---------- From: Black Unicorn[SMTP:unicorn@schloss.li]
From: <mmotyka@lsil.com> wrote Declan, The larger problem notwithstanding there's at least one little bit of language in this piece that is odd :
"He said the government is seeking all of Leggett's material, including all originals and copies." [...]
Looks like a reporter ( or anyone else for that matter ) should keep well hidden backups of their notes and work so that they can comply with Napolean complexes, fishing expeditions and spin control operations and not lose their life's work.
No. Well hidden backups would put the reporter in a position of contempt, committing obstruction of justice or perjury. Better to escrow such documents with an attorney in a jurisdiction not likely to cooperate with the United States. (I can suggest several to interested parties privately).
I'm curious what the term 'copy' refers to when the Internet and encryption gets involved. If a reporter posted an encrypted copy of her notes to usenet on a regular basis, she could recover them anytime, anywhere, from etin.com, dejanews, or any of the other news archiving services. However, if ordered to 'turn over all originals and copies', what can she do? Ask deja to dismount a drive and send it to the court? Ask the NSA to please gather up all their tapes which had copies and send them? Isn't there an implied and anachronistic assumption here that a requested private document is physically seperable from other private documents, and that to be private a document has to be under the authors physical control? And that there is a meaningful distinction between an 'original' and a 'copy'? This comes of a the same problem we find with so much of the IP arguement, that information exists only bound to some physical object, and shares it's limitations. I can only assume that the court, for reasons which seem unclear but which seem to amount to punishment, wish to deny her access to her own work. If many copies exist which are readable only by her, but not under her control, how can she be so deprived? (I suppose the court could order her to forget her passphrase :-) [I'm not addressing the issue of forced exposure of keys, just the information-theoretic notion of destroying or sequestering widely distributed information, and how that collides with the assumptions of ill-educated or maleific judges] Peter Trei