It seems the Feds are enthusiastically doing their patriotic duty to do what little they can to balance the budget. This website was subpoena’d by a grand jury to fork over all info related to web comments posted in response to the case of the Las Vegas contractor who paid his employees in legal tender US gold coin and reported their income at face value - this should obviously be legal since the coins are legal tender like any other. He did this to “evade taxes” and “cheat” Unlce Sam (it is not frequently enough noted that Uncle Sam is the creepy kind of offers-you-a-backrub-when-nobody’s-around kind of uncle.)
But what if this had been a gagging NSL? The website couldn’t even have warned its visitors so they could prepare themselves for an imminent Federal investigation, as they have here. And what’s stopping the Feds from targetting mises.org and LRC? In fact, if I were the Feds, LRC would be at the top of my list of websites to go after because it is a stated matter of moral belief by LRC - probably held by most of its readership - that there is zero moral duty to pay taxes and the only good reason to pay taxes is the same reason a shopkeeper in a gang neighborhood pays the protection money - to keep his kneecaps intact.
So, given the possibility that LRC and/or mises.org could be served with a gagging NSL, there is a way to subvert the system. Security alarms and other “online” communications systems use a protocol called a “heartbeat” to let the receiver monitoring the line know that everything’s OK. So, why not implement a heartbeat on LRC and/or mises.org in the form of a weekly post to the effect that “all’s clear, we’ve not been served with a gagging NSL.” Of course, when the NSL is served, they would no longer be permitted under law to continue making the heartbeat post, signalling automatically to all readers that the site has indeed been slapped with a gagging NSL. Then we can all go hire lawyers because we know the Feds are a-comin’!!
What think ye?
Clayton -