Greetings & Good hello. Welcome to my view of this story, this junk mail riot. Someday, although not for some months, I will again have access to the internet and to the news. Perhaps then I will learn what stories have been spun about these events. At present I have only dribbles and the occasional docket entry slipping through the censors to intrigue me with a tale woven only of words similar to those I might use. The story leaked to me sounds similar to the one my various defense counsels have attempted to sell me as they push me to “wrap things up” and accept a “plea offer”, thereby protecting the image of the government as an agency for which arrest is equivalent to conviction. My reluctance to accept the plea stems, in no small part, from the discord between the story so sold and the fragments of the tale which haunt my memory. As much as I am willing to avoid a needless trial, I am simply not willing to purchase my freedom with a currency of lies.
Today is the 2nd of March, not yet one month since the very first time I was given the opportunity to present, even to my own defense counsel, any account of events contrary to the official, publicly announced, government sponsored, version. On the 8th of February, I was given 30 minutes to provide, over the jail phone, “my excuse”, as my attorney called it. In the ten months prior to this window of opportunity I had been instructed as to what I had done and what my motivations were. This instruction prepares me for my arraignment on the 9th of April, when I will be asked to confirm the facts thus rehearsed by declaring my guilt or innocence (apparently no-contest is not allowed, which I find odd). I have not yet been informed on who exactly was allegedly harmed nor how they were allegedly harmed – that is irrelevant as long as I agree to my guilt by accepting the “plea offer”. By the by, acceptance of the plea offer clears the government of any wrongdoing, locks the fabricated account in place as fact, and blocks any further investigation into the matter. The penalty for not taking this deal is quite harsh, amounting to about 2-3 years in prison unless I am found completely and utterly innocent, after which the 10 months of incarceration and family trauma is simply swept under the rug. Thus there is a great practical incentive for me to simply “accept the plea” and perhaps this is why my defense counsel could really care less about the facts of the matter. This is, again, why I insist that my choice is between preserving my integrity or purchasing my freedom with a currency of lies. Such is the reality of our federal judicial system, once you see how the sausage is made. Their near 100% federal conviction rate is, in no way, a testament to a well-functioning engine, as we shall see.
So let us get on with it. Here is what I claim happened, as near as I can reconstruct, given the active hobbling of the state and my own defense counsel.
Guilt or Innocence
I am clearly not innocent – I am no saint, and I possess no virginal purity. I am an alcoholic who drifts in and out of periods of sobriety, usually depending on how long I can go without a significant traumatic event. By that I mean something that triggers some PTSD-like symptoms I picked up after 2015 and which, for example, can leave me with a resting pulse rate around 100 at 9:00 in the morning. Other symptoms include claustrophobia, a fear of ringing telephones and doorbells, a morbid fear of minivans, and deeply intrusive thoughts – all of which come under control on my farms in my home of nearly 20 years, a peaceful town called Pai, in Northern Thailand.
While I can claim no innocence, neither am I willing to accept simple guilt any more than anyone can be found guilty for inflicting wounds on their attacker or rapist. That is to say that I style myself somewhat as a victim. In fact, I suspect all those involved are victims as well. Keep in mind, if this were a simple matter then presumably it would take less than 10 months to clearly document who the alleged victims were and how they were allegedly harmed. This has not yet happened – and, again, I believe it is because we are all victims of a very specific legislative flaw – an individual liberty that is absent in the United States. If citizens had a particular right, all of these events could have been avoided, but as it stands, it is a lack of individual liberty that is the root cause. Wouldn’t it be a hoot if the outcome of this was a Republican Senator sponsoring a bill to enhance individual liberty instead of protecting the rights of the few to rape?
Americans like to believe they have the most rights in the world, and they put a lot of effort into telling themselves this. For example, they believe that owning a gun is very important, and citizens routinely exaggerate the extent of the 2nd amendment – which we argue gives children the right to own military-style assault weapons and shoot up schools. We put a lot of time and effort into this. We believe in free speech so strongly that we tolerate hate speech such as quotations from Mein Kampf or fascists from WWII, as long as it is done in “a political context”. Yet, with the increasing organization of book bans, the Republican lead tuning of ideological correctness along the lines of white nationalism, the criminalization of reproductive health choices best left to the individual, Americans’ individual liberty has never been more at risk. In the digital realm, the United States is far behind the curve.
