If You're Going To Forge An Email By Mark Zuckerberg, Make Sure You Use Proper English

from the not-txt-spk dept

We've already mentioned that Facebook is claiming that the email evidence presented by Paul Ceglia for his claim that he should own a huge chunk of Facebook was a fraud. Time's Techland blog digs a little deeper into the filing and highlights the research of a linguistics expert Facebook hired to compare known emails from Zuckerberg at the time, with the emails Ceglia presented as Zuckerberg's, suggesting that Ceglia's versions do not match Zuckerberg's standard email writing style. Most interesting? The emails Ceglia presented as evidence show a much less formal writing style, whereas Zuckerberg's emails use proper punctuation:

Apostrophes

A) Questionable Zuckerberg writes:

"doesnt," "parents" (parents'), "sites" (site's = contraction for “site is”), and "sites" (site's = possessive)

B) Real Zuckerberg's contractions and possessives are all used correctly. So there's that.

Suspension Points

A) Questionable Zuckerberg writes:

“. . . I've been tweaking the search engine today,” with spaces in between his suspension points.

B) Real Zuckerberg doesn't space out his suspension points. For example: “So let me know…”

Spelling

A) Questionable Zuckerberg writes these words as follows:

“back end” (two words), “internet” (lower case “I”), and “can not” (two words)

B) Real Zuckerberg writes:

“backend” (one word), “Internet” (capital “i”), and “cannot” (one word)

The link has some more examples as well, but this is certainly fascinating. Obviously, this is from Facebook's hired expert, but it does make you realize just how much people have specific language "tics" in how they write, and how difficult it is to fake that, sometimes.

Filed Under: email, linguistics, mark zuckerberg, paul ceglia
Companies: facebook

Claims In E-Mail Sent Via Google Found To Be Opinion, Not Libel

from the we-need-legal-protection-to-form-an-opinion? dept

Another day, another bizarre lawsuit. Well, it would be "bizarre" but we see way too much of this sort of thing to truly consider it out of the ordinary. The case, Sandals Resorts v. Google, deals with an email sent to "numerous recipients" that detailed Sandals Resorts' usage of state subsidies in Jamaica while hiring Jamaicans for only low-paying, menial jobs. 

Sandals Resorts took issue with the "compare and contrast" tone of the email, which highlighted the top dollar lifestyle of its executives while making the point that the average Jamaican lived in far less luxury. Additionally, the email pointed out that all top paying jobs went to foreigners. At this point, Sandals Resorts decided to play the race card and sue Google for libel in NY, citing precedent:

Sandals alleged the e-mail was false and defamatory in claiming that the company was racist. It said that an accusation of racism was inherently a basis for a libel claim, relying on the Appellate Division case of Herlihy v. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 214 AD2d 250 (1995). In that case, a former MOMA employee claimed that she was falsely accused of making anti-Semitic remarks and then fired. The court ruled that the allegation of anti-Semitism was an example of "slander per se" and denied the museum summary judgment.

Their next move was to go after Google, rather than the end user who actually crafted the email, which would be par for the course. Google = $$$! asjft3092@gmail.com? Not so much. And then came the attempted land grab (internetically-speaking):

Sandals asked the court to order Google to turn over 'all information concerning the Google account de-signated asjft3092@gmail.com, including but not limited to all e-mail, instant messages, text messages, buddy lists, address books, contact lists, account histories, account settings, profiles, mail boxes, folder structure, detailed billing, user activity records (log on and log off times), user identification records, phone number access records, ISP access records, and all information provided by the user at the time the account was created."

Whoa. That's a lot of information. And all of this is needed to deal with one email that makes the suggestion that Sandals Resorts is benefitting unfairly from a combination of state subsidies and cheap local labor? Fortunately, the presiding Justice headed them off:

In March 2010, NY Supreme Court Justice Alice Schlesinger denied the petition, ruling that the e-mail "does not contain assertions of fact, nor would a reasonable person construe that it does."

Justice Schlesinger also noted that the e-mail's numerous links to outside sources invited readers to draw their own conclusions and suggest "that the account holder's words are meant to provoke either thought or discussion and are therefore protected speech.

Finally, the judge said the company offered no evidence that it was harmed by the e-mail.

Further smackdown was supplied by Justice Saxe:

"Considering the e-mail in question here as a whole, we find that it is an exercise in rhetoric, seeking to raise questions in the mind of the reader regarding the role of Jamaican nationals in the Sandals resorts located in Jamaica," Justice Saxe wrote for the court.

