Last week’s drama in Maricopa County, Arizona over access to and control over the criminal justice database continued this week in court and in the media. Tuesday, Chief Deputy Dave Hendershott of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office agreed to share computer passwords to the criminal justice computer system with other county agencies that used the…
French DPA issues guidelines on personal data transfers
On August 19, 2009, the Official Journal published guidelines issued by the French Data Protection Authority (Commission nationale de l’informatique et des libertés (the “CNIL”)) regarding transfers of personal data carried out in the context of U.S. discovery proceedings (the “Guidelines”). The CNIL’s publication comes in the wake of a recent increase in the volume…
Feds invoke national secrets in wiretap case
The Obama administration, trying to derail a lawsuit over former President George W. Bush’s authority to wiretap Americans without court permission, has refused to take a position on the program’s legality and says a federal judge can’t decide that question because the crucial facts are national secrets. A ruling on whether Bush exceeded his constitutional…
The coming-out stories of anonymous bloggers
Blog fans in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, saw PittGirl as their masked superhero — a comedian and local commentator who jibed the mayor without reserve and ranted freely about her hatred of pigeons. But despite her effort to keep her real name secret, people started to figure out who PittGirl was. […] Courts have set general guidelines…