Unmasked blogger blames First Baptist, Sheriff's Office

[RiversideLoki]

And that's why I didn't vote for Corey.

[copperfiend]

So, will this be swept under the rug?

[BridgeTroll]

It has...and if I was FBC... I would not hesitate in the least to do something like it again.  The blogger has said he is looking at his legal options.  He is the only one who can keep this issue alive.

[stjr]

Worth repeating!

...Corey defended Hinson's notification of the church.

"Sometimes you need to know who has access to you, who has been watching you, who has been talking very negatively about you," Corey said.

....Hinson followed department policy. It forbids officers from investigating matters involving their own families but permits looking into issues for friends, neighbors and churches, she said.

"Officers are called upon all the time by people they know ... to look into things they have concerns about," Smith said. "That's part of the JSO's relationship with the community."

Similar policies are commonplace among law enforcement agencies, said Roy Hudson, director of law enforcement services for the Tallahassee-based Florida Sheriff's Association.

Sounds right out of George Orwell's "1984" to me. 

Bridge, unlike the $ky-high-way, this we can agree on! :

It has...and if I was FBC... I would not hesitate in the least to do something like it again.  The blogger has said he is looking at his legal options.  He is the only one who can keep this issue alive.

[reednavy]

Ok, Corey is officialy a stupid b***h.

Yeah I said it, so what, she sucks at her job anyways and basically is a puppet to Peyton and his administration. I can not wait to get my first chance to vote for a new mayor here. When is the election?!

[civil42806]

Worth repeating!

...Corey defended Hinson's notification of the church.

"Sometimes you need to know who has access to you, who has been watching you, who has been talking very negatively about you," Corey said.

....Hinson followed department policy. It forbids officers from investigating matters involving their own families but permits looking into issues for friends, neighbors and churches, she said.

"Officers are called upon all the time by people they know ... to look into things they have concerns about," Smith said. "That's part of the JSO's relationship with the community."

Similar policies are commonplace among law enforcement agencies, said Roy Hudson, director of law enforcement services for the Tallahassee-based Florida Sheriff's Association.

Sounds right out of George Orwell's "1984" to me. 

Bridge, unlike the $ky-high-way, this we can agree on! :

It has...and if I was FBC... I would not hesitate in the least to do something like it again.  The blogger has said he is looking at his legal options.  He is the only one who can keep this issue alive.

Agree, this whole situation is outrageous.   The idea that the state can do this is legally is mind boggling.   Has anyone, there has to be some lawyers on here, Chris, Chris?  Is this truly legal, can someone gain a soupena on just this type of information?  Is this in fact standard practice?

[copperfiend]

...Corey defended Hinson's notification of the church.

"Sometimes you need to know who has access to you, who has been watching you, who has been talking very negatively about you," Corey said.

[BridgeTroll]

Bloggers website...

http://www.fbcjaxwatchdog.blogspot.com/

[stjr]

Here is another followup article from the Associated Baptist Press covering this incident with JSO: http://www.abpnews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4001&Itemid=53

The excerpt below shows a connection between FBC's Vines, Gilyard, AND one of the other blogs that JSO investigated.  Apparently, it was "hounding" Gilyard and dragged Vines into the picture.  The third site just happened to share a similar critical purpose regarding another church and the server with Rich.

After the news broke in local media, Brunson released a statement just before Easter: "This week the entire Christian world is celebrating God's greatest gift to mankind ... Jesus Christ. We pray and deeply desire that these unmerited distractions will be preempted by the majesty of his sacrificial death and life giving resurrection."

Brunson didn't mention the controversy directly in his Easter sermon, but confessed he is not "inerrant" or "infallible" but yet has a God-given responsibility to "guard the flock of God."

"As long as I am pastor, with every ounce of energy I have, I will guard this congregation to the best of my ability," he said.

The subpoena issued to find Rich's identity also sought the same information for two other blogs.

An anonymous blogger that writes about similar matters related to Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, Tenn., said he or she has no connection with the Jacksonville website, but has agreed to share some server space with Rich.

