Social media giant Reddit has been ordered to appear before a grand jury in Washington, D.C., as part of a federal effort to unmask anonymous online critics of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
According to a subpoena obtained by The Intercept, Reddit has until April 14 to provide a wide range of personal data on one of its users, whom U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have been trying unsuccessfully to identify for more than a month.
Attorneys for the Reddit user say their client’s posts and their anonymity are squarely protected under the First Amendment and that ICE’s use of a grand jury marks a disturbing escalation for the agency after seeing its previous efforts to investigate political speech quashed in court. The subpoena was issued by federal prosecutors in the capital after ICE’s effort to identify the same user failed in a Northern California federal court. (The U.S. attorney’s office in Washington declined to comment on the case.)
What did this person say that pissed the ICEflakes off so, and why aren’t we all saying it?
Reddit is a honeypot
Authoritarianism is an admission of abject weakness.
White supremacists are the weakest and most brittle snowflakes.
This is exactly what Grand Juries are for and why the bar for indictment is so low.
It’s a safeguard to prevent frivolous felony persecution by the State upon individuals.
It is to the Jurors to take one look at the evidence the prosecution presents and to say, nope, this is a BS case.
That’s why it’s so easy to get indictments. Generally, prosecutors only show up with actual evidence of potential wrong doing.
If they show up with nothing, in typical Trump legal team fashion, they will get no indictment.
They seem to think because THEY suck at law, everyone else does too. All competent lawyers left that administration. Believe it or not, plenty of lawyers actually have respect for the institutions they spent their lives training in and working in.
They don’t have to win. They don’t even have to follow through on their threat. They’ve already done what they meant to do and that’s just to intimidate everyone else. There will be plenty of folks who see this and maybe speak out a little less or stop speaking out entirely. Do you think this case is going to get the same exposure after it’s been dropped? They’ll already be onto the next intimidation tactic.
This happened on /r/behindthebastards! For anyone unaware, it’s a fantastic podcast on Cool Zone Media that covers infamous evil people throughout history. Also check out the inverse, Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff, on the same podcast network. Also check out It Could Happen Here.
I knew it would be someone on there. One of the few subreddits I still lurk on.
I thought they shadow banned everyone with opinions they don’t like. Happened to me after the Luigi situation
Credit where credit is due, to reddit for making them go to court over it.
Right? I figured they just gave them direct access before they asked.
If it ever got out that they did that, it would kill their user base, which is not in their shareholders’ interest.
No, I don’t think even that would cause the remaining folks to leave.
Yeah, the clankers would have to learn all new inside jokes to try and fit in elsewhere. Might as well stay and chat with all of the other bots just like them!
Yeah. This is not about one person.
This is a token resistance they gave us up long ago.
I made a number of comments regarding my sentiments towards the orange child rapist and felon on Reddit a year or so ago. All my accounts of many years roasted instantly.
I don’t remember the federal government ever working against so many citizens before. They are a hostile takeover.
Yeah it’s so bad they have me hoping for a military coup, never in my life would i have ever dreamed of wanting a military coup but now after trump was elected i understand why they’re necessary sometimes.
Military coups usually don’t install a democracy.
Bro the democratically elected president rapes children and starts wars for insider trading. Lile wtf are you talking about democracy??
“Firefighters usually dont install furniture” that’s what you sound like
They are just more overt. The government has long been the enemy of most good things.
Wonder what was said…
Something accurate and damning
The least bit of accuracy would still be a bullseye with Thwump.
There was a thread from early January, after news outlets including The Intercept identified Jonathan Ross as the ICE officer who shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Good in Minneapolis. Commenting on a Minnesota Star Tribune article, another Reddit user posted that Ross might be welcomed as a hero in Florida or Texas. John Doe responded by sharing that Ross had lived in Chaska, Minnesota; grew up in Indiana; and served in the Indiana National Guard — biographical details that were circulating widely at the time. “Hopefully he moves up to Stillwater State Penitentiary,” they wrote.
In another post, a Reddit user asked what they should write on an anti-ICE protest sign. John Doe suggested the lyrics to a song: “Urine speaks louder than words.” In a third instance, Doe wrote, “TSA sucks and we all know it.” According to the Reddit user’s attorneys, these were the most aggressive posts they could find.
Pretty tame honestly.
Maybe they are just ‘testing the wire’ legally speaking. Ie just how solid are these laws? Re-approach, reframe. New case, try try again?
Part of a longer game, maybe?
IF they are even that organized
So what happens if they’re not based on the US?
How many of us wonder if we might be the user?
I was critical of ICE on Reddit more than once. Likely, hundreds of thousands have been. I wonder what this mystery user said to bring this sort of scrutiny. Probably something true.
Probably a Canadian, or Brit, lol.
deleted by creator
The fact that these clowns take it to the courts instead of just sicking AI on the job of unmasking the user is really telling about thier intelligence.
Which AI? I asked Google AI about a webcomic, and it offered to find the artist for me. I said sure.
First it made something up completely out of thin air. Then it picked a random user who had commented on the comic. It had already identified the OC post of the comic, so all it had to do was check the username, and it couldn’t even do that.
