Vegas Paper Gets Subpoena To ID Online Commenters

Source: Associated Press

(06-17) 05:46 PDT LAS VEGAS (AP) --

A Las Vegas newspaper says it has been served a federal grand jury subpoena seeking information about readers who posted comments on the paper's Web site.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported Tuesday that its editor, Thomas Mitchell, plans to fight the request, which the newspaper received after reporting on a federal tax fraud case against business owner Robert Kahre.

The subpoena seeks the identities and personal information about people who posted comments on the story. The newspaper said prosecutors told the judge in the case that some comments hinted at acts of violence and the subpoena was issued out of concern for jurors' safety.

Mitchell said anonymous speech is "a fundamental and historic part of this country." The newspaper would consider cooperating if specific crimes or real threats were presented, he said.

The newspaper said the subpoena bears the name of U.S. Assistant District Attorney J. Gregory Damm, a lawyer on the Justice Department team that is prosecuting Kahre and others on charges including income tax evasion, fraud and criminal conspiracy.

Grand jury proceedings are secret, and the subpoena is not a public record.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/qws/srch/catlist?paper=ap§ion=national&Submit=Select

n/t

violence comeing true lately. I personally have no problem giving up the names. When I was in J-School, there wasn't that much online posting, but we did discuss the, at the time, growing message boards, etc. This isn't protecting a source, it's allowing people to incite violence and isn't protected.

You'd have no problem with DU giving up the names of all its posters? Right?

being given!
The exceptions should probably be the same ones where professional need to report despite confidentiality rules...basically child abuse or threats of violence.

Making threats online is no joking matter. But if no crime has been committed, then of course, no names should be revealed.

Not very clear one way or the other. Also, moderators may have removed posts of more nefarious content before the person who wrote that article reviewed the original comments.

Not saying it's right, but without the subpoena to review, it's hard to know exactly what the complaint is.

Again, you can't know that. What is left of the public comments now, or at the time that the article with two citations in it was written, may not still contain the material that incited the legal action.

Since the subpoena is secret, you, and I are not currently privy to anything of use here. The quotes you cited may NOT be the material cited in the subpoena. There really isn't anything productive to discuss, until the complaint is public.

It all depends on who makes the judgement on what is a violent threat. If someone states that "I am going to shoot John Smith at 3:10PM in front of the court house" then I can understand. If someone says, "John Smith should be hung by his toenails for his horrible performance as DA" then I have a problem.

I this paving the way for horrible abuses of power.

I will be curious to see how this unfolds as information is made public.

In regards to horrible abuses of power, I'm on the fence. Since all speech isn't protected and online postings have never been anonymous because of IP addresses, I think this is just another way in investigating a person's behavior. If people are prosecuted for their political beliefs, then we have a problem. If people are prosecuted for inciting violence, then fine by me. I don't think our opinions vary too greatly on this, if I am reading you correctly.

:)

Yeah, the latter statement is rhetorical, not a threat. I agree, if that was the statement in the criminal complaint, it should be tossed out, if it goes ahead, then we are in the same camp, I think.

I suspect there was something more sinister than that, in the subpoena, because this is pretty well-tread First Amendment territory. I wouldn't expect it to have made it this far, if the two quoted statements in the article are all there is to this.

I expect the ACLU is going to get involved, at some point here.

those who advocate blowing up clinics or assassinating doctors available if subpoenaed? Not all speech is protected. If people are going to hide behind a screen name and advocate violence, and that violence comes to fruituition, they should be held responsible.

Roeder ws on Free Republic and other sites advocating assissination of Tiller. vonn Brunn was all over the Internet advocating violence. I think it is wise for this those in charge of protecting our safety to follow up on what is happening.

Here's the actual link.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/06/16/national/a153424D33.DTL

And here are some of the comments:


One commentator said: "The sad thing is there are 12 dummies on the jury who will convict him. They should be hung along with the feds."

Another called Damm a "socialist, fascist Mormon" and a "Nazi moron."

Sound familiar?

Two specific things stand out to me:

1,Grand jury proceedings are secret, and the subpoena is not a public record.

So, we really don't know exactly what the subpoena specified.



2. The story drew nearly 175 online comments by Monday night, most in support of Kahre and critical of the government and jurors and attorneys in the case.

One commentator said: "The sad thing is there are 12 dummies on the jury who will convict him. They should be hung along with the feds."

Another called Damm a "socialist, fascist Mormon" and a "Nazi moron."

There were 175 comments, but only two were referred to. In fact, the two were comments that, as you inferring, could be found here. However, that doesn't mean that there weren't other comments that were, in fact, violent that were online, even if the comments were only online for a short time before being removed by their moderator. We have moderators here at DU. When posts are removed, the aren't tossed into cyberspace, but held on a seperate portion of the site under member's usernames. We remove incites to violence.



What we also don't know is whether there has been other threats of violence that weren't found online. They may be building a case and online comments were only one component. Just because one can go online and think they're anonymous doesn't mean that they are anonymous and that they are not responsible for what they write and the ideas they put forth.

I think Skinner should report him to the authorities immediately.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3927038#3927350

The moderators and administrators do not comb through the site and review each post as it is logged in. We rely on the alert system. If you have a specific concern, you are welcome to contact an admin. http://www.democraticunderground.com/contact.html

As a moderator, I can not and will not discuss specific posts on the general use boards.


