UK Security Minister Says Only A Drivers Licence For The Internet Can Bring Back Online Civility

from the has-other-terrible-ideas-as-well dept

A bad idea that continues to persist is a favorite of many government officials. The problem with the internet is anonymity, according to them. Wouldn't we all be better off if we were forced to identify ourselves before using social media platforms? The theory is people won't say mean, stupid, or regrettable things if their posts and comments are linked to their real names. Several years of Facebook-only commenting systems has proven this wrong.

And yet the idea continues to be pushed by European politicians and DHS officials. The latest to call for an internet drivers license is UK security minister Ben Wallace. His theory is the use of real names and verifiable info will inflict mass civility on the internet, which is currently home to roving bands of ruffians and Wild West content. [Paywall ahead.] [Alternate link to article provided by Alec Muffet, who has helpfully taken a screenshot of the print edition.]

Ben Wallace, a former soldier, said bullying and grooming occurred on social media because offenders believed they cannot be identified. “It is mob rule on the internet. You shouldn’t be able to hide behind anonymity as much as you can now,” he added.

Of course, it will all be so easy to implement in Wallace's limited view. After all, banks authenticate users' identities, so it stands to reason people will be happy to turn over names, addresses, phone numbers, and whatever else might be demanded in exchange for the heightened possibility of being doxed, sued, or exposed to overbroad prosecutorial efforts.

Wallace says there's a damn good reason to demand ID from everyone on the internet: the children.

The former soldier described being part of an uncover investigation into child sex exploitation where they found a children’s chatroom with a 45-year-old man pretending to be a 12-year-old.

He said: “It was like blood in the water with a shark – he was trying to chat up a girl to get her to come and meet him.

Whoa, if true. In the US, cops do this all the time. I'm sure UK cops do it as well, so this may have been nothing more than a couple of cops chatting to each other for all anyone knows. Even if this went down exactly the way Wallace portrays it, the institution of an internet ID card isn't going to magically make it impossible for 45-year-olds to pretend they're 12. It won't even make a dent.

What it will do is harm the internet and its users. The only services that will be able to comply will be the largest. Forums and discussion groups, hosted on free platforms and maintained by members, won't be able to cover the cost or provide the manpower. If anyone's concerned about the dominance of the major social media platforms, regulation like this isn't the answer. It will only further cement their dominance.

And there are plenty of legitimate reasons to maintain online anonymity. In the eyes of officials like Wallace, anonymity is an admission of guilt. "Nothing to hide, nothing to fear," except for people like undercover journalists, journalists' sources, dissidents, opponents of authoritarian governments, people who don't like being pre-doxed by their service provider, security researchers, government employees, people who don't like being blackmailed, critics of powerful people or corporations, kids who want to keep sexual predators from knowing they're kids… the list goes on and on.

To add injurious action to an insulting idea, Wallace has another boneheaded idea: intermediary liability for national security threats.

Mr Wallace called on social media giants to take responsibility for their own technology, as he said the UK was spending hundreds of millions of pounds on coping with the challenges of end-to-end encryption, which makes it harder for the security services to foil terror plots.

He said: “There should be an element of the ‘polluter pays’. You contribute to the cost your technology is engendering.”

What even the fuck. This is more than stupid. It's dangerous. It does very little to combat terrorism and gives the government (and lawsuit plaintiffs) a chance to grab some money from the biggest, easiest-to-locate target, rather than the actual criminals engaging in terrorist acts. This is lazy legislating and it's a cheap comparison. Terrorists may use encrypted communication services, but it hardly follows that terrorism is the result of companies offering encrypted messaging. Pollution, on the other hand, can be traced back to its source and the manufacture of products. There's a direct link from manufacturing to the production of pollutants. Offering an encrypted messaging service does not create terrorists or terrorist activity.

Fortunately for Wallace, he's floating these terrible ideas in the UK's legislative cesspool, unhampered by the First Amendment or rational national security legislation. This means UK residents, and the companies that serve them, may be eventually forced to fork over their personal info to access Facebook, much like they're expected to do if they want to access porn.

