I don’t know how it went down, but I’m pretty sure they didn’t have to give the Sheriff anything. He’d have time to go over the subpoena with a lawyer the same as if it was just mailed. It doesn’t sound like there was any warrant for the Sheriff to perform a search or do anything other than drop off the papers.
Comment on OpenAI allegedly sent police to an AI regulation advocate’s door
spit_evil_olive_tips@beehaw.org 6 days agoThis is an inflammatory way of saying the guy got served papers.
ehh…yes and no.
they could have served the subpoena using registered mail.
or they could have used a civilian process server.
instead they chose to have a sheriff’s deputy do it.
from the guy’s twitter thread:
OpenAI went beyond just subpoenaing Encode about Elon. OpenAI could (and did!) send a subpoena to Encode’s corporate address asking about our funders or communications with Elon (which don’t exist).
If OpenAI had stopped there, maybe you could argue it was in good faith.
But they didn’t stop there.
They also sent a sheriff’s deputy to my home and asked for me to turn over private texts and emails with CA legislators, college students, and former OAI employees.
This is not normal. OpenAI used an unrelated lawsuit to intimidate advocates of a bill trying to regulate them. While the bill was still being debated.
in context, the subpoena and the way in which it was served sure smells like an attempt at intimidation.
xthexder@l.sw0.com 6 days ago
MagicShel@lemmy.zip 6 days ago
From that guy’s twitter? The primary source of this article is that guy, who is a lobbyist and lawyer. Someone whose career is based on legalistic wordsmithing to convince people that other people are bad.
I’ve seen papers served before, both by a cop and a regular dude (going by appearance). The fact that the server was a deputy in this case doesn’t honestly seem relevant at all. Cops are frequently hired because someone in a police uniform knocking on your door is more likely to be answered than someone who looks like a salesman. But jurisdictions are different—I’ve never heard of papers being served by registered mail, for instance.
That’s why I’d like for the journalist to have brought in some kind of legal analyst to weigh in. They didn’t and what we have is a bunch of quotes from an expert wordsmith and a tech journalist who may not know anything more about the legalities than we do.
I genuinely appreciate that you took another step to look into this and respond, but hearing more from the guy’s own perspective doesn’t help me feel like I know what’s really going on here.
I think I’m done with this whole topic until I hear something about it from a better source. If this is never mentioned again, I’ll assume this is just an attempt at manipulating public opinion over a mundane matter that isn’t outrageous at all. If there is something to it, we’ll hear more about it.