Bronx DA Backs Down After Sending Secret Subpoena To Unearth Anonymous Bloggers & Commenters
from the the-right-to-anonymity dept
Paul Alan Levy the lawyer from Public Citizen who defended the bloggers in this case was kind enough to write in alerting us to another job well done by Public Citizen. In this case, a NYC political blog site called Room 8 had some posts by an anonymous blogger criticizing some actions in the Bronx DA's office and the Bronx Republican Party. Not long after the posts, Room 8 received a subpoena from the DA's office not just demanding the IP address of the anonymous blogger and various anonymous commenters, but also warned them that even disclosing the subpoena could get the folks behind Room 8 in serious trouble. Luckily, Room 8 chose to fight this request, signing up the help of Levy, who convinced the DA's office to drop the subpoena and after Room 8 had to threaten the DA's office with a lawsuit of its own, it dropped the demand that the supboena be kept secret. Room 8 has a full account as well. Public Citizen also has posted links to a bunch of documents from the case.What's still not clear is what was the purpose of the original subpoena. From the facts presented, it's easier to jump to the conclusion that it was purely political. Someone in the DA's office didn't like being criticized, and used the power of the office to try to squelch that voice (and, in fact, well before this came out, the anonymous blogger in question erased all his posts and disappeared). The folks who run Room 8 tried to determine what the actual issue was, and never received any answers. The whole thing is a bit scary, as it does show how a DA could abuse power to get info on anonymous critics simply by claiming it was a criminal investigation, without disclosing any details, and without letting the bloggers subpoenaed speak about it. Hopefully if other sites are getting bullied in this manner, they'll learn to fight back as well.
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No surprises here
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Re: No surprises here
Give me a break. The guy is a corrupt idiot, just like many politicians, whether red or blue. Think for yourself instead of trumpeting your colors. You might get more respect.
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Re: Re: No surprises here
And I don't want or need your respect.
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abuse of power? no!
Honestly, guys, wouldn't it be easier to run stories about non-corrupt public officials? Granted, your site wouldn't have much content.
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Re: abuse of power? no!
How pathetic. I bet everything that is wrong with America is Bushes or the Republicans fault.
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Re: Re: abuse of power? no!
the unjustified "war" in Iraq:
http://intelligence.senate.gov/press/record.cfm?id=298775
The gas prices:
http://closetheenronloophole.com
to name a couple issues. Wake up middle america, the R party is the political branch of corporate america. They hide behind "family values" and hot button issues to win votes. They only care about promoting profitability for themselves and financially interested parties. If 100% Americans used their brains when voting, the R party would never win more than ~10% of the vote.
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Re: Re: Re: abuse of power? no!
Vote Freedom, Vote Libertarian !
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Re: Re: Re: Re: abuse of power? no!
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: abuse of power? no!
so therefore, that means we all start the same, not end the same...It is up to you to make the most of the opportunities that present themselves, not the Governments job to help people that make a choice not to take opportunities and give them what they DO NOT deserve..I will agree that some people have more opportunities than others, but I do not and will not EVER agree that it is may job to provide people with opportunities they do not deserve nor have they worked for. Everyone has the chance to go to Harvard, not everyone deserves it, nor does everyone do everything they can to achieve it...Why should I pay for them, nobody paid for me, yet I still achieved what i did.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: abuse of power? no!
And just what did you do to "deserve" the parents you got and the genetics you were created with? Were you like working really hard with God before you were born to make sure you picked parents with the right genetics? Is that what made you deserving and others not? And how did you avoid subsequent catastrophic disabling accidents or diseases? Was that just God protecting you because you worked so hard at being righteous? You sound to me more like someone who won the sperm lottery then trying to claim credit for his good own good fortune as a way of alleviating his guilt for being so greedy. Just because you convince yourself of your righteousness doesn't mean you're actually right.
Yeah, but for some people that chance is like 0.0001%. Like everyone had a "chance" to win the sperm lottery too.
And many of those who do do everything they can still don't achieve it while many who don't work nearly as hard have it practically handed to them.
Lucky you. Let me play God with you and I guarantee you that I could keep you from doing it again.
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Re: Re: abuse of power? no!
Well at least everything from the days of WWII, when his grandfather, Prescott Bush was convicted of selling to the Nazis up until the present day, with this war for oil that Bush Sr. started any way. I tend to blame Reagan for a lot myself. After all, it was Reagan who deregulated most of the trade here in the US, busted the Air Traffic Controllers' union, traded arms to Central American to raise money for the release of hostages in Iran, and refused to fund AIDS research, to mention a few things.
