Submitted by Charlton (Chuck) Stanley, Weekend Contributor
This piece could easily have been titled, Peoria Mayor Jim Ardis (below, left) discovers the Streisand Effect.
(Official Photo)
The same might be said of Peoria Police Chief Steve Settingsgaard. Sometime in February or early March, the Twitter account @Peoriamayor was created, with a picture and fake bio of Mayor Ardis. On or about March 10, the account was labeled a parody, clarifying that it was not really Jim Ardis’ account. That did not deter Ardis, who appears to be as thin-skinned as any politician we have seen recently. He recruited Police Chief Settingsgaard to track down whoever was behind the parody Twitter account.
Over a period of three weeks, detectives from the Peoria Police Department conducted an intensive internet manhunt for the person or persons responsible for the Twitter account. On March 14, Judge Kirk Schoebein signed a warrant ordering Twitter to turn over account information to the Peoria police. The information was released to the police, and on March 29, Judge Lisa Wilson approved a warrant to Comcast to locate the user who owned the Twitter account. Jacob Elliot, who lives on North University Street, was identified as the owner of the account. On April 15, Circuit Judge Kim Kelly of the Tenth Judicial District of Illinois approved a search warrant on Elliot’s home. The warrant was executed on April 17.
A half dozen officers from the Police Department raided Jacob Elliot’s home in Peoria. Police Chief Settingsgaard claimed that by setting up the fake Twitter account, Elliot was “impersonating a public official.” Twitter deleted the account @Peoriamyor when they got the warrant for information in March, saying their Terms of Service were violated.
What could possibly go wrong?
Elliot’s parody Twitter account lasted about a month or less before it was taken down. He had made a total of about fifty tweets, and just a handful of subscribers. In the tweets, he compared Ardis to Toronto Mayor Rob Ford. As soon as news of the raid and arrests hit social media sites, in just the past couple of days new parody sites, such as Not Jim Ardis, have popped up like mushrooms after a spring rain. Mayor Ardis, meet the Streisand Effect.
Note that in the warrant, there is authorization to search for drugs as well as computer and telecommunications equipment. Elliot was arrested for having marijuana at his home, but nothing was in his booking report about his parody site. This is another example of using drug laws to go after someone where there is an almost 100% chance of the charges being thrown out on Constitutional grounds. His girlfriend was in the shower when the police came. One other friend was at the house. All three were taken to the police station and questioned, but only Elliot was arrested.
I have a whole lecture on the Law of Unintended Consequences. I had never heard of Jim Ardis or Chief Settingsgaard before yesterday. Now, the story is spreading on the Internet and millions of others who never heard of him either know his name and picture. Mayor Ardis managed to throw gasoline on a spark that was about to die of its own accord.
Sources:
Peoria Journal Star
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Wow…. But the truth is he’s a drug addict….
Breaking News!
Rush is outed as a vicious Democrat!
Proof: He ranted for days that Sandra Fluke was a slut.
What Chuck said.
All I See Are Dots
Dot One: Lois Lerner – IRS
Dot Two: Eric Holder – DOJ
Dot Three: Officeholder – Executive Branch
Chuck:
We had an article here some time ago where the more outlandish the statement was, the more the statement falls into parody and not libel.
This also falls into my theory about lapel pins with logos (flags, seals, and symbols) :
The bigger the lapel pin logo, the more arrogant and untrustworthy the politician.
Paul,
If it is labeled parody…or is obvious snark even if it’s not labeled…it is protected speech. The point is, this mayor used government resources to go after a guy who made fun of him. The quality of the humor is not relevant. Some people are better at it than others.
The Bundy matter is not relevant to the Peoria case by any stretch of the imagination. The difference between the Bundy situation and what happened in Peoria, is that a parody is not illegal.
Charlton – the Bundy matter is relevant because of the supposed over reaction of the Peoria PD and the personpower (being PC) used to track the person down. The Bundy matter is relevant to all of us who live in the West.
I wonder if the judges who signed off on the two search warrants were appointees of the mayor. The search in my view was unconstitutional from the beginning. If those were held to be errors by an appeals court the entire case, including the drug arrest, goes away.
I have long been an opponent of city police departments doing the bidding of mayors and councils. If an ordinary citizen had this happened the PD would have just blown them off.
I also don’t see how this involved any kind of impersonation of an official act by those who wrote the spoof webpage. If they did so it would manifest as proporting to have agreed to a contract on behalf of the city, made false proclamations, etc. Here it just went after his character as a person.
