Should police need probable cause to request mobile-phone location data?
There are currently no firm standards on the kinds of Fourth Amendment protections that should apply to cell phone tracking data. This is becoming an issue as GPS and other tracking technologies have been added to cell phone to satisfy E911 requirements, and as police agencies have discovered the potential benefits of mobile-phone location data.
Retention of transactional Web browsing data
The FBI is pressing Internet service providers to record which Web sites customers visit and retain those logs for two years.
Does an open WiFi signal reduce your 4th Amendment protections?
A federal trial court in Oregon ruled that a suspect’s rights were not violated when police — tipped by a neighbor — accessed his unprotected WiFi network and saw child pornography shared via his iTunes library.
EFF's warrantless wiretapping case dismissed
A federal judge has dismissed Jewel v. NSA, a case from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) on behalf of AT&T customers challenging the National Security Agency’s mass surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans’ phone calls and emails.
Applying the Fourth Amendment to data in the cloud
In a Note called Defogging the Cloud: Applying Fourth Amendment Principles to Evolving Privacy Expectations in Cloud Computing, David A. Couillard explores the potential applicability of the Fourth Amendment to data stored in offsite servers: spreadsheets in Google Docs, accounting data hosted on FreshBooks, and pretty much everything synced through DropBox, just to name three example services.
FBI "technically violated" wiretap laws for years
FBI general counsel Valerie Caproni said in an interview Monday that the FBI technically violated the Electronic Communications Privacy Act when agents invoked nonexistent emergencies to collect records.
Why can the TSA subpoena bloggers to get at their sources?
The TSA issued a directive aimed at instituting new security measures. After two bloggers published it, the TSA issued subpoenas that sought to compel them to reveal their sources. Why did the TSA think they could do this, and did they have the power to enforce their request?
Lawyers should leave their laptops at home when traveling abroad
There has always been an exception to search and seizure law at border crossings. In theory, this is nothing new — attorneys traveling with confidential paper files could also have them searched. But the ease of carrying vast numbers of confidential documents in electronic form raises the bar on this.
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