We've recently covered two separate stories of guys who made (perhaps in poor taste) jokes online about a violent activity they were considering (one a joke about blowing up an airport, and another taking a line from Fight Club and applying it to an Apple Store). In both cases (one in the UK and one in the US), police came to investigate. I have no problem with that part of it. If someone legitimately feels threatened, it's good that the police will go investigate. The problem was that even after they realized that the person was just making an offhand joking statement online, they still pressed charges. The guy in the US eventually got off, but the guy in the UK did not and is still appealing his case higher.
However, it's nice to know that sometimes the police recognize a silly online comment for being a silly online comment. Romenesko points us to a recent story of a blogger who writes (somewhat satirically) about the giant NYC apartment complex Stuy Town, who recently had a post entitled Tenant to Children: STFU, complaining about kids making a lot of noise early on Saturday morning, and telling parents to keep their kids quiet however possible. It also illustrated the post with "a crying child in a rifle scope's crosshairs," -- an image that was changed after people complained. Either way, all of this got some residents to call the police, worried that someone was "targeting" their children, and so the police actually stopped by the blogger's apartment to make sure he wasn't really planning to shoot children:
Detectives from the 13th Precinct stopped by today to check on my lucidity and be sure there were no guns in my apartment after some tenants complained that I was inciting violence by posting an email sent to me for the "Tenant to Children: STFU!" post. They were really nice and understood the Lux Living post in question was satire but they had a job to do. After a tour of my apartment and some light conversation about my art collection and antique furniture it was clear to them that I am just a writer with a dark sense of humor and not a threat to society.
While one assumes that this should be the standard way that police respond to such complaints, just the fact that we've seen a few stories that went in the other direction made me realize we might as well highlight when things go the right way also.
There's a rather incredible story over in the Baltimore Sun about the extent Abbott Laboratories' execs went to in their effort to sell more of their heart stents. This is not a unique story, but every time I see a similar story, it serves as a reminder of the problems of putting "healthcare" in the hands of companies who have every incentive to sell you snake oil -- especially when that snake oil is patented and they can charge ridiculous monopoly rents for it.
The story involves a heart stent sold by Abbott. Apparently, Abbott cultivated a few doctors and plied them with all sorts of... well... most people would probably refer to them as bribes... to implant more stents. The article focuses on one Dr. Mark Midei, who "set a record" by implanting 30 stents in one day. That would be great if those stents saved lives. Problem is... a study earlier this year showed that stents were no better than drugs for many patients. Now, in some cases, they can certainly be helpful, but there was little indication that Midei made much of an effort to see if the over 2,000 stents he was implanting per year were really necessary. Perhaps this is why:
Abbott feted Midei at Ruth's Chris Steak House. It paid $1,235 for an " Alabama Pig Pickin'" barbecue at his Monkton home two days after the 30-stent marathon. A month earlier it paid $690 for beer and crabs served during a meeting at his house to discuss Abbott's "business strategy."
Also, that 30 implants in one day was referred to as "Project Victory" within Abbott, and it was talked about how the company should continue to do more for Midei, such as "VIP trips." Oh, on top of that, after it came out that many of those stents never should have been installed, Abbott rewarded Midei by hiring him as a "consultant" to tell the world how wonderful Abbott's stents were.
So when all this started coming out in the press, Abbott responded with some (one hopes, joking) emails about how they should go beat up the Baltimore Sun columnist who was reporting on the issue.
"Don't you have connections in Baltimore?????" Pacitti e-mailed a subordinate regarding a January column I wrote on heart-artery stents. "Someone needs to take this writer outside and kick his ass! Do I need to send in the Philly mob?"
Again, one hopes he's joking, but it again demonstrates the problems with letting these kinds of companies define healthcare in the US. I'm not against the ability to profit in healthcare, but shouldn't the profit be about actually keeping people healthy?
visual77 alerts us to the news of a guy arrested in Baltimore for a bomb plot. As you dig into the details, though, it looks quite similar to the case in Portland, where it appears that the entire "plot" was created with the help of the FBI. The guy was arrested for trying to blow up a military recruitment center -- with a fake bomb that was provided by the FBI. Obviously, it's not good to have people who are willing to blow stuff up, but with so many of these stories, you have to wonder if the FBI wouldn't be better off focusing on those who not only want to harm Americans, but who actually have the ability to do so. As it stands, it looks like the FBI is fabricating "plots" to thwart, rather than dealing with real threats.
Remember the recent story of the ecommerce store operator who claimed he was thriving by being obnoxious, because all of the bad reviews were increasing his Google rank? It's been interesting to watch what's happened since that NY Times article was published. Within days, Google announced that it had tweaked its algorithms to deal with that and similar situations, noting that being bad to customers is unlikely to be a good long term business strategy. It also might lead to jail. The NY Times is now also reporting (as sent in by Robert Ring) that the guy profiled in that original story, Vitaly Borker, who seemed so proud of his angry tirades against customers, has now been arrested for mail fraud, wire fraud, making interstate threats and cyberstalking. So much for that strategy.
