Gordon Smith reports: People posting apparently innocuous information on social networking sites could leave themselves open to identity theft, a computer security conference heard this week. Presenting a keynote address at the RSA conference in London, People Security’s chief security strategist Hugh Thompson said that while posting on social networks has grown, “there hasn’t been…
B.C.’s law society gives itself authority to copy hard drives without court order
Jane Mundy reports: On the heels of the Law Society of British Columbia (LSBC)’s commitment to make major changes to its disciplinary process, B.C. Benchers adopted a rule in October that allows investigators to copy a lawyer’s entire hard drive — including personal information. Benchers agreed that the law society will create a rule that…
Court case shows (yet again) limits of anonymous blogging
Jacqui Cheng reports: US courts have historically looked on anonymous bloggers and commenters with a sympathetic eye, but there are exceptions. A Tennessee judge denied a blogger’s motion to quash a subpoena to reveal his identity last week, and he also denied a motion to dismiss the case. With few other options available to him…
Privacy, free speech, and the PATRIOT Act: First and Fourth Amendment limits on national security letters
Patrick P. Garlinger has a Note in the October issue of the New York University Law Review. The abstract is: Congress’s passage of the Patriot Act after 9/11 expanded the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) information-gathering authority to issue national security letters (NSL). Without any judicial review, the FBI issues NSLs to telecommunications providers to…