Hacker News Reader

Comment by lscdlscd | Hacker News Reader

Sickening. If FB were to selectively refuse to comply with some state subpoenas, what would be the consequences? Banning of FB in Indiana? I think that would be more of a punishment for the Boomers of Indiana than for FB.

View on HN

If there is a Subpoena or Search Warrant for FB messages, FB has no choice to hand them over. However, FB should have fought like hell in the courts to not hand those messages over.

Yep. The requests for data always come with a “show up to court if you don’t want to give the data”

They made a decision not to.

Isn’t it usually: “your archivist is required to appear physically at this address: xxxx, with a physical copy of the following items: yyyy. As a courtesy to you, you can email them to Special Agent zzzz if they are in the proper format.”

So showing up (at thousands of courthouses a year) is the default. If you’re helpful (to the prosecution), we will let you do things by email.

They had a choice - they can tell their lawyers to fight the subpoena/warrant in court. Possibly a long, expensive, and futile exercise, but it would signal whose side they're on. And to the surprise of (hopefully) nobody, they're not on our side at all.

Not all legal battles are long and drawn out.

They would get raided by the government and forced to comply. They literally can't refuse in this case. They could have fought it in court (and lost) but at the end they would have to produce the documents under threat of contempt and then criminal charges.

It is considered contempt of court, not sure what the punishment is in Nebraska, but that is usually something like a $500 fine and six months in jail.

Obviously you can't put FB in jail, so does that turn into a bigger fine?

Generally, there are just fines, but courts have put people from a company in contempt because they were the actual reason for contempt. For example, if the lawyers refused to produce files during discovery, the lawyers (despite working for the company) could be found in contempt and sanctioned.

They could’ve went to court and argued they don’t want to do it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com