Tiffany Croft, who has never blogged anonymously, writes about Darrell Gilyard, another prominent Baptist minister who has repeatedly been accused of sexual misconduct. Although she has on occasion criticized the former First Baptist pastor, Vines, for supporting Gilyard, she said it was an invasion of privacy for detectives to investigate her.

[stjr]

Here is a national column on Google's role in all this at WebProNews ( http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2009/04/13/google-helps-out-anonymous-blogger):

Google Helps Identify Anonymous Blogger
By Jason Lee Miller - Mon, 04/13/2009 - 12:25

A subpoena is a subpoena is a subpoena

Free speech has always been an irritant to those who become the target of it; freedom in general is a frightening concept to some because of the broad blanket it throws over the righteous and the sinful alike. And as always it seems many people support the freedom concept so long as it supplies protections for the liberties they themselves choose to enjoy—enjoy the wrong set of liberties and you’ll suddenly find far fewer true believers in the founding principles of the American experiment.

Google makes no such philosophical judgments anymore when dealing with subpoenas. The search engine made its (eventually failed) grand stand against the Department of Justice’s demand for search records a couple of years ago. Since then, any document coming from a law enforcement agency has been treated as sacrosanct.

The most recent incident involves handing over information to the Jacksonville, Fla. Sheriff’s Dept. to help identify an anonymous blogger critical of the pastor of a local Baptist megachurch. In September of last year, the pastor, John Blount, filed a police report regarding “possible criminal overtones” on the blog FBCJaxWatchdog, hosted on Google’s Blogspot service.

Once Robert Hinson, the detective assigned to the case, received a subpoena requiring Google “to provide all information, including names, screen names and address, of the anonymous writer,” Google blindly complied. Though Hinson closed the investigation because he found no criminal activity, the church issued a trespass warning to Thomas Rich and his wife, apparently now excommunicated from First Baptist Church. Hanson has investigated two other bloggers as well.

What’s very important to note here is that, despite the Sheriff’s office saying the detective was just doing his job, law enforcement was able to force Google to reveal the identities of a law abiding citizens exercising their right to anonymous free speech based on accusations of possible criminal overtones in written communication, not based on any actual evidence of wrongdoing. In effect, Blount and Hinson, and Google by default, presumed Rich guilty until proven innocent.

The power structure’s desire to strip anonymity from the digital landscape is reaching disturbing levels. It has grown beyond the “three times makes a trend” rule in journalism and becomes a full-blown epidemic—it’s happening all over the country and world. A Kentucky legislator was famously shouted down for introducing a bill that would outlaw anonymous commentary. An Alaskan politician recently outed an anonymous critic for no reason other than he didn’t like anonymous bloggers. German police raided a Wikileaks volunteer because of the anonymous leak and posting of a secret Australian website blacklist.

A bill recently introduced in the US Congress and passed by the House of the Representatives at the end of March is intended to prevent the federal government from compelling a journalist from revealing his or her sources. However, it still contains language defining who is considered a journalist, and by default, who is not. According to the bill’s language, an unpaid, unprofitable blogger would enjoy no such protections.

Quite obviously no branch of the government (apparently anywhere) cares about the First Amendment rights anonymous bloggers or nonprofit, gadfly bloggers. And, as per usual, where the government actively seeks to deny the rights of citizens in the digital realm, the citizens will find no refuge in terms of service agreements of large corporations, nor in surface-level digital democracies.

Like your privacy, your right to anonymity is an illusion.
 

[BridgeTroll]

Like your privacy, your right to anonymity is an illusion.

So much for screen names and avatars...

[Lunican]

There are plenty of ways to blog anonymously. FBCJ Watchdog just didn't think it was necessary to take any precautions. Now we know it is.

[BridgeTroll]

http://www.jacksonville.com/opinion/editorials/2009-04-16/story/jso_and_first_baptist_troubling_issues

JSO and First Baptist: Troubling issues
Story updated at 1:24 AM on Thursday, Apr. 16, 2009

The case, now closed, involving a police investigation of a blogger and First Baptist Church raises serious issues.

First, there is a perception that one of Jacksonville's most influential institutions used its influence with the Sheriff's Office against a man who had been criticizing it. This raises free speech issues.

Second, the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office has ethics rules that allows an investigator who works on the security detail of the church he attends to conduct the investigation.

