moosenose

Personally, I'd think you would be more concerned about the mods or admins than me. After all, if you post something illegal (like, after explaining how you had broken the law as an act of civil disobedience, and then spent six or seven years as a fugitive from justice before being pardoned, and then encouraged others to commit what some would call "acts of civil disobedience" and the rest of us would refer to as "felonies"...) THEY are the ones with an incentive to report you, if for no other reason than to avoid criminal liability for themselves. Take, for example, if somebody repeatedly posted pictures in the EZ of a 30 something year old man having sex with an obviously very underage female. That would obviously be a criminal act, yes? What do you think their response would be? After all, the record of the criminal act would be on their servers, so just deleting the posts without reporting it to the appropriate authorities could be construed as obstruction of justice or various other charges of a similar nature depending on the locality. They obviously couldn't legally leave the posts up, either, lest they become guilty of distribution of child pornography. So what would they do? I haven't spoken with them about such a scenario, but I think it is a virtual given that they would do the right thing and report it to the appropriate authorities.

I'm sure that you are well aware that the First Amendment freedom of speech is not absolute. Certain speech alone can be criminal. The standard example of this is "falsely yelling 'fire' in a crowded theater". As another example that I am certain you are aware of, it's illegal to threaten certain high-ranking governmental officials (not me, I'm not "high ranking"), even in jest, and the enforcement agency of such crimes is both very good at enforcing that law, and not known for it's sense of humor in such matters.

Just out of curiosity, if you had a police officer move in next door to your house, would you assume that he did so as part of a grand governmental plot to inhibit your criminality? If you see an off-duty cop driving on the highway, is it "Tha Man" trying to "keep you down", or is it a guy who works for the government on the way to the grocery store or work or whatever?

My presence here is not part of my job description. I have never, EVER accessed this site from work, because to do so would be a violation of my agency's internet use policy. I'm not a Federal LEO. And I doubt VERY seriously that you live within my jurisdiction. So I'd postulate that I am NOT any more of a "threat" to your dissenting in this forum than any other person with email or a telephone would be, unless you should consider my "personal network" of friends and professional associates to be a "threat" to you, which I don't think a rational person would. In fact, as I discussed above, I'm far less of a "threat" to you than any of the mods or admin are, since they have a very large vested interest in keeping you from posting illegalities here, and I do not.