Alice Lipowicz reports: Can personal medical data that has been stripped of its identifiers to protect privacy later be used to identify a specific person? That is the question that the Health and Human Services Department is hoping a research contractor can answer. HHS intends to hire a contractor to demonstrate either the “ability or…
Category: Featured News
Can the Police Now Use Thermal Imaging Devices Without a Warrant?
Orin Kerr writes: In Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27 (2001), the Supreme Court held that it violated the Fourth Amendment to direct an infrared thermal imaging device at a home without a warrant to determine the home’s temperature. This post asks whether that result is still good law. I realize that probably sounds…
Obama Orders Overhaul in ‘Top Secret’ Rules
Travis Sanford reports: In a sweeping change to current practice, President Obama has ordered that all federal agencies presume that documents and records they produce will not be considered “classified” unless disclosure reasonably could be expected to compromise national security. Obama also ordered that almost all classified material will be declassified after 25 years. In…
Buying You: The Government’s Use of Fourth-Parties to Launder Data about ‘The People’
Simmons, Joshua L., Buying You: The Government’s Use of Fourth-Parties to Launder Data about ‘The People’ (September 19, 2009). Columbia Business Law Review, Vol. 2009, No. 3, p. 950. The full-text article is available as a free download at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1475524 Abstract: Your information is for sale, and the government is buying it at alarming…