Comment by sxp
12 years ago
>A judge will see right through this if it's tried and probably impose contempt of court. If one were to try something like this it would be essential to broaden the scope enough that it couldn't be used to reference a specific gag order.
[citation needed]
Has there been a case where the judge forced a civilian to lie?
Contempt for communicating a message (by whatever means) is not the same as forcing to lie.
Does it make any difference that at the time the communication was committed to, the gag order was not in effect?
Given that the whole point of the commitment to the communication was to evade a future gag order, I'm not sure what to tell you. It does sound like immovable object meets irresistable force, but it's a Catch-22 of the "cypherpunk's" own making.
The court can't compel you to lie. The court can compel you to not communicate about a gag order, and enforce that with contempt of court. So if you don't choose to "lie" (since again, we all understand the purpose of the communication is not as a factual statement but rather to signal whether a gag order is received) they can still hold you accountable for it.