Sheriff John Rutherford has stated that his department acted appropriately in every respect. See his statement on this page.

The fact that an investigation was conducted and that information was shared with the complainant is routine practice, he said.

The investigator who conducted the work was only doing his regular job, the same actions he would take if any other faith group issued a complaint, Rutherford said.

But there are several factors that raise troubling concerns:

Weak link to criminal activity: The church was concerned about stolen mail and photos taken of the pastor's wife. But linking them to a critical blogger seemed a stretch. While the blogger's posts were critical, they did not appear to justify a police investigation.

As Rutherford wrote in his statement, the investigation was shut down because "no criminal conduct or significant threat to the church was determined to exist."

Beef up JSO's ethics code: The code forbids officers from investigating matters involving their families, JSO spokeswoman Lauri-Ellen Smith told the Times-Union, but permits probes involving friends, neighbors and churches.

Conflicts could arise in any area in which officers have close personal involvement. That could include businesses, schools, outside activities, and, especially, their places of worship. In this case, the investigating officer had both a religious and business relationship.

The Sheriff's Office should reexamine its ethics code, perhaps in concert with the city's ethics office, to prevent similar situations from happening.

The goal should be to avoid perceptions of favoritism. This case certainly fostered that perception.

[stjr]

And, as expected, the lawsuit sequel.  This should be fun to watch! 

Jacksonville blogger files suit over his identity being outed
He says the sheriff named him, violating the First Amendment.

    * By Jeff Brumley
    * Story updated at 12:15 AM on Tuesday, Apr. 28, 2009


A Jacksonville blogger filed a lawsuit Monday claiming police and state prosecutors violated his constitutional rights to anonymity and free speech in a 2008 criminal case "fabricated" solely to uncover his identity for First Baptist Church.

The lawsuit also claims the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office and State Attorney's Office violated the First Amendment's establishment clause by disclosing the blogger's name to the downtown megachurch. Doing so amounted to taking sides in a religious dispute between the blogger, Thomas Rich, and the church, according the suit.

The suit does not name First Baptist as a defendant because only government agencies can be held accountable for the violation of citizens' free speech rights, said Rich's attorney, Michael Roberts.

The suit seeks damages of at least $15,000 - the minimum required to file a case in Duval County - for what it describes as the ongoing "emotional anguish, emotional distress and loss of enjoyment of life" as a result of Rich and his wife being barred from the church they had attended for 20 years. The couple joined another Southern Baptist church as a result.

Rich launched his blog in August 2007. In it, Rich chastised Pastor Mac Brunson and other First Baptist Church leaders on everything from salary and housing to fundraising priorities and ministry objectives.

Rich said Monday he wanted to remain anonymous partly to keep the focus on the issues and he feared retribution.

The lawsuit rejects police's assertion the investigation was meant to protect the congregation's safety.

"The criminal investigation was fabricated to create the illusion of legitimacy but was, in fact, a mere pretext for the disclosure" of Rich's identity to the church, the lawsuit says.

Church officials could not be reached Monday. But the top administrator, the Rev. John Blount, has told the Times-Union he called Detective Robert Hinson last fall to report increasing vitriol on FBCJaxWatchdog. blogspot.com, Rich's then-anonymous blog.

Blount said he also told Hinson, a church member, that mail had been stolen from Brunson's home and that a stalker had taken photos of Brunson's wife. Although police reports were never filed on those incidents, the church wanted to know if the blog, letters and photographs were connected, Blount said.

The investigation, which lasted from Sept. 29 to Nov. 13, ended with no criminal findings.

Sheriff's spokeswoman Lauri-Ellen Smith had no comment on the lawsuit.

Assistant State Attorney Stephen Siegel is named as a defendant because he approved Hinson's requests for subpoenas to Google and Comcast for all information related to the blogger.

State Attorney Angela Corey, who was not in office at the time of the investigation, said she hadn't seen the lawsuit but added she thinks proper procedures were followed in issuing the subpoenas. She said she plans to look into the matter.

http://www.jacksonville.com/news/metro/2009-04-28/story/jacksonville_blogger_files_suit_over_his_identity_being_outed

[RiversideLoki]

Give em hell Mr. Rich!