Katherine McIntire Peters and Aliya Sternstein report: Unhappy Senate lawmakers have asked the U.S. Marshals Service, an arm of the Justice Department, to explain why it has stored more than 35,000 whole body imaging scans taken at a federal courthouse in Florida. In an Aug. 19 letter to the agency, Sens. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., and…
Category: U.S.
Wiretap Act Violations Require Criminal Intent
Tim Hull reports: A son who used his iPhone to record a kitchen-table conversation about his dying mother’s will did not violate the federal Wiretap Act, the 2nd Circuit ruled, because he had no criminal intent. The federal appeals court in Manhattan joined its sister circuits in finding that the Act’s “exception to the one-party…
Sharp Dissents in Police GPS Tracking Decision
Elizabeth Banicki reports: In one of two sharp dissents from the 9th Circuit’s decision not to rehear the case of a man tracked by police with GPS, Chief Judge Alex Kozinski cautioned that if courts refuse to protect the right to privacy, “Some day, soon, we may wake up and find we’re living in Oceania.”…
Twins caught in a case of mistaken identities
Ah, the joys of facial recognition software. It seems that those using it may forget that some people are identical twins. Lori Pabst of the Star Tribune in Minnesota reports: After 42 years, identical twins Molly Schleeter and Ellen Zwiefel are still amused by the confusion evoked by their matching blue eyes and dark brown…