{"id":678,"date":"2010-04-26T14:59:26","date_gmt":"2010-04-26T14:59:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/?p=678"},"modified":"2010-04-26T14:59:26","modified_gmt":"2010-04-26T14:59:26","slug":"ze_plot_she_ees_thickening","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/?p=678","title":{"rendered":"Ze plot, she ees thickening&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So now <a href=\"http:\/\/gizmodo.com\/5524843\/police-seize-jason-chens-computers\">one of Gizmodo&#8217;s editors has gotten a search warrant executed and his house raided<\/a>. It appears as well that Gawker Media is going to push back claiming immunity under California&#8217;s shield law that protects sources for reporters.<\/p>\n<p>I have a sneaking suspicion that dog ain&#8217;t gonna hunt. Mainly because the law says &#8220;no warrant shall issue for&#8230;the source of any information.&#8221; A full description of the notional iPhone 4, with specs and stats, would certainly constitute information. Even pictures could be so construed. But that ain&#8217;t what&#8217;s doin&#8217;. What&#8217;s doin&#8217; is that Gawker Media, through its employee, took possession of actual property in a manner that, under California law, probably rises to the level of stolen goods.<\/p>\n<p>Now I&#8217;m sure there will come the usual parade of First Amendment absolutists who think all reporters should be protected from everything for all time, to which my usual response is: you obviously have never seen NBC. But Jason Chen&#8217;s little exercise in balls-to-the-wall journalism is not going to get the same protection as, say, Daniel Ellsburg and the Pentagon Papers, and rightly so &#8211; because while details of the iPhone are certainly newsworthy, they do not rise to the level of a compelling public interest. Even so, with California&#8217;s shield law, he would probably be in a position to skate if they hadn&#8217;t paid $5000 &#8211; a felony-theft level of cash &#8211; for property that was not the seller&#8217;s to sell.<\/p>\n<p>As it is, if I&#8217;m Gawker Media&#8217;s lawyer, I&#8217;m skipping over the righteous pontification and heading to the part where I hope the DA might be open to pleading down to something that doesn&#8217;t involve jail time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So now one of Gizmodo&#8217;s editors has gotten a search warrant executed and his house raided. It appears as well that Gawker Media is going to push back claiming immunity under California&#8217;s shield law that protects sources for reporters. I have a sneaking suspicion that dog ain&#8217;t gonna hunt. Mainly because the law says &#8220;no &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/?p=678\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Ze plot, she ees thickening&#8230;&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=678"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}