Europe for example)"! This case (mentioned in the Slashdot story), is one of those that (because of different ethics) a Greek/European like me can examine/understand only after reading links like the one you provided, so thanks.
A question for you, no trolling, what's it like in Greece with the fiscal stuff? is everybody freaking out? is it like being on an out-of-control freight train?
Don't worry Sir, i understand very easily when someone is trolling and when just asks a reasonable question about the situation.
People here are calm, considering the situation. While we had about 1/4 of our GDP/GNI vanishing, Greeks have a social net based on family that protects almost all from dramatic financial situations... e.g., no one is starving, the images with those waiting for some food are from illegal immigrants that the international media display just for drama!
Technically we are 5 days before declaring bankruptcy (in reality we have one more month before this bankruptcy becomes legaly valid). Greece is in a situation where we can declare bankruptcy (i.e., stop repaying our debt), continue public spendings at current levels (since we have a state's budget surplus), and staying in the EUROzone (i.e., using the "Euro" currency - our EU membership is not an issue even if we had to leave EUROzone) - this solution would be problematic because we could not fund our economy (we can not print Euros!), so if we declare bankruptcy the most logical and likely is to leave EUROzone (but not EU) so we can print Drachmas (our national currency, which we can devalue so our economy can start "moving"). Things are not so dramatic as most/all the international media describe, but are not good also - most Greeks (including myself) want to just continue using the Euro, but many Greeks (not me!) believed our current, 4 months old, (ridiculous) left-wing goverment that promised staying in EUROzone AND relaxing austerity... i am very pro-austerity and pro-EU/EUROzone, i hope that in the next weeks our current goverment will loose the support so our previous goverment can take control again, continue repaying the loans and you know... do what it must be done. Keep in mind: Greece is a poor state with rich citizens!
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Keep in mind: Greece is a poor state with rich citizens!
what does this mean?
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Keep in mind: Greece is a poor state with rich citizens!
what does this mean?
It means that we Greeks, as citizens, have personal income AND wealth (tangible and intangible) that is beyond of our state's reach - in other words, we are extreme tax-evaders (e.g. 1/3 to 1/2 of our economy is "gray/black")!
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. i am very pro-austerity and pro-EU/EUROzone, i hope that in the next weeks our current goverment will loose the support so our previous goverment can take control again, continue repaying the loans and you know... do what it must be done. Keep in mind: Greece is a poor state with rich citizens!
So pay your fucking taxes already. There is no way the rest of us are going to subsidize you at the rate of 36 billion euros a year.
(Actually, now we've got you to pay off all the debt you owed to our private banks we're going to throw you to the wolves any day now).
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. i am very pro-austerity and pro-EU/EUROzone, i hope that in the next weeks our current goverment will loose the support so our previous goverment can take control again, continue repaying the loans and you know... do what it must be done. Keep in mind: Greece is a poor state with rich citizens!
So pay your fucking taxes already. There is no way the rest of us are going to subsidize you at the rate of 36 billion euros a year.
(Actually, now we've got you to pay off all the debt you owed to our private banks we're going to throw you to the wolves any day now).
While i think i understand what you write in your parenthesis (i.e., the debt of Greek's state was to private entities - it become debt to public entities -EU citizens- after some foreign countries decided to save their private entities from the risk they took for decades... enjoying huge profits for decades since we Greeks payed them for decades huge interest rates!), allow me to provide some info and details (for those not understanding the situation): the money we Greeks get AS NEW LOAN from the "Troika"
Re:Fairly clear (Score:4, Insightful)
here's the problem though. there's nothing remotely illegal about the statements that were made.
So it's clear on its face that the comments are free speech and not actionable. so why was the govt looking into taking action? that is the question mark.
Why? BFYTW.
The government hardly confines it's abuse to those who actually break laws. Government thugs abuse their enemies, high among them being those who highlite and oppose government thuggery.
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I wouldn't count on free speech being protected for much longer.
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Re:Fairly clear (Score:5, Interesting)
You can beat the rap but you can't beat the ride.
It may have been testing the water to see if they could harass the editors of Reason enough to make policing the comments less hassle, required or not.
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It's judges like these that should be taken out back and shot.
It's judges like these that will be taken out back and shot.
Why do it out back? Shoot them out front, on the steps of the courthouse.
