When I was in law school, I went to a luncheon at which famed legal scholar Arthur Miller spoke. His topic, still a fresh one back in the mid-1980s, was the amount of private information floating around in computers. His target was American corporations. He felt that American corporations were collecting too much consumer data,…
Category: Govt
China’s Green Dam, technology and human rights
China recently announced a policy that every computer sold must be packaged with specific software that bars it from being used to visit certain Internet sites. This so-called “Green Dam” software ostensibly is aimed at blocking child pornography and other vile sites. In Chinese, “green” and “clean” are interchangeable — here, the idea being that…
GPS Ruling Challenges N.Y. Law Enforcement
On May 12, 2009, the Court of Appeals issued People v. Weaver, 2009 NY Slip Op 03762. This article provides a brief summary of the opinion and goes on to discuss some of the concerns it raises with respect to its effects on law enforcement. On Christmas Eve 2005, Scott Weaver, John Chiera and Amber…
Free Speech vs. Surveillance in the Digital Age
Tools of mass communication that were once the province of governments and corporations now fit in your pocket. Cell phones can capture video and send it wirelessly to the Internet. People can send eyewitness accounts, photos and videos, with a few keystrokes, to thousands or even millions via social networking sites. As these technologies have…