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Ask HN: I found documents on the backseat of a taxi. Can I legally use them?

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Re: Ask HN: I found documents on the backseat of a taxi. Can I legally use them?

#21

Post by smalter »

you should see a lawyer.

but the black letter law as of when i was a lawyer (2010) is that you can trade on an overheard conversation (see the switzer case involving the famed oklahoma football coach).

you don't have a fiduciary duty to the company and you don't inherit the duty from the tipper because the tipper tipped without personal benefit.

edit a reliable reference (contra some of the other sources cited in this thread): http://www.concurringopinions.com/archives/2009/08/insider-t...

Re: Ask HN: I found documents on the backseat of a taxi. Can I legally use them?

#22

Post by cowsandmilk »

ramchip wrote: post #19
dmourati wrote: post #10

Documents left on a taxi seat can be characterized as mislaid. That is, the paper was intentionally put on the seat and forgotten. http://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=117... Confidentiality is a an agreement between parties not to disclose information to a third party. You are now talking about the unintended disclosure of confidential information. Since you are not a party to the confidentiality…

> As far as insider trader, I don't suspect a random person who stumbled upon such data lawfully could be found guilty of any crime for using it. That sounds like terrible advice to me. See this for example: http://www.investopedia.com/articles/03/100803.asp > Oftentimes, people accused of the crime claim that they just overheard someone talking. Take for example a neighbor who overhears a conversation between a CEO…

Please explain how anything in your link classifies this as insider trading. My interpretation is that finding information in a taxi means I am not a corporate insider, therefore I could not be guilty of insider trading.

Note, I agree with the currently most upvoted comment that you should see a lawyer. If you wouldn't make enough money by trading on this information to make seeing a lawyer worth it, then it isn't worth taking the risk of making the trade.

Re: Ask HN: I found documents on the backseat of a taxi. Can I legally use them?

#24

Post by zobzu »

jacques_chester wrote: post #7

See a lawyer. Seriously. See a lawyer. People on the internet are not lawyers; if they are lawyers, their main advice is go see a lawyer . Law is a profession of tiny details with huge consequences. Those tiny details vary from place to place and from subject to subject. Even lawyers have lawyers. If I learnt one and only one important lesson from my time in law school, it's this: If you have a question of law, go se…

While this is the safest thing to do and people should probably do so, I think this shouldn't be used as a "hey, we DONT want you to know".

The simple fact that we have to tell people to go see a lawyer for protecting themselves just shows how wrong the society is (in the USA in particular) regarding laws.

But more than that, people should at least be able to get an educated answer on what to do, other that "go pay money to that guy, he knows AND this will shield you from legal issues that could ruin your life."

I mean, seriously.

Re: Ask HN: I found documents on the backseat of a taxi. Can I legally use them?

#25

Post by PeterisP »

pests wrote: post #9
mschuster91 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It 'd be best if you ask a real, qualified lawyer in the country you're resigning. In most countries though, you're under duty to return the documents to the owner ASAP, and you're eligible to some kind of compensation according to the value of the documents.

I don't think that is his main concern. In the original post he seems concerned about the legality of information learned, not so much document ownership or lost and found rights.

Even so, the details that aren't supplied in the question (which jurisdiction exactly? what kind of information was it?) are more important than the few details that are listed (where the information was found, that those are printouts).

If you want an useful answer, you need to tell more details to a relevant lawyer; currently this question can only get answers that are either useless or dangerous.

Re: Ask HN: I found documents on the backseat of a taxi. Can I legally use them?

#26

Post by smalter »

ramchip wrote: post #19
dmourati wrote: post #10

Documents left on a taxi seat can be characterized as mislaid. That is, the paper was intentionally put on the seat and forgotten. http://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=117... Confidentiality is a an agreement between parties not to disclose information to a third party. You are now talking about the unintended disclosure of confidential information. Since you are not a party to the confidentiality…

> As far as insider trader, I don't suspect a random person who stumbled upon such data lawfully could be found guilty of any crime for using it. That sounds like terrible advice to me. See this for example: http://www.investopedia.com/articles/03/100803.asp > Oftentimes, people accused of the crime claim that they just overheard someone talking. Take for example a neighbor who overhears a conversation between a CEO…

that's a poorly written article that, for one, lacks citations. i think the point they're making with the excerpted text is that your "claim" that you merely overheard a conversation is going to be tested and could very likely fail if you have a pre-existing relationship with the tipper.

Re: Ask HN: I found documents on the backseat of a taxi. Can I legally use them?

