ACLU Sues School For Punishing 12-Year-Old Over Facebook Comment. Can a school district punish a student for making derogatory comments about staff members online? Not according to the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed a lawsuit Tuesday against a Minnesota school district and sheriff's office. In the suit, filed in U.S. District Court, the ACLU claims a 12-year-old student was disciplined by administrators of the Minnewaska Area School District after she posted on Facebook that she "hated" a hall monitor who was "mean" to her. In an interesting twist, Facebook's sign-up policy requires users to reach 13 years of age before they are granted an account. According to the lawsuit, the girl's principal decided that the Facebook post constituted "bullying.
" She then posted another comment, saying that she was annoyed someone had shown her first comment to school officials. "She was given an in-school suspension and was prohibited from attending a school field trip," according to the ACLU. Dharun Ravi Gets Off Easy In Rutgers Spying Case: Month In Jail And $10,000 Fine. Jurors' Tweets Upend Trials. Court Orders Man To Delete Revenge Blog Targeted At His Ex. Now Cops Can Search Cellphones Found at Crime Scenes. Police in the U.S. can legally search mobile phones discovered at the scene of a crime, a federal appeals court has ruled. After police in Indiana discovered a batch of cellphones at the site of a drug bust, they did some digital sleuthing and searched each device for its telephone number. Those numbers allowed investigators to get the call histories of each cellphone owner. Those logs connected them with the illegal drug operation, according to Reuters.
One of the men found guilty in the trial appealed his conviction. In his appeal, his lawyers argued that the police had no right to search his phone without a warrant. That argument didn't fly with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit. Judge Richard Posner's decision examined the proper role of the police in handling personal technology found at crime scenes. Posner went on to compare a cell phone to a personal journal or diary. The decision left plenty of legal questions for other judges to interpret. Privacy and Civil Liberties in the Digital Age | Epicenter.
Last year, a researcher discovered that iPhones — among the world’s most popular electronic devices — were storing detailed, unencrypted information on their owners’ locations and uploading it to any computer they were connected to. Subsequent research revealed that both Apple iPhones and Google Android devices were sending detailed location information back to Apple and Google — and that in some cases, users didn’t know about it and even if they did, they had no way of stopping it. Just a few months ago, another researcher discovered that software made by a company called Carrier IQ had been secretly installed on millions of smartphones and was tracking consumers’ locations and other private information.
In both cases, millions of consumers who were carrying smartphones in their pockets had no idea that their personal information was being collected — and no way of stopping it. But we have a long way to go to get our modern privacy laws in line with modern technology. FBI cuts back on GPS surveillance after Supreme Court ruling. WASHINGTON – The FBI has begun cutting back GPS surveillance in an array of criminal and intelligence investigations following a Supreme Court ruling last month restricting its use, a federal law enforcement official said. The bureau began implementing the change the day after the Jan. 23 ruling in which the court found that attaching such a device to a car amounted to a search covered by the Fourth Amendment, requiring police to seek warrants in many cases.
The official, who was not authorized to comment publicly on the matter, said the Global Positioning System directive was issued until further legal guidance is provided on the use of the technology. STORY: Supreme Court: Warrant for GPS tracking Meanwhile, the official said, additional FBI agents have been dispatched to cover costly, labor-intensive surveillance operations that had previously relied on GPS technology. The Justice Department is in the midst of evaluating the ruling's implications, Justice spokeswoman Laura Sweeney said. Privacy laws: Private data, public rules. Ordering defendant to decrypt hard drive did not violate her Fifth Amendment rights. U.S. v. Fricosu, 10-CR-00509 (D.
Colo. January 23, 2012) Pursuant to a warrant, federal agents seized defendant’s laptop from her home. The court rejected defendant’s arguments, granted the Government’s application and ordered defendant to provide an unencrypted copy of the hard drive. The Fifth Amendment provides that no person shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself. Existsis in the possession or control of the produceris authentic (i.e., is what it purports to be) The court held that defendant’s Fifth Amendment rights were not implicated because providing an unencrypted copy of the hard drive did not serve to accomplish any of the three points listed above. The feds had confiscated the computer, so they knew of the location and existence of the computer files. Defendant Ordered to Decrypt Laptop May Have Forgotten Password | Threat Level.
A Colorado woman ordered to decrypt her laptop so prosecutors may use the files against her in a criminal case might have forgotten the password, the defendant's attorney said Monday. The authorities seized the Toshiba laptop from defendant Ramona Fricosu in 2010 with a court warrant while investigating alleged mortgage fraud. Ruling that the woman's Fifth Amendment rights against compelled self-incrimination would not be breached, U.S. District Judge Robert Blackburn ordered the woman in January to decrypt the laptop.
"It's very possible to forget passwords," the woman's attorney, Philip Dubois, said in a telephone interview. "It's not clear to me she was the one who set up the encryption on this drive. The decryption case is a complicated one, even if solely analyzed on the underlying Fifth Amendment issue. One case involved a child pornography prosecution that ended with a Vermont federal judge ordering the defendant to decrypt the hard drive of his laptop. 10-1259 United States v. Jones (01/23/2012) Canada News: Ontario appeal court allows lawsuits for invasion of privacy. The Ontario Court of Appeal has recognized a right to sue for damages for invasion of personal privacy, which includes snooping through financial, health and employment records, opening mail, reading diaries and intruding into the sexual orientation and practices of another person.
