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InvisibleZero7a1
Leaving YourWasteland

Registered: 10/23/02
Posts: 3,594
Loc: Passing Cloud
Mr. Sherman
    #2814083 - 06/21/04 12:55 PM (19 years, 9 months ago)

Here is a part of the story concerning Sherman Austin. The patriot act gave the go ahead for government officials to raid sherman's home... seized evidence they deemed necessary for their "investigation".

here is a piece of the story

Quote:

Sherman Austin is the African American webmaster and activist currently serving a one-year sentence in federal prison for material written by someone else. Through a variety of Orwellian twists, Sherman was imprisoned for the content of another youth?s website. This other youth, who is white and the son of wealthy Orange County Republican parents, has never been charged with any crime even though he admitted to the FBI that he is responsible for the material for which Sherman is now imprisoned.

Sherman's site, www.raisethefist.com, featured information on the anti-globalization and antiwar movements, prison abolitionism, police brutality, racism, sexism, homophobia, and other social justice concerns. In addition to news stories, links, and music, the site offered visitors with a space to post open announcements and messages, not unlike the self-publishing spaces available on indymedia sites. The opportunities this site provided for young anarchists and activists to share ideas and organize protest actions attracted a heavy flow of international visitors.

The boy responsible for the offending material linked his personal website to the self-publishing area on Sherman?s site. This other boy's website included a direct link to a manual featuring crude instructions on how to build explosives. Sherman had no part in writing or posting any of the offending material, but he was imprisoned for violating a 1997 law sponsored by Dianne Feinstein that makes it illegal to ?distribute? information related to explosives with the ?intent? to use that information in a "federal crime of violence."

The requirement of ?intent? in Feinstein?s law allows room for an incredible range of prosecutorial freedom to choose whose relationships to ?dangerous? material can be interpreted as illegal. Sherman provided federal prosecutors with the perfect test case for using this law, flexing new PATRIOT ACT muscles, and assessing the deterrent impact a high-profile imprisonment might have on young activists. He was not only young, Black, an anarchist, and an activist, he and his single mother lacked the financial resources to hire legal counsel.

The government that placed this internet activist behind bars promises to deny him access to computers upon his release as part of the terms of a draconian probation that also denies him the freedom to associate. The goal, of course, is to prevent him from communicating his ideas to others.

Sherman was only 18 at the time of his arrest, and he is now 21. He is an incredibly sweet and gentle soul, every bit as loving as he is committed to social justice. And what has happened to him has implications for all of us who express dissent.

You can write letters or send pictures (max. size 5x7) to Sherman at:






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Offlinegermin8tionn8ion
enthusiast
Registered: 04/14/04
Posts: 399
Last seen: 19 years, 8 months
Re: Mr. Sherman [Re: Zero7a1]
    #2814320 - 06/21/04 02:11 PM (19 years, 9 months ago)

Quote:

Zero7a1 said:
Here is a part of the story concerning Sherman Austin. The patriot act gave the go ahead for government officials to raid sherman's home... seized evidence they deemed necessary for their "investigation".




As we'll see, the PATRIOT act had no play in this issue, other than the fact that the author felt like tossing the act in there. Silly litle "neocon" me, letting facts get in the way of such great anti-Government propaganda.

Quote:

Sherman Austin is the African American webmaster and activist currently serving a one-year sentence in federal prison for material written by someone else. Through a variety of Orwellian twists, Sherman was imprisoned for the content of another youth?s website.




Why is it that people of the lefterly persuasion can identify someone by race in a news article, but if Fox were to do it, it would be racism?
Quote:


The boy responsible for the offending material linked his personal website to the self-publishing area on Sherman?s site. This other boy's website included a direct link to a manual featuring crude instructions on how to build explosives. Sherman had no part in writing or posting any of the offending material, but he was imprisoned for violating a 1997 law sponsored by Dianne Feinstein that makes it illegal to ?distribute? information related to explosives with the ?intent? to use that information in a "federal crime of violence."




