by Mary Mack
Ralph Losey, one of the most prominent and respected e-Discovery leaders, has called for Attorney General Holder’s to be fired on the front page of his e-discoveryteam.com blog.
We demand that the government stop its illegal e-discovery of U.S. citizens, including, but certainly not limited to, illegal seizure of the records of journalists (such as the seizure of the phone records of twenty AP journalists revealed in 2013, or the surveillance and seizure of the email of Fox News reporter, James Rosen, which was personally approved by Holder himself). Judge Facciola’s Order needs to be both a wake-up call and a turning point.
Judge Facciola’s order is In the Matter of the Search of Information Associated with [redacted]@Mac.com that is Stored at Premises Controlled by Apple, Inc., Magistrate Case. No. 14-228 (JMF) (D.D.C., 3/7/14).
Ralph did some digging and found the opinion, and is hosting it for review. He writes:
I have seen things like this disappear from the Internet before. But widespread distribution of Judge Facciola’s Opinion, and full publication of its terms, will make that impossible, even for the all-powerful NSA. Click here to download a full copy of the Opinion and share this document, this court order, with as many people as possible. Read it carefully and discuss it with your friends. That is our constitutional right.
While I agree with Ralph that the overreach in surveillance and privacy needs to be rectified, I do not join in his call for Holder’s firing now.
Rather, I call for the executive, legislative and judicial branches to seize the moment to reaffirm our constitutional protections for speech, association and freedom from unreasonable search, seizure, scanning and rummaging around. I call on businesses, individuals, technical, legal, political, academics, military, security, privacy, marketing and other stakeholders to contribute. The Obama administration did convene a group on surveillance. We have Judge Facciola’s rulings related to criminal warrants. A related issue is Google, Microsoft and other organizations using subscriber data at will according to the fine print in their Terms of Service. Just this week, Brad Smith, General Counsel of Microsoft, announced that Microsoft reversed their self-help policy and Google’s GC denied opening a tech blogger’s email.
The issue whether we presume all data is up for grabs, or whether there should be a presumption that people’s data should not be accessed without permission or damn good reason. It’s the damn good reason that is the rub. How to define, how to request, how to object, how to decide.
It is bigger than government and law enforcement. It is also commercial.
Should there be a Sedona Working Group? Should this be part of the Information Governance Initiative? Maybe it can be done during the rewrite of Safe Harbor, necessary to allow US companies to continue to compete in the EU and other privacy respecting regions.
Ralph is right about (at least) one thing. Now is the time to raise our voices.
Permalink: http://evidenceinsight.com/losey-holder-resignation/
