Tone it down

[Woodsman]

Or else!

"Reason Magazine Subpoena Stomps on Free Speech

By Virginia Postrel
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."
http://www.bloombergview.com/article...on-free-speech

"How the Feds Asked Me to Rat Out Commenters

Reason.com, the website I edit, was recently commanded by the feds to provide information on a few commenters and not discuss it. Here’s why we’re speaking out.
Is there anything more likely to make you shit your pants out of a mix of fear and anger than getting a federal subpoena out of the blue?

Well, yes, there is: getting a gag order that prohibits you from speaking publicly about that subpoena and even the gag order itself. Talk about feeling isolated and cast adrift in the home of the free. You can’t even respond honestly when someone asks, “Are you under a court order not to speak?”

Far more important: talk about realizing that open expression and press freedom are far more tenuous than even the most cynical of us can imagine! Even when you have done nothing wrong and aren’t the target of an investigation, you can be commanded, at serious financial cost and disruption of your business, to dance to a tune called by the long arm of the law."
http://www.thedailybeast.com/article...ource=facebook

DoJ's Gag Order On Reason Has Been Lifted — But The Real Story Is More Outrageous Than We Thought

They knew they hadn't done anything wrong, but also knew that didn't matter. "Being innocent doesn't mean you're safe," point out Alissi. Alissi and Gillespie both viewed the subpoena, and the gag order, and the purported investigation of a leak as ridiculous and bizarre — a preposterous waste of resources. Gillespie called the accusations "comical" and admitted his first response was incredulity, building to rage. But what was both deeply concerning and infuriating was that it really didn't matter whether Velamoor was proceeding from malice, from bias, from indifference, from kissing up to a judge, or from sheer incompetence. He had the power to destroy lives no matter how or why he exercised it. The notion that he might launch investigations and prosecutions out of stupidity was, Gillespie said, more frightening than the prospect that he was some sort of Machiavellian genius.
http://popehat.com/2015/06/22/dojs-g...ht/#more-24009

[dcarrigg]

Re: Tone it down

Or else!

I don't know, Woody. I don't buy the press' line on this one. Nor do I buy Ken White's explanations at his popehat website. I think he's getting some self-serving notoriety out of this. The man makes a career off defending white collar criminals and the slimiest hedge funders imaginable. I trust his words less than the Manhattan US Attorney. And Reason is just David Koch's mouthpiece here on earth.

And I think that the odds are that there's an ongoing investigation that Preet Bharara's office is involved with, and that these comments somehow work into it, either by a common username or some other activity. Since prosecutors don't talk about ongoing investigations, we're not going to know the real truth for a while here.

US Attorneys - especially in NYC - have better things to do than troll the comments section of internet message boards looking to subpoena people. And the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York prosecutes most big federal financial matters since Wall Street's there. Meanwhile Ken White defends big financial interests when they get charged. He has every motive to try to make the US Attorney look bad. As does Reason, who want to de-regulate finance entirely.

These Silk Road characters are nasty. Ross - the kid who got life in prison for running the international crime ring - tried to hire something like six different contract killers to execute his enemies. Reason defends him because he was a libertarian anarchist, but the kid was into some nasty stuff, and made millions off an international online crime empire. All sorts of unsavory characters had their bitcoin tied up in that stuff - everything from drugs to executions to bombs to whatever. And they've been publishing the Federal Judge's address, social security number, routines, family info, etc. It's obvious that someone wants her executed. And the comments in question were about executing her. My guess is it feeds into an ongoing investigation, like I said.

[Woodsman]

Re: Tone it down

I don't know, Woody. I don't buy the press' line on this one. Nor do I buy Ken White's explanations at his popehat website...

Oh geez, DC. When you start a piece with that Reaganesque "I don't know..." I know I'm in for it

You've written extensively on your time around our Libertarian friends and have taken deep dives into "the literature," so I won't pretend to know what I'm talking about here. Nick is a good enough writer and that Beatles mop haircut and black leather jacket thing is like, to die for [grrrowl!], but my deepest interaction with the Libertarian Church was attendance at a single meeting. They watched "Bedtime for Bonzo" and argued about taxes and legalizing MJ. Generally an underwhelming night, but I think I remember somebody scoring in parking lot afterwards. It was along time ago.

I got nothing on the particulars of the controversies you highlight and will take you at your word. I'm sure you don't take me posting a few links and money quotes as some defense of this Ulbrich character. Seems pretty foolish of him to think he could muscle in on the family business and then get all cheeky about it without expecting the usual disproportional smack down. The groveling pleas for mercy only makes them more contemptuous of you, as young Ross found out at sentencing.

"Do you see what happens, Larry?

You betcha I know who pays the bills at Reason, but it was the first I encountered this story and at the time it seemed somewhat apropos to us here iTulip, considering it's all commentary on commentary now with EJ focused on making VR a thing. Admittedly though in the most tangential sort of way, as everyone here is so much nicer than those Reason commentators. I read it in the context of our latest kerfuffle over [insert intractable social problem here] and see it as a cautionary tale on the value of forbearance. Which is ironic too and for obvious, speck in my neighbor's eye reasons.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Tone it down

Oh geez, DC. When you start a piece with that Reaganesque "I don't know..." I know I'm in for it

You've written extensively on your time around our Libertarian friends and have taken deep dives into "the literature," so I won't pretend to know what I'm talking about here. Nick is a good enough writer and that Beatles mop haircut and black leather jacket thing is like, to die for [grrrowl!], but my deepest interaction with the Libertarian Church was attendance at a single meeting. They watched "Bedtime for Bonzo" and argued about taxes and legalizing MJ. Generally an underwhelming night, but I think I remember somebody scoring in parking lot afterwards. It was along time ago.

