Friday, June 12, 2015

Careful With Your Comments

Reason's website has been served a subpoena demanding to know who comments on their site:
Wielding subpoenas demanding information on anonymous commenters, the government is harassing a respected journalism site that dissents from its policies. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York claims these comments could constitute violent threats, even though they’re clearly hyperbolic political rhetoric.

This is happening in America -- weirdly, to a site I founded, and one whose commenters often earned my public contempt.

Los Angeles legal blogger Ken White has obtained a grand jury subpoena issued to Reason.com, the online home of the libertarian magazine I edited throughout the 1990s. The subpoena seeks information about commenters who posted in response to an article by the site’s editor Nick Gillespie about the letter that Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht wrote to Judge Katherine B. Forrest before she sentenced him to life in prison without parole. Ulbricht was convicted of seven felony charges, included conspiracies to traffic in narcotics and launder money, and faced a minimum sentence of 20 years in prison. The letter was an appeal for leniency.
 You can tell that a liberal runs the Dept. of Justice, can't you?

1 comment:

  1. This is happening in America -- weirdly, to a site I founded, and one whose commenters often earned my public contempt

    Considering the difference between Reason twenty years ago and Reason now, it isn't only the commentators who should be held in contempt.

    ReplyDelete