The Canadian Press reports that a Halifax court has ordered a newspaper and Google to provide whatever information they have to help identify people who posted anonymous comments about Halifax's top firefighters.
Halifax Court Orders Newspaper to Name Anonymous Posters
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This is unusual, if it happens before a suit is filed
After a suit is filed, it’s just part of discovery.
However, before one is filed, the applicant would need to convince the court that they were going to file on, and something extraordinary was in the way.
In either case it’s a “Norwich Orders” and we just had one on the case of “York University v. Bell Canada Enterprises”
(Detail on Google)
–dave (Who’s in the middle of typesetting a book on Anton Piller, Mareva and Norwich orders, and finds them fascinating) c-b
Backlash expected
I expect the fallout from increasing use of these types of orders will be less transparency when signing onto services such as gmail.
The best way to do it (in this case) would be to signup for the gmail account through a proxy or at an internet cafe, somewhere offsite… fill out bogus information as account holder details.
When the norwich order comes a calling the worst that can happen is the account gets suspended.
Need a new email adderss rinse and repeat
re: Backlash expected
Wait a minute. You mean you don’t already do that?
Now of course to work properly it would require you to only ever access the the email account via the proxy. Not just when you set it up. The proxy should also reside in a another country which has strong privacy laws, and you should check that the proxy operator does not keep log files.
I haven’t gone to quite this extent yet, but I must say the Pirate Bay’s Ipredator (https://www.ipredator.se/) is looking like a better and better deal every day. It’s good for getting around Bell’s torrent throttling as well!
re: Backlash expected
I would assume most folks already do this (fill out registrations with bogus info) it’s just another step up to set portal to access the email account via the proxy or vpn perpertually after that.
What’s a shame is that it has to escalate to this level in order to preserve privacy.
Re: Bell’s Torrents
I’m a *proud* client of Teksavvy’s although I approve of VPN usage to prevent snooping I don’t have to fear Bell’s throttle as far as torrents are concerned.
Besides usenet is much better. 😀
VPN
Use a VPN and make things up they’ll never learn their lesson until it happens.