Non-traditional communications devices such as smartphones and game consoles pose a particular problem to law enforcement agencies trying to milk them for forensic data that reveals criminal activity, attendees were told at the 2010 Computer Forensics Show in New York City.
From: Greene, Tim. FBI: Finding Criminal Data on Cell Phones and Game Consoles:is Tough,. in Network World, April 23, 2010.
In City of Ontario California et. al. v. Jeff Quon et. al. the U.S. Supreme Court is wrestling with the issue of whether public employees are entitled to a reasonable expectation of privacy in text messages transmitted on their workplace pages or similar devices without such messages being subject to review from recipients public employer. The city of Ontario, California is asking the justices to overturn a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, holding that it violated the Fourth Amendment privacy rights of Mr. Quon, a member of the Ontario police department SWAT team, when it reviewed transcripts of his and another offiicer’s text messages on their department pagers. Below are links to the argument transcipts and other docuemts related to this case:
Argument: City of Ontario California, et. al. v. Jeff Quon, et. al. 08-1332
The Scotus Wiki contains links to other useful documents related to this case.
The Alabama Supreme Court and State Law Library is pleased to announce the launch of its new website. Please check us out at http://judicial.alabama.gov/library.cfm. As part of our redesign, we are proud to present the full text of the Alabama Rules of Court-Civil, Criminal, Small Claims, Juvenile, Appellate, and Judicial Administration and the accompanying forms.
Volume 3 March 2010
Security and Privacy on Social Networking Sites
From the Desk of David Badertscher
In a unanimous 3-0 Decision last Tuesday April 6 the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the Federal Communication Commission did not have the authority to order Comcast in 2008 to cease and desist interfering with the traffic of Bit Torrent a P2P file sharing service. At the time Comcast ostensibly accepted the order, but ended up appealing the ruling in the courts. The April 6 opinion is the result of that appeal.
As can be expected, reactions have been quick in coming and are quite varied, depending on the perspective and interests of those responding. Some have emphasized the supposedly narrow scope of the ruling attempting to play down its overall importance. Others see it has quite significant, even ground breaking in its scope. For example, will the ruling set a prescedent that allows internet providers to control broadband service as they see fit since it clearly undercuts the FCC’s claim to authority to regulate the internet? What about the FCC’s recently released National Broadband Plan supported by the Obama administration? Many of my fellow libraraians have been looking forward to both participating in and benefiting from this program which contains some provisions related to libraries.? And what about the overarching issues relating to equal treatment for all who use the internet? That not only refers to the “information poor” who often have difficulty getting access under the best of conditions; is could also impact those at the opposite end of this spectrum, eg. Google’s You Tube and Microsoft’s MSN.com?
So many questions, which indicates that this decision really is important with far reaching consequences. Some think this ruling will be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court but we will need to wait and see. Meanwhile, the FCC has been handed some significant regulatory issues it will need to try to work around. Can they do it. It appears from a statement issued after the ruling that they are prepared to try.
In a post on the Social Media Student Blog Josh Cameron writes:
It’s no secret that Google Scholar now includes court opinions and legal journals. The legal journal articles are just search results that will redirect you to the hosting site. However, a large number of the court opinions are hosted right in Google Scholar. The only problem is that linking to these opinions is not the clearest thing in the world.
When you do visit this blog don’t forget the comments, they are interesting as well.
The Internet Society’s New York Chapter (ISOC-NY) has for some years been following the .nyc and ICANN process on behalf of the NYC community and will, on Saturday April 10 2010, host a symposium “dot nyc – How are we doing?” at NYU. Vendors Eric Brunner-Williams of CORE Internet Council of Registrars and Antony Van Couvering of Minds +
Machines will reveal details of their proposals to the City, after which there will be a discussion “What’s it for?” about possible applications – civic, community, commercial, and “outside the box” –
for a local top level domain.
On October 6, 2009 the Electronic Frontier Foundation submitted a request to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) for access to records concerning “use of social networking websites (including, but not limited to Facebook, MYSpace, Twitter, Flickr and other online social media) for investigative (crimiinal or otherwise) data gathering purposes created since January 2003…”. The response from DOJ, date stamped March 3, 2010 states that “While processing your request we located one record totaling 33 pages. After careful review of this document we determined to release this item in part.”. It goes on to explain that material being witheld from this one document, Obtaining and Using Evidence From Social Networking Sites, consists of work telephone numbers and e-mail addresses of DOJ attorneys..
Click here to download the document: OBTAINING AND USING EVIDENCE FROM SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES
Udated March 17, 2010.
On Tuesday March 16, 2010 the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced a proposal to overhaul the U.S. broadband* policy by introducing a plan that would provide higher speed internet access and much faster internet connections thoughout the U.S. than are presently available. The plan sets a goal of connecting 100 million U.S. households to broadband connections of 100 megabits per secondf, at least 20 times faster than most home connections now, by 2020.
The plan also calls for every american conmunity to have at least one “anchor” institution, such as a school, library, or hospital that has ultra high speed internet access. The FCC defines ultra high speed in this eontext as at least a gigabit per second, 10 times faster than the 100 megabit per second envisioned for home connections.
Criminal Law Library Blog