Though the FBI’s early morning raid on the LRN.FM & Free Talk Live studio on Sunday did result in LRN.FM being off-air for several hours, thanks to the outpouring of support from the liberty community, we were back on the same day! Multiple people contacted me to offer their extra computers and phones and so we were able to scrounge together enough equipment to get some audio back streaming that same afternoon. My show, Free Talk Live, did not miss an episode.
LRN.FM – The Liberty Radio Network was back up to full capacity by Tuesday, with its dozens of liberty-oriented shows from around the globe airing live and via podcast around-the-clock across multiple continents via satellite and globally via internet streaming.
One of our listeners (Virgil Vaduva of Cell 411) created a GoFundMe to raise $5,000 for replacing our stolen computers and it passed its goal in 24 hours! It was an amazing show of support from our listeners and supporters in this time where the federal government has set its destructive sights on us. Thank you so much to everyone who contributed. No thanks to the local haters who fraudulently reported the GoFundMe as fraudulent, which did get it pulled down temporarily until GoFundMe could investigate and of course returned the fundraiser to online status. As usual, the haters have nothing intelligent to say and must resort to underhanded, dishonest tactics to try to harm us. Love will win in in the end.
Thank you again for your support during these most difficult days. We will continue to broadcast the message of liberty 24/7 thanks to your help. The GoFundMe has ended, but if you still want to help, please join the hundreds of FTL & LRN AMPlifiers and contribute $5 a month to our efforts.
There’s not much good one can say about the FBI’s raid on the LRN.FM studio on Sunday morning, but the news coverage has been pretty good. Free Talk Live host TJ the Spy and I have given multiple interviews on the raid to NH-based media, plus liberty-oriented bloggers have weighed in. Here’s a quick rundown:
At 6:00 a.m. on March 20, 2016, members of the FBI, New Hampshire State Police, and Keene PD executed a federal search warrant on our studio in Keene, NH. The search team was greeted without incident upon presentation of the warrant and the studio was secured by investigating officers.
According to the search warrant, the FBI ran an undercover TOR .onion child pornography website from their government servers in Virginia from February to March of 2015. This website was designed to deliver, besides the pictures of abused children, a piece of malware that breaks the anonymity of TOR and identifies the true IP address of the person attempting to access the website. Other information, including the computer host name, username, and MAC address were also supposedly captured by the FBI. Pursuant to an investigation into violation of 18 USC 2252 (child pornography), the FBI seized approximately 46 computer and electronic devices from our studio. No charges have been filed.
Although the seizure of our equipment was inconvenient and resulted in Free Talk Live’s internet network’s (LRN.FM – The Liberty Radio Network) audio feed going offline temporarily, we will have our studio back to normal operations within 48 hours and will continue serving the high quality, liberty-oriented shows our listeners love. No episodes of Free Talk Live have been interrupted.
We look forward to the results of the FBI’s forensic examination. Many people had access to the LRN wireless network and studio computers over the previous year. If someone accessed a child pornography website from our network, it is without our knowledge. However, we feel that in a country that has a free press, journalists should be allowed to investigate all aspects of society, including criminal ones.
Free Talk Live and all of its hosts, as if we should have to, officially denounce child pornography, child rape and child exploitation. We further remind everyone that the only organization that, at this point, is guilty of having anything to do with child porn is the Federal Bureau of Investigations, who admits to distributing pictures of exploited children, a crime worse than what they are accusing their website visitors of doing.
The search and seizure Warrants are, last we heard, sealed. We encourage anyone interested in obtaining them to contact the FBI.
The past few weeks as a Free Stater has been some of the most heart breaking moments of my life. I’ve witnessed the witch hunt by OG Free Staters and FSP Inc supporters to label Ian Freeman as a pedophile. There was even a petition that was circulating which has since been removed demanding the FSP to remove FTL/LRN from all business partnerships based off the acusations of Ian supporting pedophelia. These haters have been ferocious and with out mercy. I have also witnessed FSP Inc cut all business ties with FTL/LRN.FM which I may disagree with but business is business. However, in a blog posted by the president of the Free State Project Matt Phillips, they also banned Ian from all future FSP Inc events including Porcfest and Liberty Forum.
Ian Freeman may be wrong on some issues and I am not hundred percent behind his position of age of consent. That being said Ian is one of the most peaceful/pacifist people I have ever met. He has also done more for the Free State Project and liberty than all of his haters combined. Furthermore, with so much hate coming from FSP Inc and their supporters, myself and my fiance Ann Leverette in good conscience could not bare to share our love at Porcfest with our wedding. We have announced that going forward we will be boycotting all future FSP Inc events and we will not be attending Porcfest. The Rebel Love Wedding will also not be held at Porcfest but instead NH Hempfest instead. This all happened relatively quickly and we took to the LRN.FM airwaves Friday night on Anarchy After Dark to go into detail about what has happened and what led us to this heart breaking decision. Never fear though, there is light and love on the other side. Plus the Shire is still an amazing place to live. Listen to this episode to understand why.
podcast:
With the banning, I became the latest inducted in the elite club of people like Christopher Cantwell and Zack Bass who have been similarly politically excised from the FSP organization.
It was a good run, but all things come to an end. I’m grateful for my more than a decade of helping to promote the Free State Project, and look forward to 20,000+ liberty-loving people coming here to New Hampshire and working toward freedom.
I know people have said they won’t be attending Porcfest this year due to the FSP’s decision, and I appreciate their sentiment, but to anyone who doesn’t feel as strongly, you should still attend the Porcupine Freedom Festival this June. (more…)
The main hosts of New Hampshire-based syndicated talk program (heard on over 170 radio stations coast-to-coast), Free Talk Live made a major decision tonight. On the FTL blog we announced our release of the Free State Project from our long-standing broadcast agreement. It was a long time coming. Over the years, Mark and I have been a loving thorn-in-the-side of the FSP. While we were its most successful recruiter, we were also never afraid to criticize the organization publicly. It was a relationship that came close to ending a few times over the years.
Recently a group of FSP early movers have been putting social pressure on the FSP board to disassociate from Free Talk Live, LRN.FM, and Free Keene. While a petition by the in-crowd of haters struggled to reach 100 signatures over several days, including fraudulent signatures, the anger and social pressure is real. We at FTL no longer wanted to play any role in making the FSP board choose one side over the other yet again. I am grateful we were able to work together for so long in promoting the best idea for liberty in generations, the Free State Project.
Schisms are healthy, even if the people who stoke them aren’t. In my experience, it’s always best to embrace the schism rather than fight it.
There are no hard feelings on my side. I have not revoked my membership in the FSP and I still think that libertarians, voluntarists, and liberty-loving anarchists should move to New Hampshire, ASAP.
Free Talk Live would like to formally congratulate the Free State Project on reaching 20,000 signers. Until February 3rd, 2016, the FSP was an organization primarily focused on getting 20,000 liberty-minded people to pledge to move to New Hampshire and get active for freedom. Now the FSP is refocusing on encouraging those signers and other interested libertarians to make their move. This is a goal of Free Talk Live as well, but experience shows us that when any group gets large enough there will be schisms. There are some that feel that there is no place in the FSP for Free Talk Live and with the recent change in goals of the FSP, we at FTL can see their point of view. (more…)