This is important to my case because AUSA Gregory Radics asserted, in May of 2023, that I was “quick to anger” and fly into a violent rage over what was “essentially junk mail”. This is false, and Radics offered no evidence to back it up. At the time of my first hearing in court I was unaware of this phrasing, medically incapacitated by the U.S. Marshals, Instructed not to speak or object by the judge, and had only had about 20 minutes of time to meet with a public attorney since my arrival in the U.S. from a humanitarian project in Africa. I had also been told not to worry, as I would be out on pretrial release shortly – and if not, I could retry the hearing again. The take away here: Never trust the court, your attorney, or law enforcement – and be assured the government can and will lie. Fight viciously at every step – the fancy robes and ceremony hides a viper’s nest of deception.
The truth is that I am a practicing digital rights activist and have engaged in anti-junk mail activism, physical and digital, as far back as the 1990s. I do not particularly fly into violent rages nor am I particularly quick to anger – however, once I get my teeth into something I am unlikely to let it drop and I will escalate it well past the point of comfort, and, in particular, very much in particular, if I instruct an institution not to contact me, then I expect, and often demand compliance. Sadly, asking nicely never seems to get a response – and this, this is the crux of the problem.
As an American, you do not have the right to tell an organization “Don’t tread on me.” – You simply do not have this right. This is especially true if that organization is a political entity, like the Republican or Democratic party, but includes companies like American Express.
Most Americans are surprised to learn this. The polite FBI agents who picked me up at the airport were surprised to learn this, as was every other law enforcement officer I’ve spoken with since. Americans seem to think they ought to have the right to tell a political party to leave them alone, after all, isn’t there a “do not call” list? And while there is, it is as solid as a whiffle ball, and one of the exceptions is for political parties. It is worth mentioning, in light of AUSA Gregory Radics’ lies to the American people, that, although young at the time, I advocated for the establishment of that list – because, as I said, “junk” communication has been a personal pet peeve of mine for decades. This is one of the many gross mistakes made by AUSA Radics, perhaps due to what appeared to me to be a predilection for whiskey and cocaine – if the rosy glow of his swollen cheeks and the jitter of his courtroom gait were any indication.
I learned of the “political party” exemption to the “do not call” list around June of 2020, when I contacted the Iowa State Attorney in response to abuses by the Iowa Republican party. One abuse, which AUSA Gregory Radics considers junk mail, was the delivery of a physical fake ballot to me. As I live overseas (but was temporarily trapped in the United States due to COVID travel restrictions) I had voted by mail. The letter and ballot I received informed me that my mailed ballot had been mis-processed but that I could “correct my vote” by submitting the new ballot, which was conveniently pre-filled for Donald Trump. I had to call the county and straighten out the mess. I did not consider this “junk mail”, but AUSA Radics does, and the Iowa State’s Attorney just sighed with exhaustion. This was when the Iowa State’s Attorney informed me that I did not have the right not to be contacted by the Iowa Republican party. If I were to deny the Iowa Republican party the right to send me fake ballots, misinformation, and hate speech, I would be infringing upon their 1st amendment rights. The fact that at the time my resting pulse rate was approximately 100, and I was fully undergoing a constant hyper-vigilant adrenal response, and that I had not slept in weeks due to nightmares, and that I considered myself at severe risk of a cardiac event due to continued harassment from the Trump campaign – was of no matter.
A political campaign’s first amendment right to free speech trumps the foundational right to life of mere citizens. One law applies to potential governors, another to the governed. In the context of politics, once again, “no means no” has no currency – the sentiment “Don’t tread on me” has no traction. America needs legislation with the strength and vigor of the 1st and 2nd amendment to enshrine “no means no” as a fundamental right which can not be abridged, and which extends to all modes of contact – including junk mail, but also as-yet undeveloped technologies, social media, and, of course, physical contact.
Had this legislation been in place in 2020, I would have had the tools to tell Trump to keep his junk out of my inbox. As it was, I could not. And by now you have got to be wondering what in the hell this has to do with violent threats and North Carolina – which took place a year later, from overseas – yet, were rooted in the events of Mar-Oct 2020 in Iowa. Again, Radics, this is not “quick”.
