STDCarriers.com is Back Following Long Legal Battle
STDCarriers.com is back online following a long legal battle with the federal government. During that time the owner went to prison, fought lengthy appeals, and inspired imitators.
STD Carriers is and has always been perfectly legal so the courts could not interfere with the operation. That all changed temporarily when someone listed on the website began stalking the site’s owner. The site’s owner would have none of it and fought back. He sent a threatening email warning the person to stop. When that person refused to stop, he sent an email indicating his intent to inflict imminent bodily harm. All while drinking heavily. Unfortunately for him provocation is not a legal defense to making a threatening communication and the government was already trying to find some way to shut the site down. At that time, he also operated an identical service for exposing illegal aliens and a month before his arrest then Congressman Joe Crowley targeted the site on Martin Bashir Live.
"We will be asking the Justice Department to advise us whether or not this violates any federal laws" - Former Rep. Joe Crowley, D. New York
This led then Assistant United States Attorney Sean Hoar to file an internet stalking indictment based on what he called the use of the internet to inflict substantial emotional distress on people in other states for the purpose of profit. Had Hoar been able to sustain the charge it could have served as a catalyst for charging other people for their speech based solely on claims of emotional distress made by those they speak about or those they allow others to speak about on their websites. Even though that charge was dismissed it brought the legality of the sites within the scope of the court’s scrutiny and under that scrutiny the conclusion was made that the websites were in fact legal. The site’s owner subsequently pled guilty to making a threatening communication in federal court and was banned from running any of his websites as a condition of supervision because even though they were legal, the court considered them related to the offense of conviction and the ban necessary to protect the public from future threats. That conclusion was based almost entirely on whether other people would be likely to provoke the owner in a similar fashion.
"I told him that it was not illegal at sentencing. I said as much...My question is: Does it make people mad?" - Marco Hernandez, U.S. District Judge
An appeal followed in which the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the ban as reasonably related to the offense and necessary to protect the public based on similar logic. The Supreme Court of the United States refused to hear the case.
"The public is entitled to be protected against crimes flowing from the same character trait demonstrated by the crime." – 9th Circuit Court of Appeals
While the appeal was pending, the owner of STD Carriers was sent back to jail for violating a condition of supervision that required him to participate in computer monitoring. In that case he had spoken out online against probation and IPPC Technologies for forcing him to choose between letting them make his computer almost unusable and adhering to the condition. He was sentenced to six months in jail with 24 months of supervision. Right before sentencing his arm was broken by Multnomah County Sheriff’s Deputy Timothy Barker after throwing a hand full of chips at him and threatening to speak out against several staff members including Barker's wife online. Barker and other guards involved in the incident falsely accused him of throwing punches and kicks, so he was held on new charges that eventually resulted in a guilty plea for throwing the chips and the dismissal of more serious charges. Because Judge Hernandez seemed to inadvertently deprive the court of jurisdiction over a second charge of violating supervision and gave him a supervision term six months less than he could on the first violation, the term of supervision expired in August of 2019.
STD Carriers is now back online just as it appeared on June 24, 2012 when the site went down due to the owner being unable to pay the hosting company from jail. Fortunately, the site was hosted overseas, and all data was recovered without falling into government hands.
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P.O. Box 86653, Portland, Oregon 97286