He noted that the e-mail was "replete with rhetorical questions, asked either in relation to a link to an article about Sandals' companies or executives or in relation to a link to a photograph from the resorts' on-line public relations materials. Its apparent purpose is not to characterize Sandals Resorts as racist. It is to call the reader's attention to the writer's belief that the native people of Jamaica, specifically the taxpayers, are providing financial support for the resorts on their island, but are not reaping commensurate financial rewards for that investment."

All of this would seem self-apparent, but I suppose if you're looking to, a) insulate yourself from criticism, and b) profit from the experience, all common sense goes out the window faster than your remaining reputation. The legal system worked as it should, protecting free speech and, more importantly, setting additional precendent for the open exchange of ideas on the internet:

The decision, written by Justice David B. Saxe, highlights the "freewheeling" nature of online communications, pointing out that readers generally give statements in private e-mails, blogs and other online media less credence than statements in traditional media, and are less likely to understand them as statements of fact. Courts, the judge wrote, must adjust their standards for libel accordingly.

If nothing else, we know for a fact that "traditional media" would certainly agree that the untamed internet deserves "less credence," but other than that, Saxe is dead on: online communication is nothing if not "freewheeling." And anyone who's waded in the comment threads here at Techdirt would certainly agree with this:

The opinion approvingly quotes law review articles that made the case that online communications "are often the repository of a wide range of casual, emotive, and imprecise speech..."

So, chalk up one for the little guy. To the flame wars! (Possibly already in progress.)

 

 

Filed Under: defamation, email, libel
Companies: google, sandals

Senator Leahy Wants To Update Digital Privacy Law; Some Good, Some Bad

from the well,-it's-a-start dept

For years, there have been discussions in DC about how we need an update to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), which was put in place in 1986 -- way before most people even thought about electronic communications. Much of ECPA was woefully out of date, especially when it came to content stored on remote servers. Senator Patrick Leahy has finally introduced a bill that would update ECPA, and in typical DC fashion, there are some good things in there, but plenty of bad things as well. The key points are that it would require warrants for searches of email and other electronic communications.

There's been debate on this for years, with some (mainly on the side of law enforcement) arguing that the "third party doctrine" meant that emails stored on third party servers were not subject to 4th Amendment hurdles (probable cause, warrant, etc.). To make matters more confusing, courts have issued very mixed rulings on the matter. The new Leahy bill tries to make it clear that accessing such email requires a warrant. That's a good thing.

The new bill would also require that those, whose content was accessed, be notified within three days and that they be given a copy of the warrant. There is a 90 day exception, in specific cases where disclosing the info would "imperil" an ongoing investigation or the ever popular, if overly vague, "national security." Another bit of good news: the law would cover location data from a phone or device -- something law enforcement has often tried to access without warrants.

The concerns about the bill, however, are focused on the fact that it offers an exemption, so long as law enforcement claims that the mater is one of "cybersecurity," which is, again, broad and vague and seems like the sort of "exemption" that will be used as a matter of course. There are also concerns that the bill does not include transparency in the form of reporting requirements, detailing how often these searches are done.

ECPA definitely needs updating, but it should be updated properly and without huge loopholes.

Filed Under: ecpa, email, patrick leahy, privacy

How Bin Laden Emailed Without Internet: Sneakernet-To-The-Home

from the well,-that's-one-way-to-do-things dept

There have been plenty of reports about how the compound where Bin Laden apparently lived for the past few years had no phone or internet connections (and, in fact, that was part of what tipped US intelligence off to who was in there). However, at the same time, it was known that Al Qaeda regularly used email to communicate, leading some to assume that Bin Laden wasn't as involved. However, new reports from the technology seized at the compound apparently show that Bin Laden was a regular emailer, he just used a human courier to act as the "last mile" between his computer and the network in order to avoid detection:

Holed up in his walled compound in northeast Pakistan with no phone or Internet capabilities, bin Laden would type a message on his computer without an Internet connection, then save it using a thumb-sized flash drive. He then passed the flash drive to a trusted courier, who would head for a distant Internet cafe.

At that location, the courier would plug the memory drive into a computer, copy bin Laden's message into an email and send it. Reversing the process, the courier would copy any incoming email to the flash drive and return to the compound, where bin Laden would read his messages offline.

Of course, this also means that the emails were stored, meaning that US officials now have a bunch of email info. What's interesting is that the AP article suggests this means the feds will now issue a ton of National Security Letters to get info on those accounts. What I'm wondering is why use NSLs in this situation, when it shouldn't be difficult at all to get a full warrant from a court? It seems that they would have plenty of info to get a warrant. So why use NSLs?

