Federal Magistrate Joseph Spero has approved a request by Sony to subpoena the hacker GeoHots web host, as well as YouTube, Google, and Twitter, for identifying information on anyone who has accessed, commented, or viewed information relating to the hack. At best this is lazy on Sonys part and irresponsible on Magistrate Speros, and at worst it is a deliberate and malicious wholesale violation of privacy.
The pretense for this wildly overreaching action is that Sony needs this information to prove the case should be tried in San Francisco, in federal court and close to Sonys headquarters. Why? Because its in Sonys terms of service. This after another judge noted previously that by Sonys standards, the entire universe would be subject to [her] jurisdiction.
Sony contends that the subpoenas are narrowly tailored for jurisdictional discovery. Yet their subpoena for Bluehost, GeoHots host, requires all server logs, IP address logs, account information, account access records and application or registration forms and any other identifying information corresponding to persons or computers who have accessed or downloaded files hosted using your service and associated with the
www.geohot.com website, including but not limited to the geohot.com/jailbreak.zip file. Essentially, everyone who visited GeoHots site (or his blog at Blogspot) is subject to involvement in this case.
They also will subpoena YouTube and Google requiring identifying information for anyone who watched GeoHots video showing a PS3 hack.
Every viewer. Every visitor. No matter how they came there, whether they downloaded the contested information. Whether they used that information illegally or not. Im on that list. Are you? How do you like the idea of Sony subpoenaing your personal browsing data from when you followed a link from Reddit or CrunchGear?
The EFF has responded in a letter to the Magistrate, saying the discovery seeks information about non-parties and
the relationship to the narrow jurisdictional question at issue [i.e. where the case should be tried] seem tenuous at best and citing a previous decision in which it was found that Nonparty disclosure is only appropriate in the exceptional case where the compelling need for the discovery sought outweighs the First Amendment rights of the anonymous speaker.
Sony contests that everything is proper, and that the non-parties (which is to say, me and you) will have a chance to contest involvement. Really? Sony is asking that the court knowingly involve potentially hundreds of thousands of individuals, because those individuals arent legally restricted from saying theyre not involved. They may as well accuse the whole world and then let the 6.9 billion of us not concerned each send a letter to Magistrate Spero saying theres been a minor mistake.
