Associated Press reports: The Texas Supreme Court has ruled that birth dates of about 145,000 state workers are not public record. The court’s Friday ruling says releasing birth dates is an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy in an age when many people are victimized by identity theft. The case stems from a 2005 dispute between…
Category: Court
Jail terms more likely after Pirate Bay: expert
The appeals court ruling to confirm the convictions and custodial sentences against the backers of The Pirate Bay could lead to more file sharers being imprisoned, according to a Swedish copyright law prosecutor. The crime of file sharing is currently punished by fines or conditional sentences according to Swedish law, but the court ruling could…
Ca: Supreme Court allows police access to personal consumer information
Alan Shanoff has this editorial about a recent ruling that a consumer had no reasonable expectation of privacy in his electricity consumption data: … The question for the Supreme Court of Canada was simple: Should police have obtained prior judicial authorization allowing it to obtain data on Gomboc’s energy consumption. The answer to this question turns…
ARL/ALA Say No to Personal Privacy Rights for Corporations in FOIA Case
Josh Hadro writes: Usually it’s the library organizations fighting tooth and nail for personal privacy protections. But when a company like AT&T is the one arguing for privacy protections against Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, traditional roles get a bit more complicated. The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and the American Library Association (ALA)…