At this point, however, I don't think that's what you are concerned about. I think you are now going to begin a whole subthread linking to every post you think is somehow a rule violation. And you will expect me to respond to each one. Then, we're going to move into the semantics game. And you know that my posts will be saved as a screen shot to later, when it suits, it will be brought back up to question the moderators.

Basically, the OP had a vague news story that didn't give a lot of details because the subpoena is not public information. Based on just the notion that someone's supposedly anonymous posts can be released to the authorities, I say, well of course. That isn't news. IP addresses aren't private. Out of 175 comments, only two were referenced. Again, I say that just this information is too vague to know. Were the offending ones scrubbed from public access? No information was given. Is this, perhaps, the follow through of a larger investigation? Again, no information has been provided. Just based on the news story, it doesn't seem to be, well, that news worthy (no offense to the original poster.) People should take responsibility for what they say. And, as a J-School graduate, I am well aware that not all speech is protected.

If one is under the false belief that they are completely anonymous while posting online and they are completely void of responsibility for what they say online, then perhaps this will be a wake-up call.

I don't think the comment from the thread is worth or deserving to have their info forwarded to the authorities. That is just Orwellian. But I think the same thing applies to this attorney's request from the OP.

Otherwise, we're playing semantics.

Reporting violent threats is not Orwellian. When the authorities see violent threats and issue a subpoena, revealing the names of people who are under the delusion that they are somehow anonymous because they have a screen name is not Orwellian. Not all speech is protected. It never has been, even before Bush was president.

And since the subpoena is not public information, we really have absolutely no information to form an opinion. The only discussion possible is a hypothetical one. And even in a hypothetical conversation, basic facts can not be changed. IP addresses are available to site administrators. Not all speech is protected. And ignorance of the laws is never a defense. So, if someone goes online, thinks they are hiding behind a screen name and makes threats, of course the authorities have the right to follow up on the threats. If it were a threat against me, I'd want them to protect me.

Honestly, this news story, as we know it now, doesn't give any of us enough information to form a fully informed opinion. All our opinions are based on other emotions that we instantly go to when reading this story. We fear that the government is trying to infiltrate and keep us suppressed. After eight years of Bush and what we saw, these feelings are quite justifiable. The Patriot Act and warrantless wiretapping makes us all distrustful. And a healthy cynicism is a good thing, in my opinion. On this very board, the discussion regarding Roeder and vonn Brunn has asked why someone didn't see the pattern of violence and why were they allowed to post their incitement to violence and desire to assassinate without anyone reporting them. Perhaps there is more than we know. Perhaps the next Roeder or vonn Brunn is posting on that newspaper's site and the authorities are following up on an investigation. They may be saving multiple lives right now.

I know this can be read as an apologist for warrantless wiretaps and the Patriot Act. However, investigating online incitements to violence preceeds all of that. And, quite frankly, I don't mind people's online activities being used to build a case against them.

It all depends on who makes the judgement on what is a violent threat. If someone states that "I am going to shoot John Smith at 3:10PM in front of the court house" then I can understand. If someone says, "John Smith should be hung by his toenails for his horrible performance as DA" then I have a problem.

Claiming that "John Smith should be hung by his toenails for his horrible performance as DA" is a violent threat is ridiculous. I can certainly agree to that.

However, I'm inclined to think it is a bit more than that. And if it's not, the subpoena will find no credible threat and that will be the end of that. If there is more to the threat then that, then good for the authorities for following up.

anything at all that makes them- and the people who post foul things on them more accountable, the better.

I think it's pretty common knowledge that Agent Mike monitors boards like DU. Moderators take down posts/threads/OPs that advocate direct violence. That is in the DU Rules. http://www.democraticunderground.com/forums/rules_detailed.html

Do not post messages that could be construed as advocating harm or death to the president or other high-ranking official in the United States government. In the case of the president, do not even post jokes, as the Secret Service is not known for its sense of humor.


Personally, I'm watching cases like Roeder and vonn Brunn and wondering where the FBI or local authorities were before.

... for a subpoena. I would think it would need to be an unambiguous threat for that.

( Your link points to a long listing of SFGate stories.

Is the US Attorney requesting the names of ONLY the posters who made threatening comments.
or the names of ALL posters?

We are seeing this more and more. There have been several reports in recent months of the Gov't seeking the ID of people who comment online.
This can be interpreted as a chilling effect.

:)

GOOD.

The more chill, the better.

Better still, get rid of them altogether and go back to publishing LTTE's after some review and edit.

Mr. kt worked at Yahoo! for a few years and the online comments were becoming a liability- or, at least Yahoo! felt this way and just closed down the comments boards. (I don't think they've returned them, either.) I think Yahoo! Canada still has them, but Yahoo! USA was overwhelmed with moderating the comments.

It's gotten to the point where driving the click through traffic isn't worth the denigration of the discourse. For example, on the Oregonian's comment sections, almost ANY mention of a Hispanic surname draws out the vilest statements- often completely unrelated to the subject of the article. Heck, half the time one can tell that the posters haven't even read the article.

The Yahoo! Canada ones are getting that way, although they pale in comparion to the Yahoo! USA ones. *ugh* It was sickening.

DU is easier to moderate than other boards because our peramteres are pretty clear cut. We're liberal/progressive/left, so posters that join and post the latest RW talking points don't last too long. Our rules are, for the most part, pretty clear cut. If we had to moderate from a politically neutral point of view, that would be so much more work. I would never moderate for an open board like that.