how would Ratcliffe know?`
It's not like anyone in the IC tells him anything.
And he's certainly not going to ask.

No. It isn't a question of what right he has to show anyone the door. It's a question of what that makes his platform. If he shows people the door based on content criteria, then his platform isn't a simple sharing platform. That's just a definitional thing. He has every right to not run a simple sharing platform, but curating content makes his platform not be one.

And there are attendant liabilities in that decision.

Facebook has done that from day one. Since it has not been held responsible for the content it curates and it is still existing I think your interpretation may be tad broad and not in line with the actual legislation.

I'm not too familiar with US legislation but IF the laptops are indeed Hunter Bidens the argument seems to be that there's a provision in the laptop maintenance guys agreement that in case the laptop doesn't get picked up the ownership of the laptop transfers to the store.

This probably doesn't mean the data in the laptop, videos or fotos etc..? That's separate from the hardware and under IP rights? So if this laptop is actually Bidens, the store owner might face time in the slammer for copyright violations?

And if it is made up, then he opens himself up to some libel/slander charges?

Or does the computer repair guy actually have a out here?

I’ve been wondering about this myself. If the data was not evidence of illegal activities then it was at minimum an unprofessional breach of privacy ethics, and in California, possibly illegal to release this information to another private individual. If it was evidence of illegal activities then the computer tech should have released it to the appropriate authorities, but not to Giuliani or to any other private person.

The tech may end up owning the hard drive but the data on it still belongs to the original owner.

I think that until you provide evidence, and perhaps learn what words you should be using when making your flimsy argument, I'll consider this a lie.

Only if the repair guy hacked to get the info. The Supreme court ruled you have no expectation of privacy if you leave open your email on a shared computer. If he didn't have the mail protected with a password it's a big oops on his part.

Wouldn't that mean that almost any leak of information would be a copyright breach? Plus making a copy of the data on the laptop is the service that Biden supposedly requested.

I don't think anybody is claiming that this nobody repair shop guy hand wrote tens of thousands of emails and elaborately faked the photos of Hunter Biden.

If you think that the emails are genuine and Biden is going to go after him for copyright, you are dreaming. What possible benefit could there be in suing? If they are fake, then it's hard to believe the repair guy faked it.

You don't know what the terms were under which Biden handed over the laptop. Even if it is a breach of law to have handed the data over, it's a ridiculous side issue. Nothing of any importance about the story is changed by whether or not the repair guy was on legally solid or shaky ground by handing over the data to Giuliani.

Copyright violations rarely end up with prison time. And they certainly won't in this case, for several reasons. First, there's the authorship issue. For example, Hunter may not have taken the picture of him apparently asleep with a crack pipe in his mouth. Whoever did would nominally own the copyright, not Hunter, and Hunter may not want to publicize their identity. Establishing authorship also establishes authenticity, which Hunter and Joe probably don't want either. And discovery is a bitch, so even with stuff he did take, going through each item and describing the conditions under which it was taken in order to establish his authorship is probably not something Hunter wants to pursue.

Second, since copyright exists to protect commercial interest in works, copyright violations are generally punished in proportion to the potential commercial loss they represent. There's no commercial loss here. Even were a case to be brought and won, the outcome would likely be a slap on the wrist with some nominal fine. That's really not going to be worth the Streisand effect it would bring.

Lastly, there may even be an out with fair use exceptions, if only a sampling of these works is publicly released.

Yes, if these are fakes, they would create a huge defamation liability for the faker.

It doesn't look like they are fakes.

Even if he did have an expectation of privacy, it's too late to get that toothpaste back into the tube now. Trump had an expectation of privacy about his tax returns and it was too bad, so sad for him there.

My point was Biden had no expectation of privacy by handing his computer over to the repair shop unless his emails were password protected and it was hacked. Although there is nothing to suggest that it was hacked. There is a lot of "recent" activity with these types of cases springing up on what constitutes "reasonable expectation of privacy."

https://www.cybertelecom.org/security/expectation.htm

Facts not in evidence. :rolleyes:

That is a totally different context. Fourth amendment expectation of privacy would only matter if a state actor was the one accessing the information.

As to whether a computer guy committed a legal or ethical breach it is of no account. It would depend on state law and/or the service contract.

A computer guy snooping through e-mails just because he can is at best an unprofessional creep.

Ummm no, it's not a different context. If I'm cheating on my wife and leave my email open, I have no expectation of privacy. If I send my computer to a repair guy and all my emails are visible through normal browsing means(not password protected) I have no expectation of privacy. Especially if I don't pick it up in the agreed to time frame.

I believe the repair guy claims he only looked at the files during impeachment when Burisma and the Bidens were linked in the news. That's when he called the FBI. The FBI supposedly retrieved the hardware with a Grand Jury subpoena.

This kinda makes me think Biden did drop it off. Unless the guy is on a suicide mission as far as lying to the FBI. According to reports Biden's attorney contacted the guy after it became public and wanted the hardware back. I've only seen an email from Bidens attorney thanking the repair guy for the discussion though. Nothing concrete.

That seems more or less correct. The repair shop owner could be in legal jeopardy, but that has little to do with whether the emails are legitimate or not.

Now, the alleged smoking gun is hardly a big deal, seems to me. Honestly, if it is a totally fake email, then it seems like a trial balloon sent out before more seriously damning fake emails are released.

Trump regularly meets with people who have paid his company hundreds of thousands of dollars (for Mar-A-Lago fees, for instance) and his administration ends up benefiting those companies. Here we have an alleged meeting between Biden and a fellow working for Burisma (if I'm not mistaken) with no details about the context of the meeting and no record of the meeting according to Biden's spokesmen (who are not, of course, disinterested). There is already evidence that Biden's work in Ukraine had nothing to do with Burisma's interests and that didn't evidently change after the alleged meeting.

If this is all a ruse (which honestly seems pretty likely to me), it's not the real October surprise. It's merely setting the stage for more startling allegations.

There's little doubt that Hunter Biden profited from his father's position and that Burisma was interested in hiring him at least partly because of that position. This was a poor move on his part. It certainly doesn't make Biden look worse than the Trump family looks.

You confuse the legal term with the real world term. Whether the fourth amendment forbids a state actor from doing something in furtherance of a criminal investigation has nothing to do with whether an individual who does it is an unethical creep violating another person's privacy.


Still a creep sticking his nose in places it doesn't belong. That he would do it based on some conspiracy theory doesn't change that in no circumstances would a sane person use a computer service company that thinks snooping of this nature is remotely tolerable.

Republicans trying to keep the story in the news just in time for the election.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news...=1603136281720

Where are Trey Gowdy and Darryl Issa when you need them? They know how to turn nothing burgers like Benghazi and 'her' emails into a dozen hearings, complete with dozens of press conferences where they display their outrage. Trump and Giuliani needed to start much earlier.

Even Trey Gowdy finally had enough of the scumbaggery going on in the Trump Admin.

Wow, the washington times is all kinds of crazy sauce.

The tabloid magazine reporter that actually wrote the article didn't want his name attached to it. The Hannity producer that wrote it didn't want to hers on it either. Giuliani himself gave it a 50/50 that he was working with Russian intelligence. That's how stupid this is.

Republicans trying to keep the story in the news just in time for the election.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news...=1603136281720
That's all it is. They're desperate. They're passengers on the Titanic and this story is their floating debris in the water.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com...dfa40526dd.jpg

This is the same Ratcliffe who declassified what was likely Russian disinformation and passed it on to Lindsay Graham so that Graham could make it public via the Senate, right?

I said nothing about the fourth amendment. If you think there is no such thing as "reasonable expectation of privacy" outside of gov't intrusion cases, you're wrong.

I'll try to find some text sources of these tomorrow when I've got a little more time (and therefore take them with a large pinch of salt until I can find corroboration of some kind), but I heard three pieces of information about the email and the laptop today.

The first has already been discussed in the thread (and apologies if the other two have and I missed them), namely that the metadata of the "smocking gun" email dates it to October 2019, while the laptop itself was allegedly dropped off in April 2019.

The second is that there is allegedly a time-stamp on the email which is from a central European timezone, rather than an American one.

And the third is that the serial number of the harddrive has been traced and reveals that it remains in warranty until April 18th 2022. Since that model has a 3 year warranty, that means that it was purchased on April 18th 2019. The laptop was allegedly dropped off on April 12th 2019.

With time to spare for an excursion to the basement of a pizza parlor, populated by a satanic cult and Bigfoot.

This thread addresses the latter, and more besides.

[Edit]And it means that the drive was manufactured after Biden allegedly dropped the laptop off.

Does this guy show anything other than the SSD in the laptop probably didn't have any damage to it? That hasn't been claimed.

Here's an easier to read version.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1...751762945.html

It comes down to the external drive was used to recover to. There was nothing wrong with the internal drive. It was probably easily removed from the laptop and recovered onto the external drive. I'm pleased to learn where this idea came from, but I don't understand why it is exciting anybody. Doesn't it agree with what has been claimed by the repair shop guy?

The other side:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...ocid=Peregrine

I hadn't heard this. The best I have been able to find is that the pdf uploaded by the NYP was dated then. The emails I've seen are just screenshots with dates prior to the laptop being dropped off.

Not only that, but when challenged in the actual thread, he admits things like he can't be certain what he is saying is correct. Example the 3 year warranty, it may be a 5 year warranty. He was proven wrong on the laptop and whether the hard drive was removable. Etc.

What the doubters of the story are to have you believe, Hunter didn't drop off the laptop, and the repair guy was willing to take hacked materials and fabricate how he obtained them and then lied to the FBI. I find that harder to believe than a meth addict just dropped off a laptop and never picked it up.

Exactly, the metadata is from the PDF that was created, not the email. LOL

LOVE IT! They're now trying to shame the Libs.

The positive side is that if this nobody used forged material to try and take down Joe Biden, the FBI have had a year on it and presumably had lots of time to conduct an investigation.

Yes, I'm talking about the screenshot, because the actual emails haven't been released.

Do your readers a favor, what with this being a forum ostensibly about discerning reality.

As you eagerly assign weight to such sketchy material, at least try to get your facts straight.

So why say

"namely that the metadata of the "smocking gun" email dates it to October 2019, while the laptop itself was allegedly dropped off in April 2019."

If you knew it wasn't metadata from the email?

OK. It doesn't seem like a significant discovery to me that the pdf that was made out of the emails was generated after the laptop was dropped off.

Do tell what kind of pipe was it? Since you're the expert. I've seen it called a crack pipe, and seen those people corrected to say it's actually a meth pipe in the pictures. Now with your expertise, will you please lay it out for us? Let's settle it right here since you are so well versed in it. To me, and all the non addicts, it changes nothing about the reliability of a crack and/or meth addict to follow through on responsibilities such as picking up the laptop.

Indeed. I'll never vote for Hunter Biden.

https://twitter.com/johnpavlovitz/st...963584/photo/1

Does the drug part actually matter? It feels like a pointless rabbit hole beyond the credibility such private pictures of him being in this data gives to the emails.

Also seen elsewhere https://www.therecoveryvillage.com/m...on/meth-mouth/

Seems like meth to me, but I'd like to hear your expertise.

I don't know. So why would I tell?

Do you think it's productive or informative to accuse people you don't know, who challenge something you post, of being drug abusers? Rhetorical.

You people need to get out more. There's no difference between a meth pipe and a crack pipe. There are variations but you can use the same pipe to smoke either. You can also use them to vaporize thc concentrates.

Geez, it's like you guys never party or something . . .

Hunter Biden has an admitted history of drug abuse. That you chose to challenge that fact isn't going to work out well for you. You spoke as though you were an expert. He clearly fell asleep with a DOPE pipe in his mouth. How's that?

It IS a pointless rabbit hole. But that's the point.

I think it matters as to why he may have left the laptop. Drug addicts do stupid things. The type of drug whether crack or meth does not change that. Someone wanted to make an issue of my characterization of Hunter as an addict. He's an admitted addict, so that's not going to work.