The Journal News Fallout: Limiting the First Amendment to Protect the Second
Eight days after a gunman entered Sandy Hook Elementary School, shooting and killing 20 young students, 6 staff members and fueling a national discussion on gun control, The Journal News in Lower...
View ArticleFlorida Bill Targets “Mugshot Websites,” Hits Crime Reporting
A new bill proposed by Florida legislator Carl Zimmermann seeks to end “mugshot websites,” a relatively new industry that exploits the marriage of the internet and open records laws in order to make a...
View ArticleMassachusetts Courts Mull Right of Access to Deceased Family Members' E-mail
A case in the Massachusetts Court of Appeals, Ajemian v. Yahoo!, Inc., decided on May 7, is the latest case dealing with ownership of digital assets after death. Plaintiffs, Marianne Ajemian and Robert...
View ArticleThe NSA's Spying Powers: Reading the Statute
[Ed. note -- We are pleased to feature a guest post today by Kit Walsh of the Harvard Law School Cyberlaw Clinic. More information on Kit and Kit's practice can be found here.] In the midst of...
View ArticleAre Social Media Password Privacy Statutes #necessary?
(DMLP Intern Rebekah Bradway contributed to this post.) As we live more of our life online each day, the wealth of information available on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter grows...
View ArticleMetadata Surveillance, Secrecy, and Political Liberty (Part One)
(Following on from Rebekah Bradway's post last week regarding government-created metadata as public records, we are pleased to present a two-part post from Bryce Newell on the role of metadata in...
View ArticleMetadata Surveillance, Secrecy, and Political Liberty (Part Two)
(This is the second part of a two-part post. In Part One, Bryce Newell examined the implications of government collection and analysis of metadata relating to electronic communications. Today, Bryce...
View ArticleCJEU Advocate General Finds No Right to be Forgotten by Search Engines under...
On June 25, 2013, the Opinion of the Advocate General Niilo Jääskinen (AG) in case C-131/12, Google Spain v. Agencia Española de Protección de Datos, was published. This case, which is pending at the...
View ArticleFederal Court Finds Stored Communications Act Applies to Facebook Wall Posts
[Ed. note -- We are pleased today to share with you a blog post by attorney Lindsay Burke of Covington & Burling LLP. This post originally appeared at InsidePrivacy.com.] A New Jersey federal...
View ArticleSo Close, Yet So Far: FBI Access to Silk Road Bitcoin Fortune May be Blocked...
The government's quest for a password-protected bitcoin fortune from the Silk Road shutdown may lead to a Fifth Amendment battle over whether a constitutional right against self-incrimination can...
View ArticleCash Cutoff for Mugshot Sites A Dangerous Idea
If you're arrested, your arrest is public information: your name, your address, what you're accused of. Many news organizations publish this information on a daily basis for their communities, as part...
View ArticleFrench Court: Claim of First Amendment Rights in Search Results Inconsistent...
On November 6, the Paris Tribunal de Grande Instance (TGI) ordered Google and Google France to withdraw and stop displaying in their search engine results, for a period of five years, nine pictures of...
View ArticleA Lesson in Metadata: Harvard Bomb Hoax
[We are delighted to run this piece by our friend and Berkman Center colleague Ryan Budish - eds.] On Monday morning, those of us who work at Harvard found our phones buzzing with activity as we were...
View ArticleMontesquieu, Come Back! (The French Police Already Know Where You Are)
On December 19, 2013, the French Loi de Programmation Militaire (the Military Program law, or "LPM"), was enacted. Article 20 of the LPM, which will come into force on January 1, 2015, authorizes the...
View ArticleWill E.U. Court's Privacy Ruling Break the Internet?
In 2012, a bevy of internet companies and web sites waged a successful campaign against bills in Congress -- the PROTECT IP Act and Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) -- meant to combat copyright privacy....
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