Homeland Security Wants To Subpoena Us Over A Clearly Hyperbolic Techdirt Comment by Mike Masnick.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has contacted Techdirt by phone and email asking where to send a subpoena and saying a subpoena was on the way for the identity of a commenter on Techdirt.
From Mike’s post:
Now, it’s entirely possible that there are more details here involving a legitimate investigation, but it’s difficult to believe that’s the case given the information we have to date. Also, we have not yet received the subpoena, just the phone calls and emails suggesting that it’s on its way. Normally, we’d wait for the details before publishing, but given a very similar situation involving commenters on the site Reason last year, which included a highly questionable and almost certainly unconstitutional gag order preventing Reason from speaking about it, we figured it would be worth posting about it before we’ve received any such thing.
While I appreciate Mike and Techdirt sounding the alarm about a possible subpoena, it is also distinctly possible that was the intended result of the contacts by DHS.
Not that Mike or Techdirt give a toss about the opinions held by DHS, but you can bet there are commenters and potential commenters who are quite so brave.
DHS and its unsavory companions in the government don’t have to seize newspapers, burn presses, or any of the overt things we usually associate with censorship.
They are much more insidious, not to mention cowardly.
The DHS avoids taking a chance a court might refuse its request for a subpoena but still creates a climate of fear for commenters at Techdirt.
Courts can’t rule on what is not presented to them and the DHS is well aware of that fact.
Which raises the interesting question: How often does DHS call or email about subpoenas and no subpoenas arrive? Is this, as I suspect, a systematic practice at DHS?
Question: Is anyone tracking DHS phone calls and emails about subpoenas? Where no subpoena arrives?
PS: I disagree that calling for violence, even in hyperbole, is in poor taste. People are condemned to death and worse every day in the polite language of privilege and power. It’s time we stopped having a double standard for privileged versus non-privileged violence.