Can anyone explain for the uninformed how anything like surveillance affects Groklaw?
I was under the (probably wrong) impression that most of what Groklaw did was explain the law and court cases in simple terms.
I was under the (probably wrong) impression that most of what Groklaw did was explain the law and court cases in simple terms.
That sort of information comes from having serious inside, in-depth background information.
You know, the sort of stuff serious investigative journalists /used/ to do. Like the Washington Post in 1972 when they reported on illegal activity by the President (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watergate_scandal#Role_of_the_m...) rather than the Washington Post in 2013 when the report on Presidential Broccoli (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/07...).
We've seen a rare example of serious investigative journalism and how /our/ countries respond to it by targeting family and loved ones of the journalists. That's the way we used to say only the KGB or the Gestapo behaved in the Bad Old Days. Guess what ? The Bad Old Days are right here and right now.
No wonder PJ is concerned that continuing Groklaw may expose her to serious risk from the authorities. Commenting on court cases and filling in the background through back-channel information from Deep Throat (or whatever pseudonym they use today) sure does not seem to be worth that risk to me.
It's sad that any comment on this stuff makes it sound like you go around wearing a tin-foil hat.
Note that I am not saying there were none...just that I never noticed them. Anyone have an example or two?
States explicitly "Groklaw relied in some cases on email tips from readers and other anonymous sources".
Following the early days of the SCO reporting it was obvious there was unreleased information being shared. There was even lots of discussion about whether Groklaw was some secret group of IBM agents and stuff like that due to the knowledge and insight being displayed at the time.
Oh, and she did all of the above in simple terms. Groklaw is easily one of the best blogs ever. Sad day to see PJ go.