Chapter 1: What is the main issue with the Trump administration's approach to Reddit users?
All right. This MAGA regime likes to flood the zone. And thankfully, there are so many incredible journalists in the United States doing incredible work exposing the fascism and the erosion of civil liberties. And here to discuss his reporting with me is Ryan Devereaux. He's an investigative journalist and fellow at Type Media Center. He's out with an
incredible piece uh for the intercept titled a redditor criticized ice trump is trying to unmask them by dragging the company to a secret grand jury and he's here to discuss it with us ryan welcome to ihip news this is really disturbing and there's just so many stories out there that i want to highlight how just a random redditor can be in the crosshairs of this fascist regime
Well, thanks so much for having me. Yeah, we published a story last week on The Intercept, which looks at this case that you described where a person had been posting on Reddit. The government didn't identify exactly what the offending post was, but their lawyers have surmised that it was likely to do with ICE.
Chapter 2: How has the Trump administration escalated its tactics against digital media companies?
and the shooting of Renee Goode in Minneapolis. A bit of backstory over the past year since the Trump administration came in, they've been sending a ton of what are known as administrative subpoenas to different digital media companies. The big social media companies, Meta, X, and Reddit. and requesting data on anonymous accounts that post related to immigration enforcement.
These are accounts that are sometimes tracking ICE operations in the streets, naming agents who are often masked. The government claims that this is doxing and that this is a threat to officer safety. But in a lot of cases, what we've seen are
instances where individuals seem to be doing nothing more than venting about their frustration with the federal government, and they get hit with one of these subpoenas. In this particular case, it originated in the Northern District of California. An ICE agent from Virginia had requested information and about a month's worth of really extensive electronic data on a user.
Chapter 3: What role do civil liberties advocates play in resisting ICE subpoenas?
The agent didn't say exactly what had tipped them off, what caused this. Reddit alerted, which they often do in these sort of instances, the user that there had been a request for their data. The user then contacted a group called the CLDC. It's a center for civil liberties defense, civil liberties defense center in Northern California in the district where these tech companies are based.
They filed a motion to quash this administrative subpoena. What these advocates have found is that when they actually enter these motions to quash in federal court, ICE is generally backing down in these cases. So when people get representation, when they say, hey, we're going to fight this, ICE has been backing down.
but what happened in this case that is as far as we can tell maybe the first instances instance of this happening is that that motion was filed the lawyers the defense attorneys the civil liberties advocates received an email from an assistant u.s attorney there in the northern district of california saying hey we're withdrawing this request for data and just a few days later four days later
Reddit receives a grand jury subpoena, not in Northern California, but in Washington DC, not from an ICE agent, but from an assistant US attorney, a federal prosecutor in the capital.
Chapter 4: What does the grand jury subpoena from Washington DC signify?
And they're calling not this individual Reddit user to appear before the grand jury, they're calling the company itself to turn over this data. So what civil liberties advocates, privacy advocates are saying is that this indicates
indicates a significant sort of escalation in what the administration is doing targeting the companies themselves and the very existence of a grand jury subpoena, a federal grand jury subpoena out of the capital suggests the possibility of a potential significant criminal case sort of centering around this free speech activity.
Many would argue we don't know what the substance of this case is because grand juries are incredibly secret, but we know that its existence suggests something serious.
So we know that like Zuckerberg, Musk bent the knee to Trump. I mean, that's widely documented. So do we know if the owners of Reddit, are they knee benders to fascism?
You know, Reddit's an interesting case in comparison to some of these other tech companies. You have groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which tracks sort of
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Chapter 5: How does Reddit's privacy protection compare to other tech companies?
privacy protections in the context of these big social media companies. In general, Reddit has scored fairly high on their rankings in terms of protecting privacy. Reddit certainly makes a big deal of their privacy protection policies. We don't know how much to take them at their word because a lot of this happens behind the scenes.
But outwardly, they very much sort of project the image of a company that does a lot to protect its data. In the course of reporting this story, Reddit directed me to some transparency reports that they published in the past year that really include some very interesting data about the moment that we're in right now.
So the past year, the first six months of last year, Reddit recorded more requests from law enforcement, these sorts of administrative subpoenas, grand jury subpoenas, that sort of thing, than they've ever received at any other point prior to their reporting.