I got nothing on the particulars of the controversies you highlight and will take you at your word. I'm sure you don't take me posting a few links and money quotes as some defense of this Ulbrich character. Seems pretty foolish of him to think he could muscle in on the family business and then get all cheeky about it without expecting the usual disproportional smack down. The groveling pleas for mercy only makes them more contemptuous of you, as young Ross found out at sentencing.

"Do you see what happens, Larry?

You betcha I know who pays the bills at Reason, but it was the first I encountered this story and at the time it seemed somewhat apropos to us here iTulip, considering it's all commentary on commentary now with EJ focused on making VR a thing. Admittedly though in the most tangential sort of way, as everyone here is so much nicer than those Reason commentators. I read it in the context of our latest kerfuffle over [insert intractable social problem here] and see it as a cautionary tale on the value of forbearance. Which is ironic too and for obvious, speck in my neighbor's eye reasons.

Nah, I was just giving Ulbricht's backstory for the sake of anyone who didn't know what was going on here. I wasn't suggesting you supported him or anything.

See, the CIA reference is about right. It's the same basic playbook the libertarian anarchists are using. They're calling themselves agorists. It's a curious hodgepodge of minor criminal entrepreneurs, true believer libertarians, sovereign citizens, neo-confederate secessionists, and computer geeks. Notice how Tom Woods - a founding member of the League of the South - pops up on the first page. There's always a few of them. The idea is to use markets to sell anything they can that's illegal to raise funds to push a political movement, with the belief being that it's a one-two punch. By setting up illegal markets you somehow discredit the US Government, and then by raising money in them, you can work to dismantle it and enforce your own political ideology. Which is not to different from the CIA move, except the cute little idealistic part about black markets undermining the justification for the state - probably only a relatively sheltered American could believe that nonsense. Then again, selling stuff on black markets to push a political agenda is a very old game.

Anyways, once they had .onion Tor sites and bitcoin, they were ready to go. They had a very difficult system of anonymity to crack, and a ready-made way to launder funds. Ulbricht is just a small part of that. And he even set limits in his market - What a statist! For instance, you could trade forged passports, hydrogen cyanide, counterfeit money, or parts to build explosive mines, but he'd ban the trade of child porn, stolen credit cards, hit men services or guns at Silk Road. Of course, not all of his competitors were so restrictive.

It's funny, I saw a couple of my friends - both Masshole computer engineers - blow up with outrage over the life sentence this kid got. They were saying things like "he never even touched the drugs himself," and "all he was doing was running a website that allowed people to make whatever transactions they wanted." But I had trouble feeling bad there for a couple of reasons. First, if he was a poor black kid using burner phones and text messages to arrange for a physical black market in a projects courtyard with dollars instead of a rich white kid using .onion sites and Tor to arrange for a virtual black market on the internet with bitcoin, these guys wouldn't be phased at all by the life sentence. Second, you know what they usually call the guy who makes millions off drug trade without ever touching drugs himself? The kingpin.

This case gets a lot of special attention because some high-profile political people and just plain, simple, wealthier drug users used Silk Road. And people get very angry at the judge for that - many of whom are the same sort of people who thought Michael Brown got what he deserved back in Ferguson. This is a whole different level anti-state of outrage from a whole different point of view than maybe what you're used to. And now they're spinning up the outrage machine again - apparently over US Attorney Bharara trolling comment sections at Reason just looking for people who typed mean things about a judge. But, like I said, on some of those agorist sites, as well as other places, they've been passing around a federal judge's vital info, hoping someone will at least take a mortgage out in her name or go even further.

I'd bet there's an ongoing investigation here. I'd bet that there's probably a couple people purposefully spreading her info everywhere or sending something or threatening her or something that this may or may not tie into (that's what the Grand Jury's for, I suppose). I'd even bet that somebody lost enough money when they shut down and seized the Silk Road bitcoins that they went over to the assassination market and tried to order a hit on her. And, like Ross found out the hard way, odds are most of those assassination markets are scams, and the second most are cops and FBI playing hitmen to scoop up would-be purchasers, so Lord knows what they found there.

It might be a cautionary tale on the value of forbearance. But I'm willing to bet that even a public defender in 21st century America can get you off if the only crime is typing a few words - even gruesome ones - into an internet comment section. And I'm willing to bet that the most busy US Attorney in the country isn't issuing subpoena's because he's bored and he wants to test that theory. There has to be more to this story. That was my only point in writing all this nonsense.

Maybe it's really a cautionary tale about instant news and instant jumping to conclusions. The wheels 'o justice still turn glacially. They still won't comment on ongoing cases. But that doesn't stop 100 articles from being published full of pure speculation in every press outlet ever. And those that start it have an ax to grind. Besides, even if they didn't, being first has been more important than being good or accurate in journalism for a long time now. All I'm saying is I think folks oughta read stuff like this with a jaundiced eye. The story will come out one day. But not today.