POTUS, Hizzonor And My Senators Hung Out In SI Today and Did Not Invite Me; Instead I Wrote This Article

Well, if the media reports are to be given any credence, the Director of the CIA got pwned. By now hopefully we can all agree, stealing email is not particularly difficult, that is to say, you probably know at least one person who knows how to do it.
But what are the legal repercussions?
We could start by acknowledging a preliminary binary that underpins our process of analysis: What are the legal mechanisms that protect the disclosure of an electronic communication? There is the military related "classified" communications regime. This group of categorizations is brought to you by your local governments. The private sector has its own scheme: Privileged Communications. Therefore, in addition to "Classified" the government may use privilege as their justification for not disclosing a communication.
The private sector does not have the same leeway to use "National Security" as a rationale for not disclosing a digital document, but give them some time to refine their agenda.
So far no one commenting on this fracas has referenced this law: good old 18 USC §2517; you may be particularly interested in Section (4): No otherwise privileged wire, oral, or electronic communication intercepted in accordance with, or in violation of, the provisions of this chapter shall lose its privileged character.
What does it mean? It means stolen emails, if privileged, cannot be used in a court of law, only in the court of public opinion.

The Big Bang

Grounding for a metaphysics of legal theory in cyberspace: Informed by my failures and... You are now about to witness the strength of street knowledge.

Theory of distributed liability in the cloud. For what? Corporate? Criminal? What are we shooting for here Legal Eagles? Is this about process? What about distributed computing is like the corporate veil/hierarchy? How is use of cyberspace analogous to corporate action? If it is distributed computing, why not apply corporate theory, corporations are all about distributed authority and, like cyberspace, the reach of a corporation is usually spread across various jurisdictions that often overlap. Toward a theory of rights in cyberspace. Remember the SETI project. Are distributed rights akin to shareholder voting rights? Does Citizens United apply? Perhaps that action in the cloud should be regarded by the same standard as that of an individual stakeholder in cyberspace. Could rights that would imbue to a holder of 1 share per URL edited; be the model? And thus, could there be voting trusts, proxies, and, liability for wrongdoing. Conflicts could be settled according to the shareholder's agreement. What are the basic shareholder rights? Voting, proportionate stake, buy-sell agreement? Dissolution upon what? What is required for a quorum? How does this relate back to liability? What about a criminal act? What about a tort? What is crowdsourcing? Why am I thinking about RICO? How and what kinds of conspiracies can be claimed via communications made on social networks? Argue for a theory against this! This is a terrible and frightening idea. Where is cyberspace? The cloud is a social construct. Many simple corollaries apply in existing law that will give rise to an acceptable theory. Why do these standards not apply to wikileaks? We could write it on Wikipedia. Here, I'll start:...

Is a discovery related Listserve discoverable? Shouldn’t you append a confidentiality notice for the sake of the clients? Recently I tried to friend a deceased person. What happens to your FB page after you die? All that IP... Leave the rights to it in your will. And the password. Several childhood friends have made a career of politics. When I friended one recently, I deleted that headline from my wall. Was that the right call? What if you use FB to disseminate your employer's ideas or improve the pecuniary value of her brand? Does that make all your content subject to his Licensing Agreement?
What is the difference between a FB wall feed and a blog? HTML features, for starters. Is there a legal difference? Isn't code protected expression via the First Amendment?
The great redistribution of wealth will take place when monetizing one's blog becomes part of the standard canon of knowledge. To protect? To liberate? Publish means you put something out there in the world, irrevocably. Privileges will not apply. (Attorney-client, doctor-patient, cleric-penitent) HIPPA sanctions might. The rules that apply to all American legal proceedings are the rules of evidence. Who is on you FB block list? Why? Drop the names of people when you network socially if you are willing to accept responsibility for the legal fees associated with a lawsuit for violation of privacy or libel or anything else someone like me might think of. When the news broadcasts Sara Palin’s FB page, are they really being her Friend? What does it mean to "like" something, legally? It's a subscription, isn't it? Does MTV owns some rights to your page bc you use your FB page to to disseminate the articles you write for them? Google case says maybe, no?
If you need a warrant to go into a hotel room whilst a guest is checked in, shouldn't you need a warrant to access that individual’s browsing history if they purchase internet access whilst lodged in said hotel?
Should I friend my husband's tenants? Can this status be used to conflict me out of a legal matter? Is having something appear on your wall an effective form of notice? Can you credibly say you didn't know if it was on your wall? What is a permalink? What if someone who owes you money and claims poverty posts pics of a fabulous vacation on FB? Isn’t that art?
Why are people so rude in the virtual world? Is writing on someone's wall like visiting their porch or patio? Is Twitter like a CB radio? Foursquare and Gowalla are games! If I can drop a virtual balloon animal at a building that I have never visited, why do you think it pertains to your criminal investigation? Who owns the rights to an image you upload to Foursquare? Geo-tagging is the essence of these issues because it had limitless applications and has the potential to be borderless.

