During the Right Online conference, National Bloggers Club president Ali Akbar was interviewed by Christina Corbin of Fox News:

“What they’re clearly trying to do is dampen down free speech, but it goes beyond that — it’s putting people’s physical safety in jeopardy,” said Ali Akbar, who heads a group called the National Bloggers Club made up of conservative online writers.
Akbar told FoxNews.com that he believes he is a target after he claims his mother’s home address in Texas was posted on various Internet sites to “incite someone crazy on the fringe left to do something absolutely awful to one of us for what we’re talking about.”

(Via Memeorandum.) There is a limit to what can be accomplished by defensive measures to protect against such dangerous intimidation tactics. We have seen in the cases of Seth Allen, Mike Stack, Patrick “Patterico” Frey and Aaron Walker that courts and law enforcement agencies have repeatedly failed to take appropriate action against the thugs who seek to stifle First Amendment freedoms. Indeed, in the May 29 Maryland hearing that exemplified the bizarre success of Brett Kimberlin’s abusive “lawfare” tactics, Aaron Walker was arrested – ! — on the basis of dishonest claims made by Kimberlin who, among other things, is a convicted perjurer.

Mike Stack and Patterico were both SWATted nearly a year ago, and yet no arrests have been made in those cases. Patterico demonstrates that he was being harassed on Twitter in September 2011 by Neal Rauhauser’s associates who made specific references to SWATting before Patterico had ever made public mention of having been SWATted.

The FBI knows all about this, and yet they refuse to act.

Patterico has clearly identified those whom he suspects of complicity. Has the FBI inquired with Twitter to find out who was behind the “LulzShack” handle in August 2011? Or who was behind the “Stormpedo” Twitter handle in September 2011?

We are at the point of the story where, if this was a TV crime drama, the detectives would have the suspects locked in a room, confronting them with the evidence and interrogating them for 14 consecutive hours until they cracked.

Is the FBI incompetent? Or — I hesitate to suggest this — has the Justice Department become so corrupted that even the FBI’s hard-won reputation for integrity has been compromised?

This is why Neal Rauhauser’s repeated boastings about his contacts in the FBI disturb me. We know that Rauhauser is a liar and a braggart, but what if he’s actually telling the truth about his cozy relationship with law enforcement? What if the FBI and other law enforcement agencies have actually bought into Rauhauser’s deceptions?

Perish the thought. I have spoken to at least three people who say they have talked to the FBI about what is, supposedly, an ongoing investigation of these matters. These people tell me to be patient, and assure me that the FBI is doing their best. But if they’re doing their best, how to explain the lack of action? 

We know that Rauhauser was in contact with Brett Kimberlin and Velvet Revolution by the summer of 2011. We know that Rauhauser (under his “Stranded Wind” alias) posted a series of items at Daily Kos targeting Patterico for his writings about Anthony Weiner:

• July 4: Weinergate: Patterico’s Penalization
• July 4: Disingenuous Chart, Dishonest D.A. (Weinergate)
• July 17: Weinergate: Patterico’s Petulance
• July 19: Patterico’s Personal Pipsqueak
• July 23: In Which Patterico Imperils Breitbart
• July 25: Patterico’s Prattling Puppets

On July 27, 2011, Rauhauser declared that Patterico “looks to be a pretty good candidate for the planner/operator behind Weinergate.”

We know that, when Rauhauser reached out to leaders of the “Occupy Boston” protests in September 2011, he made the connection through Gregg Housh, who was a partner of  ”Anonymous” spokesman Barrett Brown, who was raided by the FBI earlier this year in connection with the “Lulzsec” hacking conspiracy. We know that Rauhauser boasted about his connections to “a very big dog from the Anonymous pen” in October 2011. We know that Rauhauser has written extensively about his methods of online deception and secrecy.

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