Feds Block EFF Look at Google/DoJ Contacts

netbuzz writes "The Electronic Frontier Foundation wants to know all there is to know about contacts between Google and a Justice Department official involved in a highly charged 2006 government-snooping dispute that ensnared the search giant. That DoJ official, Jane Horvath, was subsequently hired by Google last year as senior privacy counsel. The DoJ has refused for six months to release public information about the matter being requested by EFF."

Comments

Re:Where's the Article?

[gclef]

It was in the firehose entry...why the editors removed that bit of info is not clear:

http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/25435

Re:5th Ammendment?

[TheRealMindChild]

I honestly don't know about the case at hand, but invoking the 5th amendment is not saying you are guilty or not... similar to refusing to give a police officer your drivers license when you are walking to the store at 1AM, or not letting airport security boot up your laptop and look through it. They would like you to think that refusal is implication of some guilt, but when it comes down to it, what they are asking has nothing to do with the problem at hand. If I am walking down the street, there is NO reason to expect that I would even have a drivers license, let alone give it up when I AM NOT DRIVING. Same with airport security snooping in my laptop... I am not plugging my laptop into your plane, your servers, or anything that should concern you. It has nothing to do with people who have a bomb in their luggage.

In cases of the 5th amendment, you can obviously call upon it when you have something to hide. You can also invoke it on principle to the fact that what I am NOT telling you has no relevance to the case at hand.

Imagine you are walking along the street and decide to rob a store. You bust into the store, start helping yourself to whatever, and you notice the store keeper being beat and raped. You call it in, it comes to trial, and all of a sudden the defendants lawyer asks you what were you doing in the store after it was closed. Obviously, you were robbing the store, but REGARDLESS, that has NOTHING to do with the beating and raping of the store keeper. This is a perfect example of why you would plead the 5th.

Re:Where's the Article?

[_xeno_]

Slashdot has added a URL field in the story submission form. (My guess is that this URL is intended for automated dupe checking.) This link gets displayed in the Firehose entry after the article.

It would appear it doesn't get displayed should the story get accepted. I guess the theory was that the editors would edit the link in. Something that, in practice, it would appear they frequently forget.

So that's my guess as to why it's missing in the article. It's not that CmdrTaco removed it, just that he forgot to add it to the story text.