Is FB the largest trove of ethnographic information ever collected? I regularly weed, or edit my FB page. This is less about censorship and more about tweaking for anyone who joins later and wants to get a comprehensive look. Doesn’t that make my page more like art? How long does something deleted stay on the FB servers? What's their document retention policy?
You usually hold the copyright to any photo you take. Post it if you like and tag it so the subject is aware of its existence in cyberspace. If they don't like it, they can untag it. (Issue of notice- I didn't know it was out there.) If there are people in your photos you don't know, crop them out. Karma. Do you want people uploading your image to the web? Remember Photoshop exists, as does GIMP. Are you sharing, as opposed to publishing?
What happens when you introduce two attorneys who are both related to you via a social network? Should you get a referral fee?
If you generally make it a practice to go to a party and spend the whole night talking about politics, then the fact that everything on your FB page is about politics reflects who you are.
Many people will never meet you in veridity and the only thing they will know about you is the you presented via social networking. Who are you?
Jurisdiction? Read the terms of use and email yourself a copy, take a screenshot. Just because it is stated in the TOU does not necessarily make it so. If you use SKYPE to communicate with your clients, have them sign a release entitled “Informed Consent.”

Reread Citizens United. Read Warshak UNTIL YOU KNOW IT INSIDE OUT. Teach it to everyone who can read and argue for its adoption in foreign countries. What does it mean to publish something? Are there degrees of published? What's the framework? How is it different from "sharing" via a social network?
If the ultimate issue in law is related to conflict of law principles, where does a theory of individual rights in cyberspace fit? What are the relevant laws? Electronic communications. Cross border communications. Long arm jurisdiction. If the ultimate game is about _by whose rules will we play_? Then the ultimate question becomes, who has the sufficient balance of reason and force to decide?
What does it mean to be a citizen of the US when we live in a world where we can conduct cross-border communications with few constraints and no apparent contact with Homeland Security? Can voting machines be hacked? Methods of authentication... PKI keys... Enable Authenticity, storage or preservation duty, permanent public access. Does Public Access mean free?
What if someone makes a practice of viewing the private page of another in order to spy on one of the other's contacts? ie: Person A and person B are FB friends (they are friended via that social network). Person C logs into person B's account (w/B's consent) in order to view information on person A. This is not addressed by the recent ethics opinions in Pa and NY.
We know person B can't be a lawyer with intent to fool. What about business contacts? Can your assistant log in and let C look at her friends? By making it prohibited for C, it is harder for C to be coerced. *Coercion is what concerns me most.*
What about those fed statutes that make intercepting an electronic communication illegal? Can't they be used to argue that intercepting a person's FB page is illegal. It is an electronic communication, is it not?
Neuroscience Axiom: When it gets dark enough, we begin to see in black and white and our mind fills the blanks in with color. Perception.
Rights relating to the stuff we upload. Remember Steven Jackson Games, 1986 electronic communications privacy act. Publishing photos containing children. Minors following you on Twitter? Posts and Tweets. Fifth Amendment right to self incrimination. Why can’t every country adopt our corporate bylaws and TOU?
What about a model TOU, like the NYC and San Francisco rent stabilized leases? Landlord-tenant issues. Some inalienable basics, ie a corollary to having heat and running water. If I let the city install a water meter on my property that transmits data to a third party contractor that is not the government, isn’t that a taking pursuant to theory of eminent domain?
Electronic discovery/satellite law offices. What if your discovery database got hacked? Do the people who telecommute at your office access sensitive corporate communications via WIFI for which the encryption is no longer secure?
How about a central databank to keep track of important pieces of art, kinda like Foursquare for works of art. They’re doing this in Iraq, just found out via NYT.com. Germany has a (draft?) law about not using an individual’s FB content in hiring. Florida bar uses social networks in admissions process. Why can’t all the apps for my phone have a standardized privacy provision? I’m worried about installing them and having my clients sue me. Should several small groups control the flow of information the way they control oil? Freedom of speech. When indemnity does not apply. Publishers have legal immunity sometimes. Are you a publisher?


(Author is an enthusiastic member of the Science and Technology Committee of the American Bar Association and gratefully acknowledges her interaction with the other members of this group in inspiring the thoughts contained in this Big Bang.)

