PRIVACY + SECURITY BLOG

News, Developments, and Insights

More on Identifying the TB Patient

I blogged the other day about the inappropriate disclosure of the TB patient’s identity. Over at Chronicles of Dissent, Dissent has an interesting post worth reading about the issue. He quotes Dr. Martin Cetron, Director of Division of Global Migration and Quarantine at CDC, who said: “I don’t think, publicly naming the individual, which we never do, has any […]

Identifying the TB Patient

The other day, I blogged about the TB patient who flew to Europe and back with the knowledge that he had a rare form of TB. The media had been reporting on the case for a while, and the man’s name was not identified until a day or two ago, when a number of stories began including […]

Anuj Desai on the Post Office and the First Amendment

Professor Anuj Desai (U. Wisconsin Law School) has posted his forthcoming article, The Transformation of Statutes into Constitutional Law: How Early Post Office Policy Shaped Modern First Amendment Doctrine, on SSRN. Anuj’s paper is a fascinating history of the early Post Office and how statutory protection of letters influenced constitutional law. From the abstract:

Should We Get Rid of the Law School In-Class Essay Exam?

I’ve long been unhappy with the typical law school exam format. The entire grade for the class is based on one 3-hour in-class essay exam. The problem with this format is that many students aren’t particularly adept at writing very quickly under immense time pressure. So the exam tests, in part, the ability to write […]

Can the First Amendment Serve as a Source of Criminal Procedure?

Typically, when we think of the constitutional criminal procedure that regulates government information gathering, we think of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments. But many government investigations involve collecting information about speech, association, religion, and the consumption of ideas. The NSA surveillance of telephone calls, for example, involves speech. National Security Letters can be used to […]

Orin Kerr on the Fourth Amendment

Anybody familiar with Fourth Amendment law knows that it is utterly incoherent. In his new paper, Four Models of Fourth Amendment Protection, my colleague, Orin Kerr (GW Law School) argues that this incoherence is actually a good thing. He attempts to sort out the muddle that currently exists in Fourth Amendment law into four models. From […]