Elisha Strom’s final blog post on I HeArTE JADE was published on July 9. It was headed “Uh-oh” and the entire post consisted of “they’re here.” The Jefferson, VA woman was arrested and jailed remains behind bars for blogging about the local drug enforcement task force, which she had described as “nothing more than a group of arrogant thugs.” Strom was charged of identifying a police officer with intent to harass, a felony. The blog certainly identify a number of police. There is, however, no convincing evidence of intent to harrass, or otherwise incite anyone to do anything.
“Elisha Strom’s obscure blog I HeArTE JADE may not have had much traffic when her posts on the Jefferson Area Drug Enforcement– JADE– task force recently landed her jail,” writes Dave McNair on The Hook. “But today’s Washington Post editorial should cure that.”
Looking at Elisha’s blog it doesn’t appear that anything exists that is not easily accessable in the public domain by anyone in Jefferson, VA. The sidebar of the blog contains a collection of photos under the heading “Meet The Jefferson Area Drug Enforcement (JADE) Task Force.”
As the Post editorial points out: “Ms. Strom is not the most sympathetic symbol of free-speech rights. She has previously advocated creating a separate, all-white nation, and her blog veers from the whimsical to the self-righteous to the bizarre. But the real problem here is the Virginia statute, in which an overly broad, ill-defined ban on harassment-by-identification, specifically in regard to police officers, seems to criminalize just about anything that might irritate targets.”
Let’s add one more graph to that. Totally sympathetic symbols of free-spech rights are fewand far between. Most people don’t get into trouble in the U.S. for saying things that the majority doesn’t have a problem with. Free speech laaws have by in large been strengthened for the common good through tests in cases surrounding those on the fringe or prone to expressing topics considered extreme.
Looking at the content of Elisha’s blog, it is apparent that she had no inside information and divulged nothing that a person with the available public resources and some time couldn’t have done. None of the posts contain content that could be deemed as inciting violence and some of them seem to be very straightforward accounts of local arrests, though possibly with some sympathy for the arrested, which there is no law against.
At one point she must have decided this was worth pointing out, as she writes:
“All personally identifying information on this site discovered utilizing resources readily available to the general public. All publicly-obtainable court documents, media reports, and any content of similar nature, provided herein or linked to were pre-published elsewhere by parties other than myself. General images along with my personal photographs are garnered via publicly accessible sources through legal means. The purpose for republishing or otherwise publicizing the information is simply to support the content contained herein.”
Nothing on Elisha’s blog is unprotected by the First Amendment. Local police probably did far more damage to their supposed undercover efforts by arresting this 34-year-old mom and bringing her blog a lot more public attention than it ever would have otherwise received.
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