Last June, two investigators employed by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) showed up at David Streever’s house in Rochester, New York. Streever was not home, so they left him a note.
That note, presented as an official warning from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), is at the center of a First Amendment lawsuit that Streever filed last month, alleging that ICE agents investigated and threatened him based on his constitutionally protected criticism of their boss. This month, the government responded to Streever’s lawsuit, confirming his allegations while attempting to rebut them.
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Your examples are entirely off topic. To arrest or search you, they need probable cause, under the 4th amendment. Unquestionable admission of a crime, like “I stabbed him”, hands them that probable cause. That has nothing to do with 1st amendment protections. Also whether or not they have the authority to search your freezer would be entirely dependent on if they can get a judge to agree that there is probable cause to think there is a body on your property and sign a warrant. They can’t just search your freezer because they heard you say, generally, that you stabbed someone.
They can unintrusively investigate anything that is publically available to them to find suspicious activity that may indicate a crime has occurred or may occur. That’s all fine. But anything done without legal cause to chill protected speech by the government that is not due to basic time, place, and manner restrictions applied in a content-neutral way is a violation of the constitution.
The investigation is not the problem so long as they didn’t violate his 4th amendment rights in the process. But coming to his home to tell him that he was being investigated due to the criticisms he’d voiced is a clear attempt at intimidation to quell future speech. That is blatantly unconstitutional.
Say, perhaps like… something you’ve posted on facebook? Is that the kind of unobtrusive investigation of publicly available information you mean?
(Everything else broadly seems to be restating what I’ve already said, so I’m not super sure what your goal is in bringing this up was. Yes, what we know of the investigation likely was not a violation of the 4th amendment (or any other statute) except in that it was clearly done to intimidate - something that is unfortunately fairly difficult to prove.)
You were the one equating the investigation of someone admitting to murder by looking in their freezer with the investigation of Facebook posts.
And the intimidation is not hard to prove. If the effect of their conduct is chilling protected speech for a reasonable person, then it’s unconstitutional. Intent is not necessary.
Yes, I sure was! Because, while both describe different avenues for protected speech to be investigated, both are the result of protected speech being investigated. There is no functional legal difference between either example of speech - both are constitutionally protected, and unless you were violating other laws (say something super legit, like ‘disturbing the peace’, anti-harassment orders, the list is long) it would be illegal for the police to prevent you from saying it.
That is what protected speech entails - it does not absolve you of potential consequences of that speech (the classic example is “shouting ‘fire’ in a crowded theater”, but my above examples of confessing to a murder/crime apply as well), it just means you cannot be prevented from speaking it
Are you sure about that? It’s really quite a high standard of evidence in a biased court system to demonstrate police harassment or intimidation or what have you at the federal level. There are far harder things to prove sure, but it’s solidly not on the “Easy” end of the spectrum.