NYC Lawyers Subpoena Code

RonMcMahon writes "Lawyers for the city of New York have subpoenaed the text message records of thousands of people involved in demonstrations at the 2004 Republican National Convention. Tad Hirsch, creator of the TXTmob code that enabled convention demonstrators to transmit messages to thousands of telephones, has been instructed to release the content of messages exchanged on the service and to identify people who sent and received messages. Hirsch argues that release of such information would be a violation of users' First Amendment and privacy rights. 'I think I have a moral responsibility to the people who use my service to protect their privacy,' said Hirsch."

Comments

Subpoena?

[bckspc]

It's GPLed! Just download the code at http://sourceforge.net/projects/txtmob/

Glad it's not Sony or Microsoft or some other corp

[electrictroy]

If this was a corporation (which has no soul or moral code), the content of the messages would already be in NYC's lawyers' hands.

Fortunately in this case, it's a man who believes in human rights.

Anonymous political speech

[dreamchaser]

Anonymous political speech has a long tradition in the US. Many of our founding fathers hid behind pseudonyms while writing many of what are termed 'The Federalist Papers' which laid much of the groundwork for the US Constitution.

If the messages were inciting people to break the law I could possibly understand, but on the face of what few facts I have on the subject right now my knee wants to jerk right into the Government's jaw a few times.

Re:Anonymous political speech

[squiggleslash]

Well, the whole point of breaking the law to overturn a bad law is that you're challenging it by standing up and saying "I'm prepared to be punished for this, because I don't believe it's just that others should be." So if your purpose in telling people to break the law is to encourage civil disobedience, but you yourself have no plans to be punished, then you're not doing it right.

A more important principle is that people shouldn't be denied their rights to participate in the democratic process because they've broken the law. That those convicted of crimes are permanently barred from voting in the majority of states is essentially a gateway to legalized vote-rigging (look at the lifestyles of your opponents and criminalize it), and a barrier to overturning unjust laws that affect large numbers of people.

T'was ever thus

[hyades1]

Every time you surrender your rights to the state in return for assurances that a) people who might be breaking some minor law like jaywalking have nothing to worry about and b) the new powers will be used only against the really, really bad people, should sit up and take notice. This is exactly the kind of thing you can expect.

How many people who want to exercise their legal right to protest will sit home next time because their career ambitions include jobs where even being on the same street as a protest could knock them off the hiring list?

It's always best to assume governments and police forces are led by lying, treacherous fascists. You will occasionally be pleasantly surprised to find that it's not the case. More often, you'll find out that power-tripping assholes are attracted to those jobs the same way child molesters are attracted to schoolgrounds and bank robbers are attracted to banks.

Re:T'was ever thus

[Omestes]

I think the parent is correct about much of modern protest, but not all. But even if it is abused, or done for no real reason, it still is a handy tool that we may need someday (or, arguably now).

I remember in college I had a bunch of friends telling me about the "die in" (basically laying down, acting dead-ish in the student union) they were holding. This was fine an noble, but they were completely unable to actually tell anyone what it was over, but they still got around 70-100 people to participate. I think, in the end, it was over the food supplier for the university or something, but I'm not sure since the organizers still won't tell me.

Yearly PRISM (the gay activist club) would organize demostations and protests for equal rights and gay marriage, one year it was then doing some stupid musical/play thing in the middle of campus. All it served was to make it impossible to study there, and to set them further apart from the rest of us (making it easier to single them out). Though the year previous they organized my favorite demonstration ever, "Gay people being gay", and it consisted of them sitting around the commons, studying, and socializing normally, while surrounded by yellow police tape, showing people that they were just people. I actually signed their petition that year.

Most protesters act outragious, and thus can pointed out at deviants and oddballs, which weakens to position that people are protesting. It makes it easier for someone to point at them and discredit them. By acting like morons they discredit their own cause. Ideally protesters should wear business attire, have professional signs, and offer and eloquent message, this way they have the image of at least treating their issue seriously, and don't come off as a bunch of mentally unstable ex-hippies wearing hemp pants who actually believe that the GOP eats babies.

Re:Glad it's not Sony or Microsoft or some other c

[will_die]

If he was interested in human rights we would release the text since knowing the information would help free the people being charged in the lawsuits or it would prove that something wrong was done and make sure those people had no chance of doing the same thing in the future.
Instead he stored the messages for some personnal or business reason.

Why does he have the data?

[Ed Avis]

The data cannot be subpoena'd if it does not exist. Why does his system keep records of who said what to whom? And if it needs the records, why doesn't it delete them after a short period? And if the system does keep an archive, why didn't he delete it manually before now, if people's privacy is so important?

Re:Glad it's not Sony or Microsoft or some other c

[Lockejaw]

I think GP's point is that it's easier to be evil when you aren't signing your own name to the order.