Spoliation cites

georgemw at speakeasy.net georgemw at speakeasy.net
Sat Aug 4 13:04:40 PDT 2001


On 4 Aug 2001, at 11:07, jamesd at echeque.com wrote:

>     --
> On 3 Aug 2001, at 13:22, georgemw at 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

> 






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