It's the job of the owner of the website to ensure that the information posted on their site is legal. If he owned this site and the young white boy was linking tons of kiddy porn from there, he'd be libel for that as well.
Quote:


The requirement of ?intent? in Feinstein?s law allows room for an incredible range of prosecutorial freedom to choose whose relationships to ?dangerous? material can be interpreted as illegal. Sherman provided federal prosecutors with the perfect test case for using this law, flexing new PATRIOT ACT muscles, and assessing the deterrent impact a high-profile imprisonment might have on young activists. He was not only young, Black, an anarchist, and an activist, he and his single mother lacked the financial resources to hire legal counsel.




Interesting. It says he violated a 1997 law, yet they are citing the PATRIOT act. Is the PATRIOT act going to be used as a scapegoat here, or will they actually demonstrate that the PATRIOT act was brought into play here. If he violated a law made 4-5 years before 9/11, then it certaintly has nothing to do with the PATRIOT act. Stupid "neocon" me, letting things like 'reality', 'the facts', and 'truth', interrupt a wonderful tirade against the government.
Quote:


The government that placed this internet activist behind bars promises to deny him access to computers upon his release as part of the terms of a draconian probation that also denies him the freedom to associate.




Of course, this sentance has been handed down to numerous white supremacists that have used the internet to pass on their message. I'm sure that the author of this article will get to that as well.
Quote:


Sherman was only 18 at the time of his arrest, and he is now 21. He is an incredibly sweet and gentle soul, every bit as loving as he is committed to social justice. And what has happened to him has implications for all of us who express dissent.




How many "incredibly sweet and gentle soul[s]" disseminate information that tells you how to make bombs?

So, they really DIDNT use the PATRIOT act, since he is being held, being given a trial, and the law that is being cited isn't the PATRIOT act at all, instead it is a 7 year old law. The "draconian" methods of preventing him from "spreading his message" have been used on numerous right-wing / white supremacist activists in the past years, apparently without sweet innocent Tyrone McBomby writing too much about them. I wish I could dry this article out, pasteurize it, spawn it with WBS and get a few great flushes off of it.

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OfflineLearyfanS
It's the psychedelic movement!
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Registered: 04/20/01
Posts: 34,184
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Re: Mr. Sherman [Re: germin8tionn8ion]
    #2814663 - 06/21/04 04:29 PM (19 years, 9 months ago)

Quote:

How many "incredibly sweet and gentle soul[s]" disseminate information that tells you how to make bombs? 




He didn't disseminate that information. Some kid did and admitted that he did.

You're right that the PATRIOT ACT had nothing do with this but this situation is still FUCKED UP. Sherman was obviously arrested in order to silence him. He did nothing. The kid who actually posted the link went unpunished. How can you defend this?

:mad2:







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Mp3 of the month:  Sons Of Adam - Feathered Fish


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Anonymous

Re: Mr. Sherman [Re: germin8tionn8ion]
    #2814674 - 06/21/04 04:34 PM (19 years, 9 months ago)

It's the job of the owner of the website to ensure that the information posted on their site is legal.

and the information he was linked to should be legal. he didn't post anyone's private information, or libel anyone. if people want to post information about how to make explosives, grow magic mushrooms, cheat on taxes, have better sex, etc etc etc., it should be legal. it's just information.

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Offlinegermin8tionn8ion
enthusiast
Registered: 04/14/04
Posts: 399
Last seen: 19 years, 8 months
Re: Mr. Sherman [Re: Learyfan]
    #2814895 - 06/21/04 05:56 PM (19 years, 9 months ago)

Quote:

Learyfan said:
He didn't disseminate that information. Some kid did and admitted that he did.




If he owned a webpage that gave his opinion relating to actions against the government and a link was present that lead to instructions to make explosives, then the owner of the website that is encouraging the practice AND sourcing the information is the only one culpable. As it's been said, it's not illegal to preach or wish for a violent overthrow of the government, and it's not illegal to have manuals to make IED's. It's not illegal to sell mushroom spores, and it's not illegal to sell books about growing mushrooms, but it's illegal to sell the spores and tell how to use them to break the law. Stupid law? In some instances I think it is. But is it the law. The owner of the spore bank that DOESNT tell people how to produce illegal drugs from the spores isn't culpable, and the shroomery posters and owners aren't culpable, because neither of them provide the tie that is required to show guilt. This man ran a site that (allegedly) calls for the overthrow of the government. If he is preaching it and providing the methods for which to do it, it is a crime. The young white kid didn't break the law by having the information.
Quote:


You're right that the PATRIOT ACT had nothing do with this but this situation is still FUCKED UP.




