Frank Askin, who is a professor of law and director of the Constitutional Litigation Clinic at Rutgers Law School-Newark, writes: Twenty-five years ago, Congress passed and President Gerald Ford signed the Federal Privacy Act. In an effort to end the abuses committed by the FBI against anti-war and civil rights activists that director J. Edgar…
Category: Featured News
DOJ takes swipe at EFF over encryption passphrases
Declan McCullagh reports: The U.S. Department of Justice took a thinly veiled swipe at an online civil liberties group that’s arguing a Colorado woman can’t be forced to decrypt her laptop for police inspection. In a legal brief filed yesterday in what is likely to be a precedent-setting case, the Justice Department claimed that the…
Are Student Cell Phone Records Discoverable?
Joshua A. Engel reports: The debate over when officials can search a student’s cell phone is an emerging e-discovery issue. This is illustrated in the recent case N.N. v. Tunkhannock Area School District, Civil Action No. 3:10-CV-1080, U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania. In this case, a student at Tunkhannock Area High School…
Social Media History Becomes a New Job Hurdle
Jennifer Preston reports: Companies have long used criminal background checks, credit reports and even searches on Google and LinkedIn to probe the previous lives of prospective employees. Now, some companies are requiring job candidates to also pass a social media background check. A year-old start-up, Social Intelligence, scrapes the Internet for everything prospective employees may…