Filed Under: anonymity, ben wallace, civility, driver's license, internet, registration, social media, uk

German Court Says Facebook's Real Names Policy Violates Users' Privacy

from the really? dept

With more and more people attacking online trolls, one common refrain is that we should do away with anonymity online. There's this false belief that forcing everyone to use their "real name" online will somehow stop trolling and create better behavior. Of course, at the very same time, lots of people seem to be blaming online social media platforms for nefarious activity and trollish activity including "fake news." And Facebook is a prime target -- which is a bit ironic, given that Facebook already has a "real names" policy. On Facebook you're not allowed to use a pseudonym, but are expected to use your real name. And yet, trolling still takes place. Indeed, as we've written for the better part of a decade, the focus on attacking anonymity online is misplaced. We think that platforms like Facebook and Google that use a real names policy are making a mistake, because enabling anonymous or pseudononymous speech is quite important in enabling people to speak freely on a variety of subjects. Separately, as studies have shown, forcing people to use real names doesn't stop anti-social behavior.

All that is background for an interesting, and possibly surprising, ruling in a local German court, finding that Facebook's real names policy violates local data protection rules. I can't read the original ruling since my understanding of German is quite limited -- but it appears to have found that requiring real names is "a covert way" of obtaining someone's name which raises questions for privacy and data protection. The case was brought by VZBZ, which is the Federation of German Consumer Organizations. Facebook says it will appeal the ruling, so it's hardly final.

On the flip side, VZBZ is also appealing a part of the ruling that it lost. It had also claimed that it was misleading for Facebook to say that its service was "free" since users "pay" with their "data." The court didn't find that convincing.

It will certainly be interesting to see where the courts come out on this after the appeals process runs its course. As stated above, I think the real names policy is silly and those insisting that it's necessary are confused both about the importance of anonymity and the impact of real names on trollish behavior. However, I also think that should be a choice that Facebook gets to make on its own concerning how it runs its platform. So I'm troubled by the idea that a government can come in and tell a company that it can't require a real name to use its service. If people don't want to supply Facebook with their real name... don't use Facebook.

But, honestly, what's really perplexing is that this is all coming down at the same time that Germany -- especially -- has been trying to crack down on any "bad content" appearing on Facebook, demanding that Facebook wave a magic wand and stop all bad behavior from appearing on its site. I'd imagine that's significantly harder if it has to allow people to use the site anonymously. This is not to say that anonymity leads to more "bad" content (see above), but it certainly can make moderating users much more difficult for a platform.

So, if you're Facebook, at this point you have to wonder just what you have to do to keep the service running in Germany without upsetting officials. You can't let anything bad happen on the platform, and you can't get user's names. It increasingly seems that Germany wants Facebook to just magically "only allow good stuff" no matter how impossible that might be.

Filed Under: anonymity, data protection, free speech, germany, privacy, real names
Companies: facebook, fzbz

Court Says Google Must Unmask Person Who Left Wordless, One-Star Review Of Local Psychiatrist

from the 1/5-would-not-litigate-again dept

Back in August, psychiatrist Mark Beale filed a defamation lawsuit. His target? A one-star review containing zero words written by someone using the name "Richard Hill." Beale claimed this single review, hosted by Google, had irrevocably damaged his livelihood.

In support of this, he offered several bizarre assertions. (These can be found in voluminous documentation accompanying Beale's amended complaint [PDF].)

- He had no patient named Richard Hill, so the review was bogus.

- Richard Hill was obviously a pseudonym, hence the need for unmasking. (This could also be used to disprove his first assertion, but never mind all that, I guess…)

- His mom thought someone she knew might be trying to ruin his reputation. (No, really. See p. 12.)

- His internet expert affirms one-star reviews are far worse than five-star reviews. (See pp. 51-56 of the Beale complaint.)

- A one-star review (with zero words attached) is defamatory on its face.

Why this litigation is still in process boggles the mind. But strap your brain in. It's about to get much, much bogglier.

When we first covered the lawsuit, Beale's lawyer made what seemed to be a completely ignorant statement in regards to Beale's attempt to force Google to strip the anonymity from masked one-star reviewer "Richard Hill."

Beale's attorney, Steven Abrams of Mount Pleasant, said he has handled several similar cases, and companies like Google, AT&T, Comcast and Verizon typically hand over identifying information of anonymous users.

“Why Google fought this case, I have no earthly idea,” Abrams said. “There’s not really a lot of case law (in South Carolina) ... on these types of cases because they don’t usually result in a fight.”

