In a time when chat rooms, social networking and online forums are commonplace, how far can a company go in monitoring them for negative comments from discontented employees before they are guilty of “cybersnooping”? A case decided last week, involving two servers at the Houston’s Restaurant in Hackensack, posed that question, and a federal jury…
KS Supreme Court limits search during traffic stop
The Kansas Supreme Court on Friday narrowed the scope of police searches at traffic stops in the state, saying its ruling was prompted by a similar decision from the nation’s highest court. The unanimous decision declared unconstitutional a law allowing officers to search a vehicle for evidence of a possible crime, rather than for evidence…
Peeping Tom jailed for filming women in toilets
A Peeping Tom who abused his position as a janitor to secretly film women going to the toilet at Coventry Council House has been jailed for six months. Peter Hartley used his camera phone to record dozens of employees visiting a cubicle between November 2007 and February 2008. Police found 119 separate video clips on…
FBI justifies gag order — in secret
When the FBI uses a national security letter (NSL) to force the cooperation of an ISP or phone company in the surveillance of a suspect, the agency typically slaps a gag order on the service provider to prevent it from revealing the existence of the NSL. Civil liberties groups have successfully challenged the DOJ on…