NYC Lawyers Subpoena Code 132
RonMcMahon writes "Lawyers for the city of New York have subpoenaed the text message records of thousands of people involved in demonstrations at the 2004 Republican National Convention. Tad Hirsch, creator of the TXTmob code that enabled convention demonstrators to transmit messages to thousands of telephones, has been instructed to release the content of messages exchanged on the service and to identify people who sent and received messages. Hirsch argues that release of such information would be a violation of users' First Amendment and privacy rights. 'I think I have a moral responsibility to the people who use my service to protect their privacy,' said Hirsch."
Subpoena? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Subpoena? (Score:5, Informative)
Why does he have the data? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why does he have the data? (Score:5, Informative)
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2004 Republican National Convention in NYC (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.2600.com/rnc2004/index.html [2600.com]
Down with Amurkan fascists! And their plastic orange fences.
We have all gone to look for America.
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And I wholeheartedly agree with the decision not to cooperate with this order.
I fail to see how this subpoena is uniquely capable of getting the relevant information. Seems more like a wide net attempt to get information on people that aren't involved in the suits. If they're just interested in discovery, p
Thanks to the back-stabbing Democrat Establishment (Score:1)
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There is no "secret rule" -- I suppose somebody just felt the way I did and had mod points.
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LEARN (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:LEARN (Score:4, Funny)
Re:LEARN (Score:4, Informative)
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Not really. What the judge said was that writing information to RAM is the equivelent of creating a record, so the 'we don't, as a principle, keep any records' defense against the subpoena was not valid. So, they were required to start keeping logs of user's IPs. And, no, a RAM dump would not have worked, it was required to be in usable form.
I don't know where I stand on the
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but they can haul your ass before a judge and ask you to disclose everything you know about your users and your system.
to say you can't remember, to say you can't recall, is likely land you in jail until your memory improves.
in this situation you are not the anonymous coward.
you are the guy up front, naked and exposed, when something goes wrong.
"the eighteen minute gap," the camera pointed in the wrong direction. nothing on record is likely to be quite so ba
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Having said that, you may still end up in court, and if you have setup a deletion policy (even if it is a policy that no logs are kept), and you follow the policy in all cases, little can be done. There is sufficient precedent to support the deletion of logs, emails, etc. as perfectly legal and within the realm of business propriety. Where trouble start
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Not anymore. [wikipedia.org]
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The lawyers are military lawyers which seems like an automatic conflict of interest but they have lawyers available.
They'll just get data from the mobile providers (Score:1)
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Glad it's not Sony or Microsoft or some other corp (Score:5, Insightful)
Fortunately in this case, it's a man who believes in human rights.
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I don't understand why New York thinks it has a legitimate reason to read everybody's private text messages from 4 years ago. What possible relevance do those messages have to anything?
Reminds me of my grandmother (reading other people's mail just to be nosy).
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Currently, people are suing the city because they where arrested back in 2004 in connections to illegal protests surrounding the RNC convention. The city wants this information to be able to prove or disprove their connections to willfully violating the laws which would make the suits meaningle
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There are certain facts about this particular situation. Some people were planning to or did break the law. A law that has stood against challenges on the grounds of it's constit
Re:Glad it's not Sony or Microsoft or some other c (Score:2)
I'm surprised that you'd consider a corporation capable of just rolling over and playing dead. Yes the airlines did that for the TSA...
Being incorporated doesn't make you evil.
Re:Glad it's not Sony or Microsoft or some other c (Score:4, Insightful)
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- You said the corporation is fighting to protect its breathalyzer code. It wants to maintain its own property & future profits. Makes perfect sense.
- But what if the State sued the corporation to obtain the *emails* sent across the machines? Does the corporation have a vested interest to protect them? Nope. The corporation will not fight. It will just hand them over to the government, as if they were best friends.
In this particular case, we have a man who has no vested intere
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I didn't say it did. I said corporations are soulless/lacking morals. A corporation makes decisions based upon their own desire to increase profit. They will not fight a "hand over all emails" court order if there's no profit to gain from that fight. They follow a very simple conditional statement:
IF PROFIT INCREASES THEN FIGHTLAWSUIT == 1
ELSE HANDOVER_EMAILS = 1
Cold. Calculating. Corporation.
Re:Glad it's not Sony or Microsoft or some other c (Score:4, Insightful)
Instead he stored the messages for some personnal or business reason.
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then he likely did it for the same reason why my company stores messages. Because the government forces them to store the messages. It's not a matter of "choice" if the government is holding a gun to your held ("save all emails, else serve time in jail").
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Looking at the company, it is more an organization, they would have no legal reason to keep
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Messages are ephemeral (Score:2, Funny)
You don't know me.
You don't know whether it is really me writing this or someone pretending to be me.
