So, some inflated ego has decided it would be a good idea to subpoena someone over the commments section on their blog.
Now we are into my part of the woods. Come, let me show where the rotting corpses lie.
The relevant case law, that actually has a ruling, not just a filing and some motions, but a real live judge's ruling, is from a case titled State of Illinois v. Priscilla Schrock(PDF, 3.1 MB).
How do I know all this?
Because I paid for the lawyer that won that case.
Priscilla Schrock was the County Clerk of Cumberland County, Illinois, and she was facing criminal charges for the crime of embezzlement.
Her defense attorney believed that it would be in his client's interest for some potential witnesses to be demonstrated before the court as not impartial, mostly by proving that they had made statements disparaging Priscilla Schrock.
Her attorney believed that disparaging comments about his client had been made on an anonymous message board at a local internet service provider. And it was true, there were many disparaging comments about Patricia Schrock on the message board. Her attorney thought that by matching those comments to individuals that may be called to testify to the facts of the trial, he could demonstrate that the witnesses were hostile to Priscilla Schrock, could probably treat them differently under the law as he questioned them, and could possibly call into question the witnesses motivations for their statements against Priscilla Schrock.
So he swore out a subpoena against the internet service provider, requiring them to produce information related to the identity of posters of 40 or so specific messages.
Did you know that lawyers issue subpoenas, not judges? As officers of the court they are given the power to compel people to deliver information or testimony.
Now, the small internet service provider had a problem. See, the law requires that internet service providers vigorously protect their clients privacy, and the failure to do so makes them liable to the client for not protecting those rights if they fail to do so. So, if your internet service provider reveals your identity without attempting to protect that identity, then you can sue your ISP.
And let's not even get into the part of the law that states that an ISP is required to notify any of their customers that are implicated in a lawsuit, so the client has the ability to muster their own defense, if they so choose. So clients are now having to be contacted, in a legally defensible manner, and in such a way that their identity won't be compromised. Did I mention that this is occuring in such a rural area that people don't have their mail delivered to their homes in town, but collect their mail at the local post office. In other words, 40 people picking up registered mail at the local post office doesn't stay very quiet for very long. Small town life, in all it's glory. Quick, hire a bunch of messengers from out of town. Fun, fun.
The small internet service provider looks over the facts, consults with a very expensive lawyer, and decides to file a motion to quash the subpoena filed by Priscilla Schrock's attorney, on the grounds that it violates the first ammendmant rights of the message board posters, and puts an undue burden on the internet service provider to produce the information.
The judge ruled against Priscilla Schrock in her attempts to force the internet service provider to reveal whatever information relating to the identities of message posters, stating that her right to collect information for her defense was not greater than the rights of message board posters to remain anonymous.
And that is how only the fifth ruling on internet privacy from any court in the country came out of a Circuit Court in Cumberland County, Illinois, an area so rural that there isn't even one stop light in the whole county.
Most internet related lawsuits are never ruled on by judges because one or both parties fold up before it gets expensive, or, appalingly, the person's privacy is not defended by the institution charged with doing so, and most people don't sue people for not defending their privacy, even though they have a case.
But our little internet service provider didn't much like being dragged into this mess, and we did what we would hope that our internet service provider would do for us if we were the clients. So we dug in our heels, spent the money, and won a ruling.
And Priscilla Schrock was found guilty of stealing $165,000 from an old couple that weren't able to defend themselves due to infirmities related to age.
So, if you dress for riding your bike, and you are not Lance Armstrong, you are basically a dork.
If you do not dress for riding your bike, in other words, don't put on the uniform of the athlete, then you are just some guy on a bike in his work clothes. Either no license, or swimming upstream against the average schmuck looking at you from his SUV(or more accurately, looked at by the guy in his Tercel who hopes to drive an SUV someday, but can't even catch up to his credit cards).
Really, if you were doing it for exercise, then you would ride a stationary bike at the gym.
This riding bikes on the road is obviously for maniacs.
Combine that with the myth of Dad letting go of the seat, and then telling you for the first time, from tens of feet further behind you than you ever imagined, "You're doing it on your own!". From independance to dork in 20 years.