The situation in which factually incorrect information is put into articles and passed off as the truth? Yes, it is "fucked up". With glaring, well, I'll say pieces of misinformation, in the document, I can't believe anything else that it may have in it as well. It's from a source that isn't only opiniated or bias, but they are so bias that they would blatantly lie, or present information that has no basis in reality, to "prove" their side of the story.
Quote:


Sherman was obviously arrested in order to silence him.




Telling people to overthrow the government and giving them links to that sort of information is illegal. If WhitePower.com was telling how "niggers" and Jews and "fags" were to be eliminated and linked to peoples websites for blowing up gay bars with precise instruction, you'd be somewhat upset, right?
Quote:


He did nothing.




He broke a 6 year old law.
Quote:


The kid who actually posted the link went unpunished.




He didn't break any laws.
Quote:


How can you defend this?




My ability to read and interpret information. The kid didn't break the law. He did, even if unwittingly. The PATRIOT act had nothing to do with it.

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OfflineLearyfanS
It's the psychedelic movement!
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Registered: 04/20/01
Posts: 34,184
Loc: High pride!
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Re: Mr. Sherman [Re: germin8tionn8ion]
    #2814988 - 06/21/04 06:26 PM (19 years, 9 months ago)

One of us doesn't understand the situation. Here's how i'm reading it:

I run a messageboard on an anti-govenment website. Some kid links his own website which has information about how to make explosives. I get arrested, but the kid who posted the link gets in no trouble.

Does that sound right to you? Theoretically, the government could post a link on The Shroomery about how to cultivate mushrooms and then shut down The Shroomery because of it. Is that ok with you??  :mad2: :mad2: :mad2: :mad2:





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Mp3 of the month:  Sons Of Adam - Feathered Fish


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OfflinePhred
Fred's son
Male

Registered: 10/18/00
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Re: Mr. Sherman [Re: Zero7a1]
    #2815033 - 06/21/04 06:41 PM (19 years, 9 months ago)

Without making any comment on whether or not what Austin did should be illegal, there's another significant fact which that article failed to mention -- Austin plea bargained his way into his sentence.

Learyfan's cartoon summary mentioned it, but in a blatantly false way. The cartoon summary claims Austin was "forced" into accepting his sentence, when of course no such thing occurred. He had every right to go to trial. He chose instead to plea bargain. His choice all the way.

We can argue till we're all blue in the face about whether it was a good decision on his part to cop a plea, but no one can pretend that he was in any way "forced" into waiving his right to a jury trial, because he wasn't.

Once again, I am not interested in responding to anything along the lines of "Yeah, but he should never have been put in that position in the first place." I merely add an additional point illustrating the shoddy (to be kind) "journalism" exhibited in that piece of birdcage liner article.

pinky


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Offlinegermin8tionn8ion
enthusiast
Registered: 04/14/04
Posts: 399
Last seen: 19 years, 8 months
Re: Mr. Sherman [Re: Learyfan]
    #2815628 - 06/21/04 10:32 PM (19 years, 9 months ago)

Quote:

Learyfan said:
One of us doesn't understand the situation. Here's how i'm reading it:




1,2,3 Not it!
:smile:
Quote:


I run a messageboard on an anti-govenment website. Some kid links his own website which has information about how to make explosives. I get arrested, but the kid who posted the link gets in no trouble.




Exactly. If I ran a site talking about how much I love mixing fertilizer and fuel oil together and priming with TNT to blow things up thats fine. If you ran a site talking about how much you hated the Alfred Murrah federal building, thats fine. If you allow the page that you host and are responsible for to link from your site to my site, and add a few words, it's encouraging the illegal act.
Quote:


Does that sound right to you? Theoretically, the government could post a link on The Shroomery about how to cultivate mushrooms and then shut down The Shroomery because of it. Is that ok with you?? 




