Administration Asks Appeals Court To Compel ISP Searches

Wed Jun 1 19:50:14 UTC 2005

On Wed, 1 Jun 2005, Barry Shein wrote:

> A major concern is indemnification and immunity for the ISP.

This sort of power was greatly expanded by a suspiciouly intentioned US
bill-turned-law from 2001 whose name I dare not mention in cleartext (<g>),
which allows such subpoenaless probes into far more information repositories
than they were originally allowed, including banks, many more forms of
communications services, travel services, consumer data, and libraries.
Nearly all of these expansive -- and in some cases completely judiciary
bypassing -- changes are coupled with implicit gag order subsections.

Very little attention was paid (whether accidentally or deliberately I won't
dare question) to the indemnity concerns about those implicit gag order
subsections.  Or, in other words, they have no "out clauses" to allow
disclosure of the probe(s) in a legal case involving the same information.
That means such a situation could indeed leave you...

> way up the creek without a paddle.

-- 
-- Todd Vierling <tv at duh.org> <tv at pobox.com> <todd at vierling.name>