I had never been to North Carolina until June of 2023, when the prison bus from USP-Atlanta crossed the state line well before sunrise. I was transferred into a prisoner transport mini-van at Butner prison and driven to Bladen County Detention Center by country roads. I arrived around noon, and that was pretty much all I saw of North Carolina by way of introduction. I had a couple of trips from Bladen into Wilmington, so got to see a bit more of the country and some strip mall hell. After a bat of torture at Bladen I was transferred to Onslow County Detention Center in a windowless box and I didn’t see sunlight again for about six months. This time I saw the true depths of strip mall Hades, a Tartarus of soulless architecture spaced apart by stretch of interstate. Downtown Wilmington looked like a nod to what people want downtowns to be, but can’t quite get back to – forgetting that what made the downtowns of our collective historical fantasy was life, not the imitation thereof.
There is a lot of racism in North Carolina. You can tell that this used to be a slave state. There is no other place in the world where such stark color lines are drawn as America – ethnic lines yes, but not so simplistically black and white. There are relatively few whites in jail, and a lot of those whites are pretty sketchy – there is a dearth of teeth and a love of Walmart. I’ve generally been viewed with suspicion by blacks at first, but generally everything starts working smoothly when it becomes clear I’m not a Nazi, or Aryan Brotherhood, or one of those. That’s my other connection to North Carolina, I somehow got added to the North Carolina Republican party Nation Builder platform and started receiving hate speech emails from racist fringe groups around the same time. This is what AUSA Radics calls “junk mail” – but I dunno, he could be a racist cracker, but I call the KKK hate speech, and a party that endorses candidates who talk about “blood poisoning” as spewing hate.
Exactly when I was added to the NCGOP lists, as well as some other Republican sites in Missouri, I don’t recall. Exactly when the KKK emails arrived I likewise don’t recall. I have vague memories of these events – the KKK email, if it was from the KKK even, triggers a memory for me of a campsite. I want to say Arkansas, but I could be away, way off. The detention context has kept me completely hobbled and I am unable to access any information related to my defense. This may seem strange, but, in fact, it is not – you have to read the fine print of the legal system – my side of the story does not matter. My job is to sit quietly while the government proves its case – there is no room for context. The fact that I was being assaulted when I took the actions I did is not, strictly speaking, relevant. The legal system is not about doing what is right, or just, or in the interest of society, it is about protecting the institution itself, the pride of the court, and executing a dance that is maximally convenient to the state. Questions of why an action was taken are not as important as establishing that the action was taken, especially if you can get the blanket protection against law enforcement officers who “accidentally” threatened the defendant’s life or “unintentionally” tortured them for four days.
In the next four weeks I have to finish assembling my case, using only friends and family, and then evaluate whether or not I should demand a trial for the sole purpose of safeguarding my integrity or whether I should purchase my freedom with a currency of lies. In both cases I may never get to go home again, and may never see my Thai family again – and all because Americans do not have the right to demand that a political party leave them alone. I would like to see my father before he dies.
So what, exactly, happened? I do not rightly know – the problematic events, I think, but have not yet confirmed (after 10 months of imprisonment) occurred in September of 2021, a full year after I returned home to Thailand. Almost exactly a year. Around that time I also was in contact with an attorney – but I am struggling to get those messages. The government has them, and so does my family, but my jailers block incoming mail and I have tried to file a lawsuit under Title 42, Section 1983 to force access to this material. That simply caused the United States Marshal Service to move me to another facility so that I had to restart the process. This is the kind of “weaponization of procedure” that is employed to pressure me into accepting a plea offer – as long as I can not effectively mount any opposition, then the burden of the state is trivially achieved.
I naively thought that I would some day sit down with my attorney and we would look at the case against me together. I thought I would offer my side of events and point out where evidence in support of my version of the facts could be found. Then, with the prosecution’s version and my version standing in contest, we would negotiate an agreement and avoid a trial.
