Hacker News Reader

Comment by sandworm101 | Hacker News Reader

7000$ is a pitance. Maybe this case is simple, but many will not be. Say they raid a house and confiscate a hard drive. Encrypted or not, that is going to be a huge thing. Arguments will be made about whether anything incriminating was stored on that drive. Just google the cost of a forensic expert witness. Both sides will need one.

Such costs are actually why so many police agencies are backing off of CP investigations. They still prosecute where evidence is clear, such as when someone emails such material openly, but they arent willing to invest the tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars necessary to handle the complex cases involving encrypted communication/storage. 7000$ would be a bare minimum for only the simplest of legal defenses in the simplest of cases.

View on HN

The reference to $7k isn’t to prosecute a CP case, it was to sue google to reinstate his account so he could get his digital life back.

Which to be fair, the guy lives in San Francisco. It isn't that hard to file a small claims case. I understand that there may be some legal nuisances involved, but just getting the attention of the legal review team that will have to show up to defend the case is usually enough to get them to evaluate a matter beyond the algorithms. I don't think it is fair, but is much quicker and cheaper $7,000.

Maybe CA is different, but in most states small claims can't order equitable remedies (reinstating his account) and can only award money damages.

What would be sought is return of property which small claims courts do have the power to enforce. A case trying to change the laws to force a company to provide services to you against their choice, with some exceptions for discrimination due to protected classes, would easily cost millions and is pretty much dead in the water from the get go. If the property value is assessed to be more than $10,000 then by all means seek relief in another court but note Google wouldn't be able to have a lawyer represent them in small claims..

If Google has to choose between sending an executive to small claims to defend the company without representation or try to resolve a dispute via settlement, they are likely to try to resolve it via settlement which is the type of relief this individual appears to be seeking.

Google has a team of non-lawyers with legal training whose job is to attend small claims court. They're not wasting an exec's time.

I don't see any information about this team of non-lawyer legal experts when doing a quick search, but regardless non-lawyers with legal training are usually still pretty expensive. Again, they are much more willing to listen and actually try to resolve an issue than first-response algorithm defenders. Most small claims even require mediation before trial, so if you don't get it settled before then you can just request dismissal without prejudice.

He could probably find a lawyer willing to take the case on contingency. A jury might decide that he deserves millions in punitive damages and courts are probably the only way to force a human at google to provide support.

Which would involve defending his case. The defense's budget has to be in 5he same league as the prosecution.

You've got that switched around. No charges were filed against him. So he would have to commence a suit against Google. Google would be the defendant and he would be the plaintiff prosecuting a claim.

This is a civil case—not criminal. The father would be suing Google, not the government suing the father for a crime.

This one is. A legal fund cannot be aimed just at the most simple cases.

Lucky for many to consider $7k a pittance. Probably a pittance to most HN participants, but certainly not for everyone.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com