Yes, liberals & conservatives with emotional allegiance actions do have consequences even on the social network & guess what – we independents have to pay the bill & listen to the grousing. Now with the current President in power – every time there is an ineffable occurrence – the response is the last President did it. Why don’t we feel the same way regarding DUI’s or sexual transmitted diseases ?
You said that, seriously?
“Before, Nazi gestapo chief Ardis” and “Sounds more like War-time Germany under Hitler?” Wasn’t the Nuremberg rationale, “I was only following orders?” Did Limbaugh use “Feminazi” and “Femigestapo?”
If this perpetual civic “Peyton Place,” which is ubiquitous and predictable, is “high crime” worthy of scrutiny and promulgation, what is the case of Lois Lerner, who, it is alleged, used the IRS as a political weapon against political opponents during a national election? Why don’t we dissect and explicate that?
Doesn’t availing one’s self of the protection of the 5th Amendment against self-incrimination incriminate? What can be more probative than refusing to speak in one’s own defense? What can be more probative of linkage than being subordinate to a superior, elective branch of a national government, as was the case in Nuremberg? Did Ms. Lerner really go rogue or was she only “following orders?” Let’s ask Lois. Oops! We did.
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing” –
Edmund Burke.
Just by labeling it a parody, does not make it a parody. My father had as saying “You can put a handle on a printing press but that does not make it portable.”
Charlton – your article is a little different than spoofing the White House or Barack Obama’s Twitter account.
Just some thoughtful reading for an Easter Sunday.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/376053/united-states-swat-john-fund
There’s actually nothing surprising about Twitter parodists being viciously tracked down by the police, because if we don’t speak up for everybody’s rights, we better be ready for our own rights to be trampled on when we least expect it. It starts with criminalizing deadpan satire in the form of “Gmail confessions,” intended to embarrass or “injure” a well-connected academic department chairman, and from there it moves to criminalizing Twitter parodies intended to “injure” a city mayor. See the documentation of America’s leading criminal-satire case at:
http://raphaelgolbtrial.wordpress.com/
and consider, in particular, the NACDL’s statement that if certain individuals “feel aggrieved by online speech with academic value, they have remedies in tort,” rather than in criminal courts.
http://raphaelgolbtrial.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/raphael-golb-amicus-brief.pdf
The “Gmail confession” case, despite being widely reported on in the press, has been ignored by nearly every legal commentator in the country, so it’s not at all surprising that the police now feel free to go after the creators of satirical Twitter accounts embarrassing to wealthy and powerful members of the community, whether they be politicians, university presidents, or anyone else ordinary people might choose to mimic and mock on the Internet.
We are all in a twitter about this case (pun intended) but I do not see a thread about the armed BLM and the Bundy ranch debacle. Talk about government over-reaction. The BLM captured and slaughter innocent cattle and were only stopped when enough of the Bundy armed neighbors showed up to even the forces
Not sure if I misread, but Mr. Elliott doesn’t own the Twitter account.
Paul,
Regarding your assertion at 3:05PM that setting up a parody site about Obama would result in arrest:
http://whitehouse.gov1.info/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/06/fox-news-anna-kooiman-obama-parody_n_4053994.html
http://thepeoplescube.com/
As for email capture, anytime you send an email to a politician…any politician, they capture it and you will begin receiving “newsletters” and solicitations for campaign contributions.
Arrogance comes to mind when I read this article.
This Mayor needs a new line if work.
Annie – the McAllister incident took place on federal property, hence the federal investigation. How much money have the spent on Snowden? He outed everybody. 🙂
andrea – do not be surprised if he does is capture your email address and spams you back. That is what Barak Obama did when he took office, so I guess it is legal, even if he said he was not doing it.
Why do these elected officials think they can use taxpayer monies to conduct private investigations for them? Just like Congressman McAllister using the FBI to conduct an investigation into who outed him in the Kissingate Affair.
Let’s say, just for an example, someone set up a parody site for Barack Obama and started tweeting away. Is that a crime? Why, yes it is. Damn, you mean, ol’ Barack would have somebody arrested for spoofing his Twitter acct? Yes, he would.
What we are talking about is not the mayor in his private capacity, but the Mayor in his official capacity. Evidently, there is a law about pretending to be a public official, if you are not.
Flood his inbox with abusive but protected-by-the-First-Amendment emails. I did my civic duty last night by doing just that.