{"id":31648,"date":"2015-06-14T04:00:53","date_gmt":"2015-06-14T08:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=31648"},"modified":"2015-06-13T09:22:07","modified_gmt":"2015-06-13T13:22:07","slug":"more-on-that-reason-grand-jury-subpoena","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2015\/06\/14\/more-on-that-reason-grand-jury-subpoena\/","title":{"rendered":"More on that <em>Reason<\/em> grand jury subpoena"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>At the <em>Foundation for Economic Education<\/em>, <a href=\"http:\/\/fee.org\/anythingpeaceful\/detail\/why-the-feds-are-going-after-reasoncom-commenters-and-what-it-means-for-free-speech\" target=\"_blank\">Ryan Radia<\/a> discusses the free-speech-quashing subpoena issued by a federal prosecutor in New York state:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In late May, Judge Katherine Forrest, who sits on the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, sentenced Ulbricht to life in prison. This sentence was met with mixed reactions, with many commentators criticizing Judge Forrest for handing down what they perceived as an exceedingly harsh sentence.<\/p>\n<p>A few <em>Reason<\/em> users, some of whom may have followed Reason\u2019s extensive coverage of the fascinating trial, apparently found Ulbricht\u2019s sentence especially infuriating.<\/p>\n<p>One commenter argued that \u201cjudges like these \u2026 should be taken out back and shot.\u201d Another user, purporting to correct the preceding comment, wrote that \u201cit\u2019s judges like these that will be taken out back and shot.\u201d A follow-up comment suggested the use of a \u201cwood chipper,\u201d so as not to \u201cwaste ammunition.\u201d And a user expressed hope that \u201cthere is a special place in hell reserved for that horrible woman.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Within hours, the office of Preet Bharara, the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, sent <em>Reason<\/em> a subpoena for these commenters\u2019 identifying information \u201cin connection with an official criminal investigation of a suspected felony being conducted by a federal grand jury.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This doesn\u2019t mean a grand jury actually asked about the commenters; instead, in federal criminal investigations, it\u2019s typically up to the US Attorney to decide when to issue a subpoena \u201con behalf\u201d of a grand jury.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>Even if this subpoena is valid under current law \u2014 more on that angle in a bit \u2014 the government made a serious mistake in seeking to force <em>Reason<\/em> to hand over information that could uncover the six commenters\u2019 identities.<\/p>\n<p>Unless the Department of Justice is investigating a credible threat to Judge Forrest with some plausible connection to the <em>Reason<\/em> comments at issue, this subpoena will serve only to chill hyperbolic \u2014 but nonetheless protected \u2014 political speech by anonymous Internet commenters.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At the Foundation for Economic Education, Ryan Radia discusses the free-speech-quashing subpoena issued by a federal prosecutor in New York state: In late May, Judge Katherine Forrest, who sits on the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, sentenced Ulbricht to life in prison. This sentence was met with mixed reactions, with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,10,28,13],"tags":[186,58,477,154,217],"class_list":["post-31648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-law","category-liberty","category-media","category-usa","tag-freedomofspeech","tag-internet","tag-magazines","tag-privacy","tag-rights"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-8es","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31648"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31648\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31649,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31648\/revisions\/31649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}