Room 8 Ungagged, Dishes On Bronx DA
Here’s a very strange story that not only should send a chill up the spine of any anonymous blog participants, but also could have wide-reaching implications when it comes to the Internet and free speech.
Room 8 has won a legal battle with Bronx DA Robert Johnson, who withdrew a grand jury subpoena demanding the identification of a blogger and commentors and threatening prosecution if anyone dared to breathe a word about the subpoena’s very existence.
The DA’s office wanted details - specifically, the IP address - of a Room 8 blogger who goes by the name “Republican Dissident” and has been highly critical of the Bronx GOP and its chairman, Jay Savino.
Republican Dissident also urged the Republicans to run a candidate against Johnson, a Democrat, and called for him to be removed from an investigation into the party. S/he has since taken down the post in question plus all other writings. Some are cached here.
Room 8, of course, has extensive coverage, plus a copy of the subpoena that was issued in January.
The Times posted a story last night that has some choice quotes from - and a dapper photo of (so, THAT explains why he was wearing the Bar Mitzvah suit!) - the site’s co-founder and my predecessor here at the DN, Ben Smith, now with Politico.
Smith told The Times Jonathan Glater that he’s not adverse to assisting prosecutors in certain cases, but was concerned in this instance that sharing information about Republican Dissident would have a chilling effect.
“Was somebody found face-down on their keyboard and the I.P. address was going to help identify the killer?” Smith said. “We’re not free speech absolutists here.”
(Snip)
“If our anonymous bloggers were to learn that we’d been handing out their identities to politicians whom they’ve been criticizing, I think they’d be much less likely to write on the site,”
Smith and his fellow Room 8 co-founder, Gur Tsabar, received pro bono legal representation from the Public Citizen Litigation Group, a public interest law firm. Attorney Paul Alan Levy, who filed a motion to quash the subpoena, said the DA’s office refused to tell him why they sought Republican Dissident’s identification. (Documents in the case are available here).
A spokesman for Johnson, Steven R. Reed, told The Times the DA hadn’t been aware either of the conent of the comments or even that the subpoena with the gag order was sent until after it was already issued.
Which sort of makes one wonder what the heck is going on over there in the DA’s office.
If this was a politically motivated effort - and it’s hard to see what else it might have been - isn’t it a clear abuse of power and taxpayer funds? And shouldn’t the DA be concerned about that?
Over at The Daily Gotham, Bouldin raises some of the same questions and suggestes this might be a case for AG Andrew Cuomo.
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