Unmasked blogger to sue Google

[evanovitch]

From The Times
August 25, 2009
Unmasked blogger Rosemary Port to sue Google for $15m

Mike Harvey, San Francisco

Google is to be sued for $15 million (£9 million) by an anonymous blogger who was unmasked by the internet search company.

Rosemary Port said that Google had failed to protect her right to privacy when the company obeyed a court order to reveal her name after she used her blog to accuse a former Vogue model of being a "psychotic, lying, whoring ... skank".

Liskula Cohen, 36, won a landmark case in a New York court last week, forcing Google to disclose the online identity of Ms Port, 29, a Fashion Institute of Technology student, who created her "Skanks in NYC" blog a year ago using Google's Blogger.com program.

Legal experts said that the ruling stripped away some of the anonymity provided by the web, making people who post offensive blogs, videos or tweets more responsible for their anonymous statements.

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In the UK, bloggers who operate behind the cloak of anonymity have no right to keep their identities secret, the High Court ruled in June. In a landmark decision, Mr Justice Eady refused to grant an order to protect the anonymity of a police officer who was the author of the NightJack blog.

He ruled that Richard Horton had no “reasonable expectation” to anonymity because “blogging is essentially a public rather than a private activity”.

Ms Cohen claimed that Ms Port had anonymously posted photographs and “defamatory statements concerning her appearance, hygiene and sexual conduct that are malicious and untrue".

The New York Supreme Court ruled that Google must reveal the identity of the blogger.

Judge Joan Madden rejected Ms Port's claim that the blogs were a "modern-day forum for conveying personal opinions, including invective and ranting" and should not be treated as factual assertions.

After the court ruling Google turned over the e-mail address and IP addresses from each time the blogger had logged on to the blog, allowing Ms Cohen to discover the identity of her tormentor.

She said she was relieved to discover that the woman who created the blog was not someone close to her and decided not to continue with a defamation suit. The blog was deleted in March.

Google said that users of Blogger.com agree to a privacy policy that allows the company to share personal information if required by legal action.

"We sympathise with anyone who may be the victim of cyber bullying," Andrew Pederson, a Google spokesman, said.

"We also take great care to respect privacy concerns and will only provide information about a user in response to a subpoena or other court order.

"If content is found by a court to be defamatory, we will, of course, remove it immediately."

Ms Port told the New York Daily News that the model should blame herself for all the publicity.

"This has become a public spectacle and a circus that is not my doing. By going to the press, she defamed herself," Ms Port said.

She added that she would sue Google for failing to protect the rights of its users. Her attorney, Salvatore Strazzullo, said that Google would be charged with breaching "its fiduciary duty to protect her expectation of anonymity".

"I feel proud to live in a country where you're not persecuted for your opinions," Ms Port said. "That right has to be protected.

"Even though people are now taking shots at me on the web, I believe those people have a right to their opinions — and their anonymity," she told the Daily News.

[Gen]

Re: Unmasked blogger to sue Google

yeah I was when mi see this


mi nuh know how mi feel bout revealing the identity

[evanovitch]

How to spy on your rivals? Just redirect their email

How to spy on your rivals? Just redirect their email

Bobbie Johnson
guardian.co.uk Blogposts Mon 24 Aug 2009 12:30 BST
A strange legal case from Texas, where Affiliated Computer Services - a $4.4bn IT services giant with links to many large public and private bodies in the US - is suing a rival company over allegations that it stole trade secrets online.
How? According to the case brought before federal court in Dallas, Duncan Solutions used Outlook to fake the email addresses of 25 ACS employees, redirecting all incoming messages to their own systems - thereby gaining access to all sorts of private business information.
"The stolen emails reveal not only information about specific prospective and existing clients, but also confidential and proprietary information regarding ACS' general business strategies and plans," said the complaint.
Compared to the complexity of most computer crimes, this seems almost dangerously simple. Duncan is contesting the charges.

[RichD]

Re: Unmasked blogger to sue Google

there usualy is a caveat that there is no protection of identity if posted material is actionable. like this:

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">We have a good faith belief that access, use, preservation or disclosure of such information is reasonably necessary to (a) satisfy any applicable law, regulation, legal process or enforceable governmental request, (b) enforce applicable Terms of Service, including investigation of potential violations thereof, (c) detect, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, security or technical issues, or (d) protect against harm to the rights, property or safety of Google, its users or the public as required or permitted by law.</div></div>

[evanovitch]