There's been a lot of talk lately about the new backscatter scanners at airports that take a "naked" image of the passenger, and how airports have now instituted newer and more invasive patdowns for those who refuse to go through the scans. Many feel that both of these practices goes way too far. A whole bunch of folks have now been submitting the story of one guy who refused to go through the backscatter scanner, and then told the TSA (in a slightly crude manner) that he would not consent to having his groin groped. Specifically, he warned the officer, "if you touch my junk, I'll have you arrested." This, of course, led to supervisors and supervisors and various reports being written up before he was escorted out of the screening area and told he would not be able to fly.
Of course, we've seen similar stories before. But where this one got even odder is that after he went to the ticket counter and was able to get his ticket refunded (even though it was a non-refundable ticket), he was approached by a man in a suit and two of the people who had both detained him in the security area and escorted him out of it -- and told that he could not leave the airport until he submitted to the invasive screening. If he tried to leave, he was told he would be sued and could face fines of $10,000:
At this point, I thought it was all over. I began to make my way to the stairs to exit the airport, when I was approached by another man in slacks and a sport coat. He was accompanied by the officer that had escorted me to the ticketing area and Mr. Silva. He informed me that I could not leave the airport. He said that once I start the screening in the secure area, I could not leave until it was completed. Having left the area, he stated, I would be subject to a civil suit and a $10,000 fine. I asked him if he was also going to fine the 6 TSA agents and the local police officer who escorted me from the secure area. After all, I did exactly what I was told. He said that they didn't know the rules, and that he would deal with them later. They would not be subject to civil penalties. I then pointed to Mr. Silva and asked if he would be subject to any penalties. He is the agents' supervisor, and he directed them to escort me out. The man informed me that Mr. Silva was new and he would not be subject to penalties, either. He again asserted the necessity that I return to the screening area. When I asked why, he explained that I may have an incendiary device and whether or not that was true needed to be determined. I told him that I would submit to a walk through the metal detector, but that was it; I would not be groped.
With groups like EPIC and the ACLU fighting these machines, I'm guessing the guy has already been contacted by them and other such groups. The idea that buying a ticket and entering the screening area means you've agreed, no matter what -- even if you decide not to fly -- to go through an invasive screening process, seems like a pretty radical reading of the 4th Amendment that I'm sure some civil liberties groups would happily challenge.
You can listen to the audio of most of the encounter at the link above (there's video too, but it's mostly of the ceiling). Some have questioned why he was filming, and if he had set this up with a plan to get into a confrontation all along. You can see his explanation here which makes sense. He claims that he had checked online prior to flying and the TSA's website had said that San Diego Airport did not have the backscatter scanners, which is why he agreed to fly through there. Then, when he got to the security area, he chose a line that was a traditional metal scanner, rather than the backscatter lines. The person in front of him was told to go to the backscatter scanner, and after refusing he realized they might ask him to go instead, so he then turned on his camera, since he'd heard of numerous other incidents, and wanted a recording just in case. Throughout the experience he points out that 80% of the passengers are just going through the traditional metal detector, and he'd be fine if he could just use that same process, but they won't allow it.
It seems pretty clear that these new invasive scans and pat downs are going to end up in the courts. From my perspective, they certainly seem to go way beyond the "reasonable" standard, but who knows what the courts will say. That said, in this case, the security officials went way beyond even that level, by threatening to sue the guy for not consenting to go through with it, even after he had said he would no longer be flying.
We found it ridiculous that UK law enforcement pushed forward with a plan to prosecute Paul Chambers, a guy who made a bad joke on Twitter. After hearing that his local airport was closed and noting that he was supposed to fly out of there in a week, he stated that if the airport didn't "get [its] shit together" he was going to "[blow] the airport sky high!!" It's a bad joke, no doubt. And I don't even mind that law enforcement felt the need to check the whole thing out. But where it gets insane is that they pushed forward with prosecuting him. Of course, even law enforcement was smart enough to recognize that they couldn't charge him with making a bomb threat (which is illegal), because they knew he really didn't make a bomb threat. So instead, they charged him with an obscure part of the UK's Communications Act which outlaws sending a message "of menacing character." It got even more ridiculous when he was found guilty of this.