You don't know how many "me"s there are behind this nickname.
You don't know how many other accounts I have that pretend to be someone besides me.
Which me is the real me?
Which you is the real you?
Which way to Kathmandu?
Would you, could you in a car?
Eat them, eat them! Here they are.
Re:Messages are ephemeral (Score:5, Funny)
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Lets say I masqueraded as your father and sent your a message to meet me at location 3 at the second time we discussed earlier. Me being at the same spot pretending to be your father at a certain time could demonstrate that you "intended" to meet your father at a specific time and place. Of co
Anonymous political speech (Score:5, Insightful)
If the messages were inciting people to break the law I could possibly understand, but on the face of what few facts I have on the subject right now my knee wants to jerk right into the Government's jaw a few times.
Re:Anonymous political speech (Score:5, Informative)
frankly i grow tired of being snooped on
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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I totally agree with you about taking away citizen's voting rights.
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There is such a thing as conspiracy and inciting violence on connection to any crime. You might not be willing to accept the consequences of the actions directly but it doesn't absolve you from those actions if you took part in encouraging them or making them happen at your direction. If a mob boss order a hit on someone, that boss can be just as liable as
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Re:Anonymous political speech (Score:5, Interesting)
I am basically of the mind that you just have to follow the course of the three boxes. Soap Box, then Ballot Box, then Ammo Box. I also hope and pray that the latter option is never really required. I would far prefer a political revolution to an armed one.
Re:Anonymous political speech (Score:4, Informative)
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
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Still, I probably should have properly attributed the quote from which I draw that particular philosophical notion. Thanks for elaborating.
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Lawyers and judges (who are lawyers in robes, after all), HATE jury nullification and have done a pretty good job of neutering it.
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"Mr. Government, don't make me jerk my knee. You may not like where my knee ends up."
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And it appears that the current US government learned the lesson from that, and is taking steps to avoid a repetition.
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They are suing over being falsely arrested during the RNC convention in 2004. The city claims they had a legitimate reasons ofr their arrest and detention even though they didn't charge the people.
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In my analogy the only legitimate circumvention would b
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And as for privacy, they got a warrant issued by a judge which satisfies the constitution by anyones regard. This really isn't an issue of privacy. People aren't directly identifiable from the
T'was ever thus (Score:5, Insightful)
Every time you surrender your rights to the state in return for assurances that a) people who might be breaking some minor law like jaywalking have nothing to worry about and b) the new powers will be used only against the really, really bad people, should sit up and take notice. This is exactly the kind of thing you can expect.
How many people who want to exercise their legal right to protest will sit home next time because their career ambitions include jobs where even being on the same street as a protest could knock them off the hiring list?
It's always best to assume governments and police forces are led by lying, treacherous fascists. You will occasionally be pleasantly surprised to find that it's not the case. More often, you'll find out that power-tripping assholes are attracted to those jobs the same way child molesters are attracted to schoolgrounds and bank robbers are attracted to banks.
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Protesting is a waste of time, a hobby for the ineffective and unemployed.
Want to know their real angle? Imagine being a traveling professional who is unable to travel because of the "do not fly" list. Or runs the risk of missing flights and having corporate property stolen or destroyed beca
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I disagree with your opinion on public protest. It has been and remains an effective tool to change public policy. Why do you think governments are so anxious to suppress it?
And while you may be right about air travel, I think you have to acknowledge that other alternatives remain, though they may impose a burden on the traveler. I would expect that sooner, rather than later, American professionals who need to fly frequently will be forced to submit to thorough vetting in return for some kind of enhanc
Re:T'was ever thus (Score:4, Insightful)
I remember in college I had a bunch of friends telling me about the "die in" (basically laying down, acting dead-ish in the student union) they were holding. This was fine an noble, but they were completely unable to actually tell anyone what it was over, but they still got around 70-100 people to participate. I think, in the end, it was over the food supplier for the university or something, but I'm not sure since the organizers still won't tell me.
Yearly PRISM (the gay activist club) would organize demostations and protests for equal rights and gay marriage, one year it was then doing some stupid musical/play thing in the middle of campus. All it served was to make it impossible to study there, and to set them further apart from the rest of us (making it easier to single them out). Though the year previous they organized my favorite demonstration ever, "Gay people being gay", and it consisted of them sitting around the commons, studying, and socializing normally, while surrounded by yellow police tape, showing people that they were just people. I actually signed their petition that year.
Most protesters act outragious, and thus can pointed out at deviants and oddballs, which weakens to position that people are protesting. It makes it easier for someone to point at them and discredit them. By acting like morons they discredit their own cause. Ideally protesters should wear business attire, have professional signs, and offer and eloquent message, this way they have the image of at least treating their issue seriously, and don't come off as a bunch of mentally unstable ex-hippies wearing hemp pants who actually believe that the GOP eats babies.