#27

Post by jacques_chester »

zobzu wrote: post #24
jacques_chester wrote: post #7

See a lawyer. Seriously. See a lawyer. People on the internet are not lawyers; if they are lawyers, their main advice is go see a lawyer . Law is a profession of tiny details with huge consequences. Those tiny details vary from place to place and from subject to subject. Even lawyers have lawyers. If I learnt one and only one important lesson from my time in law school, it's this: If you have a question of law, go se…

While this is the safest thing to do and people should probably do so, I think this shouldn't be used as a "hey, we DONT want you to know". The simple fact that we have to tell people to go see a lawyer for protecting themselves just shows how wrong the society is (in the USA in particular) regarding laws. But more than that, people should at least be able to get an educated answer on what to do, other that "go pay m…

I think this is availability bias. You notice the disputes and tricky questions that get referred to lawyers because these are unusual.

The law almost always goes on without anybody having to notice or take additional action. We are always moving through and interacting with the invisible web of the law. It works so well that we only notice it when something goes awry or something unusual happens (like OP's situation -- if it were normal, people would have a better idea of what to do).

Yesterday I entered into several legal contracts. We went through all the legal formalities under common and statue law, created mutually binding obligations, discharged our legal requirements and then went on our respective ways. These variously took the form of buying groceries, hailing a cab, buying dinner, picking up laundry (with the added bonus of bailee-bailor relationship) and getting a haircut.

Because nothing unusual happened, I didn't think about the law. At all. But it was there.

Re: Ask HN: I found documents on the backseat of a taxi. Can I legally use them?

#28

Post by tonfa »

manojlds wrote: post #17
Theodores wrote: post #13

Why legally? A couple of days ago I found a wallet with what looked like £40 (Didn't count it), travelcard and bank cards in it. I could have taken the money and put it the rest in the bin. I could have even skimmed the credit/debit cards and gone on a spending spree! But I did not. I went to the local shop and enquired - 'do you know this guy?' The wallet owner actually lived in the flats above the shop and the wall…

Does using the information on the document mean whoever misplaced is going to lose something? Probably not. My point is, the OP's case and your example about the wallet are not the same. PS: if I were the OP I would try to return or destroy them.

> Does using the information on the document mean whoever misplaced is going to lose something? Probably not.

Depending on information, how it is used, etc. I can imagine him losing his job.

Re: Ask HN: I found documents on the backseat of a taxi. Can I legally use them?

#29

Post by kefka »

I'll answer your question with a situation I had happen to me recently.

Two of us were working at the local hackerspace late night. We had some trash we took out to the dumpster, and we saw a desktop tower. It had a bit of dried mud on it, so it was probably there no more than a few hours.

I take it in, and I put it in the 'dedicated desktop testing area' (read: wherever there was a keyboard/mouse/monitor). I was expecting some massive dead machine. Nope. there was a 80GB hard drive, cd/dvd, RAM, CPU.. Everything was there, and it boot right into WinXP.

Then the ohshit factor came into play. On the desktop there were icons for "Anthem Insurance Quoter", "Blue Cross Quotes".... and Client List.xls.pdf . That list alone had 500 names, SSN, DOB, address, and phone numbers. And there even more files with more identities as well. So, what do I do? Oh, and I also found the agent's name along with his license number. Nifty. He googles to about 2.5 miles away.

So.. is this a discarded machine, or was this a drop site after a theft? I don't know, and powering it up didn't tell me. There wasn't any security on the machine at all, so anybody could have plugged in a USB storage and copied without fear of logs.

I took it to the police. That's not because of the hardware, but because they can alert the users on this machine of possible identity theft and take appropriate steps.

(Yes, I do know where on Tor to sell identities like this. And the quality of these would have been roughly 100$/per. And I'm poor, but damned if I'll be unethical like that.)

Re: Ask HN: I found documents on the backseat of a taxi. Can I legally use them?

#30

Post by smalter »

edw519 wrote: post #6

"Legal" does not necessarily = "Right". So forget about what's legal and just do what's right. You are in a unique time and place in history (as evidenced by your presence here) to build something out of nothing and provide great value to others. So why don't you just forget about what you found and instead spend your precious energy building something? As for the documents, either return them or destroy them and ple…

it's not obvious that trading on material, non-public information that you overheard is unethical. it's basically the same thing as winning the lottery, and i wouldn't not cash in lottery winnings because i have the opportunity to build something of great value to others (that's neither here nor there).

it's not even obvious that insider trading should be illegal (http://business.time.com/2013/07/26/why-is-insider-trading-e...). (not particularly relevant, but i do think certain types of insider trading should definitely be illegal but the scope is debatable.)

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