Absolutely nothing like that has happened. I have had to fight and battle to force my version of events to even be recognized as existing. This existence is still tenuous. I have had to strain my family greatly to do the work of lawyers and investigators to track down and gather evidence. I have had to file motions and prepare for pro-se litigation to try to force detention centers to obey the law. All of this just to get the possibility to have a voice at the table of my own defense – and the tool provided for this is a pencil and the United States Postal Service. No Google or directories mind you, you start from scratch.
So again, what exactly, happened? Deprived of resources I can not reconstruct what happened in August or early September 2021 to set me off again – but I suspect, once I am released I will be in a position to determine my guilt or innocence more empirically. Clearly something set me off – not, as AUSA Radics claims, “quickly” – but rather, something flared a fire that had been burning for well over a year. What event that was I would have to look through the digital record to find – if we can battle our way past the jail firewalls in time, I might be able to put it together and argue it to my defense counsel so that either he or I can use it on the 9th of April. It may or may not change my decision.
At that same time I had reached out to a prominent attorney seeking assistance dealing with the NCGOP and attempting to get, from them, an accounting of why in the hell they thought I was ever a candidate for contact and an iron-clad guarantee that they would never, ever contact me again. My non-counsel defense network is still trying to track down these records. The senators from North Carolina became involved after extensive efforts to establish contact with the NCGOP and National GOP failed – the idea being that if the Republican party, as an institution, would not be responsive, then perhaps individual Republicans would prove to be a better choice. The violent rhetoric was chosen as that seemed to be the language of choice of the Republican party – who had recently engaged in a violent insurrection in the nation’s capital. That and a lot of whiskey, benzodiazepines, and long standing (not quick) political anger at Trumpist Republicans, as well as, nonconsensual communications.
But let’s step back a bit, something set me off specifically in September 2021 – but the fight began back in 2020. As I said at the start, once I get my teeth into something, I am not likely to let go and I will escalate it past the point of comfort if I believe it to be a matter of principle. I believe matters of consent in communication to be matters of principle and I have so believed for decades – this is not, as AUSA Radics will have you believe, a spurious unreasoned belief of quick escalation to violent rage over junk mail.
The evidence shows that both the Iowa and North Carolina Republican parties were clients of Hines Digital, a firm that leveraged the Nation Builder platform to provide campaign support for Donald Trump. Hines Digital also ran other right-wing websites in Missouri. In 2020, when I was being assaulted by the Iowa Republican party and tried to block the party from contacting me, I contacted Hines Digital. As I was unable to unsubscribe from the Iowa Nation Builder site, I developed a frustrated relationship with Hines Digital. Somehow I wound up subscribed to all the sites operated by Hines Digital, and no other Republican sites. I assume the racist, white nationalist sites came from some relationship with that activity as well, as the timing fit. This activity was spread across a few different email addresses and it lasted for a while – but, I don’t believe, past the election. And, I left the country in late September 2020, once COVID travel restrictions allowed me to return home to Thailand. So, to be clear, this email activity was largely between July and September 2020 – but it left a scar that burned for over a year until finally erupting in the unfortunate events of 2021. This is where the story begins, and, as we will see, AUSA Radics certainly has an odd definition of “quick”.
To understand this time we should point out that I was in the United States from about May 18th – September 28th 2020 on what AUSA Radics calls “a trip to visit my father”. I did visit my father, and, in a sense you could even argue that was the purpose of the visit. I will let you decide.
I as in Argentina on March 16th when the COVID sanctions hit. Argentina closed its airports completely and that night my wife and I were assaulted in our hotel room since she is Asian. We piled furniture against the door and escaped the next day. Friends secured us in a secret Airbnb as Beunos Aires went into semi martial law, and we stayed there until May. Thailand evacuated its citizens and tried to get me home – their efforts were tremendous. I was transitioning my visa at the time, switching from work to retirement so I was technically without any visa status – which was a problem. Although they could not overcome that obstacle, the Thai embassy still checked on my status every few days – there were three other husbands in similar situations. As my wife used to have a green card, I called the U.S. embassy to see what they could do, they told me to leave my wife to deal with her own shit and find my own way home, then hung up. Once my wife was safely home I made arrangements to work on a COVID relief project in the area since the last country I wanted to go to was the United States under Trump’s idiotic COVID management.
