Well, the letter of the law is sufficient to get an indictment, but usually the job of a judge is exactly that, to interpret vague legal language and render an unambiguous verdict. So if it’s against the spirit of the law, then logically a judge should rule in favour of the defendant.

Whether they will is another story, though, as the American legal system has been… Under question regarding partisanship.

But the defense lawyer will likely seek acquittal because “may be viewed by another person” cannot reasonably include when you’re being spied on against your will. Because then the words “in any manner in which it may be viewed by another person” are completely redundant and useless. A limiting statement that limits nothing.

Plus, otherwise, all iCloud accounts, all personal backups, etc. that a company is technically capable of viewing is technically up for grabs without a warrant.

Ruling against the defendant in this case would be WILD as a precedent to set for surveillance etc.

You gravely underestimate the ignorance of the general public. The vast majority of people don’t realize companies are spying on them. Even less so for content that isn’t publicly available.

There is nothing inherently “communication” or “publishing” about an AI. In fact, a local LLM does not communicate anything to anyone, and it’s the same thing as Claude, just slower And without the telemetry.

If you ignore corporate greed and yada yada, there’s no reason a tech illiterate person would expect that anything they say in there isn’t private.

Your argument would make sense if it were a forum or social media post.

That was a conversation with an AI chatbot. A word generator. Inherently that stuff doesn’t communicate with anyone, and the only reason anyone saw it was that the chatbot company is spying on its users.

A more reasonable comparison would be if the accused had written down plans to attack a police station in her iCloud-saved notes and Apple had taken a look unprompted and decided to contact the authorities.

That’s just the thing. That wasn’t communication intended for anyone to see.

Charged with transmitting a threat? They are obviously twisting that law.