One of the worst places I've worked had a well stocked break room. Sodas, chips, ice cream, everything short of a full meal. They patted themselves on the back about how well they treated their employees. And failed to treat them well in the areas that matter.

You can document prior art by publishing it on a web page and having a printed copy notarized for $5. No need for the cost and rigor of any kind of patent filing.

Virginia considers you not merely to be a citizen of the country and of the state but also a citizen of your locality within the state.

Section 5. County, city, and town governing bodies.

Whenever the governing body of any such unit shall fail to perform the duties so prescribed in the manner herein directed, a suit shall lie on behalf of any citizen thereof to compel performance by the governing body.

Check your civics boss. According to the 14th Amendment, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."

The overwhelming majority of classified documents are classified because they were derived in part from some other document that was classified and were written by a government contractor who is not authorized to declassify any portion the prior document marked classified.

Even if that weren't true, it has no bearing on a state government's response to FOIA requests. Classification is purely a Federal government thing where Federal FOIA rules apply.

And in case it wasn't clear, I don't want some dope from California wasting my Virginia tax dollars on some paranoid quest to find out what Virginia knows about alien abductions. If you can't at least find a like-minded Virginian to sign his name to the request, something is seriously wrong with the request.

It's not the government's time. As a citizen of Virginia, it's my time. *I* paid for it.

If with all the Internet at your disposal you can't find one single person in the state willing to submit the FOIA request and pass you back the results, it's a good sign you're wasting everybody's time and *shouldn't* have access to the information you seek.

This is terrible advice. You can bankrupt yourself this way and the state doesn't have to compensate you even if you really were innocent. If you truly have nothing to hide, your best bet is to hide nothing. That maximizes the speed with which the police can clear you as a suspect and zero in on the suspects they can't clear. Besides, you remember the old saw about "round up the usual suspects?" How do you think someone joins the list of "usual suspects?"

If you do have something to hide (related to the alleged crime or not) then yeah, shut up and lawyer up. Or if you're actually under arrest then shut up and lawyer up. They don't arrest you until they're pretty confident it was you. Time to let a professional sort it out.

Not correct. If asked your legal name, you can't take the 5th. They may have proof that a person with your name committed the crime. They may not have proof that's your name, so answering would increase your chances of being found guilty. You still have to answer because your name cannot intrinsically be incriminating.

Indeed other judges have compelled decryption when state has demonstrated that the defendant does in fact possess the encryption key. This judge's ruling is completely compatible with the others.

No, the trick is this:

The government hasn't proven that Feldman *has* the encryption key. Compelling him to turn over the encryption key would be compelling him to admit that he has the key. The compelled admission that he has the encryption key is the fifth amendment violation.

Had Feldman admitted that he had the key or if there was prima facie evidence that he possessed the key, the government could still compel him to provide it.