You Are Not a Lawyer

Paul Ohm is starting a new "very occasional" feature on the Freedom To Tinker blog called You Are Not a Lawyer — "In this series, I will try to disabuse computer scientists and other technically minded people of some commonly held misconceptions about the law (and the legal system)." In the first installment, Ohm walks through the reasons why many techies' faith in the presence of "reasonable doubt" is so misplaced. "When techies think about criminal law, and in particular crimes committed online, they tend to fixate on [the 'beyond a reasonable doubt'] legal standard, dreaming up ways people can use technology to inject doubt into the evidence to avoid being convicted. I can't count how many conversations I have had with techies about things like the 'open wireless access point defense,' the 'trojaned computer defense,' the 'NAT-ted firewall defense,' and the 'dynamic IP address defense.' ... People who place stock in these theories and tools are neglecting an important drawback. There are another set of legal standards — the legal standards governing search and seizure — you should worry about long before you ever get to 'beyond a reasonable doubt.'"

Comments

Re:Wow! Who ever would have guessed that!?

[TenDollarMan]

I'm a lawyer, and I'm getting a kick out of these replies, etc.

A technique that defence lawyers use is to attack the legitimacy of the gathering of the evidence. Succeed there, and it all becomes inadmissible, and the prosecution fails.

Never mind your fucking Venn diagrams.

That, I believe, settles the matter.

Re:Ohm's Law?

[snspdaarf]

You do the same thing you do when you need a doctor and are new in town. You ask people, you look at the specialty of the professional in question, and you call for an appointment. You do not have to have a lawyer on retainer at all times. Many times a first visit is free, so if you get a bad vibe from a lawyer, or don't feel like they are listening to your concerns, try another. While I would not want a patent lawyer defending me in criminal court, if I was arrested and the only lawyer I knew was a patent lawyer, I would call him and ask for help getting the right kind.