Earlier this semester, NYU student Alana Taylor wrote a posting for the PBS blog MediaShift critiquing the professor of her “Reporting Gen Y” class for not being up to date with new technology.
Privacy Law
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License Plate Scanners Make Stealing More Difficult
Law enforcement agencies across the country have begun using license plate scanning systems to help in the recovery of stolen vehicles and to capture criminals. The devices, placed on the roof of police cars, use optical character-recognition technology to read license plates from up to four lanes away and take pictures of just the lower section of the vehicles.
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Nevada’s Encryption Law: How Much Does it Help?
The Wall Street Journal recently reported on a Nevada law that went into effect on October 1, 2008 requiring businesses “doing business” within the state to “encrypt” their customer’s “personal information.” While this law does represent an important development in the effort to protect consumers from crimes suc
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Search, Seizure, and Cell Phones?
Customs officials and police officers, in a small but increasing number of cases, have been carrying out warrantless searches of the contents of laptops, mobile phones, and other wireless devices. Additionally, courts have said that police officers, in the course of an arrest, can legally search a person’s cell phone photos, text messages, and call lists. A prominent court case dealing with warrantless searches comes from the Ninth Circuit U.S.
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The Prisoner’s Dilemma of the Digital Age
South Carolina’s state prison chief, John Ozmint, recently announced his wish to jam cell phone signals in prisons to prevent further crime and inmate escapes. Unfortunately, Mr.
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Anti-Vaccination Movement Takes a Turn for the Worse
On September 3, 2008, the journal PLoS ONE published a case-control study examining a potential link between the Measles, Mumps, and Rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism. The study's results suggested that there is no merit to a contention, common in some circles, that the live measles virus contained in the MMR vaccine can cause gastrointestinal distress that would then cause autism.
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GPS: Global Police Stalking?
Eric Hanson was recently convicted of fatally shooting his parents and bludgeoning to death his sister and brother-in-law. David Lee Foltz, Jr. is currently charged with abduction and sexual battery, and is suspected of eleven other attacks on women in the area.
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Article: You Can Run, But You Can't Hide: Protecting Privacy from Radio Frequency Identification Technology
North Carolina Journal of Law and Technology, Volume 8, Issue 2, Page 249 (July 2007)
Abstract
RFID technology is a highly effective means of tracking products and people, and it is ready to be employed on a massive scale. Without regulation, RFID will be used to track both products and people. There is currently no government oversight of the use of RFID. Instead, the Federal Trade Commission allows companies that use RFID to self-regulate. Increasingly, RFID-tagged products are entering the stream of commerce without any notice to alert consumers to their presence. Moreover, with the development of miniscule tags, detection may become impossible unless labeling is mandated.
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Article: United States v. Councilman and the Scope of the Wiretap Act: Do Old Laws Cover New Technologies?
North Carolina Journal of Law and Technology, Volume 6, Issue 2, Page 437 (June 2005)
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In United States v. Councilman, the First Circuit Court of Appeals addressed the complex issue of when the Wiretap Act protects electronic communication. In a split decision, the First Circuit upheld the district court ruling, holding that an Internet service provider (“ISP”) does not violate criminal wiretap laws when it copies and reads customers’ email messages without their consent. The First Circuit reasoned that the intercept provisions of the Wiretap Act did not apply due to the fact that the messages were held in electronic storage.
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Recent Development: DNA Databases and Discarded Private Information: “Your License, Registration and Intimate Bodily Details, Please”
North Carolina Journal of Law and Technology, Volume 6, Issue 2, Page 343 (June 2005)
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In the small town of Truro, Massachusetts, three years had passed and the police could still not find the killer of freelance fashion writer Christa Worthington. Christa was found stabbed to death with her two year old daughter “clinging to her body.” Local police found semen on Worthington’s body, providing a DNA sample, an important clue to help solve the case. As has occurred on other occasions in the United States and abroad, investigators deployed a so-called “DNA Dragnet” of all 790 males in the town.
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Recent Development: Big Brother on a Tiny Chip: Ushering in the Age of Global Surveillance Through the Use of Radio Frequency Identification Technology and the Need for Legislative Response
North Carolina Journal of Law and Technology, Volume 6, Issue 2, Page 325 (June 2005)
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One of the most controversial provisions of the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act (“USA PATRIOT Act”) allows the government to track the books people check out of the library. The critics of this provision argue that allowing the government to monitor what books people read is an unprecedented invasion of privacy that will erode civil liberties and chill free speech.
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Comment: You Get What You Pay For . . . and So Does the Government: How Law Enforcement Can Use Your Personal Property to Track Your Movements
North Carolina Journal of Law and Technology, Volume 6, Issue 1, Page 165 (December 2004)
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If Scott Peterson had been stuck in traffic on a congested highway in Los Angeles, driven to a local bank, or taken a transcontinental road trip to West Orange, New Jersey, police in Modesto, California would have known. Indeed, the police department’s surveillance was precise, perpetual, and nearly invisible. It was also electronic. Shortly after Peterson’s wife, Laci, disappeared in December 2002, police in Modesto, California secretly placed Global Positioning System (“GPS”) tracking units on four of his vehicles.
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Article: Reflections on the NC JOLT Symposium: The Privacy Self-Regulation Race to the Bottom
North Carolina Journal of Law and Technology, Volume 5, Issue 2, Page 213 (June 2004)
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We are in the Wild West of privacy and security today. As was the case with consumers of food and drugs one hundred years ago, today’s consumers know little about the actual practices of companies that have their personal information. There is skyrocketing identity theft, stalking made possible through the sale of personal information, and a shift in power from individuals to business and government data collectors. There also are more subtle, cultural harms.
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Recent Development: I Spy Something Read! Employer Monitoring of Personal Employee Webmail Accounts
North Carolina Journal of Law and Technology, Volume 5, Issue 1, Page 121 (December 2003)
Abstract
n employee arrives at work, logs onto Hotmail, types a quick message to his wife, sends a quick e-mail to friends about catching tonight’s game at the bar, and forwards the latest joke that is a little risqué. This type of e-mail use is common in corporate America among employers of all sizes. However, use of personal e-mail at work is no minor distraction. Consider an average size company of 1,000 employees—if the employees spend only one hour of each day on the Internet or using e-mail, the cost to the company could be greater than $35 million dollars in lost productivity in one year.
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Article: A Penny Saved, a Lifestyle Learned? The California and Connecticut Approaches to Supermarket Privacy
North Carolina Journal of Law and Technology, Volume 4, Issue 1, Page 143 (December 2002)
Abstract
It is becoming increasingly difficult to find a grocery store where consumers can take advantage of special discounts without first handing over a frequent shopper card for scanning. While many may consider this grocery store technology a new form of coupon clipping, few stop to consider the privacy implications. Grocery store technology, like technology in other areas, allows for the consolidation and dissemination of personal information in ways never before possible.
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Note: Death Watch: Why America Was Not Allowed To Watch Timothy McVeigh Die
North Carolina Journal of Law and Technology, Volume 3, Issue 1, Page 193 (December 2001)
Abstract
Timothy J. McVeigh was sentenced to death on August 14, 1997, for the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, which left 168 people dead. Although United States Attorney General John Ashcroft explained that “all the citizens of the United States were victims of the crimes perpetrated by Mr. McVeigh,” all such victims were not allowed to watch McVeigh’s execution by lethal injection at the United States Penitentiary at Terre Haute (USPTH) on June 11, 2001.
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