Tuesday, January 18, 2011

U.S. Twitter Subpoena Is Harassment, Lawyer Says

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U.S. prosecutors’ demand that the microblogging service Twitter Inc. hand over data about users with ties to WikiLeaks amounts to harassment, said a lawyer for Julian Assange, the website’s founder.

The Justice Department subpoena, approved last month in federal court and later unsealed, also violates the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable government searches, Assange’s lawyer Mark Stephens said today in a telephone interview in London. WikiLeaks is an organization that publishes leaked documents on its website.

“The Department of Justice is turning into an agent of harassment rather than an agent of law,” Stephens, of the firm Finers Stephens Innocent LLP, said. “They’re shaking the tree to see if anything drops out, but more important they are shaking down people who are supporters of WikiLeaks.”

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said Nov. 29 that the Justice Department is investigating the posting by WikiLeaks of thousands of classified U.S. diplomatic communications and military documents. Lawyers have said the U.S. will likely charge Assange with espionage.

“To help users protect their rights, it’s our policy to notify users about law enforcement and governmental requests for their information, unless we are prevented by law from doing so,” Twitter spokeswoman Carolyn Penner said in an e-mail.


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Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Why Twitter Was the Only Company to Challenge the Secret WikiLeaks Subpoena

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Secret subpoenas of the kind the Department of Justice sent Twitter are apparently not unusual. In fact, other tech companies may also have received similar WikiLeaks-related requests. But what is unusual in this story is that Twitter resisted. Which raises an interesting question: Assuming that Twitter was not the only company to have been served a secret subpoena, why was it the only company that fought back? The answer might lie in the figure leading Twitter’s legal efforts, Alexander Macgillivray (right), an incredibly mild mannered (really) but sharp-as-a-tack cyber law expert.

Twitter’s general counsel comes out of Harvard’s prestigious Berkman Center for Internet and Society, the cyber law powerhouse that has churned out some of the leading Internet legal thinkers. The center was founded a little over a decade ago by none other than Charles Nesson, the famous defender of Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg. While at Harvard, Macgillivray helped teach a course on the law of cyberspace, along with Wendy Seltzer, a fellow at Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy. Today Seltzer leads the Chilling Effects clearinghouse, a collaboration between several law schools and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which tracks legal challenges to lawful online activity.


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Tuesday, January 11, 2011

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Some people think that Seth Rogen is making his crime-fighting debut this week in The Green Hornet. Those people are mistaken.

Yes, Rogen’s adaptation of the classic pulp character is fighting its way into theaters this weekend, but his turn as Britt Reid is hardly the first time that he’s played a gun-toting hero. Rogen already covered that territory as pothead process server Dale Denton in 2008′s Pineapple Express, and based on comments from Rogen’s screenwriting partner and pal Evan Goldberg, he could be headed back into the wacky world of weed-infused misadventures before much longer.

Speaking with Screen Rant, Goldberg revealed:

“I’m even hesitant to make Pineapple 2, but I’m loosening up to it as of like the last few weeks. Recently we were at Danny Mcbride’s wedding, and we were all there, well David couldn’t make it (David Gordon Green, the director of Pineapple Express); but me, (James) Franco, Seth and Danny were all there and I thought; ‘this is fun, I have fun with these guys.’ … Everyone has always wanted to do it, me and Seth were very hesitant, but frankly I was the driving force behind that hesitancy. I just kept thinking, you know not to say we’re the Coen Brothers, because we’re super not – they’re my idols in a lot of ways – but those guys never make a sequel. Like, great, great films don’t have sequels. … hopefully, there will be a sequel.”

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Thursday, January 06, 2011

Casey Anthony Team Denied Subpoena for Blogger's Photos

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Casey Anthony's defense attorneys suffered another blow today when they were denied a subpoena to collect what they suspect are a blogger's photos of the vacant, wooded area where her daughter's remains were found in 2008.

Judge Belvin Perry this afternoon denied a defense motion to subpoena searcher Joe Jordan's blog and internet photos, finding no factual basis to compel those items that may have appeared online.

Perry was not satisfied they would reveal meaningful "tangible" evidence and he expressed concerns that the defense was going on a "fishing expedition."

"I cannot give you a license to fish," Perry said soon before issuing his ruling today.
Perry did, however, deny the motion without prejudice, meaning the defense attorneys could revisit the issue if they can make a more compelling argument for the obtaining the information they seek.

Anthony, 24, is charged with first-degree murder in the 2008 death of her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee Marie, whose body was found in a lot off Suburban Drive near the Anthony home months after she was reported missing.

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Wednesday, January 05, 2011

Louisville Police to get Electronic Subpoenas in January

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A decades-old problem of making sure Louisville Metro Police officers know when they need to be in court may be fixed, thanks to a new electronic subpoena system that will start next month.

Outgoing Mayor Jerry Abramson stood with Police Chief Robert White and other city officials Monday to announce the end of the county's cumbersome system of hand-delivering subpoenas to officers, an antiquated process that has helped cause thousands of felony and misdemeanor cases to be dismissed when police failed to appear.

“It will improve by leaps and bounds everything that we have been able to do in terms of subpoenaing,” said Abramson, noting the city is funding the new system through $480,000 in federal stimulus funds. “It will become a model for other communities statewide.”

In recent years, an estimated 10 percent of the approximately 100,000 paper subpoenas issued annually to Louisville police never reached officers, according to department officials.

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Tuesday, January 04, 2011

A Day in the Life of a Process Server — Business is Good

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TAMPA, Florida — Michael G. Murray pulls his Honda Civic up to the gatehouse at Cheval Golf and Country Club, one of Hillsborough County's priciest residential neighborhoods. The guard inside smiles as she takes Murray's laminated photo ID, which identifies him as a certified process server.

"You again," Cheval's gatekeeper says with a grin. "How many you got this time?"

Murray, 45, pulls the top papers from a stack of recently filed foreclosure complaints piled on the armrest. "Just one stop today," he says as the guard returns his ID.

"All right then," she says. "Good luck!"

From the front seat of Murray's car, which racks up about 50,000 miles a year zigzagging around northwest Hillsborough County, one thing is clear: Florida's foreclosure wave has washed away class distinctions. On this day in late November, he'll try to deliver foreclosure papers to owners of a double-wide as well as a $1.6 million lakeside mansion. He'll ring doorbells at a small pink-shuttered block home with grass gone to sand, a condo with a U.S. Marine emblem on the door and a sprawling corner-lot estate with a well-tended lawn.

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