Now, to turn a ridiculous situation into a pure farce, an appeals court has upheld the earlier ruling. Comedian/actor Stephen Fry, who had promised to pay the original fine has again promised to pay whatever Chambers owes. The BBC coverage doesn't explain the court's ruling for upholding the original conviction, but it certainly seems to make the UK judicial system look like a joke. At some point, shouldn't common sense enter into the discussion? It's fine to investigate the comment, but even the officer who investigated it noted that the statement was obviously a "foolish comment posted on Twitter as a joke for only his close friends to see." That's the point at which they tell him maybe he shouldn't make stupid jokes and send him on his way... not go through with a trial.
An anonymous reader sends over the news that the website MuckRock.com -- an open records website -- has received a threat letter from the Massachusetts Department of Transitional Assistance, concerning some food stamp data that MuckRock had published. How did MuckRock get the data? It had filed a Freedom of Information Act request to the Massachusetts Department of Transitional Assistance, who gave it to them. Apparently, the department now realized that it released the data in error and is trying to erase the mistake by ordering the site to delete the info.
I am writing to inform you that certain information found on the website http://www.muckrock.com, which lists individual retailer redemptions for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), is posted in violation of federal law.. [sic] This information was erroneously released by the Department of Transitional Assistance to Spare Change News. Federal law prohibits release of such information under 7 U.S.C. 2018(9)(c), and 7 CFR 278.1(q).
Failure to remove this information may result in fines or imprisonment. 7 U.S.C. 2018(9)(c) (“any person who publishes, divulges, discloses, or makes known in any manner or to any extent not authorized by Federal law (including a regulation) any information obtained under this subsection shall be fined not more than $1,000 or imprisoned not more than 1 year, or both).
The Department has told the press that it was the federal government which alerted it to the mistake and the department decided to inform the MuckRock owner that he might face potential legal problems from the federal government, but didn't intend the letter to be a direct threat from itself. Of course, now that the news of the demand has been made public, the original information will only get that much more attention...
We've recently had our own run-in with a ridiculous threat of a libel lawsuit from the UK, in what appeared to be a clear attempt to intimidate us, rather than an action with any serious legal basis. As we mentioned in that post, thankfully, the US recently passed an important and broad anti-libel tourism law that protects US websites against overreaching foreign libel claims that go against US laws, such as Section 230 safe harbors for service providers.
So, we're always interested in hearing about other similar threats, and here's a doozy that gets more ridiculous the further you read. It starts off with just such a libel tourism attempt, but then devolves into a true comedy of threats and errors, involving misaddressed threats, ridiculous claims of confidentiality and implied threats of copyright lawsuits on publishing the letters that reveal this comedy of errors. Make sure you read through the whole thing.
It starts out with a NY-based company, GDS Publishing, who was apparently upset about the complaints about its telemarketing practices found on the website 800notes.com, specifically calling out the NY-based phone number (212 area code) used by GDS. After GDS complained to Julia Forte, who runs the site, she removed the comments that violated the site's terms of service, but left plenty of the other (non-violating, but still complaining) comments up, which GDS apparently did not appreciate. It then had a UK law firm threaten to sue her in the UK under UK libel laws. Now, it is true that GDS's parent company is based in the UK, but Julia and 800notes are in the US, and thus protected by Section 230 and the libel tourism law. And, while it doesn't even matter, given 800notes' status, this was about actions by the subsidiary, which is incorporated in New York, and all of the actions and complaints concerned that NY company (using a NY phone number).
Already, this seems like a classic case of over-aggressive lawyering, perhaps from someone unaware of the SPEECH Act, or from someone who simply hoped to intimidate an American website into compliance. However, the story gets even more ridiculous. First, the lawyer in question, one Leigh Ellis of Gillhams Solicitors LLP in the UK, apparently made a typo when copying the email address of Ms. Forte from the whois page for 800notes, resulting in him sending the initial complaint to a totally different Julia Forte (who happened to be a lawyer) based in NY, rather than the 800notes Julia Forte (who happens to live in North Carolina). Oops.
After the NY lawyer Julia Forte told Ellis of his mistake, rather than recognizing that he made a mistake, Ellis appears to have both emailed the same (wrong) Julia Forte again, and interpreted the email from the NY lawyer Julia Forte to mean that the North Carolina 800notes Julia Forte was denying her association with the site -- even though the NY lawyer Julia Forte told Ellis that he had the wrong email address. So, instead of correcting the mistake and emailing the correct Julia Forte, he sent a letter to 800notes' webhost, SoftLayer Technologies (pdf), claiming that the content on 800notes was defamatory, and saying that Forte "has informed us that she is not associated with the Website," and asking SoftLayer to confirm that Ms. Forte really is the account holder, and also demanding that SoftLayer take down the content GDS doesn't like, or face defamation charges itself.
Ah, the comedy of errors. Of course, it was the wrong Julia Forte who accurately denied being associated with the website. The correct Julia Forte has no problem standing behind her site. Thankfully, SoftLayer is well aware of the legal issues involved here, and well aware of Section 230 and the SPEECH Act that protects it, as well as Julia Forte, so it passed along the letters to Forte's lawyer, Paul Levy. If only the comedy of threats and errors ended there. But, it did not...
