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.
National Science Foundation (NSF) Discoveries - Redefining Adaptation, the Study of How Populations Grow and Survive - US National Science Foundation (NSF) DiscoveryRedefining Adaptation, the Study of How Populations Grow and Survive Researcher also engages educators and students in an open forum June 27, 2013 How do organisms adapt over time? For example, "did a giraffe's neck get longer because there were thousands of mutations each resulting in a millimeter increase?" Marx's research focuses on adaptation, the process by which populations improve in their ability to grow and survive. Understanding how adaptation works in smaller populations is important because many scenarios--from new infections to cancer--involve small numbers of cells. "Many current therapeutic approaches aim to reduce population sizes of pathogens in order to thwart their eventual success," Marx says. Until recently, many scientists held the classic Darwinian view that adaptation occurs gradually through a series of small changes, he says. "If you change the population size, three things are supposed to happen," he says. Investigators Christopher Marx
United States v. Jones is a Near-Optimal Result This morning, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in United States v. Jones, the GPS tracking case, deciding unanimously that the government violated the defendant’s Fourth Amendment rights when it installed a wireless GPS tracking device on the undercarriage of his car and used it to monitor his movement’s around town for four weeks without a search warrant. Despite the unanimous result, the court was not unified in its reasoning. Five Justices signed the majority opinion, authored by Justice Scalia, finding that the Fourth Amendment “at bottom . . . assure[s] preservation of that degree of privacy against government that existed when the Fourth Amendment was adopted” and thus analyzing the case under “common-law trespassory” principles. Justice Sotomayor, who signed the majority opinion, wrote a separate concurring opinion, but more on that in a second. 1. 2. 3. Wow. 4.
Kerr Defends the Third-Party Doctrine Orin Kerr is a law professor at George Washington University and a blogger on the popular Volokh Conspiracy. He is a thoughtful, open-minded legal scholar, but I don’t think it’s unfair to say that he reliably sides with law enforcement on Fourth Amendment issues. He recently posted a draft article defending the third-party doctrine, which is an interpretation of the Fourth Amendment holding that a person sharing information with a third party cannot make a Fourth Amendment claim to protection of that information. He treats as similar two issues that I see as separate: revelations gleaned from informants/agents and from business records. I think the third-party doctrine was never right, and that it grows more wrong with each step forward in modern, connected living. It’s wonderfully contrarian to run against the grain and defend the third-party doctrine, which has plenty of detractors, but sometimes contrarians can be wrong. My differences with Kerr are plentiful.
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.
Supreme Court Decision in Warrantless GPS Tracking Case Offers Little Guidance in Consumer Privacy Context Sometimes Fourth Amendment cases (which by definition arise in a governmental context) have implications for consumer privacy law since the "reasonable expectation of privacy" analysis can be employed in both areas. Yesterday's U.S. Supreme Court 9-0 ruling in United States v. Jones that the warrantless attachment of a GPS device to a car for monitoring purposes violated the Fourth Amendment offers little guidance in the consumer privacy context as the majority of the Court did not rely on an "expectation of privacy" analysis. The main opinion of the Court chose not to address the issue of whether the suspect had a reasonable expectation of privacy not to be monitored, which was another available avenue of analysis. [I]t may be necessary to reconsider the premise that an individual has no reasonable expectation of privacy in information voluntarily disclosed to third parties.
Supreme Court GPS Tracking Case: Round-up and Resources Updated February 20, 2012 UNITED STATES v. JONES 615 F. 3d 544, affirmed. From Cornell University Legal Information Institute [HTML version has links to cited cases]: From the Supreme Court and American Bar Association websites: Legislation In his written opinion, “Alito said the court and Congress should address how expectations of privacy affect whether warrants are required for remote surveillance using electronic methods that do not require the police to install equipment, such as GPS tracking of mobile telephones. Legislating Privacy after US v. For a list of proposed location privacy legislation as of Fall 2011, visit the home page of Kevin Pomfret’s Centre for Spatial Law and Policy. Law Review Articles and Essays Case Summaries and Commentaries (disclaimer: opinions and analyses are those of the original authors, not all may be accurate) February 2012 January 2012 Older posts US v. Syllabus UNITED STATES v. No. 10–1259. SCALIA, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which ROBERTS, C.
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 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. Sharp argued that this "pattern and practice" of misconduct made court intervention essential. An emerging consensus
Police Use of GPS Is Ruled Unconstitutional A set of overlapping opinions in the case collectively suggested that a majority of the justices are prepared to apply broad privacy principles to bring the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches into the digital age, when law enforcement officials can gather extensive information without ever entering an individual’s home or vehicle. Walter Dellinger, a lawyer for the defendant in the case and a former acting United States solicitor general, said the decision was “a signal event in Fourth Amendment history.” “Law enforcement is now on notice,” Mr. Dellinger said, “that almost any use of GPS electronic surveillance of a citizen’s movement will be legally questionable unless a warrant is obtained in advance.” An overlapping array of justices were divided on the rationale for the decision, with the majority saying the problem was the placement of the device on private property. The Supreme Court affirmed that decision, but on a different ground.
Supreme Court rules: Warrant needed for GPS tracking - Technology & science - Security WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday that police must get a search warrant before using GPS technology to track criminal suspects. The ruling represents a serious complication for law enforcement nationwide, which increasingly relies on high tech surveillance of suspects, including the use of various types of satellite technology. A GPS device installed by police on Washington nightclub owner Antoine Jones' Jeep helped them link him to a suburban house used to stash money and drugs. He was sentenced to life in prison before the appeals court overturned the conviction. Associate Justice Antonin Scalia said that the government's installation of a GPS device, and its use to monitor the vehicle's movements, constitutes a search, meaning that a warrant is required. "By attaching the device to the Jeep" that Jones was using, "officers encroached on a protected area," Scalia wrote. All nine justices agreed that the GPS monitoring on the Jeep violated the U.S. Related:
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. 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. "She has not taken that position in court," Davis said.
Supreme Court rules: Warrant needed for GPS tracking - Technology & science - Security WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday that police must get a search warrant before using GPS technology to track criminal suspects. The ruling represents a serious complication for law enforcement nationwide, which increasingly relies on high tech surveillance of suspects, including the use of various types of satellite technology. A GPS device installed by police on Washington nightclub owner Antoine Jones' Jeep helped them link him to a suburban house used to stash money and drugs. Associate Justice Antonin Scalia said that the government's installation of a GPS device, and its use to monitor the vehicle's movements, constitutes a search, meaning that a warrant is required. "By attaching the device to the Jeep" that Jones was using, "officers encroached on a protected area," Scalia wrote. All nine justices agreed that the GPS monitoring on the Jeep violated the U.S. Scalia wrote the main opinion of three in the case. Related: