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The bigger problem is that, as I understand it, all of these documents were obtained from someone suing Facebook who had access to them as part of a lawsuit aga
by makomk 8y ago
The bigger problem is that, as I understand it, all of these documents were obtained from someone suing Facebook who had access to them as part of a lawsuit against Facebook under a court order that required them to be kept confidential.
- amerine 8y agoThe law was followed to get access to these files. What are you talking about? Regardless of your agreement with the manner of procurement, nothing nefarious was done here. This is what happens when CEOs ignore governments.
- makomk 8y agoWhich law? They were seized by the British government under British law, but the court order which gave the person they were seized from access to them and imposed conditions on how they were used was a US one.
- aaronmdjones 8y agoThat US court order has no standing in England.
- criddell 8y agoThat makes me wonder if a confidentiality agreement should ever include sharing that information with the government? Maybe NDAs from publicly traded companies should always exempt sharing with elected officials?
- steve_gh 8y agoMight work under US law, but not under UK law. In the UK Parliament is sovereign. Yesterday, Parliament forced the Government to publish it's confidential legal advice on the impact of the proposed Brexit deal - they had previously pushed through a motion of a type called a "humble address" - basically a petition to the Queen (who is the head of state, and nominally in control of the Government), asking for the documents to be published. When the Government tried to wriggle out of it, there was a debate, followed by a vote on a motion that the Government was in contempt of Parliament (kind of like Contempt of Court, but more so). The Government lost, and immediately published the papers. So be in no doubt, the UK Parliament (and a bunch of others), are all really p*ssed off with FB and other tech companies giving them the runaround. They are fighting back with the weapons they have, which turn out to be pretty toothy. I guess that if you broke an NDA saying "You may not release this data to a government" you might get sued in a US court, but would a jury convict?
- ryacko 8y agoSpeech and debate clause.
- matt4077 8y agoYou cannot agree to a contract requiring you to break the law. A lawful seizure therefore cannot trigger liability.
- gmueckl 8y agoThe company CEO shared those files. But I believe that only his lawywers had a right to have them. Is this right? I am not 100% certain.