Save a Chatlog... Go to Prison? 486
Alien54 writes "You are engaged in a chat session with some friends and colleagues, when one of them makes a witty remark or imparts a pithy bit of information. You hit CTRL-A and select the conversation, then copy it to a document that you save. Under a little-noticed decision in a New Hampshire Superior Court in late February, these actions may just land you in jail. New Hampshire is "two-party consent state" -- one of those jurisdictions that requires all parties to a conversation to consent before the conversation can be intercepted or recorded. The decision is the first of its kind to apply that standard to online chats, and the ruling is clearly supported by the text of the law. But it marks a blow to an investigative technique that has been routinely used by law enforcement, employers, ISPs and others, who often use video tape or othermeans to track criminals in chat rooms. This also has troublesome implications [for employers] monitoring of email and other forms of electronic communications."
Does... (Score:2, Interesting)
Am I violating it by saving this webpage (once it has gained enough commentary)? How about a mirror of it?
Troublesome how? (Score:2, Interesting)
This is probably the least troublesome aspect of this particular issue. Employers should not be allowed to track peoples personal communications in any way.
Aren't employers required to monitor e-comms? (Score:3, Interesting)
So, in New Hampshire, it sounds like employers must either not comply with Sarbanes-Oxley or must be guilty of illegal wiretapping. Or am I missing something?
So, what about saving email? (Score:4, Interesting)
Hey, couldn't this be used to fight off an RIAA lawsuit? Could making a record of a Kazaa user's IP address without that user's consent be illegal in a two-party consent state?
Troublesome consequences? (Score:5, Interesting)
This is downright welcome! Some portion of you are going to consider this flamebait, but shouldn't online chat be held to the same restrictions that other conversations are?
If we had the easy ability to do audio searches, would there be phones that recorded a history of the last n hours of conversation you had? Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should...
Re:Easy... (Score:5, Interesting)
When is America going to wake up out of this hypocrisy?
It's not a chat log, it's a screencap (Score:4, Interesting)
The test seems to be whether the recording capability is part of the instant messaging software itself (in which case it may be legal to record) or whether it is an add-on, and therefore an unlawful recording.
So the Slashdot article is somewhat skewed. The chatlog isn't illegal. And I wouldn't be too upset, since the process the officer used involved video screen capture, as well as cutting and pasting, to get into a final document.
As far as chatlogs go, it's generally understood that written correspondence (mail, etc.) is owned by the one who receives it. I'd be surprised to see chatrooms fall outside that rule of thumb.
Re:A blow to an investigative technique? (Score:2, Interesting)
As for jurisdiction, that's a good question, and one that nobody has a good handle on. As we have seen, you might be arrested if you violate a country's laws while outside its borders but later enter it. I doubt any country would want to extradite someone for logging casual chats.
Possible workaround... (Score:3, Interesting)
"BY ENTERING THIS CHAT, YOU ARE AWARE THAT WHAT YOU SAY CAN BE RECORDED AND SAVED TO DISK. IF YOU DO NOT CONSENT, PLEASE END THIS CHAT."
IANAL, but I think this would be sufficient under the current laws that we have that regulate wiretapping.
Maybe I should code up a patch for GAIM...
IRC logs (Score:1, Interesting)
Sarbanes-Oxley (Score:2, Interesting)
How about throwing in... (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, it's CYA of the worst sort. But it should let the company continue monitoring employees just like they do today. If someone complains, well you can probably blame the employee (read: scapegoat).
Kjella
Re:Logs are presumed (Score:3, Interesting)
If *you* are in one of those 12 states, you must have consent of all parties. But someone in a one-party-consent state can record you, even if you are in an all-parties-consent state, without your consent.
The Maryland cops use this a lot. Maryland is an all-parties-consent state. They routinely pop over the border into Virginia (a one-party-consent state), make a phone call to a Maryland phone, record it, go back to Maryland, and have a (legal) recording of a Maryland phone by a Maryland law enforcement officer, with only one party consenting.
Tell me again why I should have respect for the law, when the police obviously don't?
Here is a very intresting one (Score:2, Interesting)
Apparently, her son was talking to some girl in his class
Needless to say, at some point, his father (who doesn't live with them) was able to install some VNC software. He was monitoring his conversations and turned on the logging. When he seen what was going on, he called Dyfus. (Division of youth and family services) Which, one a side note for those who don't know. Is a child protection agency that is more intrested in prosecuting parents for anything they can, and ripping familys apart. They are NOT there to help you, only hurt you
My friend recived a call from Dyfus which informed her that the next day to be home and they are coming to confiscate the computer for an investigation. On another side note, they should be required to have a search warrent for this, some idiot gave them full access to peoples homes without a search warrent. Which in some cases is good, but not all.
They didn't give all the details to why they where doing this, but she already knew since the father was complaining about it a few days before.
I told her to press charges against the father for unauthorized access to the computer. But, the local police department refussed to file the charges.
Without getting too off topic, they could have charged her with endangering a minor if they had gotten access to those logs. Which, honestly is total bullshit. Thats what 14 year old kids do
Re: Respondeat Superior (Score:4, Interesting)
IANAL, and I don't have any knowledge about how this works in other countries, but in the US, I don't think that will fly in a court of law. The employee is an agent of the company. If the employee fails to get the permission, an agent of the company failed to get permission. Therefore, it's the company's fault (respondeat superior). I.e. companies are responsible for hiring employees, so they are responsible for the employees' actions.
