Matthew Nied, a law student at the University of Victoria, writes: A recent case illustrates that American jurisprudence is increasingly coalescing around a uniform approach to determine whether a plaintiff may compel the disclosure of an anonymous defendant’s identity in internet defamation cases. As discussed below, the Canadian experience has been different. In Swartz v….
Article: Preemption and Privacy
Paul M. Schwartz has an article (pdf) in Yale Law Review that provides much food for thought. Here’s the abstract: A broad coalition, including companies formerly opposed to the enactment of privacy statutes, has now formed behind the idea of a national information privacy law. Among the benefits that proponents attribute to such a law…
UK: Criminal record checks gone too far
Tom Whitehead reports: The system of investigating people’s backgrounds for employment vetting much be overhauled because it is wrongly “tilted” in favour of protecting the public, the Supreme Court concluded. It said this meant that individual rights could be damaged by “unreliable” or “out of date” details, especially with the use of so-called soft intelligence…
On Gmail and the Constitution
Ashby Jones writes: Here’s a question: Is it kosher for a law enforcement agency to, pursuant to a lawfully granted search warrant, search your Gmail account without telling you? According to an opinion handed down earlier this year and currently making the rounds on legal blogs (here and here), the answer is yes. The opinion,…