Brad Stone writes: On Friday, Google made a stunning admission: for over three years, it has inadvertently collected snippets of private information that people send over unencrypted wireless networks. The admission, made in an official blog post by Alan Eustace, Google’s engineering chief, comes a month after regulators in Europe started asking the search giant…
Category: Featured News
Lower Merion permanently banned from webcam monitoring (update 2)
John P. Martin reports: A federal judge Friday permanently barred the Lower Merion School District from using webcams or other intrusive technology to secretly monitor students through their school-issued laptops. The five-page injunction signed by U.S. District Judge Jan E. DuBois also requires the suburban district to adopt transparent and expansive policies by September to…
Do Computer Searches Distort the ‘Plain View’ Doctrine?
Leonard Deutchman writes: The “plain view” doctrine of the Fourth Amendment holds that law enforcement properly authorized to be in a certain area can lawfully search and seize evidence seen in plain view from that vantage point. It is seen as an “exception” to the Fourth Amendment because, under it, searches and seizures are authorized…
Ie: Leaked EU report reveals big surge in call data requests
Karlin Lillington reports: The Garda made more requests for phone-call traffic data in 2008 than police in Germany, which has 20 times the population of the Republic. According to a leaked draft of a European Commission report, gardaí made more than 14,000 access requests for call data in 2008, a rate about 40 per cent…