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Politech is the oldest Internet resource devoted to politics and technology. Launched in 1994 by Declan McCullagh, the mailing list has chronicled the growing intersection of culture, technology, politics, and law. Since 2000, so has the Politech web site.
News coverage: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/74939_freespeech17.shtml http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,53255,00.html Politech archive: http://www.politechbot.com/cgi-bin/politech.cgi?name=trummel From Anonymous, suggesting that politechnicals mirror these site before it's too late: >Trummel's writings may be found at www.contracabal.org (uncensored) and >www.contracabal.net (censored) > >The names and contact information that form the basis of Trummel's >contempt are at: >http://contracabal.org/801-09.htm >I suspect he may take these down in the next few days, so the link could >go bad at any time. > >Judge Doerty's website is at http://www.jdoerty.com I suspect that many of >the entries in the guestbook are going to disappear very soon! >http://jdoerty.com/guestbook.html Elena (below) is a Washington state attorney who has worked on similar First Amendment cases before (http://www.politechbot.com/p-03324.html). -Declan --- Date: Mon, 17 Jun 2002 22:16:14 -0700 To: declan@well.com From: Elena Luisa Garella <garella@mindspring.com> Subject: Re:Disturbing comments by Judge in Trummel free speech case. Declan-- I believe you are familiar with the Trummel case. Paul Trummel was, until April, 2001, a resident of Council House, a HUD-funded housing project for the elderly in Seattle, WA. He wrote a newsletter that reported allegations regarding the poor administration of Council House and some of the activities of fellow residents. Council House sought and obtained a restraining order based on allegations of harassment. Judge James Doerty presided. The Order (April 19, 2001) required him to stay 500' away from Council House, effectively operated as an eviction. Mr. Trummel continued his self-styled investigation of wrong doings at Council House, and posted the names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses of the Officers and Board of Directors. The Court issued another restraining order, banning Mr. Trummel from "posting on the Internet or to his web site, directly or indirectly, any personal identifying information, including, but not limited to the name, address, phone number, Social Security Number, or photograph of any current, former or future staff member, resident, board memeber, or agent, including attorneys, of Council House." Mr. Trummel apparently posted the information anyway. (By the way, I do not believe he ever posted anyone's SSN. I also believe the information he posted was restricted to those people who administer and/or direct Council House. However, I have not reviewed the entirety of his web-sites or seen all of its various incarnations). The Court put Mr. Trummel in jail three and a half months ago for civil contempt . About a month ago, the Court further ordered that Mr. Trummel be restricted from using the phone except to call his attorney. King County Jail then placed Mr. Trummel in solitary confinement, in a cell next to alleged "Green River Killer" Gary Ridgway. http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis.cgi/web/vortex/display?slug=ridgway14m&date=20020614&query=ridgway At the time he was initially jailed, the Court failed to advise Mr. Trummel that he was entitled to counsel, and that, because he is indigent, counsel would be provided to him free of charge. (Because the civil contempt proceeding involved the threat of imprisonment, Mr. Trummel had a right to an attorney). On May 1, 2002, the Court finally appointed Mr. Trummel a lawyer. That lawyer, Brad Meryhew, asked Judge Doerty to vacate the finding of contempt and to recuse himself on grounds that the judge's impartiality is suspect due to the denial of counsel. Today I attended the hearing on the motion to vacate and for recusal. The Court did not enter a decision, continuing the matter until this Friday. The Court did release Mr. Trummel until that date, apparently to give him an opportunity to remove the offending matter from the Internet. The Court delivered a startling (and, IMHO, depressingly misguided) blast at Mr. Trummel and his rights. That oral opinion can be found attached and at http://www.metrokc.gov/kcsc/ It is beyond the scope of this letter to explore everything that is wrong and dangerous about this opinion. A few (and just a few) of my observations are as follows: 1) On page 2, the Court states that this "is a case about balancing speech and the right of privacy." I am aware of no decision of precedential value that curbs free speech based on the privacy rights claims of others. This is simply not the correct test. The test, under the US Constitution, is whether or not the speech must be restrained in order to serve a significant government interest.” Madsen v. Women’s Health Center, 512 U.S. 753, 764, 114 S. Ct. 2516, 129 L. Ed. 2d 593 (1994). Any court order restricting such speech must “burden no more speech than necessary to serve a significant government interest.” Madsen v. Women’s Health Center, 512 U.S. 753, 764, 114 S. Ct. 2516, 129 L. Ed. 2d 593 (1994) (upholding 36-foot buffer zone as applied to only certain areas around abortion clinic). Washington law is even more protective: [T]ime, place and manner restrictions may be imposed whenever the right of free speech under Const. art.1, § 5 has been abused, but only if the restrictions (1) are content neutral, (2) are narrowly tailored to serve a compelling State interest, and (3) leave open ample alternative channels of communication. Bering v. Share, 106 Wn.2d 212, 234, 721 P.2d 918 (1986). Restrictions that are not tailored to a significant (or compelling) government interest, and do not leave adequate “breathing space” for speech protected by the First Amendment, are unconstitutional. Madsen, 512 U.S. at 773-74, 129 L.Ed.2d at 612-13, (striking down 300-foot restriction on solicitation and picketing at abortion clinic). Any restrictions on Mr. Trummel's activities must be narrowly tailored to a compelling state interest and leave open ample alternative channels of communication. Notwithstanding these precedents, the Court has ordered a 500' no-contact zone for Mr. Trummel, and is contemplated a one-mile restriction! (See page 16 of the decision). A one-mile restriction would bar Mr. Trummel from much of Seattle, including, in all likelihood many essential medical, legal and governmental offices. 2) The Court presumes that it has the power to prohibit the promulgation of names of people. I don't believe that any other US Court has found a privacy right vested in one's own name. Mr. Trummel has posted the names and contact information of persons who are involved in a public enterprise (the running of a partially federally funded housing project!). They are limited purpose public figures. I do not see how publication of their names, or legally obtained contact information, can be restrained for the same reasons I opposed such restraint in Kirkland v. Sheehan. Indeed, were the Court correct in this regard, the newspaper could be banned from publishing Mr. Trummel's name! It is absurd. {RCW 63.30, cited by the Court on page 11, does not exist; I believe the reference is to RCW 63.60.010, which states: Every individual or personality, as the case may be, has a property right in the use of his or her name, voice, signature, photograph, or likeness, and such right shall be freely transferable, assignable, and licensable, in whole or in part, by any otherwise permissible form of inter vivos or testamentary transfer, including without limitation a will, trust, contract, community property agreement, or cotenancy with survivorship provisions or payable-on- death provisions, or, if none is applicable, under the laws of intestate succession applicable to interests in intangible personal property. The property right does not expire upon the death of the individual or personality, as the case may be. The right exists whether or not it was commercially exploited by the individual or the personality during the individual's or the personality's lifetime. This statute bars profiting from someone else's intangible property rights-- e.g. commercial endorsements using a person's likeness or name without permission] 3) Ironically, the Court, while (improperly) pointing out that Mr. Trummel is not an American and therefore "perhaps . . . has difficulty in understanding this basic principle of a federal republic" appears to have its own difficulties with the concept. At the top of page 8, and throughout the opinion, the Court argues that the Washington privacy clause and anti-harassment statute somehow trump the US Constitution! In fact, this is wrong, wrong, wrong, and the Court need only review State v. Williams, 144 Wash.2d 197, 26 P.3d 890 (2001) for a fine explication of why a state statute is necessarily limited by federal constitutional rights. 4) The Court also doesn't understand the concept of prior restraint. On pages 8 -9, the Court suggests that because the Court's order affects only 100 words of Mr. Trummel's website, there is only a "slight infringement on his free speech" and "no prior restraint." In fact, the Court has made a content-based restriction, and it doesn't matter if it is one word or a million. Indeed, a great deal of damage could be done to virtually any work of literature--or court opinion, for that matter-- via the removal of a "mere" 100 words. The upshot is this: Mr. Trummel has four days to remove the offending names, addresses and phone numbers from his website. If he fails to do so, he's likely to be put back into jail. Even if he does comply, he may face serious sanctions, including restriction from 3.14 square miles in the middle of Seattle. Sorry for the long letter-- but this has the makings of a civil rights travesty. Elena Garella Attorney 927 N. Northlake Way, Ste. 301 Seattle, WA 98103 --- From: Eric Cordian <emc@artifact.psychedelic.net> Subject: PI Article To: declan@well.com Date: Mon, 17 Jun 2002 11:36:06 -0700 (PDT) There's a rather snotty article in today's PI on the Trummel matter, in which the author manages to put quotes around every occurrence of "writer" and "journalist." Nonetheless, I thought you might find it entertaining reading, and perhaps worth posting a pointer to on Politech. http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/74939_freespeech17.shtml -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law" --- ["aufargis@peoplepc.com" appears to be someone who Paul Trummel has criticized in the past (http://www.politechbot.com/p-03630.html). --DBM] To: declan@well.com From: aufargis@peoplepc.com Subject: Paul Munchausen Trummel Date: Mon, 17 Jun 2002 19:41:09 -0700 (PDT) Mr. Bretagna, I assume that you would like to know what happened to Paul Trummel today. Court ruling can be read at: http://www.metrokc.gov/kcsc/rulings/trummel_v_mitchell.htm If you have some time to spare I would appreciate your comments very much. F. Jacques --- To: declan@well.com From: aufargis@peoplepc.com Subject: Paul Munchausen Trummel Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2002 16:17:41 -0700 (PDT) The “anything goes” culture prevailing in the Internet is a clear reflection of the vulgarities of a mass society inebriated by a soulless technology and no other medium projects it so vividly and so accurately. Besides being the main lever of the pornography industry and the haunting grounds for the sexually deviant, the Internet is also the forum for the anarchist-cum-nihilist, know-it-all-café-intellectuals, beer-hall-philosophers and assorted dispensers of intellectual flatulence. Of course there is good stuff in the Internet. Lots of it but, in spite of the infinite sources of knowledge, beauty art, the humanities, science, politics, literature, poetry and general information made accessible to all by the Internet, the medium has been - and this, may be irremediably - polluted by heavy-duty intellectually vulgarity. What could have been the most efficient arena for healthy intellectual intercourse turned into a intellectual, ethical and moral sewer. This vulgarity, this commonness, this boorishness finds its expression particularly in the so called “Internet Media.” A rag-tag of could be, should be, may have been or ought to have been: journalists freelance writers, commentators and pundrity experts in general. They all seem to came from the same mold: All are self annointed, Envy League Alumni and Grievance and Conspiracies Studies Majors. Found of dramatic effects and afflicted with a childish relativism and arid rationalism they fill the ether with their spurious notions of right and wrong and, their proclivity for exaggerations and oversimplifications, reduces everything to the lowest common denominator. Their collective mediocrity gives wide berth to the most outrageous assumptions including the idea that people ought to make donations to some of their Web sites so they can carry on with the dispensations of their God given wisdom. The defense of Paul “Munchausen” Trummel by the Internet Media has been positively emphatic, sometimes pathetic, frequently nauseating and more often than not absurd. Now and then it sounded intensely sincere, even touching, nonetheless, monumentally wrong. Their symptomatic ethical disarray, their nihilistic rage, their unjustified snobbery, their frequent use of words totally detached from their meanings makes that to list it all would be a task equal to the cleaning of a too oft used hot house. An intellectual hot house there is. Their collective mediocrity is only matched by their laziness. Physical and intellectual laziness. Indeed, a few phone calls and the house of cards built by Paul Munchausen Trummel could have been brought down with little effort. Yet, it was not done. One wonders why. Was it narcissism? After all there is a romantic aura attached to the profession of journalist and even a greater one to that of freelance writer. The first invokes daring courage while the other conveys the image of the independent loner and deep thinker. The idolatry of the self that seems to permeate the Internet media could explain such laxity. And probably it does. But then there is the instinctive turf self-defense. The First Amendment is precious to all but if a little provincial judge can bring down all the Paul Munchausen Trummel’s that populate the Internet media the medium could be taken by true professionals, professionals who may choose to adhere to strict ethical rules. By real freelance writers, individuals with a sensible command of the language and capable of clear thought who may create Web sites full of meaning and purpose instead of those altars for self idolatry that sully the Internet. It was an opportunity that was missed and most probably may never present itself again. A inane and senseless judicial joust will now take place between a judge and a host of others Munchausens roaming the Internet and calling themselves “members “ of the press and simplifiers - to the point of caricature - of the democratic principle of freedom of expression. The desperately needed cleaning of the Internet media is a task that is now left for future generations. Of course there are exceptions, Matt Drudge and his lack of pretentiousness for instance, but in the overall the Internet media is essentially composed of callous and immature intellectual adolescents filled with parochial intransigency and lacking the intellectual austerity needed to build a much necessary vehicle of information. Good luck to all the Paul Munchausen Trummel’s out there, the Internet is yours. --- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Like Politech? 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