However, my father indicated he really wanted me to come home – he had something to share. Knowing him I could tell what it was, and he confirmed it when I got home – a terminal cancer diagnosis. So, I flew to the only country I was allowed to travel to, the United States, against my wishes, to share my father’s terminal cancer diagnosis. I did not want to return to the U.S. because I did not want to retrigger my PTSD, as happened in April of 2019, my previous visit.
Everything started to go downhill fast, and then there were the George Floyd murders just up the street in Minneapolis. By the first of June, after a long period of sobriety, I was back to drinking to keep the nightmares at bay, had reached out to counselors, unplugged all the phones, and had a resting pulse rate of about 100. I was in a Trump town with anti-vaxxers and conspiracy nuts everywhere – it was difficult to go to the store or anywhere I could overhear people or see the news. As these are things I can control I bought an old Ford with a covered bed, outfitted it for camping, and took off for the isolation of unused national forests – not, as AUSA Radics claimed, the national parks.
Since I am semi-retired from high tech and work exclusively remotely, I dialed back my workload – handing off meetings I chaired and the like and paring down to just the essential consulting obligations. With a light solar setup, deep cycle marine battery, Linux laptop, and a WIFI hotspot I was ready for the road – email and video calls would link me with work and family, otherwise I would be off-grid and away from the American craziness. I stopped by the hospital for medication to help the PTSD symptoms and began a 5000 mile trip around the inner U.S. First stop would be Austin TX, to visit my daughter – who does not live in Thailand, as falsely claimed by AUSA Radics.
The only problem following me: Hines Digital and his Nation Builder clients.
As I drove through small towns and rural America, the extent of the Trump infection became depressingly clear. In between campsites and forests I encountered some extremely disturbing sites – AK47 fundraiser raffles with violent pro-Trump slogans, circled RVs with confederate flags and white nationalist bonfires in county parks, and any number of run-down hovels with “blue lives matter” posters pinned out front. I had people loosen the lug nuts on my tires learning that I wasn’t of the “kill the towelhead” persuasion. The forests were safe, but coming into town for supplies and internet was always stressful and more than a little terrifying. As I wrote to friends at the time, I was pretty sure civil war was near.
This is the context in which I spent a hundred or so hours on the phone or chat or email with Nation Builder, Hines Digital, various GOPs, dozens of law enforcement agencies, attorneys, and anyone I could think of trying to block the Republican party and Donald Trump campaign from my various inboxes. I tracked Hines Digital to Anne Arundel County, Maryland and contacted every single law enforcement agency trying to get a restraining order against Hines Digital. I could never even get an email back. I got the same treatment from Nation Builder. This is because, no matter how much distress the contact causes you, it is your obligation to suck it up – you, as an American do not have the right to demand someone leave you alone.
Donald Trump has the right to jam his junk in your box without your consent. Tom Tillis can stuff your box if he wants. Hines Digital does not need your permission to target your box.
I believe this is wrong.
By the time the end of September 2020 rolled around I was in O’hare ready to fly home. There was a minor digit transposition in some COVID clearance paperwork but I was able to call the Thai consulate in Chicago from the checkin line and get it straightened out. I am always amazed and forever thankful and grateful to the Kingdom of Thailand – its government has always stood by me and I consider it an honor and privilege to pay taxes and support it. I do not feel this way about the United States. I can not think of a single time in my life when I have not been disappointed by my encounter with our government – most recently, for the second part of my case, consular officials threatened to send my daughter to a detention camp. The program was described by Stephen Miller in November 2023 – it is part of a project to “ethnically cleanse” Texas. Of course, the doctrine of “consular nonreviewability” prohibits legal redress for the officers’ statements. But what are we to do about this? As Americans, perhaps more than any other country in the world, this mess is our responsibility – it is ours, at the leaf edges and grass roots. So no AUSA Radics, I am not quick to anger and I do not get into a violent rage because of junk mail – that is not accurate. What is accurate is that I demand the right to consensual communication and I demand it now. I demand it in a language that can be heard and is appropriate and which has been established by the Republican party. We must have consent-driven communication – and if I tell an organization or person not to contact me, then, unless they are otherwise legally obligated, they are obliged to honor that demand. Better yet, let us forget presumptive consent and begin all communication with the request for consent.
