PRIVACY + SECURITY BLOG

News, Developments, and Insights

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Update on the Kansas Teen Sex Medical Records Case

Kansas

A few days ago, I blogged about a case in Kansas where the Attorney General interpreted 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. Recently, the Kansas Supreme Court issued an opinion, Alpha Medical Clinic v. Anderson, strongly limiting the Attorney General’s reporting requirement. Relying in significant part on Whalen v. Roe, 429 U.S. 589 (1977) (discussed in depth in my earlier post), the Kansas Supreme Court reasoned:

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Gonzales’s Tortured Logic on NSA Surveillance

NSA Surveillance

Attorney General Gozales brought out some new arguments in defense of the warrantless NSA surveillance program. He should have kept these arguments in the bag, as they are flatly wrong. For example, according to the AP:

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Three Cheers for Law Reviews

Law Reviews

Law reviews get little respect both within and outside the legal academy. For those unfamiliar with the system, legal academics publish their articles in law reviews, which are edited and run by law students. Law students select the articles, not professors. In contrast, journals in most other fields are peer reviewed and edited.

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Government vs. Google

Google Subpoena and Privacy Case

According to the AP:

Google Inc. is rebuffing the Bush administration’s demand for a peek at what millions of people have been looking up on the Internet’s leading search engine — a request that underscores the potential for online databases to become tools for government surveillance.

Mountain View-based Google has refused to comply with a White House subpoena first issued last summer, prompting U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales this week to ask a federal judge in San Jose for an order to hand over the requested records.

The government wants a list all requests entered into Google’s search engine during an unspecified single week — a breakdown that could conceivably span tens of millions of queries. In addition, it seeks 1 million randomly selected Web addresses from various Google databases.

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Making Sense of Public Attitudes Toward NSA Surveillance

NSA Surveillance

MSNBC journalist Bob Sullivan, in his blog Red Tape Chronicles, writes:

Ask Americans something like, “Should the government be allowed to read e-mails and listen to phone calls to fight terrorism?” and you’ll get a much different result than if you ask, “Should the government be allowed to read your e-mails and listen to your phone calls to fight terrorism.” . . . .

In 2002, The Pew Research Center for People and The Press asked just those questions — and by simply dropping the word “your,” the number of people willing to support such government snooping jumped by 50 percent. Only 22 percent were willing to let the government peek when it was personal, but 33 percent were willing when it sounded like only someone’s else privacy was at risk, said Scott Keeter, director of survey research for Pew.

 

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Website Hacking Blackmail

Hackers

A while back, I wrote about the Million Dollar Homepage, where Alex Tew, a student, created the idea of selling a million pixels on a website to advertisers for $1 each. His plan was successful, and he recently reached his goal of raising a million dollars in just a few months.

But the story attracted some unsavory criminals bent on ruining Tew’s enterprise. From the BBC:

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