HERE’S A LINK TO THE DEMAND LETTER received by blogger Justene Adamec with regard to Infotel, posted by her co-blogger.

I think that this story deserves a lot more attention. And while I’m no expert at all on California law (perhaps Eugene Volokh will weigh in here), the claim that the right of privacy in the California Constitution somehow yields an obligation on the part of a blogger to remove posts (or comments to posts) that merely threaten to reveal private data seems to me to be rather a stretch. Yet that seems to be the claim. There’s certainly no case law authority cited in support of that proposition, as one might expect if there were any substance to it. I’ve been thinking for a while of writing an article on lawyers’ ethical duties in writing demand letters; this, while not an especially egregious example, suggests to me that I should move that topic higher on my agenda. Meanwhile this post on libel by Yale Law Prof. Jack Balkin, though directed at a different incident, provides some useful information, as does this one.

Meanwhile, there’s blowback. I had never heard of Infotel before. Now — more because of the actions of their attorneys than because of anything that appeared on Justene Adamec’s weblog — I have a very low opinion of them.