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Google+The boom in transportation and communications technologies in the nineteenth century outpaced the pace of legal change. It was only through the emergence of new concerns around both privacy and confidentiality that people themselves began to realize their importance in a way never before imagined.
constitution
Law of privacy vs. confidentiality in the nineteenth century
According to Richards and Solove the “right to privacy” as we now understand it actually grew out of an earlier recognition of the right to confidentiality in certain situations. Warren and Brandeis then took this original principle of confidentiality and shifted it to focus on a newly developed right to privacy.
The telegraph and business invasions of privacy
In the late 19th century, many began to see the rise of monopolistic telegraph operators as more of a threat than the government. Against this potential eavesdropper, the Bill of Rights provided no protection.
Extending the Fourth Amendment beyond the home: Ex parte Jackson (1878)
Ex parte Jackson, which dealt with government agents opening mail in search of banned lottery materials, hints at the future Court’s ruling on wiretaps in Katz v. United States that the Fourth Amendment “protects people, not places.”
Stepping stone to Internet privacy: the telegraph
There have been four pivotal technologies that have forced modern American law and society to re-examine its notions of privacy and confidentiality.
The 1971 Supreme Court on WikiLeaks
In that 1971 case, New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 US 713, the Court ruled against an attempt by the Nixon Administration “to enjoin the New York Times and the Washington Post from publishing the contents of a classified study entitled ‘History of U. S. Decision-Making Process on Viet Nam Policy.”
The Stored Communications Act and you
It’s always good to remember that storing your email on someone else’s server is a potential problem.
Research preview: the historical case for vaccination
I’m researching how the scientific and medical community presented and developed itself such that the public moved from rioting to cooperation with vaccination.
You do not get an “A for effort” with copyright
In reaction to claims that copyright exists to protect creators because of the effort they’ve put into their work, Techdirt points us to a Supreme Court case that clearly says otherwise. History and precedent back it up.
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.
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.
Should signing a petition be a confidential act?
The Supreme Court has accepted a new case on to its docket concerning the constitutionality of a Washington State law being used as the basis to publish the names of signers of a petition to restrict gay rights.
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?
Court transcripts and copyright awards
Should a court reporter own the copyright on his or her work product, and be able to force everyone to pay for it into the future. “No,” says an appeals court, overruling a lower court decision to the contrary.
Current themes evident in copyright arguments from 100 years ago
From thepublicdomain.org comes this interesting and revealing series of excerpts from the legislative history of the 1909 Copyright Act.
