[rdl]

IANAL. Not legal advice. I'm far from qualified to advise on legal matters. Entertainment purposes only.

Once you're given immunity, you can be compelled to testify, since the only restriction is on self-incrimination; self-incrimination is impossible once you have immunity. (Essentially, it's also only protection against self incrimination; you can be forced to incriminate others. There are limited exceptions for doctor/patient, priest/victim, spouses, attorney/client.) If you refuse at that point, it's potentially contempt of court.

Grand Jury rules are also somewhat different from trials.

IMO, she made some seriously bad life decisions in both retaining logs (making them is bad enough, but retaining them indefinitely is horrible), and in testifying. But not out of malice, just ignorance or something. The party to blame here is the prosecution and government for creating a world where random girlfriends and journalists need to be combatants.

[marvin]

You're bringing up a good point here. I think it is seriously chilling that I am only a subpoena away from giving up the secrets of my friends that are archived in my e-mail account, in Skype's logs or on Facebook. I know secrets that, although not illegal, I would go far out of my way to keep secret because they would jeapordize the livelihood of my friends. The US government can basically look these up if it finds a good reason to do so.

A hacker would berate me for keeping secrets on other people's machines, or berate my friends for communicating through insecure channels. But most people will simply never think this way. You could have said the same for phone conversations back in the day, but these were not logged indefinitely.

I think that the loosely restricted use of electronic records is a dark development.

[sneak]

> I think it is seriously chilling that I am only a subpoena away from giving up the secrets of my friends that are archived in my e-mail account, in Skype's logs or on Facebook.

Hahaha, no you're not. Gmail, Skype, and Facebook all have streamlined and well-trod paths for turning that stuff over to the feds. If it was truly serious business, you'd be lucky to even find out it had happened.