COPA - Court: "people claim confidentiality on everything from soup to nuts"

As a coda to the censorware research results, this is an interesting statement on confidentiality by the judge in the "Child Online Protection Act" (COPA) Internet Censorship trial (November 8):

The Court: ... The court is well aware from experience, and nobody in the room would think otherwise, people claim confidentiality on everything from soup to nuts when they are deposed.

When the chips fall down, or come down to the bottom, they waive it or they don't care about it, because it was 10 years ago. But they assert the confidentiality out of protective mechanism and then it may not be important to them. It may not be important. They may keep asserting it until they are on the witness stand.

And I say, do you really have to assert that? I can't figure out what the business purpose is. And then they say, well, all right. So who knows. Protective orders are like a sponge. They soak up everything until the chips are down. And when they are down we will see what happens.

Seth Finkelstein's Infothought blog (Wikipedia, Google, censorware, and an inside view of net-politics) - Syndicate site (subscribe, RSS)