Courts Conspire with Chevron to Erode the First Amendment

[BainsBane]

While it may come as news to some, the Bill of Rights contains more than the Second Amendment. The First Amendment is the most precious of our rights, and it is being systematically undermined by an array of corporate interests. Chevron's ability to subpoena American's private email correspondence without their being notified is the latest effort by business to suppress activism and with it free speech.

Court: Chevron Can Seize Americans' Email Data

Last month, a federal court granted Chevron access to nine years of email metadata—which includes names, time stamps, and detailed location data and login info, but not content—belonging to activists, lawyers, and journalists who criticized the company for drilling in Ecuador and leaving behind a trail of toxic sludge and leaky pipelines. Since 1993, when the litigation began, Chevron has lost multiple appeals and has been ordered to pay plaintiffs from native communities about $19 billion to cover the cost of environmental damage. Chevron alleges that it is the victim of a mass extortion conspiracy, which is why the company is asking Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft, which owns Hotmail, to cough up the email data. When Lewis Kaplan, a federal judge in New York, granted the Microsoft subpoena last month, he ruled it didn't violate the First Amendment because Americans weren't among the people targeted.

Now Mother Jones has learned that the targeted accounts do include Americans—a revelation that calls the validity of the subpoena into question. The First Amendment protects the right to speak anonymously, and in cases involving Americans, courts have often quashed subpoenas seeking to discover the identities and locations of anonymous internet users. Earlier this year, a different federal judge quashed Chevron's attempts to seize documents from Amazon Watch, one of the company's most vocal critics. That judge said the subpoena was a violation of the group's First Amendment rights. In this case, though, that same protection has not been extended to activists, journalists, and lawyers' email metadata.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) represents 40 of the targeted users—some of whom are members of the legal teams who represented the plaintiffs—and Nate Cardozo, an attorney for EFF, says that of the three targeted Hotmail users, at least one is American. Cardozo says that of the Yahoo and Gmail users, "many" are American.

"It's appalling to me that the First Amendment has no bearing in this case, and that the judge simply assumed that all of the targets aren't US citizens—when in fact, I am," says a human rights activist from New York who has been advocating on behalf of the indigenous community, doing both volunteer and paid work, since 2005. He has never been sued by Chevron, nor been deposed. He wishes to remain anonymous—because his legal fight against the subpoena is still pending. The activist received a notice of the subpoena from Google last year (it has not been granted yet.) Chevron is seeking information including, but not limited to, the name associated with the account and where a user was every time he logged in—for the past nine years.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/07/chevron-ecuador-american-email-legal-activists-journalists

[HiPointDem]

1. kr. and this is the real reason for storing all metadata.

[BainsBane]

2. One of many

The government has its own uses for it.

[HiPointDem]

3. same uses. which is why the overwhelming majority of supoenas have been about drugs.

[BainsBane]

7. This is a case where Chevron is trying to claim

that activism on the part of citizens trying to get them to play to clean up an oil spill in Ecuador is part of a criminal conspiracy.

[HiPointDem]

8. i meant, control of populations rather than anti-terrorism.

[markiv]

11. which is why much of DU rolling over for this is an outrage

it has the potential to make any 'progressive' issue completely moot

absolutely no way to pursue protest to anything the elite does

absolute power

[G_j]

4. citizens have nothing to worry about

as long as they are good little drones and keep their mouths shut.

[BainsBane]

6. And don't ask oil companies to clean up their toxic waste

lest they risk being charged with engaging in a "conspiracy"--corporate speak for political action.

[midnight]

5. K&R

[bonniebgood]

9. Does the word 'conspiracy' have a new meaning? according to

the definition the word to 'conspire' is illegal/a crime.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_%28crime%29
The OP 'courts conspire' IS illegal as well. Unless the secret court has changed the meaning.
To protest or report is not ILLEGAL? unless you are teabaggers. All empire fall from within.

[BainsBane]

10. Evidently it now means trying to get an oil company

to clean up a toxic mess they made.

[gtar100]

12. It's really hard for me to imagine minds that wake up every day making schemes like this.

It seems like such an awful waste of potential. But then again, there is a reason we came up with descriptive words like 'assholes', and and 'selfish motherf....' you know, those kind of labels. Because the shoe fits. And all these people who find the First Amendment an inconvenience did get up today and will continue their work from yesterday.

[BainsBane]

13. lawyers working for greedy corporations

Chevron is making record profits but still doesn't want to pay to clean up its own messes, and they'll do absolutely anything to save money.