On the left, a fun new tactic has arisen for trying to silence conservative speakers: “SWATting.” The idea is to call the police, give the home address of a conservative columnist/activist, etc., and report that there has been a shooting at the home and the gunman – who may allegedly be the conservative target himself – is still at large. The goal is to bring a police SWAT team to the target’s door, a terrifying experience that is itself fraught with danger. Here is how popular conservative blogger Patterico describes his SWATting:
At 12:35 a.m. on July 1, 2011, sheriff’s deputies pounded on my front door and rang my doorbell. They shouted for me to open the door and come out with my hands up.
When I opened the door, deputies pointed guns at me and ordered me to put my hands in the air. I had a cell phone in my hand. Fortunately, they did not mistake it for a gun.
They ordered me to turn around and put my hands behind my back. They handcuffed me. They shouted questions at me: IS THERE ANYONE ELSE IN THE HOUSE? and WHERE ARE THEY? and ARE THEY ALIVE?
I told them: Yes, my wife and my children are in the house. They’re upstairs in their bedrooms, sleeping. Of course they’re alive.
Deputies led me down the street to a patrol car parked about 2-3 houses away. At least one neighbor was watching out of her window as I was placed, handcuffed, in the back of the patrol car. I saw numerous patrol cars on my quiet street. There was a police helicopter flying overhead, shining a spotlight down on us as I walked towards the patrol car. Several neighbors later told us the helicopter woke them up. I saw a fire engine and an ambulance. A neighbor later told me they had a HazMat vehicle out on the street as well.
Meanwhile, police rushed into my home. They woke up my wife, led her downstairs and to the front porch, frisked her, and asked her where the children were. Then police ordered her to stand on the front porch with her hands against the wall while they entered my children’s bedrooms to make sure they were alive.
He’s lucky his kids didn’t have a beloved dog. SWAT teams always shoot the dog.
Another recent SWATting victim is Red State editor and conservative MSNBC commentator Eric Erickson.
One of the problems with compulsory disclosure of political donations is that it opens people up to harassment. For this reason, many Americans prefer to give to trade associations or other organizations as an intermediary. The public will know that the Chamber of Commerce or the NAACP has spent money on a political ad, but it won’t know the exact names of donors to that organization. There are two strands of Supreme Court case law on this subject, one that has provided strong protection for anonymous speech as a general rule (Thomas v. Collins, NAACP v. Alabama, Talley v. California, Bates v. Little Rock, Watchtower Bible & Tract Society v. Village of Stratton) and another that has allowed substantial – yet still clearly limited – mandatory disclosure in the specific realm of contributions and spending regarding candidates and campaigns (Buckley v. Valeo, which allowed disclosure of independent spending only if contained “express advocacy,” Brown v. Socialist Workers ’74 Campaign Committee, which exempted political committees from disclosure of donors if they could demonstrate a threat of harassment, McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission, which exempted an individual from disclosure requirements in a ballot issue campaign, Buckley v. American Constitutional Law Foundation, holding that petition signature gatherers cannot be forced to identify themselves, and most recently, McConnell v. FEC, allowing compulsory disclosure of donors to issue ads made close to an election, Doe v. Reed, permitting public disclosure of the name of signers of a petition to put an issue on the ballot, and Citizens United v. FEC, reaffirming McConnell on the validity of compulsory disclosure of issue ads close to an election.)
For many on the anti-free speech side of the campaign finance debates, knowing the name of the group or organization paying for the ad is not enough. They demand to know who gave money to the group whose name is disclosed on the ad. In approving limited, compelled disclosure of campaign contributions and spending, the Supreme Court has cited three government interests: disclosure can help the government enforce other restrictions in the law by detecting violations; it can help voters observe patterns of shirking by legislators, who act on behalf of donors rather than constituents; and it can provide voters with information to evaluate the message.
In the current push for unprecedented disclosure, however, none of these three rationales is really in play. Rather, the anti-speech group has made clear that it’s goal in gaining more information is to enable boycotts and harassment of speakers.
Professor Richard Hasen has been a cheerleader for new levels of compulsory disclosure. Typical of the breed, he makes clear that his goal is to hold speakers “accountable.” Of course, what can it mean to hold someone “accountable” for legal, non-defamatory, non-tortious speech, other than to attempt to harm or intimidate them with some type of non-speech harm? Such acts may not always rise to the level of illegality, but they certainly are not liberal in spirit. And government has no compelling interest in invading citizens’ privacy in order to enable others to harass them or organize boycotts against them.
In any case, presented with Patterico’s case, Professor Hasen, who has been downplaying the threat of political harassment, is finally sympathetic. Hasen’s view is that the government does have a compelling interest in enabling citizens to harass one another, at least if the harassment falls somewhere short of SWATting. But he’s willing to draw a line somewhere – at the end of a short post on Patterico’s SWATting, Hasen concedes, “regardless of one’s politics, no one deserves to be ‘SWATTED.'”
But notice that those arguing for more compelled disclosure have no solution to the problem, other than to let the SWATting take place and then to try to find and punish the perpetrators – a difficult and unlikely scenario. It is not known how the SWATters of Patterico and Erickson got their home address info, but one place they could get it, for anybody who makes political contributions, is through compulsory disclosure of political contributions and spending. The regulators demand that people report to the government their political activities, employer information, and addresses. They not only want longstanding disclosure rules maintained, they want them broadened to cover far more activity, and to remove the ability to participate through intermediaries such as the Chamber of Commerce or NAACP without disclosing those activities. If such supporters are SWATted, well, that is “horrifying.” But they’re perfectly willing to provide the means for SWATting to take place, because, even though nobody deserves to be “SWATted,” you must be held “accountable” for your speech somehow.
It should be no surprise to us that some people will think SWATting is an appropriate form of “accountability,” and it is little comfort to that who are harassed in this way that post-hoc, even the anti-speech zealots (some of them, anyway) think that this behavior crosses the line. And it’s no comfort at all to those who suffer lesser harassment, such as losing their jobs, having to put up with harassing, obscene phone calls at their homes, or having their property vandalized (things that the compelled disclosure advocates dismiss with a shrug). After all, it’s “just disclosure.”
(This post was edited without altering its substantive content at 10:49 a.m. on June 1.)