Re:Fairly clear (Score:5, Insightful)
Reason has no responsibility to police its comments, so the govt leaning on them won't push them to do so. It could send a chilling effect among internet commenters, but only if people knew about it, so what was the gag for?
The point is to abuse Reason with legal process so that they shut down their comments sections, eliminating a forum for people who generally disapprove of government power. Also, naturally, to terrorize commenters and make them all think twice about communicating this disapproval in public.
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so you think it was just heavy handed thuggery. I agree, that's like the only thing that makes sense.
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Re:Fairly clear (Score:5, Insightful)
the whole incident was specifically meant to cause a chilling effect
It is likely to have the exact opposite effect. The readers of Reason are mostly libertarian kooks that are already highly prone to conspiracy theories. Actions like this are just throwing gasoline on the flames.
Disclaimer: I am somewhat of a libertarian kook myself.
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What else could it have been for? Read TFA, particularly the comments that were singled out for 'investigation'.
It could be that they need safety scissors, of course.
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It is likely to have the exact opposite effect. The readers of Reason are mostly libertarian kooks that are already highly prone to conspiracy theories. Actions like this are just throwing gasoline on the flames.
Disclaimer: I am somewhat of a libertarian kook myself.
Yes, the readers are of course generally provoked. Many have changed their names to incorporate variations on the wood chipper theme.
Wouldn't you like to be a Chipper too?
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And I like having kooks of various persuasions around. Every so often, you learn something valuable from them.
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I think it's both. Certainly delivering the subpoena before obtaining the gag order was ridiculously amateurish. I mean, did they really expect _Reason_ to voluntarily comply? Or did they try to say "voluntarily" in the tone of voice used by Mafia dons and IRS agents, but their voice cr
Re:Fairly clear (Score:5, Interesting)
Or did they try to say "voluntarily" in the tone of voice used by Mafia dons and IRS agents, but their voice cracked?
I believe what they did was send the gag order *directly* to the Reason editors, instead of their legal counsel, which is considered a huge and threatening breach of process in the legal world.
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Interestingly, prosecutors are prohibited from lying in court but defense attorneys are not.
Sure, they are. I think this story is an obvious counterexample for the prosecutor side. The burden of proof is too high [srhunterlaw.com]. And since when have defense attorneys been able to lie in court? I see that they can be disbarred [quickanddirtytips.com] for doing so and there are other consequences [stroock.com].
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They very well may have expected Reason to comply voluntarily... An interesting piece of information the government is not going to give up here is how many other sides have given up information voluntarily? If it is a high percentage, it is very easy for law enforcement officials to come to expect this information from everybody. Anyone that doesn't instantly give up their rights now has something to hide and needs to be punished by the full force of the law. Power is a dangerous drug.
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An interesting piece of information the government is not going to give up here is how many other sides have given up information voluntarily?
You mean such as slashdot that has never opposed such requests for information, or revealed any of the gag orders against it?
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Statists vs. Libertarians (Score:1, Insightful)
Didn't want to put this partisanship into the submission, so here it goes. In my opinion, this is yet another battle in war of Statists against Libertarians — and all the rest of us.
Pick your side...
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For those of us concerned about privacy, that begs the question. There isn't a great deal of difference to me between a government or a multitude of corporations making themselves privy to an increasing share of our personal lives, especially given the extent to which they're all in bed together. Or, for that matter, the chilling effect of a subpoena vs. the chilling effect of payment processors shunning activity they disagree with. (Bitcoin hopefully serving to address the latter, anyway.)
The aspects of
Re:Statists vs. Libertarians (Score:5, Insightful)
There isn't a great deal of difference to me between a government or a multitude of corporations making themselves privy to an increasing share of our personal lives, especially given the extent to which they're all in bed together.
There are two obvious differences. A government has far more power and a captive revenue stream. A corporation doesn't get to just take a significant fraction of your paycheck whether you like it or not.
Second, there are a multitude of corporations which is a tremendous dilution of power. Sure, if all those huge corporations were to act in concert to screw you over, then you're pretty fairly screwed though still not as badly as if a government were doing it. But why would they do that, unless some powerful agency, like a government, is coordinating the assault?
Or, for that matter, the chilling effect of a subpoena vs. the chilling effect of payment processors shunning activity they disagree with.
The former can force you to engage in certain behavior by people with guns, like talk about your subpoena.
I find this sort of argument silly because it pretty much equates the power to throw you in jail or to shoot you and leave you in a mass grave, with the power to toss a few extra monthly fees on your phone service or go through a few years of your grocery bills. There is a huge qualitative difference which is ignored.
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A corporation doesn't get to just take a significant fraction of your paycheck whether you like it or not.
I guess all those transaction fees don't count.
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I guess all those transaction fees don't count.
You can always choose not to get that service.
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You can always choose not to use a bank and get ripped off by the cash exchanges too. Please, save it. The privates have got you by the privates also.
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You can always choose not to use a bank and get ripped off by the cash exchanges too.
I do and it works.
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You're still paying a 'tax' to the exchange house.
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You're still paying a 'tax' to the exchange house.
I only pay for use. I get to pay for government no matter what obscene thing they do.
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Where else are you going to cash your paycheck if yo don't use the bank?
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And they charge nothing for all transactions?
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Shop around a little. It's not that hard to avoid bad players. But you have to try first.
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And just like in the market, you can vote for the government you desire. In either case we, in theory, control both, but in the "free" market we simply don't have enough capital to affect much. We have to attract the interest of big money that flows in the canopy over our heads, like how how it took Google 'trickle down' to delay SOPA. In government, all we have to do is stop reelecting crooked politicians, you know, like maybe being a bit more involved during the primaries, and demanding open primaries tha
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And just like in the market, you can vote for the government you desire.
In a market, I get what I want when I "vote" and the decisions can be fluidly changed. If I want to drink orange juice in the morning, I don't have to assemble a coalition of like-minded orange juice drinkers. Nor do I run the risk of losing and having to drink Coke for the next four years because I couldn't persuade enough of my fellow citizens to drink orange juice instead.
In government, all we have to do is stop reelecting crooked politicians, you know, like maybe being a bit more involved during the primaries, and demanding open primaries that don't favor any particular faction, and learning how to tune out propaganda.
I already did that. Somehow the crooked politicians keep getting elected.
The huge difference here is that actual markets are quite
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Nor do I run the risk of losing and having to drink Coke for the next four years because I couldn't persuade enough of my fellow citizens to drink orange juice instead.
Oh, yes you would. If there is an insufficient market for orange juice, you ain't gettin' any for less than a thousand dollars a quart(if the pilot doesn't smuggle it in his flight bag for you), unless you have your own tree on your own property. That is exactly how the market works. Or maybe you have forgotten the infrastructure required to
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you ain't gettin' any for less than a thousand dollars a quart
Which I can do should I desire it enough.
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As an individual, you have just as much control over the government as you do the market. And the government, as our representative, has every right to compete in the market and inform us where danger lies. Otherwise, it's not really open, it's merely privateering, with everything simply going to the highest bidder, which is really what we have because presently that is who the government serves, and that is because the public can't be bothered...
Meanwhile no biggie. There's enough demand to keep the orange
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As an individual, you have just as much control over the government as you do the market.
I think I've already explained why that isn't so. You seem to have not gotten the point of the orange juice example. There's no analogue to the light weight activity of buying orange juice in a government.
And the government, as our representative, has every right to compete in the market and inform us where danger lies.
That would be termed an obligation not a right.
Otherwise, it's not really open, it's merely privateering, with everything simply going to the highest bidder, which is really what we have because presently that is who the government serves, and that is because the public can't be bothered...
So why are you wasting my time? I'm supposedly controlling this mess? That's news to me.
Meanwhile no biggie. There's enough demand to keep the orange juice infrastructure afloat and the price almost reasonable. But the real truth is that the price is arbitrarily set by some commodity brokers in London, Hong Kong or New York, under the watchful eye of the triads, yakuza and other wealthy "families". The whole "supply/demand" thing is a total myth.
Nice to know that. Here's the problem. Supply and demand is not a myth, but rather a basic observable thing of any market. It doesn't matter who sets the price when I can c
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I'm supposedly controlling this mess? That's news to me.
Yes, you are, with your vote, and if it is news to you, well now you know. Take it any way you like.
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Yes, you are, with your vote
What does "control" mean here?
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You have the same influence over the government as you do over the market. Actually, because of the *one person, one vote* thing, you have much more so
No. There are very substantial differences between the two. The most important is simply that markets can cater to small groups and interests and wants that change day to day. They have a responsive to wants that are simply not present in a government.
Further, this lack of immediate responsiveness in government is by design. There is no democratic government in the world that allows real time modification by its constituents/customers.
I think it's completely foolish to equate the infrequent and very c
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That is not agility, the market is merely fickle and panicky.
In other words, agility. You can be too responsive though that is less of a problem than you claim.
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But it does have it — and ought to retain it. It just must be made to wield that power less — much less. That is the Libertarian argument.
We wrote the Constitution — and, in particular, the Bill of Rights — to limit the government's power, but (and this was predicted [monticello.org]) the Statists have been eroding the limits sin
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Because the Collectivism is the direct cause of Fascism and/or Communism. Once you subjugate the silly, selfish, cantankerous Individual to the Glorious Collective, any and all human rights abuses become immediately possible. From forcing you to pay for somebody else's education, to forcibly changing your opinion on what the word "marriage" means, to the outright killing fields. As long as it is done for The Greater Good (a.k.a. General Welfare, as the Statists like to intrerpret US Constitution), it all becomes justifiable.
So providing education for poor people and recognising gay marriage lead inevitably to the Khmer Rouge?
Interesting...And by interesting, of course I mean ultra right wing paranoid stupid.
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First of all, corrections:
And
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First, taxing and spending for the general welfare is a Constitutionally granted power of Congress. Not all the founders saw it that way, but that's how the Constitution was written and ratified.
Second, nobody's forcing anybody else to consider same-sex marriages the same as opposite-sex marriages. You don't want to consider one of my cousins married, go ahead. (I will hold it against you, but that's my right.) You're proposing to deny them the rights other get. Mixing up government and religion is
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The part of your argument that everyone else finds silly is that you think that the power to throw someone in jail or shoot them goes away if the government doesn't have it.
In practice, it does.
The power vacuum will be filled.
Only if there is a power vacuum. When there isn't, then nothing gets filled. The key piece missing here is that people can fill that vacuum themselves.
The fundamental conceit of libertarianism is treating individual rights as being more powerful and having greater primacy than the rights dictated by collective force.
That is not even wrong. Rights are precisely the constraints on collective force. There are no rights dictated by collective force by definition.
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No, that is incorrect. In some ideal world, maybe, but in this one rights only exist if they can be enforced. Your definition is not practical; it does not correspond to the world as it is observed. There is no effective constraint on collective force save for the collective itself, or perhaps that one guy with a nuke wired to a deadman switch.
Ok, I misunderstood. I thought you were referring to rights of the collective force not rights enforced by collective force.
Wonderful, but that won't be rampant individualists, because it's less effective than collective force -- which is why we have governments in the first place, and the difference between mob justice, or even just two thugs joining forces, and government as we know it, is only a matter of degree and formality.
Obviously, I don't necessarily think that is the case. For example, the US has made a colossal maze of bureaucracies with its health care system, with both public and private aspects. And I consider it more likely than not that the next generation of the system will be even more byzantine and ineffective.
But I don't think that system or any of the single payer systems in the world t
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Individuals acting on their own behalf don't always generate optimal outcomes.
Depends on what you're trying to optimize. But having said that, I'm quite aware that there are a variety of situations where individual action results in suboptimal outcomes. I just think that's a terrible excuse for generating an even worse outcome via government action.
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Who is it you think is making that excuse?
Whoever I was replying to.
I'm just pointing out that there are plenty of situations where judicious government intervention is warranted.
And I'm just pointing out that there are plenty of times when government intervention is not only unwarranted, it is actually counterproductive. I think a large part of the problem here is that =advocates of government intervention frequently don't have much idea what "judicious government intervention" means.
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For example, let's consider the current story. Prosecutors got to this point of casual abuses of laws and ethics because there are no consequences. People cared more about the appearance of "being tough on crime" and expediting the prosecution of crime than on results, the unintended consequence is that now there are a bunch of out of control prosecutors who can harass people and organizations just because they
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Care to name a few?
Prisoners' dilemma is the classic example. That covers a broad category of human interaction right there where one person can potentially screw over another for personal gain. Then there's a number of large projects where coordination of activity results in a better outcome than uncoordinated action.
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Outcomes. We try to optimize outcomes.
There isn't one obvious standard of optimization. Optimization inherently requires a choice about what is to be optimized. For example, a common failure mode is to optimize that which is more easily measurable. Governments do this all the time economically with GDP, a measure of economic activity. This results, among other problems, with the well-known problem of the Broken Window fallacy where economic activity is considered more important than the creation of value.
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So what's the best we can hope for?
A free society where we can be the best we can be as we see it.
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You know, I'm just happy if we can agree to that extent. I think highly of individual rights, being an individual myself; I think they are an (extremely) important conceptual counterbalance to the overwhelming might of the collective. I just can't square primacy of individual rights against the practical problems with that philosophy: that rights are what can be enforced.
I don't have a similar problem. The issue here is that you need very ample individual rights or you just don't have a counterbalance to the overwhelming might of the collective. A vast problem here is
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You know, I'm just happy if we can agree to that extent. I think highly of individual rights, being an individual myself; I think they are an (extremely) important conceptual counterbalance to the overwhelming might of the collective. I just can't square primacy of individual rights against the practical problems with that philosophy: that rights are what can be enforced.
I don't have a similar problem. The issue here is that you need very ample individual rights or you just don't have a counterbalance to the overwhelming might of the collective. Even if we have pure rule by the collective, somehow eliminating the insidious conflicts of interest of rulers, we still have fundamental conflicts between us. They commonly manifest as discrimination against an outcast minority and short sighted decision making. For examples of the former in the US, we have Jim Crow laws, current a
Re:Statists vs. Libertarians (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, the difference is vast: for a corporation to compel either you or another corporation to reveal any data, it has to win legal case — or, a least, convince a judge to issue a subpoena. The government has been gradually lowering this bar for itself over the years — recall the "National Security Letters" [reason.com] (and how easy they are for the government to obtain [stanfordlawreview.org]).
And that's when it bothers with the legal process at all — often it can simply just bust in and take your stuff (without warrant [politicalears.com]), seize any property on mere accusation of it being used in a crime [fee.org], and confiscate bank accounts without even an accusation, only suspicion [nytimes.com], or, as was the case with Reason.com, demand your "voluntary" cooperation or else...
But my point was not, that the government ought not to investigate legitimate threats against judges and public officials — even hard-core Libertarians would agree, that this is, actually, a proper role of the government. The point is, this particular investigation was patently illegitimate — the "threats" were bogus and hyperbolic and DoJ could not possible have hoped to ever win a conviction.
Their intention was to simply harass the dissenters by hitting them with subpoenas and giving them threatening "talking-tos". The prosecution, in other words, was malicious [wikipedia.org]. That's the disgusting part.
But there is no difference! What's good for the goose, is good for the chicken as well:
Even more obvious examples abound. For example, the EPA considers any billabong in the US [spectator.org] to be under its control and protection — so both private citizens and corporations alike now need a Federal Government's approval to build anything on their property, if it happens to have a lake, a stream, or a swamp, however small...
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That's only because the entertainers are not, formally, employees, but are all "independent" and "renting" space in the joint. This legal dodge has been in place for ever and it is only a matter of time before some future Eric Holder or Elliot Spitzer puts an end to it.
Now that's fresh... We are done here.
Thank you, sergeant Painfully Obvious. I wonder, what happened to the "Please, don
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Save this one for more bigoted audiences.
Reading the rest of yourv hate-filled post, I have to say, you're the target audience.
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Corporations are government granted entities. In a libertarian society there wouldn't even be any corporations.
And how precisely would you stop wealthy individuals grouping together and operating as a combined entity with ever-increasing power and reach? Make it illegal?
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Not really. This is more a battle in Those Who Believe in the Rule of Law vs. The End Justifies the Means crowd.
A similar event happened when the NSA issued "official" letters to telecos demanding information. The NSA knew what they were asking for was illegal, the telecos also knew the requests were illegal, yet all complied except for Qwest. That didn't end well for them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Of course. it is a different world now, where we can justify torture in the name of All-That-Is-Holy-An
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But there is no particularly deserving end in this case. Nothing to justify the means with... Torture, at least, was claimed [wsj.com] to prevent some acts of terror and even capture bin Laden.
Contrary to the "not really" you began with, Statism is the problem:
In other words, if you want Federal governmen
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The end, as you noted elsewhere, is to compel Reason into suspicious activity to its user base under trumped up charges. Not to mention what good is power unless you flaunt it every now and then?
The typical libertarian argument against government posits it as an all or nothing deal. The difficulty is not that the government gives you everything, it's that the beast must be tractable to, at a minimum, the rule of law and the will of the people. That holds true regardless of the size of government. Or corpora
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Of course, this was the end. It is just, as I noted elsewhere, not a particularly worthy end...
Ok, at least, we agree, Statists are wrong...
No, that's not true at all. The Libertarians do recognize the government as necessary — we just want its role to be as limited, as it was during the times of Jefferson
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Then strictly speaking, you aren't a libertarian, but a peculiar brand of constitutionalist that ignores the following 200 years of changes to the Constitution and evolution of the government. Turn back the hands of time, and you still end up with more government
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Didn't want to put this partisanship into the submission, so here it goes. In my opinion, this is yet another battle in war of Statists against Libertarians — and all the rest of us.
Pick your side...
The only non-"Statists" are pure anarchists. That is an interesting political theory, but it certainly doesn't have much in common with the right wing pro-commerce Randian extremists who call themselves libertarians in the US.
All gag orders should have an expiration date (Score:5, Insightful)
If the cops think you are planning something and also think they know about it more than 1 year in advance, they should arrest you in that year. If they can't prove anything after that 1 year, then most likely they never had anything real in the first place - or are so incompetent that having you find out about the subpoena wouldn't matter anyway.
Seriously can anyone think of ANY criminal action that the government finds out about, gets a subpoena, takes more than one year before they publicly move - and the criminal knowing about the subpoena would hurt in any way?
FIFA is a great example the corrupt people knew about the investigation and did nothing.
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Why don't they already? We already have statutes of limitations on most crimes why should gag orders be any different?
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Or maybe I'm simply the first one to ever think of it. Man I'm smart!
Looks like all commenting sites need a canary... (Score:3)
Kinda sucks, though, that it's come to this.
Welcome to the USSA Comrade (Score:2, Troll)
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Yes the US has fallen, as do all societies. Someday we will rebel, and the Upper and Middle classes will trade places on the backs of the lower classes. Some small forward steps will be made, and the decline will begin again.
Or we will all die of of our own hubris and shortsightedness.
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Actually, red scares go back to the Nineteenth Century, although the rise of the Soviet Union certainly encouraged and focused them. Of course, back then it was difficult to tell the Socialists from the Anarchists, particularly when it was to the benefit of powerful people that they be indistinguishable, and some anarchists did throw bombs.
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It also goes even further back than Marx. The French Revolution espoused a communist ideology as well, although the term hadn
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Things started to really devolve after McCarthy's witch, I mean red hunts.
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Yeah, that is funny.
The fact that a pesky little thing called freedom of association escaped him. It was made all the more sad that he failed to understand that being a dirty commie, is not in itself illegal.
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Your IP traffic has been recorded, comrade.
I'm not kidding.
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LOL, like that is somehow remotely new.
Re:Welcome to the USSA Comrade (Score:4)
Don't call people comrade, citizen. Your use of satire has been recorded.
I'm not kidding.
A legal answer (Score:5, Informative)
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They don't need that anymore. Civil forfeiture will suffice, if they really want the names.
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Technologically Inept Law Enforcement (Score:5, Interesting)
We can all have a good laugh at our lessers who don't know how to use computers, but some of them are in very powerful positions to do great harm to those they perceive as engaging in "criminal" activity.
*CSB*
A few years back a man with a badge came to my door and said that a threatening e-mail to the governor had been traced to my IP address. It took me a moment, but I recalled a sarcastic e-mail I had sent some months prior to the governor's office congratulating their efforts to take the state's education ranking from 49th to 50th with budget cuts. I used my university issued e-mail address, with my name and position clearly spelled out in the e-mail signature. I don't know if it was just the guy at my door who was ignorant of the facts of my particular case, or if that's what was really written down in their file. Basically some secretary dragged my unconstructive criticism to the "bad" folder and later I'm being questioned and accused of a crime (though not charged).
*/CSB*
People in law enforcement may not realize how dangerous their ignorance can be to the general public. One can only hope by the time you're facing a judge you'll have at last found someone in the system with the freedom to act reasonably in the face of such ignorance.
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Re:NSA (Score:4, Interesting)