
House Homeland Security Committee Subpoenas 8chan Owner - tareqak
https://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/457454-house-homeland-security-committee-subpoenas-8chan-owner
======
bediger4000
I'm a bit confused about House committee subpoenas. It seems like they're
really not all that important. Some folks, notably Attorney General William
Barr, and ex-White house lawyer Don McGahn. Former White House staffers Hope
Hicks and Annie Donaldson (McGahn's aide) were told not to comply by the White
House.

But clearly some people do have to comply, otherwise the subpoenas would be
invitations, right? I'm confused about who has to comply, and for who a
subpoena is optional.

~~~
tptacek
Refusal to respond to a subpoena will result in you being found in contempt of
Congress. Congress then has several options, ranging from referring you to the
DOJ for prosecution to referring the citation to a federal court, effectively
converting the subpoena/contempt into contempt of court, or literally
imprisoning you in the House basement, which will never happen but it's
amusing to note that they technically have that authority.

Subpoenas of administration officials complicate this because the primary
vehicle Congress has for enforcing contempt citations is a referral to the
DOJ, which is part of the administration; a civil referral is, I think? its
own kind of civil suit, which is time-consuming and complicated, and it's
likely that the House majority will keep their powder dry on referrals about
administration officials until they have a really good case.

But random civilians aren't so fortunate, and can effectively be compelled to
testify, and it's likely that Congress would not have much trouble getting
their subpoena enforced.

~~~
bediger4000
> enforcing contempt citations is a referral to the DOJ, which is part of the
> administration

Weird, seems like a flaw in the checks-n-balances, a lot like the "American
Rule"
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_rule_(attorney%27s_fe...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_rule_\(attorney%27s_fees\)))
for paying attorney's fees.

~~~
henryfjordan
That rule, justified in the wikipedia article, is a double edged sword. It
allows me to sue a large corporation without the fear that I'm going to run up
a million dollar bill because they insist on the best lawyers. Under a system
where I have to pay if I lose, I'm not going to want to sue unless I'm 100%
sure I'll win, as opposed to just 51% likely under the american rule. Sure, it
sometimes leaves people footing the bill for the defense of frivolous lawsuits
but it also enables more people to seek justice.

What it is not is a flaw on checks and balances between the branches of
government.

~~~
Tomte
> It allows me to sue a large corporation without the fear that I'm going to
> run up a million dollar bill because they insist on the best lawyers.

That does not follow. In Germany, for example, the winner is entitled to costs
up to the statutory hourly rate. Which is the minimum rate lawyers may bill.
If you choose a lawyer that bills twenty times as much, your opponent pays
only a twentieth.

~~~
mreome
Out of curiosity, the statutory hourly rate times what? Is there a limit on
the number of billable hours that can entail?

The cost of the "best lawyers" doesn't (always/just) mean paying one lawyer an
exorbitant amount, it means paying a large team of in-house lawyers, or large
legal firm, to spend thousands or tens of thousands of man hours on a case.

------
bjt2n3904
> The House Homeland Security leaders previously asked Watkins to "provide
> testimony regarding 8chan's efforts to investigate and mitigate the
> proliferation of extremist content"

This seems... fairly self evident? What do they want his testimony for, except
a dog and pony show?

~~~
jcims
Did 8chan even have any legal obligations to do what they are asking about?

~~~
manfredo
If the content it hosts violates the law, then yes. Granted, 1st Amendment
protections extend beyond what I typically find people believe it covers.
Illegal content mostly falls under the category of:

1\. Credible, specific, and actionable threats.

2\. Illegal videos & images (CSE, I think revenge porn might fall into that
category now).

3\. Recruitment or tangible assistance to terrorist groups.

Even things like broad threats of violence are protected by the 1st Amendment
(e.g. calling for killing of groups of people, provided the statements do not
amount to specific or actionable threats). See this case as one example of
this:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_v._Ohio)

~~~
jcims
Great info thank you!

~~~
jlgaddis
In 8chan's case, I believe that Section 230 is mostly what protects them.

------
raintrees
I remember reading posts from Watkins on gab.com recently along the lines of
the manifesto being posted first to Twitter - If true, I expect that to change
things, all else being equal.

~~~
faissaloo
He claimed it had been posted to Instagram first, Hotwheels contests this and
it would have been unlikely considering it was posted to 8chan in a PDF and
the user would have had to go through the trouble of compiling images from
Instagram into a PDF

------
mindslight
Sheesh, the fourth estate (whom Congress ultimately answers to) is really
beating the drum around the democratization of media-incited violence.
Disruption is a bitter pill to swallow!

The truth of the matter is that these recent senseless acts of violence are
better seen as a _scaling down_ of the status quo. Historically, mass media
would rile up the entire country against a different whole country, creating
an all-out war. This new trend is of isolated groups egging on lone members to
directly commit an act of "war" at an intrinsically small scale.

The Iraq War was an act of media-incited senseless violence, with around
60,000 direct deaths. None of its cheerleaders were criminally prosecuted for
speaking the untruths used to fuel it. Why are we panicking and abandoning our
longstanding value of Free Speech over a comparatively tiny number of
casualties from what are better described as ordinary _crimes_? Every single
human death is its own tragedy, but wisdom cannot prevail when ignoring a
sense of scale.

------
mLuby
I have two questions; maybe someone more in-the-know on procedure can answer
them:

1\. Sounds like this will be done by phone call. Will there be recordings or
transcripts made public; is it closed even to reporters?

2\. Is this expected to be mostly technical/fact-finding or
emotional/political posturing? Frankly I'm not even sure how the usual
Democrat/Republican split looks in this case.

~~~
Kaveren
> "The bill could create a bipartisan commission of experts tasked with
> drawing up recommendations to deal with the "intersection of homeland
> security and social media," a committee spokesperson told The Hill."

This is just going to be political theater. Everyone already knows that
unmoderated anonymous boards are cesspools of hate, the obvious recommendation
is to do moderation. The government can't infringe on free speech, so this is
a waste of time. What are you hoping to get out of him?

Only way this turns out to be substantive is if it leads to a push from the
Democrats toward a constitutional amendment in regards to hate speech, which I
could see happening.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
> What are you hoping to get out of him?

Sound bites that you can use to get votes. What else?

~~~
caf
Or, less cynically, a public airing of the various arguments and points of
view around this issue?

~~~
cc439
How many people will watch the hearing on C-Span and how many will watch the
condensed and heavily editorialized version released by the news source most
closely aligned with the preexisting political opinion?

------
peterwwillis
Praying that his phone accidentally goes off mid-finger-wagging. _" Never
gonna give you up..."_

------
shiado
Doesn't the guy who runs it live in the Philippines? Is the USA playing Team
America: World Police or do they have jurisdiction?

~~~
almost_usual
If you read the article you would know he's currently visiting Reno, NV and is
voluntarily going

~~~
shiado
You caught me. But it is bewildering that somebody in his questionable legal
circumstances would willingly visit the USA. Most of the other people who run
sites like 8chan relocate to obscure regions with no extradition.

~~~
coldtea
What "questionable legal circumstances"? He runs a forum, he's not selling
drugs and guns on the dark web...

------
tareqak
Here is a graph of how this thread trended:
[http://hnrankings.info/20709448/](http://hnrankings.info/20709448/) .

~~~
dang
Would you please stop doing this?

Also, please review
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
and don't submit stories like this. Garden-variety politics is dime-a-dozen
and off topic here. "Committee issues subpoena" is not a significant story,
let alone an intellectually interesting one—even less than "politician
introduces bill".

~~~
tareqak
Sorry 'dang. I’ll stop submitting stories like this one.

As for linking the graph of how a thread ranked, I’ll stop doing that too.
However, could you also please call it out in the guidelines too then? The
second last point of _In Comments_ seems like the most appropriate place:

> Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good,
> and it makes boring reading.

------
kevin_thibedeau
Hopefully the IRS audits him too.

~~~
big_chungus
This is not a good thing to hope for. We don't weaponize clerical agencies for
criminal, civil, or political purposes. It's a very bad idea, and _will_ come
back to bite you when the "other side" gets power.

~~~
chocolatebunny
Yup. Everyone remembers what happened with the whole IRS/Teaparty thing.

