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To: dantecristo who wrote (4403)	4/4/2003 3:00:33 PM
From: dantecristo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12465

Patriot Act Creates Net Firm Duty to Name Threat-Makers--Attorney "The USA Patriot Act effectively created a new civil duty for Internet companies to reveal the identities of users who threaten serious bodily injury a Cal. Attorney contends. Jon Eisenberg, an Oakland appellate lawyer, said he developed the novel theory when a torrent of death threats directed to his clients – losing defendants in a publicized Internet-defamation case – and their lawyers came via e-mail and Yahoo discussion boards last year. Yahoo rebuffed his request to identify threat authors using names such as “fifthhorseman_2002” and “crack_smoking_jesus,” Eisenberg said. The Patriot Act allowed Internet service providers to disclose user date by reporting serious danger to a govt. entity or others. The providers covered are defined more broadly than ISPs, and Eisenberg said it’s broad enough to include board hosts such as Yahoo. Although the federal law is merely permissive, it has huge implications under negligence law, he said. Cal. Courts have found the duty to report serious threats so important they have pierced confidentiality privileges of psychotherapists and attorneys in tort lawsuits to enforce it, Eisenberg said. By extension, since the Patriot Act explicitly allows Internet service companies to disclose users’ identities, they have no shield against demands for information – even without subpoenas – about users making threats and the companies might have an obligation to monitor communications and voluntarily report threats, he said. “I think anonymity is virtually unprotected after the USA Patriot Act,” Eisenberg told a U. of Cal. Hastings College of the Law conference. Stewart Baker, a lawyer for ISPs, acknowledged Tues. there was no requirement in federal law for providers to withhold subscriber data. But they made privacy promises to their users, he said. “I think there’s some logical leaps” in Eisenberg’s scenario, said Baker, gen. Counsel for the U.S. ISP Assn. “It’s theory. It’s not been tested. I’ve never heard it before.” Someone aware of a serious threat could get a subpoena for the information, Baker said. Eisenberg replied that a contested subpoena request could be expensive and prolonged. Yahoo hadn’t responded to calls for comment by our deadline. Eisenberg’s clients, Mary Day and Michelangelo Delfino, are former research scientists who lost a $775,000 Santa Clara County Superior Court defamation judgment last year to 2 employees and 2 units of their former employer, Varian, over discussion-board comments they had made. The case has been briefed to the 6th Cal. Dist. Court of Appeals but arguments haven't been set. This month, an Agilent Technologies engineer in Colo., Cameron Moore, was charged in U.S. Dist. Court with making electronic threats against Day and Delfino. An FBI agent's affidavit said Moore had admitted writing some of the threats again and had resumed making them after promising the bureau he would stop. Authorities identified moore as "crack_smoking_jesus" but said he wasn't "fifthhorseman_2002" and wasn't responsible for all the threats, Eisenberg said. Eisenberg said his investigation disclosed that Moore had worked at Hewlett-Packard along with the wife of a Varian defamation plaintiff and someone resembling Moore had attended the couple's wedding. The lead plaintiffs' lawyer, Matthew Poppe, said the wedding guest was someone else, the wife didn't know Moore and the plaintiffs had no connection with him. "We don't know who's sending these [threats], and we don't know for sure that Delfino didn't send these to himself to create a side issue," Poppe said."--Louis Trager Washington Internet Daily March 26, 2003 Vol. 4 No. 58 geocities.com