Is there a technological fix for privacy?

Interesting overview of issues related to Internet privacy and the combination of technology and business practices that might be used to give people more choices about how their data might be used.

Problems in determining tax exemptions for religious organizations

Two current examples of the problem of trying to determine whether an organization warrants the tax exemption granted to religious organizations.

Liberty University and political endorsements.

Christian crashpad for Congressmen.

Free speech and terrorism in USSC

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments yesterday in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project which is a case concerning Patriot Act provisions that make it illegal to provide expert advice to groups linked to terrorism.

That did not seem to satisfy Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. “So you can communicate, but the communications are censored,” Justice Ginsburg said. “You can be a member, you can attend meetings, you can discuss things, but there is a certain point at which the discussion must stop, right?”

Ms. Kagan responded, “The discussion must stop when you go over the line into giving valuable advice, training, support to these organizations.”

Ms. Kagan gave examples of prohibited conduct. A lawyer would commit a crime, she said, by filing a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of a terrorist group. Helping such a group petition international bodies is also a crime, she added.

Justice John Paul Stevens asked if there was an authentic risk that Mr. Fertig would be prosecuted were he to make a presentation on behalf of the Kurdish group at the United Nations. He seemed to expect a negative answer.

But Ms. Kagan would say only that the matter would involve a “prosecutorial judgment.”

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said at least one part of the law, banning expert advice, seemed vague to him. “I don’t know sitting down that I could tell,” he said, whether advice about peaceful advocacy was covered.

I don't know if the oral arguments will be made available, but if they are you can find them at Oyez along with the summary of the case that they have already posted.

Cool

I think I picked the wrong sort of professor to be, no access to liquid nitrogen around my office. Of course, I don't share this guy's attitude and I don't work with props but what sort of fun can I have throwing laptops in a bucket of Supreme Court cases? None at all.

Free speech and privacy in the UK

The British constitution protects freedom of speech, but not in the same ways or to the same extent as the First Amendment here. Two recent cases demonstrate this in stark terms.

First is the case of the guy who posted a joke about an airport on Twitter.

He was arrested on suspicion of communicating a bomb hoax and later charged with sending, by means of a public electronic communications network, a message that was grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character.

Yesterday, the court heard that the message read: "Crap! Robin Hood Airport is closed. You've got a week and a bit to get your shit together otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!"

....

Adjourning the case, District Judge Jonathan Bennett told Chambers that all sentencing options, including custody, were open. He was granted unconditional bail to appear before the same court for sentencing on 12 March.

After his arrest, Chambers was suspended from work pending an internal investigation. Detectives also confiscated his iPhone, laptop and home computer.

Take a careful look at the language of the statute in the first paragraph quoted above - which cases in US First Amendment law does this fall under? And is there any chance that this conviction would be upheld here?

In another set of incidents, British authorities have stepped up their harassment of photographers in public places (despite the law authorizing such harassment having been struck down by the ECHR). And they appear to be getting ready to seriously limit, if not eliminate, professional photography (which I think would include artists and documentarians) in public places. Photos in public places will be barred if any person in the photograph objects to being photographed.

Not content with abrogating photographers' copyright, another part of Government is now going some way to ban photography altogether in public places, for data protection reasons. The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) proposed new code for personal information online has "commonsense" new rules that in effect will prohibit photography in public places where anyone who's in the photograph might be unhappy about being photographed. A photo, taken in public, is now deemed private data, y'see.

CCTV, full body scans at airports, no problem, but if an ordinary person takes a photo, this Kafkasesque notion of privacy in public will apply. Unless it's on film. You'd probably be OK taking photos of someone committing a criminal offence too, as ICO thinks this shouldn't be private information.

Mindful of the damage this would do to tourism and how much it would piss off Joe Public to be told he can't use his cameraphone in the street to make humiliating snaps of his drunk mates for Facebook (and quite possibly subsequent orphan use by Rupert Murdoch), ICO have decided that this lunacy shall only apply to pro photographers, a small enough constituency to castrate with impunity.

And, according to the same article, it appears as though Rupert Murdoch will be stealing your flickr stream whenever he wants to.

Anyway, I'm glad that I took my trip to England before all this took effect, or else I might not have been able to share this radically invasive, offensive, dangerous photograph with you all.

Public Opinion and the Supreme Court

So Citizens United was tremendously unpopular across the political spectrum. This is really interesting to me since people usually don't pay that much attention to the Supreme Court and rarely coalesce around opposition to a decision so quickly. Perhaps that says something about the Washington Post poll involved as well as the issue of corporate political speech, but off hand, these are the sorts of poll numbers you might expect on a case about flag burning, not campaign finance law.

More on Yoo and Bybee

Good overview and criticism by David Luban of the Margolis decision to not refer Yoo and Bybee for disciplinary action by the bar association. He includes lots of links to additional commentary.