I know that after knee surgery my father was not able to return to work when he felt ready because they were concerned that he might reinjure his knee on work time (the original injury was not work related). Even if *he* had been at fault, they would have been liable if he was on work time.
CYA of this sort only works inside a corporation. It has no weight in a court case, AFAIK.
A better solution is to simply automatically inform anyone who connects that the conversation is being recorded (in the log file) and direct them to other methods of conversation if this is unacceptable. A buddy list request response might be able to handle this (if you only accept messages from someone on your buddy list; those not on it have to send you a request to be on it).
DO you give implicit permission to record buddy requests that you make? If not, then how could they add you to the buddy list (doesn't that record it)?
Re:Easy... (Score:2, Interesting)
It's perfectly legal to sit there and write out what someone's saying to you over the phone, but illegal to have a recorder store? That's just dumb.
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I agree.
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two party consent laws are stupid
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Ethically, consent laws period are just stupid. They're tactical loopholes used by people who know they're planning to do something which would otherwise be illegal. Either you have rights or you don't. Ethically you cannot take away someone's rights by cornering them into a position where the choice is implicitly "sign this or get fired".
This is America, though. Disregarding the pomp and dispaly there are no true ethics. The only real law is "might makes right".
Re:Relevance - freedom! (Score:3, Interesting)
I mean, no, I don't want to be put in jail for saving a chat log, but I do believe that this type of thinking promotes freedom. You would have the freedom of saying something to a friend on IRC without worrying that someone is going to use it against you.
In a country where the laws keep on getting more crappy for joe american, we need protection.
Re:Trillian Pro (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Relevance - freedom! (Score:5, Interesting)
If you don't trust your friend, why are you telling him your secrets in the first place? Even if it's somehow possible to prevent him from saving the transcript, there's no way you can stop him from "using it against you".
In a country where the laws keep on getting more crappy for joe american, we need protection.
On the other hand, I see great potential for abuse. I'm sure certain individuals in government would love to prevent all permanent records of their statements.
Re:Relevance (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Easy... (Score:2, Interesting)
If the slave had to sign a document that made it ok for him to be a slave, then I imagine slaves would never willingly do this
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My experience is that the situation would be approximated in this fashion,"Sign the papers or take your chances with the wild indians out there. You won't get a better deal from anyone else within a month's walk."
This is the same as present day America. "Sign these papers or take your chances on the open job market. I hear McDonald's is hiring."
I'm suddenly reminded of Qui-Gon Jinn in Episode I trying to buy a new engine from Watto. America the beautiful isn't really any different for all the pretty rhetoric that the politicians have.
If a husband says "have sex" and his wife says "no" and he forces her then he is still legally accountable for sexual assault. If a company says "sign this" and the employee says "no" the company is not liable for wrongful termination. This is only legal because power currently takes precedence over rights. In that case why are citizens ever deluded into thinking that they have rights? Who would ever refuse a consent form to be monitored if the implicit alternative was to get a "dangerous driving" ticket every time they pulled out of their parking lot? The "dangerous driving" may be disproved in court, though the police typically get the benefit of the doubt, but the constant harassment alone will have more of a toll than the ticket.
Re:Relevance (Score:3, Interesting)
More usefully, does it make it illegal for your ISP to record your IM conversations?
And with the laws requiring ISPs to record everything, does that make it illegal to even be an ISP?
AOL/AIM profiles warning of logging? (Score:2, Interesting)
Since profiles are public and easily veiwed I think it would be fair warning.
If you say you have DeadAIM in your profile, which logs by default, then wouldn't that also be fair warning.
The only people who aren't able to view profiles are using third party clients, which use auto-logging anyway.
This is just nuts! (Score:2, Interesting)
It's a good thing that I don't live there! (Score:3, Interesting)
This is because I have a rather bad memory, and it also comes very handy sometimes. For example, it's useful to find URL that appeared in a conversation, find what exactly somebody said about some subject without having to dig in all my logs (having 4 different places with logs is quite a nuisance), and it's especially useful to find things like birthdays and addresses.
I think the current database has somewhere about 100K rows.
Re:A blow to an investigative technique? (Score:1, Interesting)
The logic is that the other person should realize that if you're chatting on AIM, and the normal AIM client has logging features, then logging of the conversation is likely.
You can't prove I "recorded" a chat session. (Score:3, Interesting)
What if I take a real chat session and change the names? Heck, real chat sessions don't even have real names; Can Munkygurl69 show me some legal ID with that name on it?
What if some hacker put those logs there! Seems like some California judge got off on some sort of child porn charges by claiming it was put there [actually he got off because the search of his computer was illegal - but the claim was hey, if this guy could break into my computer and "search" it, why couldn't he have put the stuff there!]
If you leave an open wireless connection can you then plausibly deny anything coming from your IP address was necessarily "you"? Isn't it like those red-light cameras - if the driver doesn't come out in the picture, they only know that it was your car, but can't prove you went thru the light.
Re:Relevance (Score:2, Interesting)
AUP. (Score:1, Interesting)
74. You abandon all copyrights to any informations and opinions you express in this chatroom.