Man Who Threatened Obama Found Innocent!

A man who supposedly threatened the life of Barack Obama prior to his election as President has been found innocent by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Walter Bagdasarian had posted "he will have a 50 cal in the head soon" on a Yahoo Finance forum, which was reported to the Secret Service.

The Secret Service in turn had to investigate and raided Bagdasarian's house and took his computer and hard drives, finding only one other email where he threatened Obama. His threats were racist in tone.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/20/walter-bagdasarian-convic_n_904481.html

This is interesting because as a webmaster I am required to cooperate with the authorities when someone posts a message threatening the President. In fact, twice I have been "ordered" to turn over info on members here, and have complied because threatening the life of the President is a crime and thus the members in question had broken our Forum Guidelines and voided any privacy rights we would normally afford them on Hipforums.

I know in one case the Secret Service (or another agency) came to the member's door and questioned him. They did not arrest or prosecute him because just like in the article above, he did not really pose a threat, and had no real intention to do the President harm. I don't know what happened in the second case.

So just remember that if you threaten the President of the US on these forums you are likely to be reported and I'll have to give out whatever info they request that we have. But unless you're really intent upon do the president harm, you won't likely end up in jail, but you may have to go to court.

BTW, in my 15 years as webmaster these are the only two times I have had contact with Law Enforcement about our members. That certainly says something about the freedom of speech we allow on these forums. Our Free Speech mandate (which most ppl don't understand) protects all speech on this website from legal action from governments. So you are allowed to post on any subject without fear of arrest or censure by any government, with the one exception noted above (threatening the President), or posting up kiddie porn. That is the extent of our free speech mandate. It does NOT include posting anything that violates our forum guidelines. The Hip Forums reserves the right to ban ANYONE for ANY reason. It has nothing to do with Free Speech, because only your government can effectively limit your freedom of expression.

 

Well if they're not in the USA, then it would be kinda hard for them to get him, no?

Funny thing. Compare it to Thailand where insulting the King is against the law. Evidently you can't even remark about his musical skill. I remember reading about a recent case where someone insulted the King and when they came back to Thailand they were arrested and put on trial.

And I love it when the media say all Thai people LOVE their king. Well they have no choice, do they?

 

Yes, I foresaw this eventuality long ago. When I started hippy.com there was nothing on the Net like it, but I could sense the need. The corporations were already starting to take it over, first by making everyone pay for domain names (they once were free, believe it or not!)

Big business had already brainwashed people into thinking the future was all rosy at a time when the stock market bubble was taking off.

I looked around the net for alternative websites, and there were alt-newsgroups but that was it, nothing alternative cause young geeks were taking over the Internet, who'd never really experienced the 60s or the protests. The only sites with any alternative content was the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) and the Well, which was not an open site where anyone could join.

Anyway, the point is that the Internet is becoming more controlled and more corporate everyday. Along with that comes restrictions on what people can post. And most politically oriented sites will ban those opposed to their point of view right away, rather than have to confront those who disagree.

And what's really worrisome is the tendency for everyone to join just a few sites like Facebook and Google and post up their personal info on them. I've already posted my concerns regarding them...

 

I think we got your point already.