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Phoenix666 writes:

On Dark Web sites like the Silk Road black market and its discussion forums, anonymous visitors could write even the most extreme libertarian and anarchist statements without fear. The rest of the internet, as a few critics of the US judicial system may soon learn, isn't quite so free of consequences.

Last week the Department of Justice issued a grand jury subpoena to the libertarian media site Reason.com, demanding that it identify six visitors to the site. The subpoena letter, obtained and published by blogger Ken White, lists trollish comments made by those six Reason readers that—whether seriously or in jest—call for violence against Katherine Forrest, the New York judge who presided over the Silk Road trial and late last month sentenced Silk Road creator Ross Ulbricht to life in prison.

"It's judges like these that should be taken out back and shot," wrote one user named Agammamon, in a comment thread that has since been deleted from Reason.com's story on Ulbricht's sentencing.

"It's judges like these that will be taken out back and shot," answered another user named Alan.

"Why do it out back? Shoot them out front, on the steps of the courthouse," reads a third comment from someone going by the name Cloudbuster.

The subpoena calls for Reason.com to hand over data about the six users, including their IP addresses, account information, phone numbers, email addresses, billing information, and devices associated with them. And it cites a section of the United States criminal code that forbids "mailing threatening communications." When those communications threaten a federal judge, they constitute a felony punishable by as much as 10 years in prison. (The average internet user has no such protection.)

The Streisand Effect lives.