Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

From the Quotation of the day mailing list, 2008-02-16:

"Il y a plus affaire a interpreter les interpretations, qu'a interpreter les choses, et plus de livres sur les livres, que sur autre subject: nous ne faisons que nous entregloser. Tout fourmille de commentaires : d'autheurs, il en est grand cherte." -- Michel de Montaigne, Essais III 13 (published in 1588)

[The submitter's translation: "There's more activity interpreting interpretations than interpreting facts, and more books about books than on any other subject: all we do is footnote one another. Everything is teeming with commentaries: there's a great shortage of authors."]

(submitted to the mailing list by Jean Rogers)

A question that came to mind this morning: if Federal authorities tried to subpoena a newspaper's subscriber list and all records of newsstand sales for a particular day, would that be considered legit? Would it kick up a storm of "WTFingF?" reactions? Would it be treated as a fairly ordinary event? Or would it be calmly fought in a barrage of motions and countermotions as folks tried to pin down exactly where the line of reasonableness is?

(I honestly don't know the answer. I was going to start out by using that question as a rhetorical device, but then I realized that I don't actually know what the response would be if the Washington Post were ordered to turn over the names, addresses, SSNs, and bank account numbers of everyone who'd bought a copy of yesterday's paper or so much as checked the headlines on washingtonpost.com. Clues, please?)

The reason I'm wondering:

In a case that raises questions about online journalism and privacy rights, the U.S. Department of Justice sent a formal request to an independent news site ordering it to provide details of all reader visits on a certain day.

[...]

The subpoena (PDF) from U.S. Attorney Tim Morrison in Indianapolis demanded "all IP traffic to and from www.indymedia.us" on June 25, 2008. It instructed Clair to "include IP addresses, times, and any other identifying information," including e-mail addresses, physical addresses, registered accounts, and Indymedia readers' Social Security Numbers, bank account numbers, credit card numbers, and so on.

Is it just me, or does the idea of shipping every single packet by way of the onion router and using anonymized payment methods wherever possible and pseudonymous email accounts, seem just a bit more reasonable than it did a week ago? Maybe not because I expect my own government to find anything they'd bother to use against me in this kind of fishing expedition, but just to frustrate such attempts in the future (uh, assuming a large majority of other Internet users adopted the same habits, that is).

Maybe all of this will look very different to me after I've slept (or after my body finally vanquishes this damned virus and I can breathe properly again). Or maybe not. At the moment I'm finding the idea of serving a news site such a broad subpoena somewhat disconcerting.

I should probably disclose that I haven't read that PDF yet and am going on the description of it at the site I linked to.

Thought I was doing better yesterday; am doing much worse today. Didn't see downturn coming, and bought too little cough syrup. ( Read more... )

And then, to make another cup of cofee, tea, or broth (ain't decided which yet). And see whether that calms the soreness in my throat enough to let me fall asleep instead of feeling like I'm choking.