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Accused Killer Asks For Online Media Users' IDs

Posted by timothy on from the who's-poisoned-which-well dept.

SpaceGhost writes "According to the Houston Chronicle, the attorney for a Texas man charged in the death of a four-year-old 'has asked several local media outlets to provide the names of readers and listeners who commented about his client online,' stating that his client 'was struck by the conclusions people drew about his client and the specificity of some comments that made it appear they came from people with personal knowledge of the case.' Media outlets who have been subpoenaed include The Houston Chronicle, the Conroe Courier, KHOU (Houston area Channel 11, CBS affiliate) and KTRK (Houston area Channel 13, ABC affiliate)."

3 of 149 comments (clear)

  1. sigh by wizardforce · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Those who comment generally use pseudonyms, and the lawyer has asked for identifying information on about 300 of them.

    how many people would have ersonal knowledge of the case? probably no where near 300 so they're implying that a smaller number of people went out of their way to voice their opinion about the guy. It seems however, that they are on a fishing expedition with suspicions but no evidence at least indicated by TFA.

    --
    Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
  2. Re:Okay... by Runaway1956 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's just the standard fishing expedition. The defense doesn't HAVE a defense, so they are trying to confuse the issues. Notice that they don't name just a single paper, or a specific number of users or posts. It's a broad sweep with a huge net, meant to pull in a lot of material that will have maximum confusion value.

    --
    "Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
  3. Re:Not like we didn't know this was coming... by betterunixthanunix · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Two things that case screams to me:
    1. Not really the same issue that we are seeing here.
    2. If you want anonymity, STAY AWAY from blogging services, and more generally, stay away from the web. If you really have to use the web (i.e. because it is more popular than an anonymity-friendly system like Usenet), use a damned proxy server from a different jurisdiction.
    --
    Palm trees and 8