As we move forward into an ever tighter fusion of digital and physical selves, the need for consent-driven interaction will not lessen. Here, in 2020, I was a person in crisis, taking all reasonable steps to deal with it – but I was being hunted and effectively psychologically violated, repeatedly – by operatives of the Trump campaign and the Republican party of North Carolina. I was denied protection by law enforcement. The horror of that time stayed with me for a year and spilled out again in 2021 – all because of a refusal to accept my denial of consent. There is a name for violating someone without consent.
When the United States strips me of my family, my home, my ability to continue my international humanitarian work, and forces me to remain a citizen, it is exacting a far greater price than the prison sentence it views as the entirety of its punishment. The 18 families destroyed in order to preserve the Republican party’s right to rape are mere collateral damage in American legal calculus. I hope, by the 9th of April, I will be informed exactly who alleges harm and, inshallah, I hope my friends and family will help me fight the judicial system so I enter the proceedings with a clear accounting of events.
If you can help in any way, we would love to hear from you at [email protected].
Postscripts
A challenge of detention is the need to write fast, with pencil and paper and without a dictionary. Speed is required because it will take 1-2 weeks for this message to reach its destination. In 21st century America, this is considered adequate for prisoners who are, if you recall, “innocent until proven guilty”. Consequently, I have added these addendums to bring to light some salient points as this is probably my one and only chance at communication prior to conviction.
Conditions of Detention
I expressed some concern over the preservation of integrity and the signing of a “plea offer” – the plea offer serves two functions. First, it avoids a costly trial and it incentivizes this by offering discounts on your sentence. For example, you get “points” for accepting responsibility and for not “obstructing justice” – if you go to trial you are seen as both obstructing justice (2 points) and shirking responsibility (3 points). The cumulative effect of 5 points is 6-9 months in prison, per count or charge. This is one, but not the only “incentive” to taking a plea. Second, taking a plea absolves the state of any wrongdoing – you accept everything that has happened and agree not to make any sort of fuss or further investigation. For me this includes excusing the officers who threatened to kill me and dispose of my body. This includes the 9 months of manipulated medical records which resulted in periods of forced under-dosing and forced overdosing of medication.
The “overdose journal” where I recorded the hours I spent with my cellmate gasping for breath until I was reasonably able to breath, following a taser-enforced over-medication would simply “go away” if I sign that plea. Being forced, again at taser-point, to jump off a top bunk onto a concrete floor, somersault, twice a day, to get heart medication is accepted by the plea agreement. The period of time I was stripped naked, handed a smock, and kept without water or medication in a cell with only a hole in the floor for a toilet is to be ignored. I developed a bad foot infection due to the unsanitary conditions of that cell – but perhaps what is worse is that my daughter, calling to find out why dad disappeared, spoke with a guard who saw me unconscious on the floor and assured her I was just fine. In fact, deprived of the medication I take since heart surgery, and deprived of water, I had passed out with severe chest pains – I was allowed medication when I agreed to let the facility edit my medical records.
In signing the plea deal, I sweep all of this under the rug. None of this includes the administrative battles – the flagrant violations of Code of Federal Regulations, Title 28, Part 40, which describes how inmates register grievances – like the 80% loss rate in mail delivery and the destruction of case material by jailers. The day to day fight to get access to cleaning supplies, hygiene, your mail, communicate with your people and coordinate your defense, and all manner of reality for inmates. In fact, for two of the three hearings I have had I have been effectively “medically incapacitated” through accidental over- or under-dosings. The effect of depriving someone of food or medication for a day and locking them in a cell, and then subjecting them to intense psychological pressure by highly trained, practiced, and well rested individuals should not be discounted.
A final note need be made that commenting on this behavior risks getting one scheduled for ideological re-alignment at a facility such as FMC Butner. Interested readers might look into “The Daily”, a New York Times podcast which covered the death rate at Federal Medical Campus – Butner, where over three federal inmates die per day. If you believe that the above behaviors of the federal detention system are aberrant, or if you do not believe that the American legal system is the global paragon of virtue, you may be a candidate for ideological realignment at FMC Butner under rule 4241 of the United States Code.
