After a four-year court battle, the FBI has agreed to turn over records it created when it spied on Antiwar.com and pay $299,000 to settle our attorneys’ fees.
The action only settles a portion of the lawsuit. ACLU attorney Julia Mass said “We will continue to challenge the FBI’s collection and maintenance of descriptions of our clients’ First Amendment activities in violation of the federal Privacy Act.”
“You will know you have spoken the truth when you are angrily denounced;
and you will know you have spoken both truly and well when you are
visited by the police.” –J. B. R. Yant
FWIW, if you notice the records of my posts & articles here, I was chilled from contributing to antiwar.com from October of 2013 until March of this year, 2017 — a period of ~3 1/2 years — because of the above FBI investigation.
I’m less than proud to admit this, but as anyone who’s been paying attention knows, it is no longer safe to speak openly in the U.S. References available on request.
This case, costing just under $300,000, demonstrates the cost of just discovering that you’re being surveilled because of a really dumb government (FBI) error, specifically that the FBI thought the REPORT of a hack threat made against antiwar.com was instead antiwar.com threatening to hack the FBI.
Nice work there Hooverites!
Glad to see AWC won this, finally.
Good News!!
I’ll only be happy when the records get posted on TheSmokingGun.com.
How can you fight the State? They seem to hold all the cards. Little by little over the next few years, you will be seeing more and more cases like this, except in most of those instances, the good guys will not win in court, because of the poisoning of the judicial system with rampant statist ideology.
One must have faith and persevere. Will we prevail at a greater rate? Perhaps not. Those inspired to do combat may well lose. With the internet we have a chance to earn an audience for our victories. As Ernest Hancock says the Revolution begins between the ears.
I haven’t given up. It just seems that the race between expanding government power, and mass political enlightenment, may be won by the bad guys. And, once they win, that’s the end of it, as we will not even have the tools or freedom to educate people.
Some factors why I may be a wee bit more optimistic than you are at this instant: The socialized education monstrosity K-PhD is showing signs of crumbling. Completely private education is advancing via Tom Woods, Ron Paul and other endeavors. Also “bad guys” are often not “bad” as they are miseducated or ignorant and *once in a while* will see their own error *and fix it*. The bad guys operate largely in unreality, some times that causes failures in reality that will come to correct errors.