The Year of the Rabbit

Hi there, faithful reader(s). This is just a heads up that I have taken a look at this long neglected blog and will be working on it again. The things I will probably write about are related to the things that are usually on my mind, like art, cyberspace, law, and perception. Please remember I am an attorney in New York State, but not anywhere else, so do not take my opinions as definitive, and do not interpret them as legal advice, that could cause me some troubles with the bar associations. Also, this may be construed as attorney advertising (which I think is silly, since I am not even using my given name) but being that may be the case, I repeat: I am only licensed in New York state, and I am not currently looking for new clients.
game on!
: )

The Exception To The Rule: Sound City Records

After one-hundred posts, I decided this blog was done, and moved on to others. But I am writing today about something that is very close to me and very much relevant to Astoria. Sound City Records, located on 30th Avenue, just off Steinway Street, closed its doors May 31st 2009. Permanently. Sound City opened in March of 1991. I should know, I begged them to let me work there. What could be cooler to a crazy music addict like me than to work at an independent record store? Gus and Chris obliged. We spent the first fifty days labeling, by hand, 45s. Do you remember 45s? I still have an adapter so I can play them on my turntable. Sound City outlasted "Nobody Beats The Wiz." The Wiz was a music store with significantly more square footage, many more top forty CDs in stock, many employees, and an address actually on Steinway Street. Its employees shopped at Sound City. The space Sound City inhabited measures less than four hundred square feet, and when Gus, Chris and I were there at the same time, we had to climb over each other to get to the cash register. Sound City sells vinyl. Sold vinyl. Sound City is on the Q18 bus route, and kids from the Astoria Houses used to come in, giving us a heads up on emerging artists like Mobb Deep, Raekwon, Nas. Gus would "special order" anything for his customers: bluegrass, Praxis, techno, hardcore, jazz, as there was just not enough room in the store for everything. The customers I remember were fantastic. They made us mixed tapes from the breakbeat vinyl they purchased. I think one of those kids (now an adult presumably) supervises the music at Central. There were suave guys with huge arms who drove convertibles and came in to buy only freestyle (c'mon, you must know who TKA, Noel, and Johnny O are!) so they could cruise their rides by Astoria Park. There were metalheads, who lined up to buy G&R "Use Your Illusion" and gave us the single best sales day while I was there (thank you!). There is Cathy, who lived nearby and spent a small fortune on country music. I think her purchases alone paid the rent. There were the crazy drug dealers, who only seemed to mind their manners when they were in our store. It boggled my mind that they had the most discerning taste in music: David Bowie, Velvet Underground, Fugazi, Madonna, Eric B. & Rakim, Apotheosis. And who could ever forget "SSD Control" a customer who insisted on categorizing every piece of music in the store, but as the nickname we gave him suggests, only purchased eclectic headbanger. Those are just the people from the first few years... Sound City passed out House of Pain's "Jump Around" before the radio was playing it. Sound City pimped Biggie before he was known to roll with the Bad Boys. My experience at Sound City rescued me from the life of debauchery towards which I was already on the fast lane. Thank you Gus, you kept me from becoming a full blown drug-dealing delinquent. Sound City was a bond... At least, a loosely affiliated group of fascinating people from which to learn, vent at, yell. At best, brunch on your favorite sun-filled day followed by a Yankee game where the winner made absolutely no difference and someone else covered the store. Or late summer nights sitting in someone's music room or rehearsal studio, talking music, waxing nostalgic, revealing secrets, laughing hard. I say we, even though at first I was the only non shareholder there. Hell, I was seventeen. Once, we were walking home from the nightclub "Silver Screen." Silver Screen was its own Astoria Institution. I was disappointed to not find any footage on the web to share. It's a Gentlemen's Club now. It used to be "Krash," and when we were goths it was called "Berlin." It's further south on Steinway. Walking towards home with a member of the Sound City crew after a night of aforementioned debauchery, I was sobered by the smell of smoke. The time was just after 4:00 AM. The storefront next to Sound City was on fire and the fine gentlemen of the FDNY were just about to take an ax to our glass storefront. Sound City was rapidly filling with smoke. We fished the keys to the store out of of my handbag instead. Sound City was completely unharmed by a fire that destroyed the adjoining cafe. those were the days my friend we thought they'd never end... Oh, I could fill a hundred pages with stories about Sound City; perhaps another time. To all the loyal customers, I do not think Gus would mind if I said "thank you" on his behalf. Over the years, customers who started off as children grew to men and women. Some died. Some met in the store and after learning they both loved some obscure piece of shit song, hooked up. It was more than a store. In the big picture, eighteen years is not a long time. But for a mom 'n pop shop in New York City, it can feel like a life. In a South American Mall in 1992 I purchased vinyl copies of Michael Jackson's double album Dangerous and upon returning to my job gave them to the guys as souvenirs. Michael Jackson died a some hours ago. 

