PRIVACY + SECURITY BLOG

News, Developments, and Insights

Why the Innocent Are Punished More Harshly Than the Guilty

The AP reports on a really tragic case of wrongful conviction: A man who died in prison while serving time for a rape he didn’t commit was cleared Friday by a judge who called the state’s first posthumous DNA exoneration “the saddest case” he’d ever seen. . . . [Timothy] Cole was convicted of raping […]

Criminalizing Google’s YouTube in Italy

In Italy, a rather disturbing prosecution is taking place. Google officials, including Chief Privacy Counsel Peter Fleischer, are being criminally prosecuted for a video somebody else uploaded to YouTube. According to an article by Tracey Bentley in the International Association of Privacy Professionals’ The Privacy Advisor:

Herring v. United States, the Exclusionary Rule, and Errors in Databases

Earlier this week, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Herring v. United States, a case examining whether the exclusionary rule should apply to a search that was based on an error in a database. In particular, due to a negligent error in a computer database indicating that there was an outstanding felony arrest warrant for Bennie […]

Privacy Expectations: Being Seen vs. Being Recorded

An interesting case from the Wisconsin Court of Appeals embodies what I believe is a thoughtful and nuanced understanding of privacy. The case is Wisconsin v. Jahnke, 2007AP2130-CR (Dec. 30, 2008). The case is a criminal prosecution of a man who secretly recorded his girlfriend in the nude, in violation of Wisconsin Statute § 942.09(2)(am). […]

William Cuddihy’s The Fourth Amendment: Origins and Original Meaning 602-1791

I’m delighted to announce the publication of William J. Cuddihy’s The Fourth Amendment: Origins and Original Meaning 602 – 1791 (Oxford University Press, January 2009). The book has just come out in print, hot off the press, and it’s an absolutely essential volume for any scholar of constitutional history, criminal procedure, or the Fourth Amendment. […]