Filed Under: bin laden, email, national security letters

Replying To An Email Does Not Create A Contract (And Does Not Require Walmart Pay $600 Billion)

from the that's-not-how-the-law-works... dept

While this case involves one of the many ridiculous lawsuits filed by individuals demanding insane sums of money from companies for no good reasons, there are some good points in here (also, like many of these lawsuits, it involves a plaintiff who has history of filing lawsuits). Apparently, a guy by the name of David Stebbins sued Walmart. To understand the basis of the lawsuit, you have to understand that he sent various companies a link to a "contract" on his MySpace page, which he claims presents a binding contract (if you're particularly risk averse, you may want to avoid clicking on that link, though it's difficult to believe any such contract is valid). Here are some snippets from the faux contract:

My name is David Anthony Stebbins, and I live in Harrison, AR. I am sending a link to this webpage to various companies to put you on notice: If you contact me in any way, shape, or form, you hereby acknowledge that you have read, understand, and agree to be legally bound by the terms below.

[...]

This will also take effect if I attempt to contact you, and, upon hearing my name, you do not cease communications with me on the spot.

[...] You hereby agree to allow me to use, distribute, and sell the rights to your name, physical likeness, and any intellectual property that you may own, throughout the universe, for no fee, for all eternity.

You hereby agree to not request, nor accept any offer for, any third party to remove any material that I use that you feel that you own the copyright to.

You hereby agree that, for now and for all eternity, in the event that I ask you a question, you must answer it promptly, accurately, and truthfully.

You hereby agree to never

Interrupt me when I am speaking, for all eternity.

Hang up on me in any phone call, for all eternity.

Block my attempts to communicate with you, for any reason, for all eternity.

Ask me a question that I have previously answered, for all eternity.

Demonstrate any rudeness, annoyance, or disrespect, however petty, against me, for all eternity.

Accuse me of lying, or any variation thereof, for all eternity.

It goes on along those lines. Anyway, he sent the email to Walmart with the link to this contract. Walmart customer care sent back a standard, boilerplate reply suggesting he contact a different department, which Stebbins used to claim the contract had been entered into (in combination with him also buying a gallon of milk -- don't ask). He sent a letter to Walmart demanding arbitration to settle their "legal dispute." When Walmart failed to agree to arbitration within 24-hours, he claims that he wins and should get $600 billion (with a b):

"since Wal–Mart did not accept the arbitration invitation within twenty-four hours of receiving it, he automatically wins regardless of the merits of the case and is entitled to an award of six-hundred billion dollars."

Not surprisingly, the court isn't buying it:

Plaintiff maintains Wal–Mart accepted the contract by its “act” of replying to his e-mail....The e-mails from Plaintiff are self-serving documents that did not form the basis for any conduct or performance on Wal–Mart's part....In this case, Wal–Mart performed no act. It merely replied to two e-mails by directing the Plaintiff to the correct department. It performed no service and Plaintiff made no promise.

Obviously, this particular case is something of a joke, but given how often people seek to claim that a contract has been entered into on dubious terms (such as replying to an email), perhaps a bit of reasonable caselaw comes out of this...

Filed Under: contract, email
Companies: walmart

Court Says Gov't Can't Double Dip And Charge Email Hackers With A Felony For Both Hacking & Hacking Email

from the good-ruling dept

Orin Kerr has an interesting blog post, discussing how the government has been rejected in an attempt to turn a misdemeanor email hacking case into a felony, by finding two overlapping laws to charge the guy with for the single action. Kerr nicely summarizes the issue as follows:

Federal criminal law has two overlapping misdemeanor criminal offenses that prohibit hacking into an e-mail account. The first, 18 U.S.C. 2701, specifically prohibits hacking into an e-mail account stored on an ISP’s server. The second, 18 U.S.C. 1030(a)(2), generally prohibits hacking into any computer, which will always be implicated when a person hacks into an e-mail account. The present overlap is largely a historical accident. When the two sections were enacted, both in 1986, Section 1030’s scope was very narrow. There was little overlap. But Section 1030 has been expanded over time so that it now covers every computer. As a result, 2701 in its current form is redundant: It doesn’t do any work that 1030 doesn’t already do. However, that overlap matters because violations of 2701 and 1030(a)(2) are normally misdemeanors, but Section 1030 contains an enhancement: The crime becomes a felony if it is conducted in furtherance of another crime. The present overlap between 1030 and 2701 raises the prospect that prosecutors might try to use the felony enhancement to engage in a kind of double-counting. Here’s the question: Can DOJ charge hacking into an e-mail account as a felony by claiming that it is a 1030 violation in furtherance of a 2701 violation?

Apparently the Justice Department originally tried this with the guy arrested for hacking Sarah Palin's email, but later changed the charges. However, in this other case, United States v. Cioni, the 4th Circuit appeals court has rejected this line of reasoning by the government, and made it clear that it's attempting to double dip over a single action in order to turn a misdemeanor into a felony. The court points out that this pretty clearly violates US principles on double jeopardy:

Looking simply at the allegations of Count 2, it does appear that the government charged Cioni with unauthorized access or attempted access to information in [Victim 1]'s e-mail account and sought to elevate that charge to a felony by alleging that the access to [Victim 1]'s e-mail also constituted a violation of § 2701. Moreover, the facts that the government offered into evidence in support of Count 2 confirm this reading. . . . We thus conclude that a merger problem did arise, implicating double jeopardy principles, and that therefore the felony conviction on Count 2 must be vacated, and, as requested by Cioni, the count remanded for entry of a simple misdemeanor conviction, under § 1030(a)(2)(C).

. . . . Count 4, which claims two crimes, one in furtherance of the other, is actually based on Cioni’s single unsuccessful attempt to access [Victim 2]'s AOL electronic e-mail account. Moreover, this is all that the government proved at trial. If the government had proven that Cioni accessed [Victim 2]’s e-mail inbox and then used the information from that inbox to access another person’s electronic communications, no merger problem would have arisen. But the government charged and attempted to prove two crimes using the same conduct of attempting, but failing, to access only [Victim 2]’s e-mail account. This creates a merger problem, implicating double jeopardy principles.

Always good to see courts get things right.

Filed Under: double jeopardy, email, felony, hacking

Judge Not Allowed To Hide Google's Report About Shutting Down Gmail Account Per Judge's Order

from the public-scrutiny dept

You may recall, a few years ago, a lawsuit involving Rocky Mountain Bank, who apparently screwed up (badly) and sent confidential and "sensitive" information concerning customers to a gmail email address entirely by mistake. The bank went to court to find out who the recipient was... and the court ordered Google to just shut down the account. We found this troubling that the court could just shut down the account, without even giving the individual whose account it was a chance to respond. Also troubling, was that Google agreed and shut down the account. MediaPost Communications (who reported on the story), represented by Public Citizen, was curious as to why this happened, and asked for the court to make Google's compliance report public. They were (of course) fine with the fact that customer info could be redacted, but the overall report should be made public. Amazingly, the district court judge refused, saying that since he'd asked Google to send him the report directly (rather than file it with the court Clerk's Office), that it had never been filed and thus was not subject to publication.

Thankfully, an appeals court has now said otherwise:

We were concerned that the suit was filed improperly, that without even considering the obvious flaws in the lawsuit the judge had jumped the gun in issuing a restraining order without giving either Google or the anonymous user a chance to respond, that Google had gone along with the TRO far too easily any notice, and that by denying of access to the compliance report Judge Ware was sweeping all these past mistakes under the rug.  Consequently, representing MediaPost Communications, which broke this story in the first place, we appealed this ruling, while agreeing that to the extent that the compliance report disclosed the anonymous user’s identity, that information should be redacted.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has now held that the right of public access cannot be so easily evaded.  Having been demanded by the judge so that he, and Rocky Mountain, could be sure that the TRO had been obeyed, "the report in question is a quintessential judicial document," the court said.  The public's right cannot be evaded by labeling the submission process as "lodging" instead of "filing." The court therefore reversed and remanded with instructions to release the document with redaction only for any truly private and confidential information.

Filed Under: email, restraining order
Companies: google, rocky mountain bank

Conde Nast Sent $8 Million To A Scammer After A Single Email

from the financial-controls? dept

Apparently it's not that hard to scam a big company out of millions of dollars these days. You can just send a single email, pretending to be from a vendor of that company. That's apparently what a guy named Andy Surface discovered when he set up a bank account for an operation he called "Quad Graph," likely designed to be similar to Quad/Graphics, the giant printing company that prints many big name magazines. He then sent a single email to magazine giant Conde Nast, leading the magazine company to send that new account $8 million:

In early November, Conde Nast received an "Electronic Payment Authorization” form by email at its offices in ... New York. The form appeared to have been sent by Quad/Graphics. The form requested that Conde Nast direct payments for Quad Graphics to the Quad Graph Account, and provided account information. Conde Nast filled out the form and returned it by facsimile from its offices in ... New York to the facsimile number provided in the form. Following Conde Nast's receipt of the "Electronic Payment Authorization" form, Conde Nast started making payments for Quad/Graphics bills by ACH transfer from a Conde Nast account with JPMorgan Chase Bank in New York to the Quad Graph Account.

