Joseph Farah
I’ve written previously about the acrimonious war of words between Joseph Farah (publisher of WorldNetDaily) and conservative author Ann Coulter. According to MediaMatters for America, in a new article: Coult-zilla vs. Moth-Farah, the exchange keeps boiling. One thing that has enraged Coulter is that Farah has released what purport to be private emails from Coulter to him.
In an email to Tucker Carlson’s conservative Daily Caller, Coulter wrote that Farah was going after her for “publicity alone,” that she believed her emails with Farah had been “private” and that he was a “swine” and a “publicity whore” for using them. She also said that Farah, “could give less than two sh-ts about the conservative movement — as demonstrated by his promotion of the birther nonsense.” [underlining added]
MediaMatters
Well what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. I too had an email exchange with Joseph Farah last February in which he said some things perhaps he shouldn’t have. I no longer feel honor bound to keep them private, so here is an unedited excerpt from an email I received from Joseph Farah, publisher of WorldNetDaily on February 8, 2010:
NOTE: The information in this message is intended for the personal and confidential use of the designated recipient(s) named above. To the extent the recipient(s) is/are bound by a non-disclosure agreement, or other agreement that contains an obligation of confidentiality, with WorldNetDaily.com Inc., then this message and/or any attachments shall be considered confidential information and subject to the confidentiality terms of that agreement. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient named above, you are notified that you have received this document in error, and any review, dissemination, distribution or copying of this message is strictly prohibited. If you have received this document in error, please delete the original message and notify the sender immediately.
If you have received this email in error, please burn yourself before reading it.
i’d be curious to hear from the lawyers if you can have a non-disclosure agreement without a signature or some kind of active acknowledgment. it’s kind of like saying ” we agreed about this but you weren’t there when we did “.
OK. This is funny.
Actually Farrah’s blowing smoke…. no surprise.
That disclaimer isn’t worth the electrons he wasted copying it
Do you mean like this?
I’ve always been amused by those “confidentiality” statements at the bottom of emails and never have used one — my feeling has always been along the lines of, “if it’s confidential, don’t use email” … or *at least* invest in a appropriate encryption technology.
The one purpose I think they may serve involves some nuances regarding a claim of privilege. An attorney’s communications to the client are protected by attorney-client privilege and are not subject to disclosure in another proceeding — that is,the attorney cannot be forced to reveal in discovery what was told to the client. Sometimes there is a claim that the privileged was waived because of the manner of disclosure, typically when third parties outside the zone of privilege are present to hear the communication. So those disclaimers can be tacked on to the end of an email message so that if the attorney has accidentally clicked “reply to all”, down the line the attorney can still stand on a claim of privilege to refuse to disclose matter that was in the email. (Keep in mind that the email itself might be hearsay, or may only hint at the existence of evidence that opposing counsel wishes to discover — or perhaps some aggressive opposing counsel is arguing that they are entitled to discover something entirely unrelated to the content of the email, because the dissemination of the email functions as a waiver of privilege).
But I still go back to point #1. Emails are not a secure mode of communication, so tacking a “confidentiality” clause on the end isn’t particularly useful.
Is it just me but that creepy ’70’s porn star mustache simply cannot be real…….
NSFW
Do you mean like this ?
Actually it was quite effective because I was going to publish what Farah said in that email until I read statement asserting that he intended the statement to be confidential, and so I didn’t publish it.
ianal, but i don’t see how farah’s disclaimer can be interpreted as binding on the recipient without the recipient’s explicit agreement. the first sentence states that it is farah’s intention to keep it confidential, but that can’t be enough to make it binding. that’s just wishful thinking — “pretty please thank you”. and the second sentence seems to state that if the recipient already has a prior non-disclosure agreement with farah, then this message falls under that agreement. the rest of the disclaimer is just more “pretty please thank you” …
It is a standard confidentiality statement. With the release the unedited excerpt Farah’s confidential information is still protected, but Farh fails to respect his own confidentiality statement. I like the irony.
Yes, exactly that. Good find, Misha!
Then you misinterpreted the meaning of the statement. It applies only to third parties who might accidentally or inadvertently receive an email intended for someone else.
If Farah’s communication was directed to you — then the content of whatever he conveyed to you becomes yours, to hold or disseminate as you see fit. And if you want to post it on your home page for everyone to see — you have the absolute legal right to do so.
? que es mas macho ?
I understand that I have no legal obligation to keep the email private, but ethically I felt that I should respect the “confidential” label put on it “The information in this message is intended for the personal and confidential use of the designated recipient”. I generally treat all emails from private individuals to the blog as private unless they are “official business.”
A guy named Anthony posted some of Joey’s emails. eeks. The guy wanted to know why the billboards don’t say “Where’s Obama’s Birth Certificate”. Joey set him straight.
“It’s not needed. You know what it’s about. There’s only ONE birth certificate controversy in the entire world.
That’s the point. We’ve dealt with this question ad nauseum. Read WND. If you think I’m afraid of Obama, youmust be from another planet.”
“There isn’t an 80 percent that doesn’t know. It’s less than 50 percent, according to all the polls.
Why do you suppose so many people know about it? Because of our work.”
http://www.scribd.com/doc/28276462/March-12-2010-Letter-to-Joseph-Farah-at-Wnd
Could you remove – or at least miniaturize – (a 1×1 resolution would be optimal), the photo of Joseph Farah that accompanies this article? I find it nauseating.
Effective it may be, but it’s not enforceable.
For one thing, in the position it is in, at the bottom, there is every reasonable expectation that the recipient would have read the email before the disclaimer. EWven if an email disclaimers were enforceable, it would have to be at the very beginning, in order to give the recipient a reasonable chance to decline to read the email. There would also have to be some function to obtain agreement prior to reading, such as you would find in a EULA on software installations.
By allowing the user to read the email without first being aware of the disclaimer, the disclaimer is unactionable, even if one could restrict the use of an email after it was sent, which I doubt.
I agree.
Print it, and use it as a dart target. You’ll get over the nausea.
School Bus