Tracked by feds, some supporters of Silk Road are in the dock for posting trollish comments. The Department of Justice has issued a subpoena to the website Reason.com asking them to reveal identities of the six visitors who had dared to threaten Judge Katherine Forrest. The six visitors to the site commented against the ruling of the judge that the founder of the black market website Silk Road, Ross Ulbricht, should spend the rest of his life behind bars without scope for any parole. The harsh sentence meted out to him outraged his supporters and some posted comments that called for the judge to be “taken out back and shot”. These supporters of Silk Road are being tracked by feds now.
It remains to be seen whether these were random comments posted by miscreants. Though the comments have been removed from the website, Reason.com has been ordered to submit details such as IP addresses from where the comments were posted, email ids, phone numbers, account and billing information and devices used by the specific six users who posted the comments. According to US criminal code, an individual is forbidden of “mailing threatening communications”. This offence is classified as felony and the offender can be awarded with a 10-year prison term if tracked by feds and convicted.
The flip side of this trolling incident is that average Internet users become hugely responsible for any innocent comment they might choose to post online and become vulnerable to law enforcement’s action. These comments cannot be classified as “true threats” as they did not convey any seriousness and any criminal investigation in this matter is needless according to the Silk Road supporters. Reason.Com is a popular libertarian site which is home to a number of clever writers.
As Internet users can be tracked by feds for just about anything they post online, the only method by which they can remain anonymous and protect themselves from revealing their identities is by using a VPN. They should also choose to use anonymous names when browsing the Internet. The VPN employs data encryption when transmitting and receiving communications over the Internet. If the user accesses the Internet through a VPN, their actual IP address is also changed to one from another country or location.
The six users would have remained safe had they used anonymous names and a VPN to communicate and post their comments. These would have kept them away from being tracked by feds and they would not have had anything to worry about even if a subpoena was issued.
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