The whole thing was discovered when the actual printer noticed that it was no longer getting paid and asked Conde Nast what was up. Conde Nast went to the feds, who arrested the guy and amazingly discovered that all $8 million was still sitting in the bank account.

Filed Under: electronic payments, email, scams
Companies: conde nast

Is Forwarding A Single Sentence Email From A Mailing List Infringement?

from the thankfully,-no dept

We've noted how copyright gets weird when you realize that everything that computers do is about making copies, and it can lead to some bizarre lawsuits. Eric Johnson points us to a writeup by Eugene Volokh of an attempt by a lawyer (of course) named Kenneth Stern, who argued that forwarding a single 23-word sentence that he had sent out to a listserv email list, constituted copyright infringement. As Johnson notes, the full sentence, at 150 characters, was just slightly larger than a Twitter message:

Has anyone had a problem with White, Zuckerman . . . cpas including their economist employee Venita McMorris over billing or trying to churn the file?

Now, the reason we can be comfortable reposting that, without fear of dealing with a copyright infringement lawsuit from Kenneth Stern is because the court shot down the lawsuit, noting both that the sentence was not covered by copyright, and even if it were, forwarding it to a mailing list would be fair use. Oh, and the court didn't just shoot it down. It said that Stern's lawsuit was frivolous... to the point of saying that he may need to pay attorney's fees for the people he sued.

Plaintiff asserts that he holds a valid copyright and that Defendants' acts -- copying and distributing his listserv post -- constituted both copyright infringement and contributory infringement....

[T]he copyrightability of a very short textual work -- be it word, phrase, sentence, or stanza -- depends on the presence of creativity. The opening sentence of a poem may contain sufficient creativity to warrant copyright protection whereas a more prosaic sentence of similar length may not. For instance, the opening stanza/sentence of the poem Jabberwocky contains, coincidentally, the same number of words -- 23 -- as Plaintiff's listserv post: " 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves / Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; / All mimsy were the borogoves, / And the mome raths outgrabe." The utter creativity of this "greatest of all nonsense poems in English" prompted one court to suggest that even its first line would be entitled to copyright protection.

Plaintiff’s listserv post, in contrast, displays no creativity whatsoever -- its content is dictated solely by functional considerations. Plaintiff merely requested factual information: whether anyone on the listserv had a bad experience with a certain forensic accounting firm -- and one employee in particular -- regarding overbilling and the churning of client files. His single sentence conveys precisely this idea and no more. As Plaintiff's expression of his idea is indistinguishable from the idea itself, it is not entitled to copyright protection....

Separately, the fair use argument strikes me as quite interesting in a few ways as well. For example, in discussing the four prongs, the court finds that the forwarding of the email (which was sent to the law firm that Stern was asking about) was "transformative." Now, we often hear from copyright defenders who claim that to be transformative, you have to totally change the work itself, but the court explains that's not the case:

Defendants' use of Plaintiff’s sentence is highly transformative. Plaintiff's listserv post sought specific information about a forensic accounting firm's questionable business tactics. Defendants did not seek any information at all; their purpose was to alert the company about Plaintiff's post. By forwarding the post in e-mails, they conveyed the fact of the post rather than its underlying message. Defendants' e-mails thus had a substantially different purpose than the post itself, a fact which weighs heavily in favor of fair use.

Filed Under: copyright, email, forwarding

Police Using Skype To Get Warrants While At A Crime Scene

from the virtual-courtroom dept

In this digital and connected age, many folks have discovered that the concept of a physical office is more and more outdated. Many of us can (and often do) work from anywhere. Apparently, a court in Florida is working under the same basic thought process as well. Copycense points us to the news that a judge in South Florida is working with police to let them use email and Skype while still at a crime scene to get a warrant. As one of the police officers noted: "It's like a virtual office and courtroom." So will other court functions start taking place this way soon as well? Who needs to sit around a courtroom for a trial when everyone can just login via Skype? Of course, you could (quite reasonably) argue that this is really no different than just using a phone to do the same thing...

Filed Under: crime scene, email, skype, warrants