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I can see how a reasonable, disinterested person might read these comments either way. Specifically, some of the comments that were supposedly 'obviously' not t

by Aqueous 11y ago

I can see how a reasonable, disinterested person might read these comments either way. Specifically, some of the comments that were supposedly 'obviously' not threatening have to be taken in the context of the entire conversation in which they were made, and clearly some of the comments here are referring to a specific act against a specific person. How do you determine whether these comments 'definitively' telegraph intent? What is the criteria for determining that they definitely don't telegraph intent? In the case of the "If they ever make me carry a rifle the first man I want to get in my sights is L.B.J." comment, you have to closely read the comment to determine that there is no actual intent here, because the entire statement is conditional on the 'If they ever make me carry a rifle..." portion of the sentence, which at the very least makes it not an immediate threat. In some of these comments, there is no such qualification, the presence of which would make it fairly obvious that in this case there is no credible threat. These comments are not nearly as clear cut or objective as people are making it out to be since you can't determine from the specific language people are using that this is definitely not an immediate threat. EDIT: A lot of people are modding me down without making a substantive counterargument. Using the text of the comments please highlight the portions that prove objectively that there is no threatening intention please.

tptacek 11y ago
You can in fact immediately determine from the specific language that Reason commenters do not actually plan to feed a judge through a wood chipper.
- Aqueous 11y ago
  How? What qualification or rhetorical flourish makes it objectively, explicitly clear that these are not serious threats?
  - tptacek 11y ago
    This is a rare instance in which the downvotes themselves actually answer your question.
    - Aqueous 11y ago
      The downvotes demonstrate that the community has decided it's so obvious that these aren't threats that it's not even worth explaining. We on the Internet are viewing these comments through the prism of our own experience viewing other online comments, and that experience causes us to "just know" that they aren't threats. "just knowing" is an argument that wouldn't stand up in court, though. Nothing in law is obvious
      - rayiner 11y ago
        Reasonable person standard is one of those situations where "just knowing" is actually an argument that stands up in court.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- pvg 11y ago
  The comments are no mere winking references to Fargo so it's seems a little disingenuous to keep talking about the wood chipper. They're listed here, which I'm sure you've read: http://popehat.com/2015/06/08/department-of-justice-uses-grand-jury-subpoena-to-identify-anonymous-commenters-on-a-silk-road-post-at-reason-com/ http://popehat.com/2015/06/08/department-of-justice-uses-gra... I've no trouble being convinced that the way the government is attempting to investigate these comments is ham-handed and excessive. I have a harder time getting outraged about someone's inalienable right to talk about shooting federal judges and then remain anonymous or avoid any government scrutiny. If you run around the internet saying such things, you are likely to attract government scrutiny and that scrutiny isn't somehow axiomatically unreasonable.
  - tptacek 11y ago
    More than one US President has been shot by a random crazy person, and yet SCOTUS held in the landmark Watts case that an idle threat to shoot LBJ didn't qualify as a "true threat". I don't think people should run around the Internet threatening to shoot people either, and I think threats to shoot people should be taken seriously. But "Its judges like these that should be taken out back and shot" isn't a serious threat; it is, in fact, a figure of speech. Do you want to systematize the "reasonable person" reasoning here? What are all the factors you might consider in making the assessment? I'll start a list: 1. Lack of stated intent --- someone should be shot, not I am going to shoot. 2. Lack of specific planning or details anywhere in the comments. Someone should be shot tomorrow when they come to court at 8:30AM, vs. simply "someone should be shot". 3. The rhetorical-or-true threat is a single isolated comment from the commenter, not a pattern of comments from that person over time (people make sockpuppets, of course, but the mere act of diffusing a threat over a bunch of sockpuppets argues against it being a true threat). 4. The "threat" echoes a previous comment on the same forum, as in "no, don't shoot the person out back, do it out front so everyone can see" or "no, don't use a gun, use a wood chipper". 5. Obviously: extravagant and silly modes of violence, like wood chippers, or dropping anvils on heads. 6. Jocular tone, or even, really, any non-deliberative non-serious non-specific tone in a comment that shares a forum with previous silly suggestions. You could flunk all these tests and still not come anywhere near a "true threat", but I'd argue that opening a formal investigation and collecting evidence and issuing subpoenas for comments that flunk any of them is abusive. And so in this case, on the Reason comment threads, there was a complete absence of specifics or even of stated intent. Being happy about the idea of someone being shot makes you an asshole, but it doesn't make you a criminal.
Lazare 11y ago
You are either completely misunderstanding or misrepresenting the holding in Watts. The reason the comment about L.B.J was protected was not because the "if X happens" language, but because even crude, hyperbolic political commentary is absolutely protected under US law. > you can't determine from the specific language people are using that this is definitely not an immediate threat. That's utterly irrelevant.
- Aqueous 11y ago
  From the decision: "Taken in context, and regarding the expressly conditional nature of the statement and the reaction of the listeners, we do not see how it could be interpreted otherwise." It is literally right there in the decision, so in fact the conditional language is being considered. > you can't determine from the specific language people are using that this is definitely not an immediate threat. That's utterly irrelevant. How is this utterly irrelevant? it seems to be the substance of the entire legal problem.
  - Lazare 11y ago
    1) You keep talking about immediate threats. A true threat does not need to be immediate. You may be conflating this with the related doctrine on incitement. (Basically, speech meant to incite violence is protected unless the violence is imminent. "You should kill the governor this weekend" is basically 100% fine under US law. "You should kill the governor right now" might not be. Yes, US law is weird.) 2) You can't determine from any language that something is definitely not a true threat (or an immediate threat, as you persist on calling it). Language is malleable. My use of the word "malleable" could be a coded reference which means, to those in the know, that you should be hunted down and killed. I mean, it doesn't really sound like it is, but how can you determine that? The answer is that you don't need to. Speech that you "can't determine" isn't a true threat is still protected. It's only when speech rises to the level of being clearly intended to cause fear in the recipient that it might lose its protection. (Which is, incidentally, one of the larger reasons the speech was obviously protected: It wasn't made to the person allegedly being threatened. Comments about a person face a vastly higher bar than comments to a person. If the person who made the woodchipper comment had no reason to think the judge would ever see it, it couldn't have been a true threat.) In short, the true threats exception is vastly narrower than you seem to think.

by Aqueous 11y ago

tptacek 11y ago

You can in fact immediately determine from the specific language that Reason commenters do not actually plan to feed a judge through a wood chipper.

Aqueous 11y ago
How? What qualification or rhetorical flourish makes it objectively, explicitly clear that these are not serious threats?
- tptacek 11y ago
  This is a rare instance in which the downvotes themselves actually answer your question.
  - Aqueous 11y ago
    The downvotes demonstrate that the community has decided it's so obvious that these aren't threats that it's not even worth explaining. We on the Internet are viewing these comments through the prism of our own experience viewing other online comments, and that experience causes us to "just know" that they aren't threats. "just knowing" is an argument that wouldn't stand up in court, though. Nothing in law is obvious
    - rayiner 11y ago
      Reasonable person standard is one of those situations where "just knowing" is actually an argument that stands up in court.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
pvg 11y ago
The comments are no mere winking references to Fargo so it's seems a little disingenuous to keep talking about the wood chipper. They're listed here, which I'm sure you've read: http://popehat.com/2015/06/08/department-of-justice-uses-grand-jury-subpoena-to-identify-anonymous-commenters-on-a-silk-road-post-at-reason-com/ http://popehat.com/2015/06/08/department-of-justice-uses-gra... I've no trouble being convinced that the way the government is attempting to investigate these comments is ham-handed and excessive. I have a harder time getting outraged about someone's inalienable right to talk about shooting federal judges and then remain anonymous or avoid any government scrutiny. If you run around the internet saying such things, you are likely to attract government scrutiny and that scrutiny isn't somehow axiomatically unreasonable.
- tptacek 11y ago
  More than one US President has been shot by a random crazy person, and yet SCOTUS held in the landmark Watts case that an idle threat to shoot LBJ didn't qualify as a "true threat". I don't think people should run around the Internet threatening to shoot people either, and I think threats to shoot people should be taken seriously. But "Its judges like these that should be taken out back and shot" isn't a serious threat; it is, in fact, a figure of speech. Do you want to systematize the "reasonable person" reasoning here? What are all the factors you might consider in making the assessment? I'll start a list: 1. Lack of stated intent --- someone should be shot, not I am going to shoot. 2. Lack of specific planning or details anywhere in the comments. Someone should be shot tomorrow when they come to court at 8:30AM, vs. simply "someone should be shot". 3. The rhetorical-or-true threat is a single isolated comment from the commenter, not a pattern of comments from that person over time (people make sockpuppets, of course, but the mere act of diffusing a threat over a bunch of sockpuppets argues against it being a true threat). 4. The "threat" echoes a previous comment on the same forum, as in "no, don't shoot the person out back, do it out front so everyone can see" or "no, don't use a gun, use a wood chipper". 5. Obviously: extravagant and silly modes of violence, like wood chippers, or dropping anvils on heads. 6. Jocular tone, or even, really, any non-deliberative non-serious non-specific tone in a comment that shares a forum with previous silly suggestions. You could flunk all these tests and still not come anywhere near a "true threat", but I'd argue that opening a formal investigation and collecting evidence and issuing subpoenas for comments that flunk any of them is abusive. And so in this case, on the Reason comment threads, there was a complete absence of specifics or even of stated intent. Being happy about the idea of someone being shot makes you an asshole, but it doesn't make you a criminal.

Lazare 11y ago

You are either completely misunderstanding or misrepresenting the holding in Watts. The reason the comment about L.B.J was protected was not because the "if X happens" language, but because even crude, hyperbolic political commentary is absolutely protected under US law. > you can't determine from the specific language people are using that this is definitely not an immediate threat. That's utterly irrelevant.

Aqueous 11y ago
From the decision: "Taken in context, and regarding the expressly conditional nature of the statement and the reaction of the listeners, we do not see how it could be interpreted otherwise." It is literally right there in the decision, so in fact the conditional language is being considered. > you can't determine from the specific language people are using that this is definitely not an immediate threat. That's utterly irrelevant. How is this utterly irrelevant? it seems to be the substance of the entire legal problem.
- Lazare 11y ago
  1) You keep talking about immediate threats. A true threat does not need to be immediate. You may be conflating this with the related doctrine on incitement. (Basically, speech meant to incite violence is protected unless the violence is imminent. "You should kill the governor this weekend" is basically 100% fine under US law. "You should kill the governor right now" might not be. Yes, US law is weird.) 2) You can't determine from any language that something is definitely not a true threat (or an immediate threat, as you persist on calling it). Language is malleable. My use of the word "malleable" could be a coded reference which means, to those in the know, that you should be hunted down and killed. I mean, it doesn't really sound like it is, but how can you determine that? The answer is that you don't need to. Speech that you "can't determine" isn't a true threat is still protected. It's only when speech rises to the level of being clearly intended to cause fear in the recipient that it might lose its protection. (Which is, incidentally, one of the larger reasons the speech was obviously protected: It wasn't made to the person allegedly being threatened. Comments about a person face a vastly higher bar than comments to a person. If the person who made the woodchipper comment had no reason to think the judge would ever see it, it couldn't have been a true threat.) In short, the true threats exception is vastly narrower than you seem to think.