In a groundbreaking decision released Wednesday, the court said it was acting within its mandate to develop the law to reflect the changing needs of society at a time when highly personal information about Ontario residents, including where they shop, who they call and the movies they download, is readily accessible in electronic form. The court’s 3-0 judgment involved the case of Sandra Jones, a Toronto bank employee. Jones, the court said, is entitled to a remedy for anguish and suffering caused by the unauthorized and “shocking” intrusion into her banking records by Winnie Tsige, a fellow Bank of Montreal employee. The facts of the case “cry out” for redress, he said. Obama administration says Constitution protects cell phone recordings.
The Obama administration has told a federal judge that Baltimore police officers violated the First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendments by seizing a man's cell phone and deleting its contents. The deletions were allegedly in retaliation for the man's use of the phone to record the officers' arrest of his friend. According to the Maryland ACLU, this is the first time the Obama Justice Department has weighed in on whether the Constitution protects citizens' right to record the actions of police with their cell phones.
Christopher Sharp was attending the Preakness horse race in May 2010 with friends. Sharp, who alleges that the police beat his friend before arresting her, pulled out his cell phone to document the encounter. Sharp initially refused, but fearing arrest he eventually handed the phone over. A pattern of misconduct? Sharp filed a federal lawsuit in October, charging that the police had violated his First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights. An emerging consensus. Blogger v. Blogger SoCal Cybersquatting Suit Resolved. In what may be the first lawsuit of its kind, the owners of the site TheLiberalOC.com won a judgment against another blogger who cybersquatted their domain and then posted a series of links to offensive porn sites. The site is owned by two liberal bloggers in Orange County, California (not exactly known for the dominance of that particular political persuasion): Dan Chmielewski, a PR executive and Chris Prevatt, the publisher of Thinking Liberally Media.
Last week a federal judge ruled in their favor in a lawsuit charging Art Pedroza and the Orange Juice Blog with cybersquatting, trademark and copyright infringement. It is a well-won victory for all of us. Pedroza is pretty much the ultimate slime ball, and starting in November 2009 he began acquiring various domain names that were nearly identical to the original one of the blog and Chmielewski's PR company's corporate domain. He then demanded thousands of dollars for these squatted domains. Here is Chmielewski with State Rep. Stalking on Twitter is Protected Speech, U.S. Judge Rules Mashable Stalking on Twitter is Protected Speech, U.S. Judge Rules | The top source for social and digital news. You Have A Constitutional Right To Stalk And Harass People On Twitter.
Twitter stalking freedom of speech. Pennsylvania Court Orders Personal Injury Plaintiff to Turn Over Facebook Password to Defendant -- Largent v. Reed. [Post by Venkat Balasubramani] Largent v. Reed, 2009-1823 (Pa. Ct. of Common Pleas; Nov. 8, 2011) Keith and Jessica Largent were involved in an accident in 2007. They sued Jessica Rosko and Sagrario Pena alleging negligence and loss of consortium. During Ms. Largent’s deposition, defense counsel realized that Ms. Rosko argued that Largent’s profile was “public,” and certain posts to Largent’s Facebook account contradicted her claims of “serious and severe injury.” The court starts by noting that Pennsylvania discovery rules are broad and “the relevancy threshold is slight.”
If there is no applicable privilege or statutory bar, the information must be turned over. [t]here is no confidential social networking privilege under existing Pennsylvania law. As far as a statutory bar, the Stored Communications Act was the obvious possibility. [t]he SCA does not apply because Largent is not an entity regulated by the SCA. Largent can still access her account while Rosko is investigating. Twitter, WikiLeaks and the Troubling Implications For Online Privacy. A U.S. Federal Court in Virginia caused quite a stir among digital privacy advocates last week when it ordered Twitter to grant the Justice Department access to private data from the accounts of three suspected WikiLeaks supporters. That data includes IP addresses, session times and relationships between other Twitter users. Normally, requests for this type of information are not particularly controversial, but in this case a warrant was not required and the subjects of the data inquiries have not yet been charged with any crimes.
The government is able to make such warrantless requests thanks to a 1994 law known as the Stored Communications Act. It's that lack of a need for the government to obtain a warrant that most troubles privacy advocates, given that the right to privacy was a bedrock principle in the founding of the United States and the ratification of its Constitution. A Slippery Slope For Online Privacy? Collaboration, Support and Sympathy: Where Are the Lines? Privacy Rights Victory: Court Rules Police Need Warrant to Search Cellphone Records.
Worried about the police tracking your whereabouts through your mobile records? They can't — it's unconstitutional. U.S. law enforcement agents do not have the right to access cellphone location records, a federal court ruled Wednesday. U.S. District Judge Lynn N. Hughes upheld a Texas district court's decision that the constitution's Fourth Amendment sets probable cause as the minimum for obtaining private records. A government request for asked for 60 days of travel information for certain mobile accounts probed the case. In his ruling, Hughes wrote, “two months’ worth of hourly tracking data will inevitably reveal a rich slice of the user’s life, activities, and associations.” SEE ALSO: How the World Is Using Cellphones [INFOGRAPHIC] The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which advocates on behalf of individual rights, filed briefs on behalf of the case.
What do you think of the court's decision?