On 4 Aug 2001, at 11:07, jamesd@echeque.com wrote:
-- On 3 Aug 2001, at 13:22, georgemw@speakeasy.net wrote:
I consider it, as I said, monstrous that a judge can legally deprive me of all copies of my own work in order to enforce a gag order, but again, if that's the way it is, that's the way it is. But it goes well beyond the bizzare to suggest that I should anticipate the possibility of a gag order and preemptively gag myslef in case one might be issued at a later date.
Judges have never attempted such crap, and if they do, lawyers will irrelevant, and will have been irrelevant for a long time before the such anyone attempts such crap.
I didn't mean to imply that BU had suggested that this would happen. My impression is that BU's response to me was based on a misundertanding of what I was saying. My suggestion "encrypt your data and post it on freenet" was based on the idea that 1) I want to be able to say with perfect truthfulness "I cannot comply with your order to turn over ALL copies" and 2) I don't want to release it to the whole world's prying inquisitive eyes. The key point is, I want to make sure I will always have access to my information. I wasn't suggesting I could delete all local copies and tell the judge, "sorry, can't give you any copies, don't have them" and mutter under my breath "but I could get them if I really wanted to". I wouldn't expect a judge to buy that line of reasoning, I wouldn't buy it myself.
These guys (Black Unicorn and his cheer squad) are loons, and I cannot imagine why they post such nonsense.
The argument they seem to be making is that judges, legislators, and bureaucrats are becoming increasingly lawless, therefore we should treat lawyers with worshipful respect.
I don't think this is right either. It's more like 1) Judges and prosecutors may interpret laws in ways that seem completely divergent from the laws as written, but at least these bizzare interpreations are internally consistent (that is, judges will follow precedent). 2) designing your systems in certain ways that take into account certain tortured interpretations of the law can potentially save you a lot of grief and 3) Lawyers will most likely know a lot more about these tortured interpretations than will non-lawyers. Really, I don't think this stuff is all that controversial. For example, the suggestion that your legal position is stronger if you can say "we've never had the logs you're asking for" than if you say "we delete those logs every 24 hours to keep the disk from filling up, so they're gone, sorry" makes perfect sense. This isn't to say your position isn't strong in the second case also, but there's more potential for grief; even a case that you win pretty quickly can cost you a lot in terms of money and inconenience.
James A. Donald
George