No, they couldn't. This law requires a combination of binary ingredients. It's not (yet) illegal to teach people how to grow shrooms, and it's not (yet) illegal to sell spores. Since the operators of the shroomery are putting this information up legally, and NOT selling spores, they are just offering the information.  It's not illegal for me to say "Boy, I wish that Person X was shot in the head with a rifle", and it's not illegal for me to give a rifle to (certain) people. It is illegal for me to do both, if it appears I was providing the 'tool' and giving encouragement.




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OfflineLearyfanS
It's the psychedelic movement!
Male User Gallery

Registered: 04/20/01
Posts: 34,184
Loc: High pride!
Last seen: 11 hours, 42 minutes
Re: Mr. Sherman [Re: germin8tionn8ion]
    #2815894 - 06/22/04 12:02 AM (19 years, 9 months ago)

You think it's ok that someone went to prison because of a link that someone else posted on his messageboard?





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Offlinegermin8tionn8ion
enthusiast
Registered: 04/14/04
Posts: 399
Last seen: 19 years, 8 months
Re: Mr. Sherman [Re: Learyfan]
    #2815905 - 06/22/04 12:07 AM (19 years, 9 months ago)

Quote:

Learyfan said:
You think it's ok that someone went to prison because of a link that someone else posted on his messageboard?




[bold text added by germ]
I don't think that the article that began this thread is objective and factual enough to base a real claim of what went on. If his site broke the law, then it broke the law. If he was encouraging violence and allowing this sort of material on HIS board, or to be linked from his board, then hes breaking the law. I'd have to see exactly what his site truely had to be able to have a total, final opinion on this matter.

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InvisibleZero7a1
Leaving YourWasteland

Registered: 10/23/02
Posts: 3,594
Loc: Passing Cloud
Re: Mr. Sherman [Re: germin8tionn8ion]
    #2815951 - 06/22/04 12:29 AM (19 years, 9 months ago)

Man... yall make me work too hard... well besides learyfan :wink: . here you go


Free Sherman

Quote:

  A Strange and Tragic Legal Journey
The Case of Sherman Martin Austin
By MERLIN CHOWKWANYUN


On Wednesday, Sept. 3, 2003, Sherman Martin Austin began serving one year in federal prison under terms of a plea agreement for which he was sentenced on Aug. 4, 2003.

Austin, the 20-year-old African-American founder and former webmaster of the anarchist website www.raisethefist.com, pleaded guilty to "distribution" of information about making or using explosives with the "intent" that the information "be used for, or in furtherance of, an activity that constitutes a Federal crime of violence." Such was deemed illegal under a relatively obscure federal statute, 18 U.S.C. 842 (p)(2)(A), pushed through Congress by Democrat Sen. Dianne Feinstein in the late 1990s. The offending material, which Austin repeatedly has emphasized he did not author, was housed on an isolated section of Austin's web server, and a small portion of it contained amateurish instructions on how to assemble simple explosives.

Now, as Austin and the increasing number of people analyzing his case count down the days to his freedom, new facts about his case are coming to light. Gathered from court records, law enforcement documents, and interviews, these new details reveal a sloppy federal investigation of Austin, one of inconsistencies and dubious evidence that nonetheless resulted in an armed raid of Austin's 950-sq. foot Sherman Oaks, CA home, a nightmarish 13-day detention in two cities, and ultimately, a year-long federal prison sentence handed down by a Reagan-appointed federal judge.

The new details also show the egregious politicization of Austin's case by federal prosecutors and the judge who sentenced Austin. They show the FBI, during its investigation, engaging in questionable conduct that make parallels to COINTELPRO quite apt. And above all, the new information elevates Sherman's case beyond its obvious--and obviously important--free speech implications and demonstrates just how low the bar is for authorities to cobble together an affidavit for easy approval (and a warrant) from a judge.



THE BACKGROUND

For those who have not followed Austin's case, here follows the basic chronology.

