October 11, 2003
The Weather Is Here
All of a sudden it isn’t as horribly hot and humid outside any more. We haven’t quite gotten to the blissful time of year when it’s just great out, as it’s still too hot in the middle of the day and too humid all day long, but the summer heat has definitely broken. It’s nice in the shade; a week ago it was awful.
In honor of this joyful annual event, I’ve added a weather report to the margin of the blog. Eat your heart out in January. Or come visit.
Bonus points if you get the local color musical reference in the title.
Declan Gets It
Internet journalist (and nice guy) Declan McCullagh received a remarkable letter recently from FBI Supervisory Special Agent Howard Leadbetter II. The letter demanded that Declan “preserve all records and other evidence” relating to interviews of a computer hacker. According to The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press other journalists have received similar letters too.
It seems that the FBI’s New York field office has decided that internet journalists are really ISPs and thus subject to § 2703(f) of the Electronic Communication Transactional Records Act”:
(f) Requirement to preserve evidence.—(1) In general.—A provider of wire or electronic communication services or a remote computing service, upon the request of a governmental entity, shall take all necessary steps to preserve records and other evidence in its possession pending the issuance of a court order or other process.(2) Period of retention.—Records referred to in paragraph (1) shall be retained for a period of 90 days, which shall be extended for an additional 90-day period upon a renewed request by the governmental entity.
Appropriately, Declan responded, “Leadbetter needs to be thwacked with a legal clue stick.”
He added,
Last I checked, electronically filing this column to my editors does not make me a provider of “electronic communication services.” Nor does tapping text messages into my cell phone transform me into a “remote computing service,” as much as I may feel like one sometimes.
Perhaps I’d be immune from the FBI’s demands if I used an Underwood No. 5 typewriter instead.
This is obviously an absurd request, and is clearly not a permissible construction of the statute. If it is, then every person who makes a web page is covered by this statute. The words “provider of wire or electronic communications services” do not mean “internet content provider”. I hope the FBI climbs down on this one before provoking litigation. But if they do, they’ll lose.
(The Justice Dept. has a sample § 2703(f) letter online.)
What OS Are You?
The Retreat was an occasion for introspection. This impulse leads naturally to meaningless online personality quizzes. Here’s one result:
Which OS are You?
While I’m not in a position to vouch for the accuracy of this analysis of my personality, the list of possible answers is pretty funny.
Retreat Behind Us
I survived the retreat. Based on this experience, so far I think neither my fears nor Eric Muller’s enthusiasm were justified, as we didn’t really do anything except brainstorming. If, however, there is meaningful followthrough on a few of the more substantial ideas brainstormed, then I’ll have to admit that Eric was right.
The first of today’s two main activities involved breaking up into small groups to come up with implementable ideas, with each groups focused on a particular area drawn from yesterday’s discussion. The facilitators wanted to assign us randomly to groups, but the faculty rebelled, and demanded the right to select the groups that we were most interested in. To the facilitators’ evident surprise, we divided up evenly enough for this to work. Perhaps as a result of being self-selected, most of the groups came up with a cornucopia of ideas, far more than we could put into practice. It will be interesting to see what process is used for triage, and what follow-through (if any) we have. Especially, given that several of the more interesting ideas gore oxen…
The second of today’s major activities was a pleasant outdoor lunch by the ocean, while watching some of the colleagues get very, very, very excited (“KILL! KILL!”) about the UM-Florida State game. You have not lived until you see ordinarily sober law professors alternate between scholarly dissections of passing strategies and rampant boosterism. Although UM was ranked above Florida State, they had the point spread. And, happily, UM won 22-14 in the rain, although it wasn’t at all pretty.