October 28, 2005

Fighting indecency fines. Promoting free speech. Watching the media.

Hillsborough County Sheriff Sues Anonymous Chat Room Posters

Thursday August 04th 2005, 11:02 am
Filed under: Free Speech?

If this isn’t a landmark internet free speech case, what is?

The Sheriff’s Department in Hillsborough County, FL, has filed a suit against several internet John Does. Messers Doe were participants in a chat room on leoaffairs.com, a forum for law enforcement officers across the country.

According to the suit, participants in the Hillsborough County forum made derogatory comments about women, members of various ethnic groups — and sheriff David Gee himself.

The Sheriff’s Department says the suit isn’t sour grapes — it’s a genuine attempt to determine if there are any “loose cannons” in the department.

Through the lawsuit, the sheriff’s office is making moves to identify the anonymous deputies. Should they be identified, Docobo said, they will be disciplined, up to and including termination.

Sheriff David Gee said he needs to know if he has any “loose cannons'’ on his force.

“It is totally unprofessional for law enforcement officers to make those kinds of postings,'’ Gee said. “It makes me wonder if they should have badges, and I want to find out who they are.'’

[…]

Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, said the sheriff’s office seems to be trying to shut down public opinion.

“It sounds like the [sheriff’s office] is trying to send a pretty important message to its internal staff that if they are doing this, they better stop,'’ Rotenberg said.

Still, Rotenberg said, anyone who thinks he is a victim of defamation has rights.

“There is a fine line between whistleblower and online defamation,'’ he said.

When an employer wants to stop disgruntled employees from posting online criticisms, it can go to the Internet service provider with a subpoena for the names of the anonymous chat room aficionados, Rotenberg said. Case law, however, has come down to say that employers should not use subpoenas in a fishing expedition to catch wayward employees, he said.

Lawyers for the department plan to subpoena leoaffairs.com in order to obtain users’ IP addresses. Jim Preston, a former police officer and founder of Leoaffairs, says he will not supply that information to the department. “If someone posts anonymously,'’ he said, “it’s because they want to protect their identity.'’

Meanwhile, a member of the Hillsborough County forum has posted a message notifying new visitors (i.e., gawkers) that the lawsuit has brought the goons out of the woodwork. The poster also thinks that the lawsuit is ultimately a good thing.

The current posts, containing outraged howls of unfairness, claims of violation of civil rights, and false appeals to nonexistent freedom of speech rights has driven our reliable, sensible and reasonable posters off the board.

Where are posts by the reliable, logical, honest and down to earth posters like St. Michael, Deacon, Vigilante, Doc Holliday and the half-dozen or so courageous souls, both still serving and retired, who post using their real names? Well, Vigilante did post, but was immediately attacked by people accusing him of trying to be “God” or “Jesus” and asking which Supreme Court he served on. (This is typical name calling from the ignorant and illogical among us for whom truth has no impact.) All of this for simply reciting demonstrably true information - not opinion, information. I don’t blame him for deciding not to respond to such rabble rousing. I don’t blame the others for not wanting to descend into this morass in which their only reward for posting will be abusive attacks.

Undoubtedly, the general public will be visiting this board repeatedly for a while. To those of you who are new to the board, be aware that the garbage postings currently appearing are not representative of many of the issue-oriented, logic-driven discussions which have appeared here in the past.

A vocal minority of malcontent underachievers whose anonymous attacks on the Sheriff and his staff have been a constant distraction on the board in the past are, for present, overwhelming the board with their venomous spewings. It was not always this way.

The board will benefit if the Sheriff’s Office lawsuit results in forcing posters to be more circumspect in their statements. It is possible to criticize the operations and policies of the office without making racist, sexist and untruthful remarks. Such postings would be neither subject to criminal or civil court action nor to office disciplinary action.

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1 Comment so far

If he thinks he was libelled, he should have to prove libel before the names of the anonymous posters are released.

Regarding racist and sexist remarks, he has no right to know who made those remarks.

Comment by Eric Jaffa 08.04.05 @ 11:41 am

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