Now they don't disaggregate that data to tell us which law enforcement agencies specifically are requesting data, but it is US law enforcement agencies that are making the most requests. A lot of those requests are coming from federal law enforcement, a lot of them are coming out of DC.
Chapter 6: What are the implications of targeting anonymous accounts critical of immigration enforcement?
It is a strong indication that these companies, Reddit in particular, but also Meta and Axe are receiving a lot of requests on accounts. Requests for data are not unusual for these companies from federal law enforcement. Normally, Reddit will get a number of requests for child endangerment type of cases.
What's different in this moment is a ton of requests from the government about anonymous accounts that appear critical of the administration's immigration enforcement regime.
Yeah, and it makes you wonder, remember all the don't tread on me flags at the January 6th, the don't tread on me people. Yeah, absolutely. And here we have a clear attack on free speech. There is this, I've read about this, I think it's NSP 17 or something like this.
It's a national security memo where they are wanting to get files on people probably like me or like you or these Reddit users and label us. It's a pre-crime labeling.
Chapter 7: How is the current crackdown on free speech linked to national security policies?
They're labeling people with a pre-crime. Do you see any link between that NSP 17 and these requests coming out of Washington in this pre-crime era that doj trump stephen miller they're wanting to it goes back to what the president ran on which is the enemy from within any reporting that this is all linked in that umbrella of this regime
Yeah, so NSPM 7 was a national security sort of memo that went out to all of the sort of ecosystem of federal law enforcement agencies, sort of outlining what the administration's law enforcement priorities and agenda are. And as you indicated, folks can look it up. There's a whole list of sort of criteria that the administration is asking to ordering its agents to be on the lookout for.
A lot of this stuff has to do with being critical of immigration policies. Anything that threatens traditional, and this is not my sort of description of what, this is not my interpretation, it's literally what it says.
Chapter 8: What are the prospects for resistance against the Trump administration's tactics?
It's sort of anyone that's critical of traditional American values, sort of Christian traditional American values, critical of immigration enforcement. That's the sort of broad umbrella that the administration has tasked its federal law enforcement agencies to be sort of targeting and zeroing in on and paying attention to.
I think what we've seen, and this is pretty clear at this point, is obviously the administration's immigration agenda is quite unpopular politically right now. In addition to a really intense crackdown on undocumented people themselves, the administration has widened the aperture to include critics of its policies.
We saw this playing out obviously very dramatically in Minneapolis where I was earlier this year. I think that these cases like we're discussing here in this instance of a Reddit user being targeted with administrative subpoena and then the government getting that batted down and turning around and
filing an order that a major, one of the largest tech companies around to appear before a grand jury in Washington, DC is part of the same sort of project. I very much believe that the Miller agenda that lumps immigration in with cracking down on the left are intimately intertwined.
Yeah, I do too. You know, they call him, his nickname in the White House is Mr. Prime Minister. And I don't think they're, this is my opinion. I think that whether it's Kristi Noem or Senator Mark Wayne Mullen, they're just a puppet. I think Stephen Miller runs DHS. He's the one who puts the pressure on the people in Minneapolis to be aggressive with protesters. So let me ask you this.
I think one of the biggest American things, it's a shit talk. I have a podcast called I've Had It because I like to shit talk, right? So I think a lot of Americans like to shit talk. The president likes to shit talk. Look at his social media feed. It's ridiculous. He's the biggest shit talker on the planet.
so you're telling me i can go on reddit right now and i can be like i sucks i think stephen miller's a prick um i think what they did in minneapolis is i think they're behaving like fascist nazis and then they're going to come after me via some secret grand jury for that that's what's happening here to americans talking on reddit
Yeah. A bit more context about this case in particular, like I said, we don't know what triggered it for ICE, but this person who's identified in court records as John Doe got legal counsel and they did a review of all of this person's posts, recent posts. What they saw were some, they posted in a thread that shared an article, a news article that identified Jonathan Ross, who is
the ICE officer who shot Renee Good in January in Minnesota. The comments from this poster in that account, which I report on in the piece, I include three different posts that are probably the spiciest of anything that the attorneys could find. And there were... even the most aggressive in that thread.
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