Outed 'skank' blogger to sue Google for $15m

Outed 'skank' blogger to sue Google for $15m

Bobbie Johnson
guardian.co.uk News Mon 24 Aug 2009 17:19 BST
'I was put on a silver platter for the press to attack me' says blogger who anonymously accused a model of being a 'psychotic whoring skank'
A blogger stripped of her anonymity by the US courts has said she plans to sue Google for handing over her real identity.
Rosemary Port, a 29-year-old fashion student from New York, has said she will file a $15m (£9m) lawsuit against the internet giant after it complied with an order from a US court to reveal that she was behind the vitriolic &quot;Skanks in NYC&quot; blog.
The case erupted last week after the Manhattan Supreme Court ruled that Google must hand over the identity of the writer, who had targeted 36-year-old model Liskula Cohen online and called her a &quot;psychotic, lying, whoring... skank&quot;.
Cohen had filed a lawsuit demanding that the writer's identity be revealed, an argument that judge Joan Madden agreed with.
However, talking to the New York Daily News, Port said her accuser had breached her right to privacy and had effectively created more negative publicity by drawing attention to the case.
&quot;Before her suit, there were probably two hits on my web site - one from me looking at it, and one from her looking at it,&quot; Port said.
She added that she plans to sue Google amid claims that the internet company &quot;breached its fiduciary duty to protect her expectation of anonymity&quot; when it complied with the court order.
&quot;Without any warning, I was put on a silver platter for the press to attack me,&quot; she said. &quot;I would think that a multi-billion dollar conglomerate would protect the rights of all its users.&quot;
The question of anonymity online - and the rights of those involved - is a hot one after a series of legal battles around the world.
In Britain, the police blogger known as Nightjack was unmasked by the Times newspaper after a court ruled that he had &quot;no reasonable expectation of privacy&quot;. Richard Horton, a detective with the Lancashire constabulary, had detailed life on the front lines of modern police force under a pseudonym for more than a year - winning plaudits and even awards for his writing.
After threats to reveal his identity, Horton had been awarded an injunction preventing publication of his real name - but a high court ruling overturned the order in June, with the Times argued that revealing his real name was in the public interest because of the possibility that he had broken disciplinary rules. That decision drew much criticism for depriving the often-closed policing world of an insightful voice, and the Nightjack blog has now been deleted.
The repercussions of such cases proven even more serious in other countries, however. In China, where the government closely monitors communication by dissidents, several journalists have been imprisoned after the government or the courts demanded their identities from the web hosts they used.

Indeed, Yahoo's role in the case of Shi Tao - a journalist jailed for 10 years for forwarding an email demanding censorship over the anniversary of Tiananmen Square - was so heavily criticised that it lead founder Jerry Yang to apologise to the families of those affected.
The company's Hong Kong office handed over Tao's details without a court order, leading a US congressional inquiry to label the Silicon Valley firm &quot;moral pygmies&quot;.

[Suesumba]

Re: How to spy on your rivals? Just redirect their email

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: evanovitch</div><div class="ubbcode-body">How to spy on your rivals? Just redirect their email

Bobbie Johnson
guardian.co.uk Blogposts Mon 24 Aug 2009 12:30 BST
A strange legal case from Texas, where Affiliated Computer Services - a $4.4bn IT services giant with links to many large public and private bodies in the US - is suing a rival company over allegations that it stole trade secrets online.
How? According to the case brought before federal court in Dallas, Duncan Solutions used Outlook to fake the email addresses of 25 ACS employees, redirecting all incoming messages to their own systems - thereby gaining access to all sorts of private business information.
&quot;The stolen emails reveal not only information about specific prospective and existing clients, but also confidential and proprietary information regarding ACS' general business strategies and plans,&quot; said the complaint.
Compared to the complexity of most computer crimes, this seems almost dangerously simple. Duncan is contesting the charges. </div></div>

don't companies usually have security/firewalls, and such to protect against this?

[RichD]

Re: How to spy on your rivals? Just redirect their email

this is almost iek when the scammers set up fake banking websites..they intercept the info before it gets inside the company security zone

[evanovitch]

Re: How to spy on your rivals? Just redirect their email

my knowledge of computers is limited to cut n paste but I have read where even the Pentagon's websites have been breached plus di US various bodies having to hire former hackers , so u can see dat nutten is infallible

[Suesumba]

Re: How to spy on your rivals? Just redirect their email

it's just scary that's all. i've seen on craigslist where someone has traced another poster's e-mail to the facebook profile and post their pictures for ridicule.

they've recently added a legal thingy about doing that very same thing.

[evanovitch]

Re: How to spy on your rivals? Just redirect their email

I tried FB for the first time recently n was shocked at how invasive it could be...the way it quickly matched mi contact list from MSN was too scary fi mi so mi quikly deleted it..mi no eena dem sharing ting..but den mi no even chat pon cellphone dat much eida...reading more fun