Levy responded in great detail to Ellis (pdf), highlighting the specific legal realities of Section 230 and the SPEECH Act, as well as detailing Ellis' own mistakes in emailing the wrong person. You should read the letter. It gets better and better as it goes along (or just skip to page 3):
Comedy of threats and errors over? Not by a long shot. After receiving Levy's letter, as well as an email correspondence in which Levy noted plans to publish Ellis's original letter to SoftLayer Technologies, Ellis' firm, Gillhams tried to warn Levy that publishing the original letter would be "unlawful" (pdf). Specifically, the law firm claims that since the original letter said "NOT FOR PUBLICATION" across the top, he had no license to publish it, and since all of their emails have a boilerplate "confidentiality notice" at the bottom, it prevents publication.
Of course, such things are simply not legally binding, leading Levy to (1) question whether or not Gillhams is charging GDS Publishing by the hour and (2) highlight how Gillhams appears to have misstated its own confidentiality clause and gotten confused over who might hold any copyright (and, thus, license-rights) to the letter in question. His response is here (pdf), though I'll restate the relevant paragraphs:
My question about whether you have been charging GDS Publishing by the hour
is relevant because, in the criticism of your conduct that I am drafting for
publication, I am trying to figure out whether your misadventures in trying to send
correspondence to Forte, and your subsequent threats directed to SoftLayer,
reflect only incompetence, or rather reflect an effort to run the meter at your
client's expense. I'd be grateful, therefore, if you would respond to my question.
Finally, I note your email referring to confidentiality notices that are contained in
your emails. Even if the emails purported to forbid publication, such notices do
not override fair use. Sad to say, however, you have misstated the fine print in
your own emails. I invite you to re-read that text. The disclaimer says that the
emails "may" contain privileged or confidential information, not that they do. I see
nothing in the emails that merits treatment as either privileged or confidential in
any event. Moreover, they instruct the recipients not to disseminate the emails if
they are NOT the intended recipients. By negative implication, these notices tell
the intended recipients that they ARE free to disseminate the emails. Your office
deliberately sent the emails to me, thus effectively giving me permission to
publish them.
Your letter also states that your "clients" are reserving their rights about the
publication of your letter and emails. However, I see no reason to believe that
your clients own the copyright in your letters. The owner would be you and/or
your firm. If you choose to try to enforce the copyright by raising a claim of
infringement, you will have to do so in your own name.
As Levy notes in his blog post on the whole situation: "I invite Ellis to bring suit here in the United States and show us that he is right. Ellis is also invited to use the comment feature to reply."
Well, here's a fun one. Apparently, there's a local news site known as The North Country Gazette (don't click that just yet...) covering parts of upstate New York via a blog format. Rather than putting in place an actual technical paywall, the site has apparently decided to go with a paywall-by-threat model. If you visit a story on the site, it tells you that you're only allowed to view one page for free, and then they expect you to pay up:
Gotta love that Comic Sans font -- in red, no less. Anyway, if you do "abuse the privilege," apparently you come up against the following (which now appears to have been taken down, perhaps due to all of the attention):
In case you can't see/read the image, it reads:
A subscription is required at North Country Gazette. We allow only one free read per visitor. We are currently gathering IPs and computer info on persistent intruders who refuse to buy subscription and are engaging in a theft of services. We have engaged an attorney who will be doing a bulk subpoena demand on each ISP involved, particularly Verizon Droids, Frontier and Road Runner, and will then pursue individual legal actions.
Where to start? First, I love how "Verizon Droid" (a phone) is included in the list of ISPs. But, more to the point, this site seems to believe that if it just says you can only visit once without paying, and you don't, it has the right to then use your IP to sue you for "theft of services." I'd love to see how well that plays out in court.
Update: Clarified a bit in the middle to note that it appears that it was the agency, not Aniston's representatives directly who are making this threat to Gawker.
You may recall late last year the legal threats that came down after some designers started discussing the possibility that a Demi Moore photo on the cover of W magazine may have been Photoshopped in an odd way. The lawyers came out and threatened those who were talking about it, leading the story to get much more attention (as per usual).
However, it appears that some Hollywood types still haven't quite figured this out. Apparently Jennifer Aniston's the representatives of photo agency are threatening to sue Gawker because the site dared to post an image that it claims is a pre-Photoshopped photo of Aniston, which the agency people insist are doctored. Either way, Gawker is standing up for its fair use rights, and as this is the story, it seems entirely newsworthy to publish the image in question:
Once again, it looks like an attempt to hide something has only served to turn that into the story itself. You would think that people would recognize this already, so it's a bit surprising that they don't.
