Orin Kerr has an interesting post with excerpts from a debate between Stephen M. Feldman and Richard Seamon about the legal academy. Fedman writes that law schools ought to become even more interdisciplinary than they already are: “Interdisciplinary scholarship, done well, can generate creative methods and original insights in previously stale areas of thought.” Seamon, in contrast, observes:
Over at the Conglomerate, Professor Eric Goldman’s paper, A Coasean Analysis of Marketing, is being workshopped in the Conglomerate’s Second Annual Junior Scholars Workshop. Professors Peter Huang and Frank Pasquale (previously a guest blogger here at Concurring Opinions) are providing commentary.
Apparently, warrantless wiretapping and gathering of phone call records just aren’t enough to quench the Bush Administration’s thirst for data. Now we learn that the government has gathered massive quantities of financial records. The New York Times reports:
NSA warrantless wiretaps. NSA collection of phone records. CIA gathering of financial records.
The stories are endless. To help out reporters, I thought I’d just write a quick and easy template to make reporting a little bit easier. So here it is:
I was watching a show on CNN about people in need of organ transplants going to China for organ donation tourism. China harvests organs from prisoners it executes, sometimes without their consent, and then offers them to “tourists” who come in need of transplants.
Today’s Washington Post contains an interesting article about identity theft. Some identity thieves enlist unwitting employees of financial institutions into supplying them with personal information:
Today’s Washington Post has an interesting story about how the privacy regulations under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) are not being enforced:
The New York Times has a fascinating and frightening article on Internet shaming in China. From the article:
From CNET:
About 1.3 million customers of a Texas provider of student loans are at risk of ID fraud, after a contractor lost computer equipment with sensitive information on them.
The equipment, which was not identified, contains the names and Social Security numbers of the borrowers, the Texas Guaranteed Student Loan company said in a statement Tuesday. The hardware was lost by an employee of Hummingbird, a enterprise software company hired to prepare a document management system, it said.
One of the most common attitudes of those unconcerned about government surveillance or privacy invasions is “I’ve got nothing to hide.” I was talking the issue over one day with a few colleagues in my field, and we all agreed that thus far, those emphasizing the value of privacy had not been able to articulate an answer to the “nothing to hide” argument that would really register with people in the general public. In a thoughtful essay in Wired (cross posted at his blog), Bruce Schneier seeks to develop a response to this argument: