If you’ve made your way around the blogosphere this week, you’ve seen some of the tale of the 16-year old who has been nabbed from his mother’s house by jack-booted Feds, sent off to another state, and otherwise mistreated as a result of the Patriot Act. It is enough to make you take up your pitchforks. The basic story from Wired:
The arrest of the teenager is real enough. FBI agents investigating a February 15 bomb hoax that evacuated the mechanical engineering building at Purdue University traced the phone call to the juvenile’s Oxford, North Carolina home, served his mother with a search warrant and arrested the teen. They issued a press release about it, omitting the suspect’s name. That was on March 5, and he’s been held without bail in Indiana ever since.
Except there is more to this than the current round of manufactured outrage would let on. Wired has the story:
The claim that the boy is a victim of USA PATRIOT, though, appears to have been cut from whole cloth. While there’s plenty to criticize in that post-9/11 law, it doesn’t contain any provision that abrogates a defendant’s right to a trial. It’s also not responsible for making it illegal to phone in a bomb threat. That’s been a federal crime since 1939.
The boy’s mother, Annette Lundeby, has even acknowledged in interviews that her son has been formally charged, has a court-appointed attorney, and has already made appearances in front of a judge. No military tribunals here. On Alex Jones, Lundeby seemed to more-or-less admit that the USA PATRIOT connection was something she dreamed up on her own.
Jones: And they said they are charging him under the Patriot Act, so –
Lundeby: They’re not saying that, but that’s exactly what they’re doing.
Jones: Well, it’s in the newspaper.
Lundeby: All their actions point towards that. But they don’t deny it either.
There is no doubt that this kid being held away from his home is serious — and it is fair to discuss whether or not this kid’s treatment is in line with what he is being charged with. But this kid is not being charged or held under Patriot Act rules — this kid’s defenders have doctored up a nice media story specifically pitched to gin up outrage over this situation and deflect from the actual facts of the case. Of which Wired has more detail in a followup article:
Lundeby confirmed that her son was known online as “Tyrone,” a celebrity in a prank-calling community that grew late last year out of the trouble-making “/b/” board on 4chan. Using the VOIP conferencing software Ventrilo, as many as 300 listeners would gather on a server run by Tyrone to listen to him and other amateur voice actors make often-crude and racist phone calls, some of which are archived on YouTube. The broadcasts were organized through websites like PartyVanPranks.com.
A former fan of Tyrone’s work helped lead the police to Lundeby’s son after the boy allegedly moved beyond pranks this year and began accepting donations from students eager to miss a day of school. In exchange for a little money, Tyrone would phone in a bomb threat that would shutter the donor’s school for a day.
There is much more detail in both of the Wired articles that is worth reading. Neither article claims that this kid is guilty of anything, but they do make it very clear that this is not an abuse of Patriot Act case and that law enforcement has more to work with here than the original sensational claims admitted to.
Both left and right blogs went crazy over this story — the left because we fought against the Patriot Act in the first place and the right because now that there is a Democrat in charge, they’ve gotten the clue on how horrific this legislation is. (They’ll change their minds if Multiple Choice Mitt becomes President, tho) And they are using their newfound opposition to try to beat up Democrats. The usual bullshit. The one left blog that I read that had this posted (dKos) had a post debunking this claim up within hours of the original post early this week. It is still a cause celebre on the right. Wonder why?
The Patriot Act should be rolled back in its entirety, but I’m not holding my breath that this will happen. But in the meantime, you’ll have more of the detail on this story than those with an agenda to flog.