PRIVACY + SECURITY BLOG

News, Developments, and Insights

Examining Law School Exams

There are a lot of really good discussions going on in the blogosphere about law school exams recently. Ann Althouse asks whether exams are a rewarding educational experience in and of themselves for students. Jonathan Adler offers his thoughts here. Rick Garnett chimes in at PrawfsBlawg. In most law school courses, the grade is based on one final […]

Electronic Surveillance Statistics for 2005

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has released its annual report on the number of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) orders, Wiretap Act orders, and National Security Letters issued in 2005. For FISA surveillance orders, 2072 applications were made to the FISA court; none were denied. Over the past few years, the number of orders has been steadily increasing:

Get High (and Identified) With a Little Help From Your Friends

It’s time to modernize the lyrics to some old Beatles songs. The University of Colorado police are using a website to post surveillance photos of students and other individuals it wants to identify for smoking pot on Farrand Field. Apparently, there’s a tradition at the University of Colorado for students to spoke pot on Farrand Field on April […]

Stuntz Responds: Further Thoughts on Privacy and Transparency

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post criticizing an essay by William Stuntz (law, Harvard) in The New Republic. Today, he has responded to my post in The New Republic Online. I’ll reply briefly here to a few of Stuntz’s points in response. Stuntz observes:

Sex in Kansas

Yes, Dorothy, you really can tell your doctor about sex in Kansas. A while ago, I wrote about the Kansas Attorney General’s interpretation of a law prohibiting sex with minors under the age of 16 as requiring doctors to report any sexual activity by people under 16 to the state authorities (here and here). Recently, a federal […]

CCTV in NYC

There’s a new British import to America, and sadly, it isn’t a rock band. It’s CCTV. In many of Britain’s cities, there is an elaborate network of thousands of surveillance cameras monitored through closed circuit television (CCTV). According to estimates, there are about 4 million surveillance cameras in Britain and a citizen is caught on surveillance […]