@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wrote:
@pburn It's the closest I could come to what the OP might be referring to. But, of course, a private enterprise trying to shut down the press is not the same thing as the government doing it. But it would be fair to say this was an attempt to silence the press. But you are right...if the report actually discussed this as a First (or Second) Amendment issue, I'd say the report got it wrong.
General reply - for what it's worth, even the deputy US Attorney, Seth Kosto, who prosecuted some of the criminal cases said what happened was "abhorrent to First Amendment values." Several judges also made mention of the first amendment in their sentencing hearings in these cases.
The Steiners weren't just targeted for things they wrote, they were targeted because eBay wanted to try to get them to out an anonymous source & commenter who used the name Fidomaster (later changed to unsuckEBAY).
While the first amendment may not strictly apply, the values it represents are clearly on the minds of the lawyers and judges involved in these cases.
From the court documents:
In the first of these meetings, BAUGH directed Popp, Stockwell, Zea, and Analysts 1, 2, and 3 to anonymously harass Victims 1 and 2...
...BAUGH called the harassment a "distraction campaign" and suggested that scary masks, live insects, or embarrassing items be sent to the Victims (and in some cases to their neighbors in the Victims' names)...
...in a separate meeting during the week of August 5th Baugh gathered Popp, Gilbert, and Supervisor 1 to plan another way to harass the Victims.
Specifically, Baugh, Popp, Gilbert, and Supervisor 1 planned to send a series of anonymous tweets and Twitter direct messages...the messages would gradually get more aggressive, culminating in the publication of the Victims’ home address...
...by design, these threatening messages would allow eBay—through Gilbert and another GSR employee—to approach the Victims with an offer of assistance to investigate and stop the threatening messages, thereby earning the Victims' trust, creating good will toward eBay, and getting the Victims' cooperation in identifying the author of the [unsuckeBay] Account. (This will be referred to in this affidavit as "the White Knight Strategy").
First, Cooke and his coconspirators targeted the Victims based on what they had written and published, and because they had made space for others to publish in comments beneath the Newsletter’s articles. Journalism about public companies, especially the world’s largest ecommerce brands, is important to investors, merchants, and customers alike.
That some at eBay disagreed with the Newsletter’s coverage, and that Baugh shared that sentiment as justification to target the Victims, is abhorrent to First Amendment values.
While there is no good reason to harass and intimidate anyone, the logic that led to the Victims’ suffering is absurd. Accepting for purposes of argument that Cooke and others were focused on Fidomaster and his online critiques, they harassed the Victims as a means of identifying and discrediting Fidomaster. That Cooke and others targeted innocent third parties is worthy of significant sanction...
...Cooke asserts that, in the August 6 meeting, he tried to talk his colleagues out of at least some parts of the harassment campaign. But what remained, even in his telling, was a series of increasingly harassing messages directed to a journalist, to set up a sting, to enable Gilbert to make a false offer of assistance, to predispose Victim 1 to help eBay with its Fidomaster problem.
In a third set of planning meetings in early August 2019, Baugh recruited Harville and Zea to travel to Boston to physically surveil Victims 1 and 2 at their home and in their community. The purported purpose of the trip was to find evidence that the Victims and the author of [unsuckEBAY] were collaborating to publish negative content about eBay...
mam98031 • Volunteer Community Member • Buyer/Seller since 1999