Yoo and Bybee

Lots of reporting about the Office of Professional Responsibility report that was released yesterday. The previously top secret documents, including the OPR report, the final decision to clear Yoo and Bybee of professional misconduct, and Yoo and Bybee's responses to earlier drafts of the report can all be found here.

From the New York Times.

The ethics lawyers, in the Office of Professional Responsibility, concluded that two department lawyers involved in analyzing and justifying waterboarding and other interrogation tactics — Jay S. Bybee, now a federal judge, and John C. Yoo, now a professor at the University of California, Berkeley — had demonstrated “professional misconduct.” It said the lawyers had ignored legal precedents and provided slipshod legal advice to the White House in possible violation of international and federal laws on torture. That report was among the documents made public Friday.

But David Margolis, a career lawyer at the Justice Department, rejected that conclusion in a report of his own released Friday. He said the ethics lawyers, in condemning the lawyers’ actions, had given short shrift to the national climate of urgency in which Mr. Bybee and Mr. Yoo acted after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. “Among the difficulties in assessing these memos now over seven years after their issuance is that the context is lost,” Mr. Margolis said.

More on the laptop cam privacy case

More details are emerging on the laptop camera student privacy case. The school district claims that it would only use the remote activation feature if the laptop was reported stolen. According to an email from one of the students involved in the lawsuit, the green lights next to the webcams would come on from time to time and students were told this was just a "glitch."

UPDATE: Additional details emerging, along with an FBI investigation.

Privacy violation

Hmnmm, wonder if this one is a privacy violation.

According to the filings in Blake J Robbins v Lower Merion School District (PA) et al, the laptops issued to high-school students in the well-heeled Philly suburb have webcams that can be covertly activated by the schools' administrators, who have used this facility to spy on students and even their families. The issue came to light when the Robbins's child was disciplined for "improper behavior in his home" and the Vice Principal used a photo taken by the webcam as evidence.

Follow the link to find the class action filing against the school.

Incitement?

Does this constitute incitement under Brandenburg?

Microchips, religion, and privacy

The Virginia House has a bill to ban involuntary implantation of micro-chips in people.

Del. Mark L. Cole (R-Fredericksburg), the bill's sponsor, said that privacy issues are the chief concern behind his attempt to criminalize the involuntary implantation of microchips. But he also said he shared concerns that the devices could someday be used as the "mark of the beast" described in the Book of Revelation.

"My understanding -- I'm not a theologian -- but there's a prophecy in the Bible that says you'll have to receive a mark, or you can neither buy nor sell things in end times," Cole said. "Some people think these computer chips might be that mark."

Cole said that the growing use of microchips could allow employers, insurers or the government to track people against their will and that implanting a foreign object into a human being could also have adverse health effects.

"I just think you should have the right to control your own body," Cole said.
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The religious overtones have cast the debate into a realm that has made even some supporters uneasy and caused opponents to mock the bill for legislating the apocalypse.

Indecency in musical form

Eric Idle took up the FCC indecency regulations issue with a short song that some people find amusing. Warning: it is meant to be indecent so it does contain a good deal of profanity. Ummm, it contains only profanity, so don't listen near your mom or if you don't find that sort of thing amusing. In any event, it is an illustration of the way in which indecent songs might be intended as a contribution to political debate.

Free speech challenge to Patriot Act provision

There is an important first amendment challenge to the Patriot Act prohibition on material support for "terrorist organizations." The quotes around "terrorist organizations" indicate that this is the real issue in the case, can the government simply declare that non-violent aid to any of a list of organizations constitutes material support for terrorism, or are there protected forms of advice, consulting, or association that are swept up in the law? Are donations to some groups on the list which may have only a tenuous connection to terror activities protected by free speech as campaign contributions are?

The Supreme Court will soon hear Mr. Fertig’s challenge to the law, in a case that pits First Amendment freedoms against the government’s efforts to combat terrorism. The case represents the court’s first encounter with the free speech and association rights of American citizens in the context of terrorism since the Sept. 11 attacks — and its first chance to test the constitutionality of a provision of the USA Patriot Act.

Opponents of the law, which bans providing “material support” to terrorist organizations, say it violates American values in ways that would have made Senator Joseph R. McCarthy blush during the witch hunts of the cold war.

Ellsberg at the Oscars

Daniel Ellsberg, a key figure in the Pentagon Papers case that we studied last week, is the subject of an Oscar nominated documentary. Here is a bit of information about what Ellsberg is up to these days and some of his favorite movies of the last year.

Educational privacy or informational lockdown

A small college in Florida requires every faculty member, staff person, and administrator to sign a very stringent confidentiality agreement that apparently prohibits them from discussing anything that happens on campus. Is this about privacy, or about control over information? Does this protect employee or student privacy, or does it protect the administration of the college from criticism and chill public debate about campus policies?

The Edward Waters agreement, revised this month, is mandatory and classifies all on-campus material as confidential data. That includes employee records, policy documents and even in-class material unless otherwise approved for release.

Faculty, staff and administrators are all included, and any violations can be met with a daily $5,000 fine and additional legal action.