Week in Review

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Illustration by Hilary Falb

There are no confidential sources on the internet

When you fuck with Apple, it tears a whole in the Constitution so big you can drive a dual G5 with a cinema display monitor through it. On Friday, the computer manufacturer turned generational marker won a Santa Clara County Superior Court case ruling that demanded an online journalist's internet service provider (ISP) reveal the identities of that reporter's confidential sources when alleged trade secrets are involved. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is representing the journalist, PowerPage.org publisher Jason O'Grady, and has stated it will ask the California Appellate Court to intervene in defense of the 'reporter's shield' clause in California's state constitution.

Apple is suing a number of unnamed individuals-grouped together under the 'Does' moniker-for leaking information about an upcoming project with the codename 'Asteroid', an audio interface used to connect multiple instruments into a single MIDI interface.

"We're disappointed that the trial court ignored the Supreme Court's requirement that seeking a journalist's confidential sources be a 'last resort' in civil discovery," said EFF Staff Attorney Kurt Opsahl. "Instead, the court asserts a wholesale exception to the journalist's privilege when the information is alleged to be a trade secret." The ruling states that this exception is not limited to online journalists.

While the case is certainly an indication of further legal privileging of corporations in the growing battle over information use and ownership in the digital age, it might also be said:

Apple is notoriously secretive. Ironically, it regularly harasses the very nerds on which it relies to create hype surrounding the company's products. Those who take their tech fetishes to the point of gaining access to and publicizing information about the company's upcoming projects can expect a cease and desist letter from Apple's legal team. This, in turn, makes the nerds feel important, perpetuating the cycle of speculation, disclosure and legal recourse.

So will the Apple Wars have any significance for journalists whose investigative practices tend toward reporting rather than inventing news? EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn called the decision a "broad-brush ruling that threatens journalists of all stripes." And while the specter of an alliance between John Ashcroft and Steve Jobs strikes fear into the hearts of us here at the Indy, we have a feeling the EFF's fears might be overstated. After all, we find our sources at www.whitehouse.gov, do our research at www.nytimes.com, and rely on blogs for our opinions.

-Alexander Provan

The mainstream media always blames the white supremacists

Last week, despite a total lack of evidence, news media and pundits across the country were pointing to white supremacist Matthew Hale as the probable culprit behind the murder of Judge Joan Lefkow's mother and husband. Hale, who is currently incarcerated for soliciting an undercover FBI agent to kill Judge Lefkow, had immediately denied any involvement.

This week, Hale's innocence was confirmed. The killer was none other than disgruntled and disfigured former electrician Bart Ross, a native of Poland who came to America in 1982. Ross, who was afflicted with mouth cancer, was angry with the judge for rejecting lawsuit he waged against lawyers, doctors, and the state of Illinois for medical malpractice. The investigation, which had focused on white nationalist groups, came to a head last week when Ross committed suicide in his van. Police discovered a suicide note that described the deaths of Michael Lefkow and Donna Humphrey. The homicides, Ross writes, were an accident that occurred as he waited in the Lefkow basement for the judge to come home.

According to his landlady and lawyers, he had become increasingly delusional and depressed after a bout of cancer left him disfigured in 1992, and had made numerous threats against judges, the Illinois Attorney General, and other public officials. Still, no one expected such violence from him. "He had this great vision of what it would be like in the United States," his former attorney Margaret O'Leary said to the Chicago Tribune, "but I don't think the US lived up to his fantasy or his dreams and everything became very hard for him here."

DNA evidence taken from cigarette butts discovered in the Lefkow's kitchen place Ross at the scene of the crime, and police sketches of a suspicious character seen lurking about the neighborhood on the day of the murders bear a close resemblance.

-Barbara Galletly

Darfur is alive with the sound of the saddest music in the world

Darfur is back in the headlines this week as attacks on citizens in the country continue and a severe drought threatens the country's beleaguered population. Up to 180,000 people have been killed over the last year and a half while at least 200,000 more have fled to neighboring Chad in hopes of finding refuge. On Monday night's BBC World Service, a US army captain reported on the brutal scenes he witnessed while there, also showing photographs he had taken while tracking movements of Darfur citizens. The saddest, he said, was of a baby girl who had been shot in the stomach and was not expected to live through the night. When asked what intervening measures the government should take, he insisted on the need for more support on all levels: a no-fly zone should be enacted over the country; weapons sanctions should be placed on the government to stem the supply of arms to the Janjaweed, the group widely held responsible for the killings of Darfur civilians. Communications support and a huge increase in the number of ground troops are also needed.

Meanwhile, the Financial Times reports that almost 300,000 have died in what is now almost universally accepted as genocide. The paper also notes that the White House remains eerily silent on an issue that now threatens to produce a devastating sequel to the Oscar-nominated film Hotel Rwanda. At this time, there is no word from President Bush on whether or not he plans to intervene. The script for the film, though, has been written many times.

-Barbara Galletly

Like Dungeons and Dragons? Israel says Don't Ask, Don't Tell

Acne spreads like a forest fire across his face. A clenched fist, a varsity ring on the index, slams into his left eye. The fire spreads in blacks and blues.

The question of what comes first-the beat downs, the zits, the fire or the Dungeons and Dragons-is the eternal question. Having escaped the windowless hallways of high school, though, one is free to be philosophical about the eternal question. One is free to find in the fantastic rituals of adolescent violence the paradoxical push of bullies to quash fantasy wherever it arises. To ask, if only in a dream: are we, Biff, really so different, you and I?

But Biff won't go away and the politics and cliques of a high school lunchroom remain powerful social models. For proof, see the Israeli Defense Force's (IDF) recent announcement that fantasy gamers make lousy soldiers. Confirming a long held suspicion among would-be residents of Middle Earth, the Israeli army doesn't like them, calling gamers "detached from reality" and "susceptible" to outside influence. Apparently these are not attractive qualities in a soldier. The internet news service Ynet quotes a military source who adds, "One of the tests we do, either by asking soldiers directly or through information provided us, is.whether they take part in the game." If a soldier answers in the affirmative, he is sent to a professional for an evaluation, usually a psychologist.

It is not merely that the Israeli army frowns on Dungeons and Dragons. The stigma surrounding the imaginative pastime of nerds has scuttled promising careers. In fact, according to Ynet, the IDF automatically lowers the security clearance of those it discovers regularly fantasizing about dwarfs and goblins and warlocks. My character, a 400-year-old wood-elf named Gamillion, gifted as he is with the crossbow, would also presumably leave me lonely at a canteen table. Like an over-weaning Dungeon Master-the player who directs a D&D game-the Israeli army implacably refuses to change their discriminative policies. Only their fist is real, and when it punches your zits, you don't block it with a spell. You get in that tank and drive it to the West Bank.

-Alexander Zevin

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