Archive for the '4th Amendment' Category
Volokh Conspiracy: Data-Mining and the Fourth Amendment
Tuesday, September 5th, 2006The Volokh Conspiracy reports on a Sixth Circuit decision in a Fourth Amendment case that addresses whether querying a database triggers Fourth Amendment protection. The majority concludedthat it does not: If the government collected the data in the database in compliance with the Fourth Amendment, analyzing that data does not implicate the Fourth Amendment.
I certainly […]
Federal Judge Orders End to Warrantless Wiretapping
Thursday, August 17th, 2006A federal judge in Detroit ruled today that the Bush administration’s eavesdropping program is illegal and unconstitutional. I’ll leave analysis of Judge Taylor’s reasoning to the experts (Jack Balkin, Orin Kerr, Dan Solove, Eugene Volokh, for starters). But I certainly agree with her quoting of Justice Warren at the conclusion of the opinion:
Implicit in the […]
NJ Librarian ensnared in privacy conflict
Thursday, July 6th, 2006NorthJersey.com reports of a local librarian who told police they would need a subpoena before she would turn over the circulation records of a man who had allegedly made sexually threatening comments to a 12-year-old girl outside the library. The police secured subpoenas and eventually received the information they requested, but the librarian is now […]
AP: Police Bypassed Subpoenas, Got Phone Data From Brokers
Tuesday, June 20th, 2006Why should you be concerned about the aggregation and commercial availability of your personal information? Because you have little Constitutional protection from the state accessing such “third party” data, as this AP report makes all to clear:
Numerous federal and local law enforcement agencies have bypassed subpoenas and warrants designed to protect civil liberties and gathered […]
Balkin: The Public Private “Handshake” and the National Surveillance State
Friday, June 16th, 2006My greatest concern about the collection of personal information by search engines, web 2.0 services, transportation systems and the like isn’t that certain individual companies happen to own a slice of my data, nor that these slices are increasingly being aggregated by information brokers like Choicepoint. Rather, my greatest concern is the increasing ease and […]
Does Using Skype Authorizing NSA Spying?
Friday, May 19th, 2006A Skype user over at Grain of Salt has discovered an interesting caveat in the “To whom does Skype transfer Your personal information?” section of their privacy policy:
Except as provided below, Skype shall not sell, rent, trade or otherwise transfer any Personal and/or Traffic Data or Communications Content to any third party without Your explicit […]
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