It turns out there's not a lot of case law in South Carolina. Well, at least not a lot of logical case law, apparently. For reasons explained thoroughly by the court -- but otherwise inexplicable given the standards applied everywhere else -- Google is being forced to strip Richard Hill's anonymity. (h/t FIRE's Sarah McLaughlin.)

It starts out promising, but quickly turns to something completely ridiculous. From the court order [PDF]:

Because South Carolina has not established a test to unmask the author of an anonymous defamatory internet posting, the Court must look to other federal and state courts for persuasive authority. State Courts have applied three different tests. Courts have required plaintiffs to demonstrate one of the following:

(1) a good faith basis warranting disclosure;

(2) evidence sufficient to survive a motion to dismiss before allowing disclosure; or

(3) evidence sufficient to survive a hypothetical motion for summary judgment.

Here, Plaintiff seeks to apply the standard requiring the least stringent proof (the good faith standard) and Google has asked the Court to apply the standard requiring the most robust proof (the summary judgment standard).

After comparing the Dendrite standard (approximately what Google was seeking) and other opinions dealing with "good faith" basis for pursuing unmasking (which includes allegations of defamation), the court decides to split the difference -- only in this case it involves a 90/10 split in favor of Beale. It accomplishes this split by deciding Richard Hill's one-star review is commercial speech, which isn't given nearly as much protection as other forms of speech.

Although Brockmeyer is the only South Carolina case on point, it did not go so far as to adopt the standard in Cahill. Cahill, quoted approvingly in Brockmeyer, is instructive; however, it is important to note that the type of speech in Cahill was political speech. In Cahill, the plaintiff was a city councilman and the alleged defamatory comments were posted on a local political website. The type of speech involved in this case is an online business review, which is commercial speech. Courts have held commercial speech should require a less stringent approach than political speech. The Ninth Circuit addressed this issue in In re Anonymous Online Speakers and suggested the standard in Cahill, although potentially appropriate for political speech, does not apply to commercial speech.

But a review of a business isn't commercial speech. It's an expression of opinion, based on a person's subjective experience. A review can be an advertisement for a business (or its competitors), but only in the way any word-of-mouth opinion is. No one sincerely believes word-of-mouth advertising is "commercial speech," with the possible exception of this court. Websites' monetization of customers' reviews doesn't convert opinions into commercial speech. This determination is not just wrong, it's incredibly obtuse.

Based on this bizarre conclusion, the court agrees to compel service providers (Google is one. Charter and Cox are the others being hit with subpoenas.) to turn over identifying info on pseudonymous reviewer Richard Hill.

The court notes it's not at the point where it can discuss the case on its merits -- not without a defendant being served and given a chance to respond. But it's not like it doesn't have that option. That the court is willing to even entertain the notion that a one-star review with zero written statements is libelous is fucking ridiculous. The complaint should have been laughed out of court after a first reading. For the judge to go further and decide a one-star review posted by an anonymous person on a third party site is somehow commercial speech is mind blowing. If this is the state of free speech protection in South Carolina, no wonder Beale's counsel seemed genuinely confused a third party would stand up for a user's anonymity.

Woe be to those who dare one-star a business in South Carolina. Fortunately, the court considers this sort of review to be "political speech."

Filed Under: anonymity, anonymous speech, defamation, free speech, mark beale, one-star, reviews, south carolina
Companies: google

Court Denies Government's Demasking Demands In Inauguration Protest Case

from the settle-down,-boys dept

Nine months after the DOJ's Facebook search warrants targeting Trump inauguration protesters were approved, the DC District court has finally issued a ruling restricting how much the government can actually obtain.

The original warrants were broad, seeking communications from every Facebook user who had interacted with DisruptJ20's Facebook page. If these hadn't been challenged, the government would have had access to the entire contents of more than 6,000 Facebook users' accounts. The warrant also came with an indefinite gag order, something the DOJ dropped on the eve of oral arguments, perhaps sensing it wouldn't be allowed to keep it.

The government claimed evidence of criminal activity -- specifically violation of DC's rioting laws -- would be found in these accounts. Once the gag order was lifted, the warrants were challenged directly by some of the targets and Facebook itself. This has led to a few concessions by the DOJ, but it's still seeking a whole lot of communications presumably unrelated to the underlying charges.

