The xzion.net Fiasco
Once upon a time, the first amendment meant something.
A while back, I had a personal Website, much like this one. This site had several sections, with several pages. One of these sections contained a page which listed individuals (by name, unfortunately) attending my school whom I didn’t particularly care for. This page was sent between some friends and myself now and then as a way to poke fun at those individuals we didn’t have any love for.
One night I was talking to one of those friends on AIM, and he informed me that he gave the URL for that page out to someone else from school. I was immediately worried that this could lead to more people finding the page. I figure there was a small chance these people wouldn’t have the same sense of humor as my friends and me.
I was right. The day after that conversation, I overheard many people talking
about it during class. at this point I was really worried. When I got home, I
sat and watched httpd-access.log scroll by on my screen. After about ten
minutes, I took the site down. Unfortunately, that didn’t fix the horrible
situation.
The next day at school, everyone was talking about it. Teachers were having class discussions over it. A lot of people figured it was me (I’m not sure how they figured that out so quickly, as I never mentioned my name and the majority of people at my school don’t know me well enough to know my humor and/or writing style). One individual (that was featured on the page) accosted me at lunch and started screaming at me until I got her to go away. She came back about ten minutes later and screamed some more until a few kids got her to lay off. My friends and I discussed how thoroughly screwed I was. I started hearing the page being referred to as a “hit list” at this point. Last hour, I got escorted to the Principal’s office.
I denied any associations between myself and the page. I insisted I didn’t understand why everyone was blaming me, and later tried to make it look as if it were someone else (which probably made things worse). This was on a Wednesday, and I was asked not to return to school Thursday or Friday, “for my own safety,” as the majority of people blaming me were knuckle-dragging idiots that would love to solve any problem with their fists.
After I got home I archived the site and encrypted it. I removed it from that computer and disconnected the computer and stored it in a closet. I got online and got a lot of messages from people from school. I denied being involved. I talked to a few online friends about how screwed I was. I was pretty unnerved by this point. I think this was the first night they talked about it on the local news. My father had to call the channel to talk them out of using my name. I don’t think I slept.
The next day, it was on the front page of the local newspaper (this lead to an interesting exchange of comments on the newspaper’s Website where people both defended and attacked me). My father took me to the police station to talk to a detective that he had known for a long time. It turns out the detective recognized my last name in one of the reports and took the case. I talked to the detective for a while, sticking to my denial. He knew I was lying from the start, and he knew I knew that he knew I was lying. He wasn’t going to let me leave before I confessed to it. So as he was talking I was reviewing how I could be caught. The only mistake I made was hosting it on my own machine. They had the domain whois records and my IP address. I knew they would subpoena Charter (my ISP) for their DHCP logs in order to find what MAC address had that IP address at that time. They’d then use that to find my account, which contained my father’s address. I knew I was stuck. I confessed.
We went to the school with the police and discussed the situation. I agreed to a meeting between the parents of the named persons, the police, and the school administration. We went back and forth between the police station and the school a few times that day. It was featured on the local news again that night. I definitely didn’t sleep.
At this point you might be wondering why I didn’t tell them to just bite me. I never did anything other than express my opinions, after all. I was pretty unnerved by all of this, and just wanted it over with, so I just agreed to all the crap to get it done. I regret it now.
Anyway, the next day we went to the school to confirm the meeting and get some speeches and such in order. The superindendent suspended me for two weeks for “disrupting the instructional process.” I thought it was pretty much bullshit, since I didn’t do anything on school grounds (or wrong, for that matter). I didn’t argue; I didn’t particularly want to be at school for a while anyway.
I wrote a sappy speech where I apoligized for any restlessness I imposed on families, etc. By this point the most popular rumor was that I was a terrorist bent on killing everyone named on the page and perhaps planting bombs, etc, at the school. I read my speech, and tried to answer questions. Two particular individuals wouldn’t stop badgering me, and I wasn’t in the state of mind to tell them off. Eventually the superintendent told them to lay off. Most people came forward and “forgave” me for any misunderstandings and acknowledged that the situation had been blown out of proportion. The aforementioned individuals refused to do anything of the sort, though. At the end of the meeting, everyone except those two came forward and shook my hand, etc. When it came down to it, the kids knew it was a joke. The parents were the ones that escalated it.
While I was on suspension, two other individuals copied my act. Only, theirs were both actual “hit lists” and used words that put forth the idea of actually killing people, whereas mine was never anything like that (insomuch as me doing anything physical). They were both expelled.
When I returned to school there were very few people who mentioned anything about it. It was only a number of weeks before everything was back to normal. I seem to have earned the nickname “terrorist,” however. I had a few people threaten me, but in reality I had far more friends than enemies, so no one actually did anything physical.
The point I’m trying to get through though, is that I was suspended from school and accused of planning to kill people because of a two paragraph blurb on a Website that said “I don’t like so and so.” What has it come to in this country where one can’t express his or her opinions without being burned at the proverbial stake? Just something to think about.
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