A district court judge in the Northern District of California recently sided with the Department of Justice in a case against the Freedom of the Press Foundation, who sued the DOJ over its refusal to disclose FBI procedures for issuing national security letters (NSLs). In short, NSLs are used to secretly collect information about people. …
While the general population infamously understands very little about the Constitution or court system, most everyone has an understanding of the Fifth Amendment’s the right to remain silent. The protection against self-incrimination can cover a variety of activities other than direct speech, and in U.S. v. Apple MacPro Computer, decided on March 20, 2017, the …
In late July Pokémon Go, an app for smartphones, launched and instantly made headlines. For years, Niantic worked to create the first “real world gaming” platform, and created the app for a worldwide market. The game immediately gathered a huge following, with millions of people roaming parks, neighborhoods, and busy cities to catch virtual monsters. …
Discovery methods continue to evolve. Twenty to thirty years ago, lawyers, usually young and expensive associates, manually sifted through hundreds of pages of documents. Today, with advances in technology, the discovery process for a similar sort of case might require review of thousands or tens of thousands of pages of documents instead of only hundreds. …
Defensive medicine is the term used to describe the practice by which physicians order unnecessary testing for patients in order to shield themselves from potential lawsuits. The practice is criticized not only for the risks it poses to patients, but also for its role in increasing health care costs. Because rising health care costs are …
As long as there have been games, there have been cheaters, and video games are no exception. However, when online anonymity was introduced to competitive gaming, cheating exploded. Although EULA’s and ToS’s prohibit player cheating, competitive online gaming is plagued with hacks (which make the game easier to win) and bots (which play the game …
The Raleigh News and Observer reported on March 14 multiple Eighth grade students at Leesville Middle School in Raleigh, NC were disciplined due to a racially charged video the students had made and posted off campus. The video was made on a “music video app” and shared with an undetermined amount of people, some whom …
Nebraska has joined seven other states (Wyoming, Kansas, Minnesota, Massachusetts, New York, Tennessee, and Illinois) in a legal battle against Apple and other big tech companies for consumers’ rights. On March 9th, 2017, the state’s legislators met to consider a bill that would set out a consumer’s “right to repair” for electronic devices such as …
On March 11, the Securities and Exchange Commission denied a request to list what would have been the first exchange traded fund (“ETF”) to track bitcoin. Bitcoin is a virtual currency that can be used to move money around the world, without the need for a central authority. The underlying technology in bitcoin is a …
I tend to identify myself as being a cyber libertarian. A vast majority of the time I will oppose internet regulation and, especially, speech regulation within cyberspace. I think this is important to state up front as it tells you the kind of lens I viewed both the presentation and the European Union Data Protection …