On the afternoon of Jan. 24, 2002, Austin awoke from a nap and found around 25 FBI and Secret Service armed agents surrounding his home. Over the course of the afternoon and evening, they proceeded to seize computer equipment, protest signs, political books, and other miscellaneous items from the premises by using a warrant supported by an FBI affidavit that contained two suspected charges--[1] "distribution" of explosives information with the "intent" that the information "be used for, or in furtherance of, an activity that constitutes a Federal crime of violence" (hereafter referred to as "distribution of information with intent") and [2] alleged illegal computer activity that included defacement of web pages.

Agents questioned Austin at length but ultimately left the premises without making an arrest. A few days later, Austin, in his 1981 Toyota, drove to the New York City anti-World Economic Forum protests, held through the first few days of February 2002. Shortly upon arrival, Austin was snatched by the NYPD on Feb. 2, 2002 with around 25-27 other activists before he even marched. Later, while waiting for someone to pick him up from a courtroom, Austin instead found himself arrested by FBI agents and then detained in a federal maximum-security prison. The criminal complaint and warrant for this FBI arrest, dated Feb. 4, 2002, contained an additional charge--possession of an unregistered firearm, and as insinuated by the FBI affidavit supporting the warrant, in this case, an explosive. This second warrant, however, did not contain the charge related to computer activity found in the first warrant used during the Jan. 24, 2002 raid.

Austin's prison once housed, among others, terrorists involved in the African embassy bombings. At a Feb. 7, 2002 detention hearing, Austin's lawyer, Susan Tipograph, who voluntarily represented Austin at the time, spoke of his prison conditions.

"Every time I've seen him, he's been sneezing, coughing, or shivering, judge. This is not right He's not been given a shower for four days," Tipograph said at the hearing.

After having spent 11 days in two New York facilities, Austin was transferred to a Bureau of Prisons facility in Oklahoma, where he stayed for two additional days before returning by plane to Los Angeles.

Months then passed without any legal incident stemming from the Jan. 24, 2002 raid or the February 2002 arrest and detainment in New York--no indictments, no arrests, no more raids, no interrogations. The two charges that appeared on a criminal complaint filed against Austin in the U.S. District Court's Central District of California while he was held in New York--for distribution of information with intent and for possession of an alleged explosives -- were dropped in mid-February.

But Austin has said that local authorities in Long Beach, CA, where he moved after returning from New York, would still regularly follow and stop to intimidate and harass him, asking questions about his political activities and identifying him by name.

In the first week of August 2002, Austin's legal troubles resurfaced. Before entering any new charges, federal prosecutors offered Austin a plea agreement that, if accepted, would have him plead guilty to only one charge, distribution of information with intent. Additionally, according to this plea agreement, prosecutors would not charge Austin for illegal explosives possession or illegal computer activity, the two other alleged felonies listed on the prior warrants. If Austin accepted the agreement, federal prosecutors would recommend a sentence of one month in prison, three months in a community correctional facility, and three years of supervised release.

Austin did not initially accept the plea and originally intended to go to trial on principle. But he later learned that this might mean facing a 20-year sentencing enhancement if convicted under a United States Sentencing Commission guideline created in the mid-1990s and the scope of which expanded greatly after passage of the 1996 Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act and the 2001 USA Patriot Act.

Thus on Sept. 30, 2002, Austin entered the courtroom of federal Judge Stephen V. Wilson, a Republican Reagan appointee, to plead guilty.

But Judge Wilson rejected the plea deal, arguing that Assistant United States Attorney Rodrigo Castro-Silva's recommended sentence of one month in prison was too light. He forced both prosecutors and the defense back to the drawing board.

Months later, in late February 2003, both sides returned with another binding plea agreement that would restrict Wilson's sentence to 6 to 12 months, a range later upgraded to 8 to 14 months after Austin became involved in a minor traffic violation (broken headlight) during which he had driven with an unrenewed license because, he says, he had never received a renewal notice of such in the mail.

Again, the agreement had Austin plead guilty to only one charge, distribution of information with intent.

His sentencing hearing on Jun. 30, 2003 set off a series of farcical twists that culminated in an eventual sentence. Upon hearing prosecutor Castro-Silva's upgraded recommendation of four months in prison and four months in a community correctional facility, Wilson again lashed out at both him and Austin's federal public defender, Ronald O. Kaye, calling their recommended sentences overly lenient (Kaye asked for a month in prison). Judge Wilson suspended sentencing for a month until Castro-Silva contacted the Justice Department and FBI for its recommendation.