This is what “innocent until proven guilty” means in America. In the words of a sergeant here at Columbus County Detention Center – “If you don’t like being in here, you should stop committing crimes”. In the federal system, guilt = arrest, the defendant has no voice and plays no role, and pre-trial detention is simply the practice of isolating and warehousing of meat until justice can be performed upon it.
Signing the plea sweeps this, and substantially more – very substantially more – government misconduct under the rug. This is why I consider it a transaction to purchase my freedom with a currency of lies.
Nation Builder
Nation Builder positions itself as a politically-neutral platform. It strives to provide tools to drive successful campaigns without regard to the content of those campaigns – and it does so based on some writings of an early founder who has obtained a sort of cult of personality within the company leadership. This was the state of the company in 2020, but I do not know how it has evolved. In 2020 it was distinctly cult-like. It just so happened to be a darling of the right-wing because it was a full-featured toolkit. There are at least two problems with the Nation Builder concept:
A) Philosophical Naïveté
The trope of platform operators being above content is, by now, well established as childish foolishness. The issue is not as simple as either being a censor or being a free-for-all. A responsible platform needs to provide tools by which to facilitate its own proper management and regulation within the context it is deployed. Nation Builder’s leadership, and as a result their company and customer support, completely failed to understand their responsibility to assist in mitigating the damage done by their platform by operators of the platform who chose to abuse it. The hours, frustration, and bad mojo developed as a result of their childish refusal to acknowledge their responsibility to support the proper operation and deployment of their tools could have been avoided by simply agreeing to communicate. In the end we clashed on principle alone – they chose to behave like irresponsible weapons manufacturers.
B) Voter Information and Consent
An example of the kind of technical irresponsibility demonstrated by Nation Builder and the justification for regulation of platforms is given by the absolute inability of the platform to support disengagement. This is a feature of American software in particular because the United States fails to offer its citizens European-class protections such as the GDPR, which supports an individual’s right to “off-board”. In the United States, companies and campaigns are focused on “catching” customers, or “onboarding” them, and once captured they do not want to give them up. This is one reason why you do not have the right to be left alone. In Nation Builder this shows up in a number of ways:
- On their installed websites, like the Iowa or North Carolina Republican party (at least in 2020), there is no way to disengage. Any contact, even a request to off-board, will re-onboard you.
- Emails, which must contain an “unsubscribe” link, are often sent with malfunctioning links. The mechanisms of malfunction are beyond the scope of this post but run the gamut from preventable to those demonstrating the insufficiency of the “canned spam act” which legislates them.
- The fundamental voter information is woefully below par, as it could not, for example, determine whether I was an appropriate candidate for North Carolina given that I was a registered Iowa voter. Likewise, given the other capabilities of the suite, such as tracking information about the voter, adding a “do not contact” attribute seems not to be a qualitatively product re-defining alteration.
Institutional Communication and Off-boarding
The entirety of this conflict could have been avoided if institutions could engage in communication with aggrieved parties. Unfortunately, this can not happen – the Iowa Republican party, the North Carolina Republican party, the National Republican party, the Anne Arundel Sheriff’s Office, the FBI, the Senators, Nation Builder, and others – none of them were willing to communicate. They provided means for me to “leave feedback” but at no time and in no way could we resolve issues. They were all notified that the communications I was and had received were considered life-threatening acts of severe psychological violence and assault akin to rape and were instructed to stop. They insisted on continuing, or, more often, “forwarded my request to the appropriate department”, at which point it disappeared and there was no further ability to resolve the issue.
We as a a society have become so trained to tolerate this “customer service” that we accept it as a natural mode of life. I do not believe it is natural; it is a sign that our institutions are broken. This learned helplessness contributes deeply to the sense of alienation that separates citizens from the government, and which leads to the profound inadequacy and inefficacy of our federal system. My case is a symptom of this because I refuse to accept this behavior from institutions – I will not tolerate the never-ending customer service shuffle which, in this case, makes off-boarding impossible and renders my withdrawal of consent moot.
Conclusions to Postscripts
Thank you for taking the time to read. If you can help, or know any attorneys or investigators who can help offload the burden from my family, please reach out to [email protected]. There is far more to tell in this story, and the battle for a voice is just beginning.
Eric Charles Welton
Prisoner #94911
Columbus County Detention Center
March 4, 2024