The district court has modified the warrants via a court order, paring back the government's demands even further. Paul Levy has an excellent, thorough post discussing the pros and cons of the modifications at the Public Citizen blog (Public Citizen moved to intervene, but apparently its motion has been ignored) -- one that is definitely worth reading to understand how much the government is still going to be able to obtain, despite months of warrant trimming.

On the plus side, the ruling [PDF] protects the identities of users who interacted with the DisruptJ20 Facebook page.

Perhaps impelled by the ACLU’s excellent briefing of the issue, his opinion contains an extended discussion of the two-step process, and of the importance of adapting that process to constrain searches that might otherwise intrude too deeply in protected political expression and create a chilling effect on future online political expression. Even more clearly than he did in his DreamHost rulings, Judge Morin states squarely that the government has never shown probable cause to believe that communications of anonymous third parties with the accounts themselves contain evidence of criminal activity charged in the indictment. Consequently, the third parties’ identifying information was entitled to be protected from disclosure pursuant to the order enforcing the search warrant.

If this is more than a DOJ fishing expedition, the government will need to move fast to get users stripped of their anonymity. Prosecutors are expecting to go to trial sometime in November, and Judge Morin won't approve the release of identifying information unless the government can hand over compelling reasons to de-anonymize particular Facebook users. As for Facebook, it claims manual redactions of the requested communications will take at least three weeks, so the government may have to talk a judge into delaying the trial or possibly face having to dismiss some charges.

According to Levy, that's the best part of the opinion, one that will probably be cited by others challenging overbroad search warrants. The rest of it is less spectacular, with some of it downright concerning.

While the order protects the identities of users who interacted with the page, it will not protect their communications. The government may not have full access to private messages, but it will apparently get a copy of anything matching certain keywords. The users targeted directly by warrants (as opposed to a targeted Facebook page) will see even more of their private communications exposed. This is troubling because much of what was discussed will likely be the sort of speech the government is supposed to protect. After all, DisruptJ20 was a protest group. Some protests may turn into riots, but it's unlikely the genesis of those riots are contained in Facebook private messages.

Worse, as Levy points out, there's still a whiff of fishing expedition in the air. Without clearer justifications for the search demands, the government appears to be engaged in the chilling of political speech.

Even assuming that there is sound reason to believe that some material on any of these pages relates to the riot, the DisruptJ20 page as well as the individual pages will have a great deal of political expression unrelated to the riot. A colloquy between Judge Morin and the Assistant U.S. Attorney during the hearing suggested that photographs of riot activity may have appeared on the pages at one time, and that the government hopes its search warrant can provide access to photos that would help identify participants, and lead to information about the photographers who can be subpoenaed to authenticate them. Given the continued secrecy of the probable cause affidavits, we cannot be sure what other bases the government may have given for the search of these three accounts.

So, the government may still be allowed to fish, but it will have to use a shorter line. But overall, it appears the government needs to expect to have a lot more of its warrants challenged if it appears to be targeting a whole bunch of people and their protected speech.

Update: Public Citizen has filed a motion for reconsideration [PDF], asking the court to take another look at one of its questionable search constraints. The filing points out the court appears to contradict itself in its ruling, possibly giving the government full access to communications of innocent parties, constrained only by redaction of indentifying information.

Doe l, Doe 2, and Doe 3 move the Court to clarify and, if need be, to modify in one narrow respect, its final order regarding the manner in which the search warrants to Facebook seeking data from the accounts of Lacy MacAuley and Legba Carrefour will be executed. There is an ambiguity in the language on page 15 of the Court's order with respect to the redactions that Facebook is to make from the data in MacAuley and Carrefour accounts before the information is turned over to the government for "front to back" review. One reading of the language is that any content posted by innocent third parties is to be redacted; another is that only identifying information is to be redacted from such content, after which that content, like the content posted by MacAuley and Carrefour, is to be subject to "front to back" review. If the latter is the proper interpretation, then the Does ask for reconsideration, based on the contention that a factual distinction drawn in the Court's opinion about how Facebook accounts work is incorrect, and not supported by the record.

The filing also asks the court to reconsider its denial of Public Citizen's motion to intervene. As is explained in Levy's blog post, Judge Morin's order in the Dreamhost case (related to the DisruptJ20 website and a warrant that targeted more than a million site visitors) greatly benefited from expert analysis and other contributions from intervenors. The same sort of expertise would further refine the restraints imposed on the government's search efforts as well as give the three parties challenging the warrant more legal knowledge to work with.

Filed Under: anonymity, demasking, disruptj20, doj, inauguration, protests
Companies: facebook

Ninth Circuit Lets Us See Its Glassdoor Ruling, And It's Terrible

from the making-secret-jurisprudence-public-precedent dept

Well, I was wrong: last week I lamented that we might never know how the Ninth Circuit ruled on Glassdoor's attempt to quash a federal grand jury subpoena served upon it demanding it identify users. Turns out, now we do know: two days after the post ran the court publicly released its decision refusing to quash the subpoena. It's a decision that doubles-down on everything wrong with the original district court decision that also refused to quash it, only now with handy-dandy Ninth Circuit precedential weight.

Like the original ruling, it clings to the Supreme Court's decision in Branzburg v. Hayes, a case where the Supreme Court explored the ability of anyone to resist a grand jury subpoena. But in doing so it manages to ignore other, more recent, Supreme Court precedents that should have led to the opposite result.

Here is the fundamental problem with both the district court and Ninth Circuit decisions: anonymous speakers have the right to speak anonymously. (See, e.g., the post-Branzburg Supreme Court decision McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission). Speech rights also carry forth onto the Internet. (See, e.g., another post-Branzburg Supreme Court decision, Reno v. ACLU). But if the platforms hosting that speech can always be forced to unmask their users via grand jury subpoena, then there is no way for that right to ever meaningfully exist in the context of online speech.

Yet neither of these more recent Supreme Court decisions seems to have had any impact on either the district court or Ninth Circuit's thinking. Instead both courts seem to feel their hands are tied, that in the 1970s the Supreme Court set forth, once and for all, the rule that no one can ever resist federal grand jury subpoenas, except in very limited circumstances, and that this ruling was the final word on their enforceability, no matter what the context. But as I wrote in the previous post, what the Supreme Court said in Branzburg about the enforceability of grand jury subpoenas only related to those that arose from a specific context, journalists shielding sources, and the only question before the court then was whether journalists, as journalists, had the ability to refuse them. The Supreme Court never considered whether there might be any other set of circumstances where grand jury subpoenas could be resisted. In Branzburg the Supreme Court had only considered the question with respect to journalists.

In fact, to make Branzburg apply to Glassdoor, the Ninth Circuit had to try to squeeze Internet intermediaries like Glassdoor into the shoes of reporters and make them seem like one and the same, even when they are not:

Although Glassdoor is not in the news business, as part of its business model it does gather and publish information from sources it has agreed not to identify. It argues that “[a]nonymity is an essential feature of the Glassdoor community,” and that “if employees cannot speak anonymously, they often will not speak at all,” which will reduce the availability of “information about what it is like to work at a particular job and how workers are paid.” In other words, forcing Glassdoor to comply with the grand jury’s subpoena duces tecum will chill First Amendment-protected activity. This is fundamentally the same argument the Supreme Court rejected in Branzburg.

With all due respect to the Ninth Circuit panel, this is not fundamentally the same argument the Supreme Court rejected in Branzburg. As I wrote last week, to view the role of an intermediary platform as the same thing as an intermediary journalist is to fundamentally misunderstand the role of the intermediary platform in intermediating information. It also fundamentally misunderstands the First Amendment interests at stake. This case isn't about the press-related First Amendment rights at issue in Branzburg; they are the speech-related First Amendment rights of online speakers. And it's not the platform's First Amendment interests that Glassdoor is primarily trying to vindicate; it is the interests of the platform's users. Yet here, too, the Ninth Circuit panel misunderstands those interests when it dismisses out of hand the idea that they might have any right not to be unmasked:

Furthermore, Branzburg makes it clear that Glassdoor’s users do not have a First Amendment right not to testify before the investigating grand jury about the comments they initially made under the cloak of anticipated anonymity. See id. at 695 (“[I]f the authorities independently identify the informant, neither his own reluctance to testify nor the objection of the newsman would shield him from grand jury inquiry . . . .”). Therefore, Glassdoor cannot refuse to turn over its users’ identifying information on the grounds that it is protecting its users’ underlying rights.

"Anticipated anonymity" is a pretty grotesque way of describing a constitutional right people expected to be protected by when they chose to speak online. And it suggests a misreading of Branzburg, which never considered speech interests that were truly analogous to those of Internet platform users. Even if there's no First Amendment right to speak anonymously with a reporter it does not follow that there is no First Amendment right to speak anonymously online at all.

But that's the upshot to this decision: people who wish to speak anonymously online, in any capacity, won't be able to. They will forever be vulnerable to being unmasked by any federal criminal investigation, just so long as the investigation is not being done in bad faith. Nothing else can provide any sort of check on these unmasking demands, regardless of any other interest in play – including those of innocent speakers simply trying to avail themselves of their First Amendment right to speak anonymously, and all those who benefit from that speech.

This is a pretty stark result, and one that stands to affect Internet speakers everywhere. Not only does it threaten those anywhere a grand jury within the Ninth Circuit will be able to reach, but it will serve as persuasive authority governing the enforceability of subpoenas from grand juries in other circuits. It's also one that stands to have this dramatic effect after having been whipped up in secret, with a hidden docket and adamant refusal to accept amicus support. (Although two amici are listed in the caption, it does not appear that either brief was ultimately accepted by the court, much less actually read and considered.) Like anyone who insists on going it alone, without the help of their friends, the results of that obstinate independence have been predictably disastrous. Friends don't let friends inadvertently undermine the First Amendment, and I wish the court had let those of us able to help it see the full implications of this ruling be that friend.

Filed Under: 9th circuit, anonymity, free speech, secrecy, subpoena, transparency
Companies: glassdoor

DOJ Still Demanding Identity Of Twitter Users Because Someone They Shouldn't Have Arrested Tweeted A Smiley Emoji

from the this-case-remains-fucked-up dept

Last month, I had two blog posts about a particularly insane lawsuit being pushed by the Justice Department against a computer security researcher, Justin Shafer. As we explained, the arrest and prosecution of Shafer appeared to be the result of a truly ridiculous vendetta against Shafer by the FBI because Shafer got angry over a previous (and totally misguided) decision to raid his home, after he properly disclosed security problems involving some dental practice software. It seems clear that Shafer never should have been arrested (and never should have had the FBI raid his house three times over just a few months). Of course, what first brought the case to my attention was an even more ridiculous part of the story, in which the DOJ had sent a subpoena to Twitter demanding basically all info on five Twitter users -- even though two of them don't hide their identity -- because Shafer tweeted a smiley emoji at them.

That story is even more insane than it sounds, but I'm not going to repeat the details here -- I'll just repeat: the case involved the DOJ demanding the identity (and more) of five Twitter users because someone else (who they're railroading over bogus charges) sent a smiley emoji to them on Twitter where they were discussing a different lawsuit altogether.

We now have two updates on that story: (1) Shafer is appealing the fact that he's still in jail, months later and (2) the DOJ has refused to withdraw the emoji subpoena. Yes. You read that right. The DOJ is doubling down, demanding the identity (and more) of Twitter users because someone they never should have arrested, sent a smiley emoji to them. We can cover that second point first because there's not much more to say beyond "What the fuck is wrong with the DOJ?" As you may recall, the five Twitter users whose info was sought by the subpoena included @dawg8u ("Mike Honcho"), @abtnatural ("Virgil"), @Popehat (Ken White), @associatesmind (Keith Lee) and @PogoWasRight (Dissent Doe). Ken White and Keith Lee are both known (and each has blogged about the situation). The rest are at least partially pseudonymous. Dissent Doe, for one, has strong reasons for retaining anonymity, given her focus on data breaches and privacy issues. She revealed the DOJ's stunning decision to keep going over the weekend, noting that she now needs to fight the subpoena in court.

Dissent Doe explained to me later that her lawyers have tried, repeatedly, to contact the DOJ about this ridiculous subpoena, and the DOJ has ignored all attempts to communicate. Twitter has told her that any motion to quash the subpoena needs to be filed this week. She also notes, appropriately, that she's "really really ticked off" about all of this. We all should be.

And, just to be clear, there is no way the subpoena is even remotely Constitutional. Not even armchair lawyers could possibly think so. Over and over again, courts have said that anonymity is protected under the First Amendment, and you need to have very strong reasons to pierce the anonymity. The key case here is McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission, but plenty of others have weighed in since then. As we pointed out, the recent Awtry v. Glassdoor case nicely summarizes the history of cases protecting anonymity under the First Amendment:

The Supreme Court has recognized that “an author’s decision to remain anonymous, like other decisions concerning omissions or additions to the content of a publication, is an aspect of the freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment.” McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Comm’n, 514 U.S. 334, 342 (1995). Indeed, “[t]he right to speak anonymously was of fundamental importance to the establishment of our Constitution.” Doe v. 2TheMart.com Inc., 140 F. Supp. 2d 1088, 1092 (W.D. Wash. 2001) (citing McIntyre, 514 U.S. at 341-42). In particular, “Justice Black . . . reminded us that even the arguments favoring the ratification of the Constitution advanced in the Federalist Papers were published under fictitious names.” McIntyre, 514 U.S. at 342 (citing Talley v. California, 362 U.S. 60, 64 (1960)). So too were the responses of the anti-federalists, which were published by authors who used such fictitious names as “Centinel,” “Brutus” and “The Federal Farmer.” In re Anonymous Online Speakers, 661 F.3d 1168, 1172-73 (9th Cir. 2011).

Further, it is well-established that anonymous speech on the Internet, like other types of anonymous speech, enjoys First Amendment protection. In re Anonymous Online Speakers, 661 F.3d 1168, 1173 (9th Cir. 2011)(“online speech stands on the same footing as other speech—there is `no basis for qualifying the level of First Amendment scrutiny that should be applied’ to online speech”) (quoting Reno v. Am. Civil Liberties Union, 521 U.S. 844, 870 (1997)). As the Ninth Circuit has explained, “the ability to speak anonymously on the Internet promotes the robust exchange of ideas and allows individuals to express themselves freely without `fear of economic or official retaliation . . . [or] concern about social ostracism.'” Id.(quoting McIntyre, 514 U.S. at 341-42).

First Amendment protection of anonymous speech “is not unlimited, however, and the degree of scrutiny varies depending on the circumstances and the type of speech at issue.” Id. Political speech is considered to be “core” speech and is afforded the highest level of First Amendment protection. McIntyre, 514 U.S. at 346. Online messages such as the ones at issue here are also entitled to some level of First Amendment protection, even if the hurdle for overcoming that protection is less stringent than it is for political speech. See In re Anonymous Online Speakers, 661 F.3d 1168 at 1177; see also Highfields Capital Mgmt., L.P. v. Doe, 385 F. Supp. 2d 969 (N.D. Cal. 2005) (finding that identity of individual who anonymously posted derogatory comments about a company on an online message board was protected from disclosure under the First Amendment); Art of Living Foundation v. Does 1-10, No. 10-cv-5022 LHK, 2011 WL 5444622, at *5 (N.D. Cal. Nov. 9, 2011) (finding the standard articulated in Highfields applied to anonymously posted online commentary criticizing the plaintiff’s organization).

Given that tons of people are pointing this out publicly, what possible reason could the DOJ have for continuing to push Twitter to cough up this info other than to just be assholes?

As for the second update: Shafer has appealed the decision of a magistrate just revoking his pretrial release. The filing, by lawyers Tor Ekeland and Frederic Jennings, is... quite a read (and even cites my articles). It certainly doesn't hold back:

The government accuses Justin Mark Shafer of putting an FBI agent and his wife in substantial emotional distress and publishing restricted information about that FBI agent with the intent to incite violence against him. But nowhere in the record, or in the discovery in this case, is there any true threat of violence against anyone. There is no explicit language articulating any kind of threat. The “restricted” information in question was a prior home address for the FBI agent, publicly available on the internet. This entire case is built on innuendo and speculation that withstands neither constitutional nor statutory scrutiny. It is a chilling example of federal law enforcement overreach, and has serious ramifications for constitutional free speech and due process in relation to the internet and computer law. If the government’s accusations in this case are a crime, then millions of social media using Americans are subject to the prosecutorial whim of the Department of Justice.

The factual bases of the government’s bare bones indictment are a handful of public tweets; a Facebook friend request and message sent to a public Facebook account; the following of a public Twitter account;1 and two emails to an FBI Agent – one with a 😊 emoji and another inquiring about the status of a report of a patient privacy violation. The Defendant made no attempt to mask his identity, and the FBI never contacted the Defendant to express any concern or to ask him to stop his communications. Instead they arrested him. And any claim that he engaged in a sustained course of conduct with a continuity of purpose to cyberstalk or threaten are ludicrous when compared to facts embodied in the case law regarding these statutes.

These accusations led to a pretrial release order so broad it functioned as a prior restraint on Mr. Shafer’s constitutional right to speak about the accusations made against him. When he sought to do so – through a post on his work-related blog – the magistrate judge revoked release, broadly interpreting the release condition terms and finding a violation of those conditions.

An innocent man—who the government has not charged, and cannot charge, with any violent crime, nor with any history of violent crime— is now in jail on the basis of protected speech.

I recommend people read the entire document, as it goes into great detail (even beyond my original posts) about the vindictive nature of the FBI's vendetta against Shafer -- not for doing anything wrong, mind you -- but for being upset that the FBI raided his house and took all his electronics twice for completely bogus reasons. And it's not just Shafer, but Shafers three kids who are now traumatized over the mutliple FBI raids, in which agents pointed weapons at the children, or denied their parents the ability to get the children out of their rooms for extended periods of time.

The children now suffer currently from trauma and substantial emotional distress as a result of the repeated armed FBI raids. The Shafers’ three-year old is now unable to sleep alone in her room. Their (now) six-year old is struggling and withdrawn in school, where he previously excelled. Their ten-year old is now afraid to be near open shades, for fear of being surveilled.... Their father has not come home since April 18, 2017, because he is in jail awaiting trial.

As for why Shafer has been in jail all this time? Apparently it's because he wrote a blog post about the case. You can read that blog post here. I wouldn't necessarily say that the blog post was a good idea, because he's clearly venting his anger about the arrest and the treatment by the FBI and Special Agent Nathan Hopp in particular. But it hardly meets the criteria of threatening Hopp or "contacting" him via social media. And yet, since Shafer was barred from either of those things as condition for pretrial release, he was brought back in and has been in jail ever since. That raises a whole new set of First Amendment questions. Shafer is in jail for blogging.

During the period of Mr. Shafer’s pretrial release, he committed no crimes. He used no illegal or prohibited substances. He neither fled nor attempted to flee. He did nothing that posed a threat to the safety of any person or the community. He simply wrote a blog post comprised of constitutionally protected speech criticizing his prosecution. (See Ex. C, April 14, 2017 Blog Post) For this he has been taken away from his wife and children.

Shortly after the blog post was published, Mr. Shafer received a notice of potential violation of his pretrial conditions of release.

On April 18, 2017, a revocation hearing was held before Magistrate Judge Toliver. The government referenced vague concerns regarding flight risk, and claimed that the blog post Mr. Shafer had written was evidence of danger to the community or violation of the no-contact order between Mr. Shafer and SA Hopp. The government argued at the revocation hearing that merely “criticizing” SA Hopp in the “blog site” [sic] was indirect contact. (Tr. 5:8-6:10 (Apr. 18, 2017).) At the close of the revocation hearing, Magistrate Judge Toliver revoked Mr. Shafer’s pretrial release order. He has been detained since.

More specifically, Shafer's lawyers point out:

The original terms of his supervised release violated his free speech rights under the First Amendment. Imprisoning him pre-trial based on his speech is unconstitutional. This current, unconstitutional incarceration before an adjudication by a jury of his peers hampers Mr. Shafer’s ability to put on an effective defense, as he is not free to diligently prepare for his defense with his attorneys due to constant monitoring and harassment in jail. This violates his Fifth Amendment Due Process rights and his Sixth Amendment right to mount an effective defense. Moreover, none of Congress’s narrowly prescribed exceptions to an innocent defendant's presumption of liberty apply here. Mr. Shafer should be released pre-trial under appropriate conditions because his current incarceration violates the Constitution and federal law.

Everything about this case is crazy. We've certainly seen overreach by the DOJ in the past, but this case seems like a pretty blatant example not just of overreach, and not just of the DOJ doing whatever the fuck it wants, but of it doubling down to violate the rights of people just because it doesn't like being called out about it.

Filed Under: anonymity, cfaa, disclosure, dissent doe, doj, fbi, first amendment, identity, justin shafer, keith lee, ken white, nathan hopp, popehat, subpoena, vendetta
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