Facebook Moderator Gets Subpoena in Wikileaks Case

netbuzz writes "Lawyers for the Swiss bank that got the plug pulled on Wikileaks.org have dragged a Stanford grad student/human rights activist into the case because he moderated a discussion group about Wikileaks on Facebook. He has no relation to Wikileaks or the case, other than that he helped authenticate documents — completely unrelated to the bank matter — that were posted on Wikileaks. The guy and his lawyer have done a nice job of making lemonade out of this lemon, though."

Comments

Shotgun lawsuit?

[KublaiKhan]

Seems these days that, especially in these high profile cases, the lawyers are suing everybody even connected with the alleged transgressor, whether or not (as is certainly the case here) they have liability of any sort.

Actually, this goes a bit beyond a 'shotgun' lawsuit--this is more a handgrenade lawsuit, or a roadside bomb lawsuit.

Is there perhaps some practical means to force someone filing suit to show that the person they're filing suit against is even vaguely the correct one?

Re:Shotgun lawsuit?

[KublaiKhan]

It's still legal action directed against someone who's entirely irrelevant to the matter at hand.

Not that these folks seem to get the concept of logic, what with their statements of "these documents are fake...but they're our private documents" and the like.

Last time I saw logic like that displayed was with the records of the Scientology trial from a while back, the one where they denied the Xenu story but claimed the documents elucidating it were secret church copyrighted stuff.

Re:Noam Chomsky

[nuzak]

Enjoining the specific document would of course require the cooperation of WikiLeaks, which for some inexplicable reason, it doesn't want to do :^)

This is really rich though. At this rate, the Swiss authorities are likely to bring the hammer down on Julius Baer, just to get their banking system out of the spotlight. Normally it'd blow over, but these clowns just keep handing major international media new stories on this every damn day.

Re:That is indeed like goldy, but made of iron.

[KublaiKhan]

Well, hell, if he's -already- having to hire the lawyer, he may as well -do- something with 'im, ne? No sense wasting money; it'll take the same number of billable hours to accomplish either thing.

So this apparently means that ...

[MrNougat]

Now, a prosecuting attorney on any case - even on a case with questionable merit to begin with - can subpoena anyone they like, so long as they can demonstrate that the target of the subpoena may have discussed the issue in the case with other people who are also not related to the case in any other fashion?

I don't understand why the obviously innocent bystander's attorney has to play that weird gambit. Shouldn't the argument be that the target of the subpoena is completely unrelated to the case, and now you have to pay the costs this innocent defendant has incurred?

Re:So this apparently means that ...

[91degrees]

I think so. It seems that the legal system is designed with an assumption that being dragged away from your normal life to sit in a courtroom to answer probing questions is of minimal inconvenience.

Re:Facebook are bastards!

[Anonymous Coward]

In other words, you're perfectly happy to tell potentially highly-damaging lies about an innocent third party in order to push your agenda, which makes you as bad as anyone in the Moroccan government.

It's is giving Wikileaks publicity

[FromTheAir]

That is a positive. Interesting how it works but it's the old ban a book and everyone wants to read it, so it gets read which is the opposite the objective of the censors. Whenever you try to silence something you bring attention to it. This bank is bringing attention to The New Transparency and the end of secrets.