Yeah, it is mostly the Republicans' fault for most of what is wrong with this country today.
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Re: Re: Re: abuse of power? no!
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Re: Re: Re: abuse of power? no!
The republican's definately have a role in so many babys being aborted each year, they played a sinister role in the break up of the family, they were certainly in on the decision to make no fault divorce an easy thing to get.
You know they strained night and day to increase taxes on everything from Gas to bubble gum.
It's OH so easy to blame "Bush"... let me give you a lessen in Social Studies my Democrat ran Public education friend... The president is teh head of the EXECUTIVE BRANCH. He enforces the laws... he doesn't write them!
There are 500 to 600 people who are bigger problems in washington and they are all in the legislative branch. Who DOES write the laws.
Even if the president said he wanted something congress could still give him the proverbial middle finger.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: abuse of power? no!
> being aborted each year, they played a sinister role in the > break up of the family, they were certainly in on the
> decision to make no fault divorce an easy thing to get.
If you think that "no fault divorce" is an easy thing then
you are living in some sort of fantasy land.
Fundies are great at deluding themselves. They can keep
themselves ignorant and oblivious and try to subject the
rest of us to that. This only HIDES problems, it doesn't
solve them.
The "Republican" notion of what a family should be is
no improvement on what you could accuse liberals of.
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Not so fast Mikey
But of course, you never know who is behind the comments before the identity is revealed
But if it's just a criticism from some third party not having a stake in the particular court proceedings then it shoud be protected as free speech
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Re: Not so fast Mikey
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Not so fast Anonymous Coward...
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We should all be fucking scared
I have extensive documentation about a civilian shooting death by police officers that occurred many years ago. The incident was well-covered at the time, in all forms of media, local, national and international, TV, news magazines, and local newspapers. Eventually books would be published, and the case is generally cited as the first Rodney King, although the circumstances are somewhat different.
I observed that there was no Wikipedia entry for the person who was killed. So I wrote up a quick wikipedia entry, and listed a dozen of my cited sources. Within two hours, some do-gooder pretending to be a neutral third-party 'disputed' the relevancy, demanding that I provide citable sources, which I had done.
Within twenty-four hours, the page and entry had been completely deleted. From the first 16 hours after I wrote the page, you could do a Google search of the dead person's name, and it was the top listing. Yet after the first 24 hours, when the page was wiped clean, there was no reference to it whatsoever in a basic Google search.
I have no solid proof but I have reason to believe that this was completely an inside job. The case was a great embarrassment to the police department involved, and even though forty years has gone by, some are still in power and former police officers associated with the incident are now politicians holding public office.
So it greatly troubles me that the oppression has reached this level that someone with an itchy trigger finger is going after wikipedia entries and trying to abuse the legal system in order to out the identity of anonymous critical bloggers. We should all be scared as hell.
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Re: We should all be fucking scared
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Re: We should all be fucking scared
If you think that some police department is monitoring wikipedia or the whole internet on an hourly basis, you'd probably find the video "Loose Change" interesting, too.
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Re: Re: We should all be fucking scared
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Re: Re: Re: We should all be fucking scared
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Re: Re: Re: Re: We should all be fucking scared
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Silly DA
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Privacy!
Are more states going to have a law like this on the books?
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HAHA, what a hoot - those politicians really got people fooled in thinking there's a difference between Dems and Repubs. Like a Dem wouldn't do the same thing in the same circumstances - I'm sure there's plenty of it going on right now.
Just another example - and there will be TONS more to follow, of 'public servants' abusing the systems they have in place for 'law enforcement'.
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Political Bullies
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politixs
tic = blood sucking parasite
seriously if anyone told me not to tell any one the court, gov or lawyer the first thing il do is publish any way any how any media
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> don't achieve it while many who don't work nearly as hard
> have it practically handed to them.
It ultimately doesn't matter. What separates man from beast is man's willingess to crawl out of filth he finds himself surrounded in. I didn't get Harvard handed to me on a silver platter either: boo hoo.
Paternalism will not help people. They succeed or fail based
on their own wits and those around them. They greater the
social distance you start from them, the less relevant you
are.
At best you can stroke your own ego by trying to have some
sort of control over someone else's life.
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Re:
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