Google complies with order of Bay Area federal judge -- Wikileaks all over again

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Paul Levy" <plevy () citizen org>
Date: September 28, 2009 4:34:36 PM EDT
To: <dave () farber net>
Subject: Google complies with order of Bay Area federal judge --  
Wikileaks all over again

Last week, a federal judge in the Northern District of California  
issued an order requiring Google to suspend a gmail account and  
identify its anonymous owner in another case that bears an eerie  
resemblance to last year's Wikileaks controversy -- bank runs into  
court, describes a threat to the confidentiality of its banking  
records that requires urgent action, and judge willingly goes along by  
issuing an order of questionable validity under the First Amendment,  
all without hearing from the other side (raising Due Process issues).  
And just as in Bank Julius Baer v Wikileaks, even apart from the  
consitutional concerns, the lawsuit itself is highly questionable --  
although the potential disclosure of confidential documents is a  
serious issue, it is not at all clear that Rocky Mountain Bank had any  
valid claims against Google or the accidental recipient of its own  
careless disclosures, there was an obvious defect in the claim for  
fereral court jurisdiction, and the papers raised questions about  
whether the bank complied with the notice requirements of the Federal  
Rules of Civil Procedure before it could seek a temporary restraining  
order.  In the Wikileaks case, it was a small ISP that went along with  
the court order because it didn't want to spend money litigating the  
case in its customer's interest; here is was Google that went along,  
and it remains to be seen why it complied so easily.

I discuss these issues here:
http://pubcit.typepad.com/clpblog/2009/09/did-google-yield-too-easily-to-a-baseless-court-order.html




Paul Alan Levy
Public Citizen Litigation Group
1600 - 20th Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20009
(202) 588-1000
http://www.citizen.org/litigation




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