I just wrote a post about the possibility of cell phones being used to nab speeders. This raises a larger question regarding law enforcement. If we employ new technologies of surveillance to achieve a more efficient enforcement of various laws, the most obvious concern that comes to mind is the threat posed to privacy. There’s also another problem worth thinking about – Is it desirable to have very efficient enforcement of certain laws?
After blogging a few weeks ago about the airline screening playset, I went ahead and ordered one.
Each day, I would check my mailbox, eager with excitement about its arrival. Today, it finally arrived. I rushed to open it and began what would be hours of exciting play. Here’s what came in the playset:
I was a bit disappointed in the toy’s lack of realism. There was only one passenger to be screened. Where were the long lines? The passenger’s clothing wasn’t removable for strip searching. The passenger’s shoes couldn’t be removed either. Her luggage fit easily inside the X-ray machine. There were no silly warning signs not to carry guns or bombs onto the plane. And there was no No Fly List or Selectee List included in the playset.
Another oddity was that the toy came with two guns, one for the police officer and one that either belonged to the X-ray screener or the passenger. The luggage actually opened up, and the gun fit inside. I put it through the X-ray machine, and it went through undetected. Perhaps this is where the toy came closest to reality.
The biggest departure from reality was that the passenger had a cheery smile on her face.
Bob Sullivan at MSNBC writes:
A second storm surge may soon start slamming into Gulf coast residents hit by hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Mounting unpaid bills will lead to a surge of black marks on victims’ credit reports, say consumer advocates, sinking their credit scores. And now, they say, efforts to convince the nation’s credit bureaus to develop new systems to account for victims’ temporary bill-paying troubles have hit a major snag.
Consumers who can’t make their house payments any more – even if that house has been completely swept away by the storm – may face the ultimate penalty in America’s credit-driven society: A credit score so low they won’t qualify for the loans they need to start rebuilding.
Consumer groups, anticipating the coming surge of late payments and account defaults, have asked credit bureaus to help. The consumer groups proposed that the bureaus take a pre-Katrina credit score snapshot of all residents in the affected areas. Later, when victims apply for loans, the pre-Katrina score could be used to identify whether victims were good credit risks before the storm.
In this interesting AP article [link no longer available], a man won an invasion of privacy lawsuit when his property manager searched his home and reported to the FBI that there were terrorist materials in the apartment. FBI officials detained, fingerprinted, and handcuffed the man, but eventually determined that the man wasn’t a terrorist:
Anonymous bloggers received a great victory this week in a case decided by the Delaware Supreme Court — Doe v. Cahill (Oct. 5, 2005). The case involved John Doe, who anonymously posted on a blog statements about Patrick Cahill, a City Councilman of Smyrna, Delaware. Doe, in criticizing Cahill’s job performance, noted that Cahill had “obvious mental deterioration” and was “paranoid.” Cahill sued Doe for defamation.
In an interesting and thoughtful post, Eugene Volokh (law, UCLA) takes issue with California’s Megan’s Law, Cal. Penal Code § 290.46(j), which places personal data about sex offenders on the Internet yet restricts the uses of this data. The law allows people to use the information “only to protect a person at risk.” It prohibits the use of the information for, among other things, purposes related to insurance, loans, credit, employment, benefits, and housing.
The Supreme Court appointment process has become almost pathological . . . ironically, for rational reasons. The incentive is for presidents to select people who are: (1) young, so they have a reign on the Court that rivals Fidel Castro’s in length; and (2) obscure, so they have rarely taken any positions on any major issues. [Sadly, the future prospects for Supreme Court appointments for bloggers are not looking good.]
Recently, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a law that toughened California’s Anti-Paparazzi Act, Cal. Civ. Code §1708.8. The original act was passed in 1998 in response to Princess Diana’s death, which was caused when her car was fleeing aggressive paparazzi.
You thought keyboard clacking was just annoying noise. Little did you know your clacking is broadcasting what you’re typing!
Berkeley researchers have developed a way to monitor your keystrokes without installing a device into your computer. Thus, far, keystrokes can be monitored via special software or other devices installed into people’s computers (either directly or via a virus or spyware). This new technique relies on the clacking of your keyboard. According to the AP [link no longer available]:
Should private citizens be forced, against the
ir will, to subsidize and assist the state in its prosecutorial function? This is basically what happens when people are summoned to testify before grand juries or are picked for grand jury duty. I’ve previously written an extensive critique of the grand jury, with a focus on its subpoena powers. An article today in the Washington Post describes the debilitating costs grand jury witnesses must often pay in attorneys’ fees: