On May 26 the Review-Journal published an article about an ongoing federal tax evasion trial. The primary defendant, Las Vegan Robert Kahre, stands accused of tax fraud for using the rather inventive argument that he could pay people in U.S. minted gold and silver coins based on their precious metal value but for tax purposes use their face value, which is many times less.Here's the article in question.
The story was posted on our Web site. When last I checked nearly 100 comments were appended to it, running the gamut from the lucid to the ludicrous.
This past week the newspaper was served with a grand jury subpoena from the U.S. attorney's office demanding that we turn over all records pertaining to those postings, including "full name, date of birth, physical address, gender, ZIP code, password prompts, security questions, telephone numbers and other identifiers ... the IP address," et (kitchen sink) cetera.
Those who run popular blogs that are critical of the government apparently need to be careful about their criticism. Commenting on such blogs may be an even riskier proposition.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal can lawyer up and fight the subpoena. Few bloggers have the same resources. This creates a chilling effect, which I think is what US attorney's office intended.
1 comments:
Reading through the comments that have been subpoenaed, I fail to see how any of the comments are relevant to the criminal complaint. I do see a lot of nuttiness, and I do see personal attacks against the prosecutor. If the prosecutor believes he has been damaged, shouldn't he file a civil suit?
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