No Justice, No Peace

The police officers indicted for killing Sean Bell were acquitted a couple of Fridays ago.
It was a bench trial, and there is plenty of research that suggests this was a good legal strategy on the part of the defendants.

But I haven't written a word since then, nor done much else but mourn.
What is the point? This shit is just going to keep happening. I did not know the departed, but if the NYPD wanted him dead they should have indicted him and tried him and tried to put him away for life.

Not execute him on the street, like a dog.

To pay some tribute to this non-justice, the novel Autobiography/Masquerade (which addresses the frustration of shootings like this one, among other things) will be available for FREE download from now until June 28th. (It is usually ten dollars. Just click above on the title to the novel and you will be taken to my Lulu page where you may choose the "download free" link. The print version is not included in this act.)

And dem is my last words.

Ten Years Gone

When we were such little fools that we took our hand-holding and plan-making for granted.
Before we learned to deride at will and were consequently spoiled,
we had those moments of glow.

Before we allowed life's jaundiced near us, we ran with the energy of an atom. And were bonded as tightly.

And random thoughts still stray to those glowing sprung times though it is no longer practicable nor prudent, and I remember your visits to my sick bed.
Ten years gone.

Deere Crossing at Socrates

There has been little time lately to post all the images of the great things that give me pleasure every day.
“Deere Crossing” adds an aesthetic tickle whenever I view it. The credits are included in the accompanying pic.
It took a while to capture this image with no people in it- that was the goal to go with the artist’s seeming intent to play with scale a bit.

This, along with many other playful and thought provoking works, may be viewed at Socrates Sculpture Park. (I almost don’t want to tell you, as in my mind it’s my park, where I wrote my book, where back in the day it took guts to come here...)

But the artist can’t mind the exposure and Socrates is arguably the coolest public space for local (and global) sculpture ever.

Comparing Gas Prices

This image was taken off Las Vegas Boulevard a few days back. (Much to the amusement of the other persons in the station.) The lowest priced gasoline (regular) is $2.99. After photographing this amazing deal, I realized just how serious this gas crunch is.
What is so exciting about three dollar gas, other than it being cheaper than three sixty-seven gas in NYC?


Attentive readers may note my commentary on the Democratic candidates for the office of American president, with a focus on their latest debates, has, of yet, to be published.
If all goes to plan, it will be published by the time they start voting in Texas.

Single Latina Female Seeks Bookstore

When I was a kid I worked at an independent record store off Steinway Street. My old boss told me that the reason he got the lease for the commercial space was that the prospective tenants before him wanted to open a bookstore, and the landlord had refused to give them the lease, believing firmly that Astorians would not keep a bookstore afloat.

That was eighteen years ago, and I am still waiting for my bookstore.

The subway takes me to 57th in ten minutes, where I walk over to the AOL/Time Warner Mall, where there is a Borders. That’s fine, but it’s not love.
And there is a place on Broadway and 33rd, I think, called Seaburn, so Astoria is not completely without books, but....
I yearn for a mega-bookstore. You know, at least three-thousand square feet of book bliss, along with a section for overpriced journals and bookmarks that I can snag when they go on sale.
I can take or leave the cafe, we have plenty of those, but my unrequited desire is for a shiny, enormous, bookstore stocked with thousands of periodicals and an even more impressive array of books to come into my life.

Of course, I would rather it be walking distance from the subway at Steinway, and there are a few decent options as far as commercial real estate offerings are involved (like the site of the old Blockbuster, for example), but I would settle for anything in the LIC area.
(Just noticed with chagrin that a previous post about not being midtown west has a glaring error--it says midtown east instead, at least three times--clearly got past me. I’m leaving it, not into revisionist history.)

So on this day, reserved for dying red flowers and terrible service at any restaurant that qualifies as “romantic,’” I confess my tale of guilty desire, for rows and rows of hardcover books, for aisles and aisles of travel books, books about Turing machines, nineteenth century art and twentieth century iconoclasts. And special edition copies of the Dr.Seuss series. For pop-up books and books that just smell really good when you quickly flip through the pages, unconsciously assessing the weight of the tome. For comic books.

Maybe the big chains, or some independent magnate are just not interested; it wounds me profoundly to ruminate on a love that does not reciprocate.
I did not sleep at all last night, tossing in bed instead, hoping for even a hint of interest, ready to accept any advance. Maybe it will come today.