Can you tell my Dad stopped by today with his not too bad bike, dressed not for riding? We had a good 15 minute conversation with me standing in the street, and him riding fidure eights around me. He looked like he was having more fun than me standing still.
Might need to get a bike, and look like a dork. Whenever anyone sneers at me I'll just shout "Your wife has secret credit cards you know nothing about!'.
She might not, but the SUV payments are usually enough to make them think.
So, hit the Yahoo headlines....
Voice Said to Be Bin Laden Vows Attacks
Bush: No N. Korea Nonaggression Treaty
Suspect Warned of Contraband on Planes
Four Palestinians Killed in Clashes
Marine Reservists Accused of Mistreatmen
Lawsuits Loom in Deadly N.Y. Ferry Crash
Comatose Woman Denied Final Communion
Targets of File-Sharing Lawsuits Warned
L.A. Officer in Trouble Over Celeb Files
... and I immediately want to go back to bed. Remind me to kick William Gibson and Robert Heinlein right in the fucking shin the next time I see them.
How do you create terrorists? That's easy enough, a little ideological fanaticism, maybe a little religious fervor, but mostly taking advantage of young minds. Like the Army does.
Now, how do you undo your little experiment? Say you've got a small army of fanatical soldiers willing to die for their cause. How do you get them to go live normal lives, and not form a new, even more pure and extreme splinter group, that maybe kills the true traitors to their cause(that would be you, original terrorist creator)?
See how someone dealt with that exact problem. Interesting.
There was a FrontLine show on PBS that most of you have probably heard about. It had a lot of information about the plans to deal with a post-Saddam Iraq, how the Iraqi National Congress managed to talk the US government into getting the US military to do it's stated job of overthrowing the existing regime in Iraq. In general, it was as gruesome as you might imagine this whole mess will look to historians, later looking back on what the hell we had in mind when we started this cluster fuck. Short answer: we had no idea what we were getting into, and those that might have known were motivated to lie to us, and we were dumb enough to not take their motivation into account for our own political reasons. It's really ugly, but, hell, you already knew that.
The most interesting part is that the State Department had spent a bunch of time, money, and intellectual resources to develop a detailed plan of how to deal with a post Saddam Iraq. They literally had a playbook.
That was discarded. Know why? Apparently the State Dapartment was against the idea of sending the US Army out carousing for political sport, and believed that the war on terror required us to deal with other problems of more pressing importance than a petty thug dictator ruling over squalor due to wars and years of UN sanctions.
Since the State Department obviously lost that argument, and the US Army was sent in for sport, and political reasons, the result was that the State Department was on the outside, because in a modern government of the world's only superpower apparently petty infighting is really important.
So those that won the argument(who were apparently lying to bolster their pre-war postions) were able to exclude any influence of the State Department, especially their little fully developed plan for post-war Iraq, that was developed by people that had some idea of what they were doing, and predicted the complete shit storm we are now experiencing.
The only conclusion that I can reach honestly is that the institutions of American democracy move in crude and clumsy ways. Really crude, and especially clumsy ways.
It's like finding about that the art work you have been admiring was drawn by a chimpanzee.
I'm certain it was just luck that those founding fathers were there in the late 1700's, cause I haven't seen much since then to justify the optimism they wrote into our original documents. Frankly, it looks like we have just graduated from blowing up some Afghan warlord's enemies wedding party with $50 million bombers to wasting and taking over a country for a slightly more informed and modern Iraqi warlord and a group of other Iraqi's that wanted Saddam out of the way and figured that this was the best way to get the job done.
We should feel like the sorority girl, who when asked "what is the first thing you do in the morning?" replies "get dressed and go home".
But we won't. We'll continue to lie to ourselves. I'm sure there is a reason that isn't demeaning and small, but for right now it just looks like we are big and stupid.
Nobody in the world ever gets what they want and that is beautiful.
Everybody dies frustrated and sad and that is beautiful.
They Might Be Giants.
I'm torn. Maybe you can help me make up my mind.