karish@mindcrf.UUCP (Chuck Karish) (09/10/90)
In article <11608@medusa.cs.purdue.edu> spaf@cs.purdue.edu (Gene Spafford) writes: >I have a second question for any legal historian types out there. A >comparison has been made here between the Phrack case and the Pentagon >Papers. The theme has been that law enforcement didn't try to >confiscate the printing presses of the newspaper. Yes, but the >question I have is, did they obtain a search warrant and confiscate >any of the newspaper's files? The confiscations & searches done >recently on computer systems seems to have been done because they have >attached storage, not because they are used as publishing tools. If >that is the case, the comparison obviously falls to pieces. [ WARNING: I'm not a lawyer. If you need an accredited authority figure, hit 'n' now. ] The Red Squad of the Palo Alto, California police force searched the offices of the Stanford Daily newspaper, with a search warrant, in 1970. They were looking for unpublished notes and photographs made during several anti-war demonstrations. This case eventually was argued before the US Supreme Court. The court ruled that the search violated the constitutional guarantees of freedom of the press. While this precedent does not match precisely the issues surrounding the recent computer seizures, it does show that there is a significant constitutional issue at stake here. As for the `attached storage' argument, this is one more example to show that rules that may be appropriate in the context of print journalism can become much more oppressive when they're applied to electronic journalism. In order to protect the property rights of Bell South, the Secret Service compromised the privacy of Jolnet's subscribers (email confiscated with the system), the property rights of the system operator, who was cooperative with the authorities to the extent of actually pointing out the suspect document to AT&T, and the right of Phrack's publishers (Jolnet subscribers) to produce their journal. >I'm not going to pursue this point further unless someone with >appropriate research and facts cares to fill in the background for >the rest of us. Good. I'm tired of reading articles that complain because no one responds to the poster's request that someone else do his homework for him. I'm glad Gene brought up some of the points that he did; I'd have been much more impressed if he'd found the relevant legal information off line and brought it to our attention. -- Chuck Karish karish@mindcraft.com Mindcraft, Inc. (415) 323-9000
spaf@cs.purdue.EDU (Gene Spafford) (09/11/90)
In article <9009091723.AA23905@mindcrf.mindcraft.com>, karish@mindcrf.UUCP (Chuck Karish) writes: > Good. I'm tired of reading articles that complain because no one > responds to the poster's request that someone else do his homework for > him. > > I'm glad Gene brought up some of the points that he did; I'd have > been much more impressed if he'd found the relevant legal information > off line and brought it to our attention. I'm not a lawyer, I don't have access to a law library, and I'm not going to make up information (unlikely the majority of "experts" on the Usenet). I'm also not going to pay a law firm to do the research for me (unless you're willing to subsidize the effort). I try to have appropriate facts on hand to discuss important subjects. Thus, I asked if there is anyone with definitive knowledge of the material. An informed reply is yet to appear. That leads me to believe that it has yet to be defined, or no one in a position to know such things is reading this group and willing to post. I'm most definitely not trying to get anyone to do "homework" for me. The implication is...amusing. -- Gene Spafford NSF/Purdue/U of Florida Software Engineering Research Center, Dept. of Computer Sciences, Purdue University, W. Lafayette IN 47907-2004 Internet: spaf@cs.purdue.edu uucp: ...!{decwrl,gatech,ucbvax}!purdue!spaf
doug@letni.lonestar.org (09/11/90)
In article <9009091723.AA23905@mindcrf.mindcraft.com> karish@mindcrf.UUCP (Chuck Karish) writes: >As for the `attached storage' argument, this is one more example to >show that rules that may be appropriate in the context of print >journalism can become much more oppressive when they're applied to >electronic journalism. In order to protect the property rights of Bell >South, the Secret Service compromised the privacy of Jolnet's >subscribers (email confiscated with the system), the property rights of >the system operator, who was cooperative with the authorities to the >extent of actually pointing out the suspect document to AT&T, and the >right of Phrack's publishers (Jolnet subscribers) to produce their >journal. This brings up an interesting point that I was pondering the other night. If I remember correctly there is a 90 day statuate on the protection of email from being read. All the SS has to do to avoid that is to pick up all the equipment, lock it in a closet, wait 91 days and read at their leasure. This way there is no violation of privacy when they read the subscribers mail. doug __ Doug Davis/4409 Sarazen/Mesquite Texas, 75150/214-270-9226 {texsun|lawnet|smu}!letni!doug doug@letni.lonestar.org "Be seeing you..."
mnemonic@walt.cc.utexas.edu (Mike Godwin) (09/12/90)
In article <11645@medusa.cs.purdue.edu> spaf@cs.purdue.EDU (Gene Spafford) write s: > >Thus, I >asked if there is anyone with definitive knowledge of the material. >An informed reply is yet to appear. I posted the following Supreme Court references in a previous posting, but Spaf apparently missed them. "The liberty of the press is not confined to newspapers and periodicals. It necessarily embraces pamphlets and leaflets.... The press in its historic connotation comprehends every sort of publication which affords a vehicle of information and opinion." --Lovell v. City of Griffin, 303 U.S. 444, 452 (1938) Moreover, says the Court, freedom of the press includes "the right of the lonely pamphleteer who uses carbon paper or a mimeograph as much as of the large metropolitan publisher who utilizes the latest photocomposition methods." --Branzburg v. Hayes, 408 U.S. 665,704 (1972). In his book NIMMER ON FREEDOM OF SPEECH, law professor Melville Nimmer also notes Tucker v. Texas, 326 U.S. 517 (1946), "in which a statute punishing door-to-door distribution of literature was held invalid as an abridgement of freedom of the press." --Mike Mike Godwin, UT Law School |"If the doors of perception were cleansed mnemonic@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu | every thing would appear to man as it is, (512) 346-4190 | infinite." | --Blake