On Jul. 28, 2003, Austin returned to the courtroom expecting his sentence, and instead learned that the clerk had forgotten to enter his sentencing hearing into the daily proceedings, which required Austin to return back on Aug. 4, 2003.

Then, Judge Wilson finally sentenced him to a year in federal prison and three years of very restrictive supervised release that will govern his computer access and association with political groups upon release.

THE AUTHORSHIP QUESTION (AND DISTORTION)

Much misinformation about the origins of the offending material on Austin's website--from which sprung the only felony count to which he plead guilty -- has spread through Internet postings, news articles and local TV broadcasts, as well as official documents of the FBI and the United States Attorney's Office. Sorting and filtering through it requires some knowledge of how Austin administered raisethefist.com, which he founded on President's Day in 2000.

Austin's anarchist site, which still operates today and is maintained by a group of volunteers, contains articles and sub-sections about a hodgepodge of topics, including protest announcements, police brutality, and anarchist theory. It also features what is known as an open publishing newswire, made famous by the indymedia.org network of sites, that allows users to submit text and photographs that instantly appear on the newswire at the push of a button. Additionally, Austin provided free web storage space--or hosting space, to use proper Internet terminology--to activists who asked for it. Activists who took up Austin's offer could, independently of Austin, and at their leisure and will, post, remove, and alter web pages they themselves created and authored.

In other words, if you were to ask Austin for hosting space, and he granted it to you, he would "host" your page, and you would be able to author web pages and place them on his server for public view without Austin's necessarily knowing their exact contents or what subsequent alterations you might make (unless, of course, he vigilantly policed your pages regularly for changes).

Other non-political websites like www.tripod.com or www.geocities.com provide a similar service. For example, on his or her designated area of the tripod.com web server, a user who signs up for free web hosting space on tripod.com can post web pages visible to an entire Internet audience. Services like tripod.com and geocities.com act as "hosts," but typically do not have the time to screen the contents of all the web pages they host for thousands of users.

It is Austin's offering of this service that led to the sole charge on his guilty plea, which resulted in the one-year sentence. One user who asked for free hosting space on Austin's site used a portion of it to house a tract called the Reclaim Guide. Prepared originally for a September 2001 IMF protest that never occurred due to 9/11, and colored by amateurish rhetorical bombast, the Guide contains, among other things, protest tactics, notes on how to avoid trouble with law enforcement at political events, and a small section with recipes for explosives. Its latter part appears cobbled together from and inspired by instructions on explosives freely available on countless websites accessible by simple Google searches, as well as published books. They do not appear very detailed, or for that matter, effective.

For example, the entirety of the Guide's "Smoke Bomb" recipe, one of the shorter entries, read as follows:

"Mix 4 parts sugar with 6 parts salt peter. Heat this over a low flame until it melts, stirring well. Pour into a container. When pouring place a few wooden matches into it for a fuse. About a pound of this will smoke up an entire block."

Silly stuff, though from reading certain accounts about these instructions, one gets two very erroneous impressions--that, one, they actually were of serious pyrotechnic merit, and two, that Austin authored them, which he did not.

For one, Austin says he told FBI agents at least seven times during the raid, while questioned, that he did not author the Reclaim Guide and its materials on explosives. Yet mainstream media and subsequent FBI documents may suggest incorrectly that he played a far more proactive role in the Guide's presence on his server than he actually did.

These materials primarily use two verbs, "post" and "author," to describe Austin's involvement, neither of which is accurate.

For example, A New York Post article published on Feb. 5, 2002, days after Austin's NYC arrest, read: "A would-be teen terrorist, wanted by the FBI for allegedly posting a how-to-blow-things-up Web site, was nabbed during World Economic Forum demonstration" The article then stated that Austin's site contained a "litany of methods" for "urban thuggery."

At a detention hearing two days later, federal prosecutor Victor Hou of the United States Attorney's Office (USAO) of the Southern District of New York quoted one of the Reclaim Guide's instructions and then claimed Austin authored the line.

