Spoliation cites

[Harmon Seaver]

Greg Broiles wrote:

> I think this is the really interesting leap here - from the ability of a
> court to order production of documents, to the ability of a court to
> control distribution of information.

    Exactly! But even for the court to order "the original and all copies" is a bit
absurd -- how could they possibly determine how many is "all"? And what the heck is
the "original" in this day and age? Most of the stuff I (and surely the vast
majority of writers and journalists these days) create is just bits and bytes. You
want the printed "original" -- gee, I've never printed one, but I will if you want
me to -- how many "originals" do you want, and how many "copies"?
     Frankly, even I couldn't be *really, really* sure I had given them "all
copies" -- I've got zipped files floating around all over the place, on backup
tapes, stored on various machines, servers around the net, floppies in boxes I'll
find years later, etc.

(snip)

> I think a response more appropriate than secrecy (with the attending
> arguments about offshore trusts, the relationship between crosscut
> shredders and cryptography, etc) would have been immediate, widespread
> publication - via Freenet or Cryptome, if the local paper wasn't
> interested. Then there's no more arguing over secret documents, and the
> grand jury's free to read about it in the newspaper and ask the journalist
> to come in and confirm that no details were altered during the editing
> process.

        Or even disseminate it in encrypted form that the jury can't read, so what?
The info is still protected from seizure, as it's beyond anyone's reach to retrieve
"all copies". In some cases it might be provident to openly publish the info, in
others not. I would think that in the case in question, someone in the jailed
journalist's immediate circle would have already made copies and secreted them
away, out of reach of the court. Maybe someone should tip them off to freenet/mojo.

>
> So don't fight the court where they're strong and you're weak - fight where
> you're strong and the court is weak, e.g., about prior restraint of
> publishing, rather than whether or not evidence was destroyed or withheld,
> which might be a contempt proceeding, which includes very little "due
> process" and no jury.

         Careful -- I got called a village idiot for suggesting essentially the
same thing.

>
>
>
> I think a lot of the tension around "cypherpunks should think about law" or
> "cypherpunks should not waste time on law" comes from different basic
> assumptions - if you start out thinking that police are thugs and you have
> no rights except the ones you enforce yourself, then all of this legal
> discussion is a big distraction.

           Well, aren't they?   See "Badge + Skinhead = Psycho" on my
http://www.oshkoshbygosh.org


--
Harmon Seaver, MLIS
CyberShamanix
Work 920-203-9633   hseaver at cybershamanix.com
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