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From: karish@mindcrf.UUCP (Chuck Karish)
Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk
Subject: The press and the law (was: Re: Musing on Constitutionality)
Message-ID: <9009091723.AA23905@mindcrf.mindcraft.com>
Date: 9 Sep 90 17:23:01 GMT
References: <11503@medusa.cs.purdue.edu> <82778@aerospace.AERO.ORG> <11521@medusa.cs.purdue.edu> <1990Sep3.182712.2260@world.std.com> <11548@medusa.cs.purdue.edu> <12945@paperboy.OSF.ORG> <11608@medusa.cs.purdue.edu>
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In article <11608@medusa.cs.purdue.edu> spaf@cs.purdue.edu
(Gene Spafford) writes:
>I have a second question for any legal historian types out there.  A
>comparison has been made here between the Phrack case and the Pentagon
>Papers.  The theme has been that law enforcement didn't try to
>confiscate the printing presses of the newspaper.  Yes, but the
>question I have is, did they obtain a search warrant and confiscate
>any of the newspaper's files?  The confiscations & searches done
>recently on computer systems seems to have been done because they have
>attached storage, not because they are used as publishing tools.  If
>that is the case, the comparison obviously falls to pieces.

[ WARNING: I'm not a lawyer.  If you need an accredited authority figure,
  hit 'n' now. ]


The Red Squad of the Palo Alto, California police force searched the
offices of the Stanford Daily newspaper, with a search warrant, in
1970.  They were looking for unpublished notes and photographs made
during several anti-war demonstrations.

This case eventually was argued before the US Supreme Court.  The court
ruled that the search violated the constitutional guarantees of freedom
of the press.

While this precedent does not match precisely the issues surrounding
the recent computer seizures, it does show that there is a significant
constitutional issue at stake here.

As for the `attached storage' argument, this is one more example to
show that rules that may be appropriate in the context of print
journalism can become much more oppressive when they're applied to
electronic journalism.  In order to protect the property rights of Bell
South, the Secret Service compromised the privacy of Jolnet's
subscribers (email confiscated with the system), the property rights of
the system operator, who was cooperative with the authorities to the
extent of actually pointing out the suspect document to AT&T, and the
right of Phrack's publishers (Jolnet subscribers) to produce their
journal.

>I'm not going to pursue this point further unless someone with
>appropriate research and facts cares to fill in the background for
>the rest of us.

Good.  I'm tired of reading articles that complain because no one
responds to the poster's request that someone else do his homework for
him.

I'm glad Gene brought up some of the points that he did; I'd have
been much more impressed if he'd found the relevant legal information
off line and brought it to our attention.
-- 

	Chuck Karish		karish@mindcraft.com
	Mindcraft, Inc.		(415) 323-9000