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And those who can't make the cut acting out their power-trip over adults will eventually find their way to being school board administrators and school principals where the targets are easier.
Which is it? (Score:2)
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Keeping records (Score:3, Insightful)
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Note also that he hasn't been ordered by the court yet, only that the lawyers representing the city demanded the info through a scary-looking nastygram.
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It's a scare tactic.
EXACTLY! (Score:1)
It takes about 20 minutes, $0.50 in postage and one sheet of fancy high-bond paper to threaten. It's trivial. And probably rather successful.
And let's be real.. this kid isn't involved in an RIAA lawsuit, he's not being sued by SCO for some linux code that NOBODY cares about outside the people reading this website.
This is politics, a guy who made it easy to protest against BushCo.
I guarantee that he can raise $50,000 for legal defense in about 3 day
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And for many of the letters I've seen evidence for, if it took them 20 minutes I'd be surprised. Many look almost like the form letters of old with open spaces to type in the relevant information via typewriter.
As for the $50k defense fund, I'd hit the RNC up, personally. They'd probably be willing to throw that much at it just to keep anything embarrasing out of the public eye, even if it'd o
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Don't be confused... (Score:2, Informative)
Why Did He Keep Them? (Score:2)
Way to tell only half the story (Score:1, Insightful)
Want to bet at least part of NYC's defense is that at least some of those arrested actually set out to be arrested?
And that the text messages will prove that?
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Retention policy? (Score:2)
Do phone companies record phone calls? Of course not? So why should text companies record content? Even recording traffic should on
speaking of subpoenas... (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't understand why... (Score:2)
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Republicans you say? (Score:1, Insightful)
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Poor articles all around (Score:2)
The subpoena is connected to a group of 62 lawsuits against the city that stem from arrests during the convention and have been consolidated in Federal District Court in Manhattan. About 1,800 people were arrested and charged, but 90 percent of them ultimately walked away from court without pleading guilty or being convicted.
I am not a lawyer, nor do I use the accompanying initialism, but can the "city" issue a subpoena? I guess a lawyer could as an agent of the court or whatever, and a lawyer could work for the city, but I thought they were issued by some clerk who had to get sign off by some judge? In which case (unless I am wrong, of course), I'd be more concerned about the
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Famous journalists are usually famous despite their bad journalism, and usually not because they are good writers?
Try doing this in the UK and hit the data protection act, this is personal data and so would have to be requested (and justified) for each specific user
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Except that in the UK the government would already have been tracking everyone and wouldn't need to get it from a third party.
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I don't really see any problems with this. The city is trying to defend itself in a series of lawsuits about its arrests of a bunch of protesters. One of the elements of its defense is probably that the people who were arrested were not just in
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Why is "planning and coordinating" a protest somehow illegitimate? Are only "spontaneous" protests protected by the First Amendment? I think not.
Frankly I don't see how it matters if the protesters
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If any o
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Your definition of "protest" could come under question. I am not saying you are incorrect to question the "perfectly legitimate" comment, but rather that your statement that "Protesting is not criminal" makes an assumption regarding the definition of a "protest". For example(s), a citizen protester may hold up signs and yell, but what if that protester also impedes the free flow of transportation or trips a random person walking by? Free speech should not be extended to physically impede the rights of ot
Can someone explain why? (Score:2)
Can it?
What is that I smell?? (Score:2)
About someone else's poor email retention (Score:2)
with simply claiming that about 2 years of their own emails got erased from their server backups and cannot be retrieved, (...pffft!!...)
and no one appears too bothered by it enough to sue for what may well have been a motherlode of information on how the war in
Iraq was handled, and other crucial tidbits which clearly were supposed to have been a matter of public record, an
Confused... (Score:2)
Not about free speech (Score:1)
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Question (Score:1)
What can lawyers subpoena exactly? (Score:1)
Up there it has been suggested they could go after the telcoms and that if this had been a corporation they would have been buckled, but IMO with them this subpoena would have been quashed in a flash. The telcoms in particular aren't too happy to just allow government go on fishing expeditions at the moment.
Phoenix AZ New Times subpoena similarity (Score:4, Interesting)
Similar to this;
http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2007-10-18/news/breathtaking-abuse-of-the-constitution/ [phoenixnewtimes.com]
The local prosecutors office ordered and conducted the arrest of the newspaper editors for disclosing the fact that they had been requested, through the act of a horrifically crooked grand jury subpoena (which neither the judge nor jury had approved or even seen), to turn over a list of their entire readership and website visitors over a period of years.
I hope for a similar, if not stronger, reaction.
Re:Yahoo (Score:5, Informative)
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