IMO, the author should seek redress to the fullest extent of the law. Government overreach, especially in judicial matters, should not be tolerated and allowing them to occur, even if the consequence of that is "a paedophile going free" (a result I find unlikely; if the authorities involved are willing to break one set of laws to gather evidence they don't really need, there's no reason to believe that they will not continue to pursue the guy after this evidence is rendered invalid)is an example of the slow erosion of civil liberties by acquiescence to the subtle extension of law enforcement powers. This is, again in my opinion, a more critical and chronic problem than the, admittedly individually more terrible but certainly more isolated, actual crime referenced here.
I'm interested in the idea of the warrant canary, however. My own research into it has led me to believe that while they are supported by organizations like the EFF, that support may be more ideologically based than legally sound, and should the government take issue with their use, the author could have found himself in serious trouble for violating FISA (a case of breaking the intent of the law, not the letter; while there is a great deal of faith in the legal system to abnegate the former in favor of the latter, I would still be hesitant to tweak it's nose in such a manner). Are there any legal experts here that could weigh in?
One other solution is to share blog/software/data with someone outside the jurisdiction.
The US can force someone to add a backdoor to their software and forbid to say anything. If the code is co-maintained by someone in the Netherlands, that person will put a big warning on the site stating that the content was changed.
This is just an example, other pair of countries works.
There are countries that can enforce extraterritorial jurisdiction (notably the US) but this applies to whole countries, not small companies. They forced us (France) to abandon business with Iran, good luck for them to force a small company without footprint in the US to do so.
Digitalization goes both ways, if we want to be able to communicate with officials and B2B online, avoiding all the paperwork while keeping it all legally binding, same legal powers have to apply to emails sent out by the government too.
One perhaps could argue to haven't seen it - not sure how that would hold in a court - but "magically disappearing" it sounds like a really bad idea to me. Mail server will either receive it or bounce it back, which is logged on both ends. When your client fetches it, it's logged on the imap/pop3 server. Your local mail client leaves traces on your hdd. You can get yourself in a lot of trouble unless you're really skillful in covering your steps.
> You should consult your own attorney for your own situation.
I love these disclaimers which assume that the attorney I can procure with my own budgetary / social network constraints would *clearly* be better than what I am reading on a blog post. In short, YMMV.
Protip for the US: If you ever need an attorney, and don’t know one or have a good reference, contact your local bar office. They will ask basic details of your case and then refer you to a local practice who can handle it for a tiny retainer ($50 when I did it).
Also, lawyers are like any other contractor. You can get bids and don’t have to stick with one who isn’t listening, assuming you’re not already mid-trial.
Even if it wasn't legit, I would still treat something like this as, "Sure I'm not in Kentucky now, but I can't predict that I will never find myself in Kentucky interacting with any part of the legal system at any point in the future."
The prosecution was dumb enough to send such a shit document, they probably would have been dumb enough to drag him to court had he ignored it. I'm confident he would have ultimately prevailed, the question is, at what cost? Tens of thousands of dollars or more, in all likelihood.
all kinds of "secrets laws" and secret government stuff is the opposite of democracy.
any country that does this cannot say it's a free democracy without lying. (it seems there exist no free countries).
if the law is this corrupt, breaking it is justice. however you might have an unfortunate accident or be found to be a closet pedophile (or rapist, or other forms of reputation destruction) if you go against these kinds of secretive entities.
> if the law is this corrupt, breaking it is justice. however you might have an unfortunate accident if you go against these kinds of secretive entities.
I think the point of secret warrants and gag orders is that they can simply put you in prison for violating them, and you'll have pray ACLU or Amnesty International will be able to get you out...
I'm interested in the idea of the warrant canary, however. My own research into it has led me to believe that while they are supported by organizations like the EFF, that support may be more ideologically based than legally sound, and should the government take issue with their use, the author could have found himself in serious trouble for violating FISA (a case of breaking the intent of the law, not the letter; while there is a great deal of faith in the legal system to abnegate the former in favor of the latter, I would still be hesitant to tweak it's nose in such a manner). Are there any legal experts here that could weigh in?