Remember when Alberto Gonzales called for Google to preserve all its search data to support potential child porn investigations? We crazy moonbats suggested that that sounded like an invitation for abuse, that once Google had preserved the records, such records would be accessed for other purposes.
Now Cannonfire points to one such case.
In brief: An incendiary comment appeared on a blog called the DeerfieldBeach Insider — which uses the Blogger service. (So do I.) Theanonymous "pundit" was upset about alleged corruption at the PublicWorks Department. "Nothing will be done until somebody brings in a gunand shoots up the whole place," he wrote.
Deerfield City ManagerMike Mahaney took these words as a threat, so he called the BrowardSherrif’s Office. The cops subpoenaed Google (owner of Blogger) andsoon found their man — a guy named Wayne Adams. He insists that he hasno violent intentions. As it happens, writer Bob Norman is acquaintedwith Adams and vouches for his character, although he does not defendhis atrocious choice of words.
So what makes this tale a matterof national interest? This: When the Broward Sherrif’s Office wantedinfo from Google, they used a disturbing strategy.
BSO turned to its child porn task force for help.
Thetask force, Law Enforcement Against Child Harm (LEACH), is adept atgetting sensitive information on the web. But when deputies subpoenaedGoogle for the IP address of the Deerfield Beach Insider commenter, theheading on the document indicated that the case was part of an ongoingchild porn investigation. The Broward Times’ Elgin Jone wrote about the apparent deception Friday after BSO, which had stalled me, finally released the documents.
Now, for the record, I don’t believe the proper way to fight corruption is to speak–even hypothetically–of violence breaking out at government agencies. So I’m not so bugged about the investigation into this comment. What bothers me is that law enforcement went to Google and claimed they were investigating kiddie porn, not potential threats of violence and/or political speech.
It’s a troubling precedent.