"He instructed others how to make fuel fertilizer bombs and encouraged people to make more devastating Molotov cocktails on his web site. He instructed them Just stuff the bottle with this mixture and light the fucker--this is what the defendant's own words dictate," Hou said.

Two FBI affidavits filed in this case--one used to support the warrant served on Jan. 24, 2002 at the original Sherman Oaks, CA raid, and a second one, signed on Feb. 4, 2002, used to justify Austin's detention in New York City by federal authorities -- were authored by the lead FBI investigator on the case, Special Agent John I. Pi.

Pi, in his second affidavit, specifically used the verb "author" to describe Austin's role in the explosives instructions.

And yet FBI documents indicate that Pi and the FBI may have known before the Jan. 24, 2002 raid that Austin had not authored the material, and certainly knew such by summer of 2002, before prosecutors decided to revive their case against Austin.

One FBI internal report used in the case, dated July 24, 2002, indicates that agents visited the home of an affluent Orange County, CA-area white teenager who actually authored the material and uploaded it to Austin's site. There, according to the FBI's own report, agents interviewed the teenager to whom Austin had granted free web hosting space -- space the teenager later used for posting the Reclaim Guide to http://www.raisethefist.com/EXIT, the address where his content could be accessed.

The FBI report indicates that FBI agents showed the teenager printouts of the page and that "[Name withheld for privacy] stated that he did author this website AUSTIN hosted this website on www.RAISETHEFIST.COM for XXXX. XXXX had direct access to EXIT via File Transfer Protocol (FTP) server on AUSTIN's computer via the Internet. XXXX also explained that Austin showed him how to use FTP."

FTP is a standard means of electronic file transfer on the Internet, used to send, receive, and update web pages and files.

The FBI report specifically cites the Reclaim Guide, which contained the explosives instructions, and indicates that the teenager admitted to the FBI agents that he had authored the material.

"XXXX was shown a copy of the webpage, www.RAISETHEFIST.COM/EXIT/RECLAIM.HTML XXXX stated that he did code this webpage and all the associated webpages based on the content of a written document, called the RECLAIM GUIDE, provided to him by another individual, Joey LNU [Last Name Unknown]."

Additionally, the report contains a copy of an e-mail sent by the teenager on Sept. 8, 2001--long before the Jan. 24, 2002 raid--from his CompuServe account. In the e-mail, the teenager provides the Internet address to the site.

The e-mail reads: "Please spread the word to get this site out before the DC action later this month! Also, much thanks to Sherman who is letting us host this site on his server. http://www.raisethefist.com/exit/reclaim.html TRASH DC!"

Agents did not arrest the teenager, nor was he ever charged with any crimes. Both he and his parents have refrained from public comment, which Austin's mother, Jennifer Martin, believes is irresponsible.

"They really should have come





This goes on...
Full Story


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OfflinePhred
Fred's son
Male

Registered: 10/18/00
Posts: 12,949
Loc: Dominican Republic
Last seen: 9 years, 2 months
Re: Mr. Sherman [Re: Zero7a1]
    #2816314 - 06/22/04 06:20 AM (19 years, 9 months ago)

Now that is a much better article than the first.

The additional information provided doesn't change my point, however. Austin is doing time because he copped a plea. He had every right to insist on a trial by his peers, and California juries are notoriously lenient. A jury shown the amateurish content of the site linked through raisethefist.com could very well have acquitted him.

pinky


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InvisibleZero7a1
Leaving YourWasteland

Registered: 10/23/02
Posts: 3,594
Loc: Passing Cloud
Re: Mr. Sherman [Re: Phred]
    #2817038 - 06/22/04 12:12 PM (19 years, 9 months ago)

I can see your reasoning behind that. I still think its pretty over the top what they did concerning the case...

I havent really decided my stance on this issue. I do believe the boy is innocent, but as to whether i think its cool that he went to PRISON for a YEAR. because of this bullshit is just rediculous.

Freedom of speech and some kid "fucking" up leading to a year in prison doesnt equate to me soo much.

You may stand by your position that you know hes in there cause thats the way it is.

But for me... thats not justice...




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