PRIVACY + SECURITY BLOG

News, Developments, and Insights

Unmasking a Judge’s Anonymity: Saffold v. Plain Dealer Publishing Co.

In a very interesting case, Saffold v. Plain Dealer Publishing Co., a state court judge (Shirley Strickland Saffold) is suing the Cleveland Plan Dealer for stating that comments posted on the newspaper’s website under the screen name “lawmiss” originated from a computer used by the judge and/or her daughter.  Some of these comments related to […]

Chief Justice Roberts and Legal Scholarship

In response to questions after giving a speech, Chief Justice Roberts expressed how he generally ignores legal scholarship.  According to the WSJ Blog: Roberts said he doesn’t pay much attention to academic legal writing. Law review articles are “more abstract” than practical, and aren’t “particularly helpful for practitioners and judges.”

Robert Morse’s Response on the US News Law School Rankings

Over at WSJ Blog, Ashby Jones contacted Robert Morse to get his reaction to my post about how raters should fill out the US News law school rankings forms: We caught up with Bob Morse, the director of data services for U.S. News, who said in his estimation, the 1-5 options generally speaking matched up […]

How to Fill Out the US News Law School Rankings Form

Every year, US News compiles its law school rankings by relying heavily on reputation ratings by law professors (mainly deans and associate deans) and practitioners and judges. They are asked to assign a score (from 1 to 5) for the roughly 200 law schools on the form. A 5 is the highest score and a […]

Data Security: When Will the Thick Skulls Learn?

The Wall Street Journal reports the theft of 3.3 million student loan records, including Social Security numbers: Company and federal officials said they believed last week’s theft of identity data on 3.3 million people with student loans was the largest-ever breach of such information and could affect as many as 5% of all federal student-loan […]

The SeaWorld Killer Whale Death Video and the Right to Privacy

Jessica Bennett at Newsweek brought my attention to a story about the family of the killer whale trainer (Dawn Brancheau) who was killed while training the whale at SeaWorld: Brancheau’s family announced this week that they would seek an injunction to protect the release of the death imagery, captured by SeaWorld’s surveillance cameras on Feb. […]