Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
Every lover of liberty and the Constitution should be offended by the moniker “Privacy Bill of Rights” appended to regulatory legislation Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and John McCain (R-AZ) introduced yesterday. As C|Net’s Declan McCullagh points out, the legislation exempts the federal government and law enforcement: [T]he measure applies only to companies and some nonprofit [...]
The smartphone is arguably one of the most empowering and revolutionary technologies of the modern era. By putting the processing power of a personal computer and the speed of a broadband connection into a device that fits in a pocket, smartphones have revolutionized how we communicate, travel, learn, game, shop, and more. Yet smartphones have [...]
If you store sensitive files on your personal computer which law enforcement authorities wish to examine, they generally cannot do so without first obtaining a search warrant based upon probable cause. But what if you store personal information online—say, in your Gmail account, or on Dropbox? What if you’re a business owner who uses Salesforce [...]
If you have a mobile phone, that’s the upshot of an argument being put forward by the government in a case being argued before the Third Circuit Court of Appeals tomorrow. The case is called In the Matter of the Application of the United States of America For An Order Directing A Provider of Electronic [...]
Jeff Jonas has published an important post: “Your Movements Speak for Themselves: Space-Time Travel Data is Analytic Super-Food!” More than you probably realize, your mobile device is a digital sensor, creating records of your whereabouts and movements: Mobile devices in America are generating something like 600 billion geo-spatially tagged transactions per day. Every call, text [...]
New Jerseyans may get a chance to vote their Fourth Amendment preferences in the upcoming gubernatorial elections. Among the candidates is Chris Christie, who as U.S. Attorney for New Jersey authorized the tracking of suspects’ cell phones without getting a warrant.
Indiana University law professor Fred Cate writes with characteristic thoroughness and organization in his article Government Data Mining: The Need for a Legal Framework, published in the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review this summer. It took me a while to get around to reading it – a little longer to write it up. Don’t [...]
Frankly, I don’t expect the scholars, lawyers, and judges who have been steeping in traditional Fourth Amendment doctrine their entire careers to get the thesis of my recent American University Law Review article. But you can! And, eventually, if I do enough work, they will. Here are some highlights from the introduction to “Reforming Fourth [...]
May 28, 2012
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
