Jim Bell's fiber-optic patent application.

[Jim Bell]

From: CryptoFreak <cryptofreak at cpunk.us>


On 09/20/2013 10:53 PM, Jim Bell wrote:
>> 
>> On Thu, Sep 19, 2013 at 9:48 PM, coderman <coderman at gmail.com
>> <mailto:coderman at gmail.com>> wrote:
>> 
>>Evidently he has made what he considers a step in this direction ;)
> 
>> I propose that the public force such companies to sign what I'd call
>> "Disloyalty oaths", promises to be disloyal to any and every
>> government.  This would include a promise that if subjected to any sort
>> of court order (even and especially those requiring that the company
>> keep silent as to the existence of said order) that the order would be
>> 'leaked' shortly, say less than a week, to an organization (Cryptome;
>> Wikileaks) that would publicize it.  Primary methods as crude as leaving
>> a few hundred copies of the order at the company water-cooler, or in the
>> cafeteria, or by the copier, would probably induce volunteer leakers to
>> mail copies to the leak-publication organizations.  Governments and
>> courts have little reason to issue such orders if their existence will
>> be leaked, particularly if they are going to be very quickly leaked. 
>> Leaks, obviously, are very easy to do these days and the identity of the
>> leaker would be very hard to know, and even harder to prove.  Chances
>> are good that such court-orders simply will cease.

>I completely support the idea of disloyalty oaths. The only problem I
>see is that they simply wouldn't work. What we'd see is the government
>putting increased threat of criminal prosecution on the corporate chain
>and not enough corporate officers willing to risk going to jail in order
>to do the right thing. Marissa Mayer from Yahoo said as much in her
>Techcrunch interview last week.

Consider:  Let's suppose there's a person in the Justice Department, I'll call him "Ed Justice" (in honor of Ed Snowden) with access to that order, who decides to leak a copy of the court order to Cryptome, Wikileaks, etc, a couple of days after it is served on the target media corporation.  (He may do so for reasons of malice, or perhaps benevolence:  He WANTS the order to leak, because he doesn't agree with the practice.)   The usual 9-by-12 brown envelope with no return address, only stamps, careful to avoid fingerprints, etc.  The leak-publisher(s) publishes the order.  How does the government prove that the lead was done by the target media corporation, and not by somebody else?  A criminal prosecution requires evidence, and none will exist.
In addition, there is an excellent argument that any order of secrecy is an obvious violation of the First Amendment to the US Constitution.  I don't recall reading any justification for such orders in any legal cases, but I think that this would be on flimsy legal ground.
       Jim Bell
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