PRIVACY + SECURITY BLOG

News, Developments, and Insights

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Why You Should Teach Information Privacy Law

Information Privacy Law

Since now is the time that many new law professors are being hired, I thought I’d re-post an earlier post about teaching information privacy law. When new law professors are hired, there is often a lot of flexibility in what courses they can teach. While the law school will typically want a newly-hired professor to teach one or two “core” courses (first year courses or required courses), other courses are often highly negotiable. So if you want to teach a particular course, sometimes all you have to do is ask for it.

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A Translation of Gonzales’s Answers at the NSA Surveillance Hearings

NSA Surveillance

The NSA surveillance hearings began today with the testimony of Attorney General Gonzales. To save you the time to read through the extensive transcript (here and here), I thought I’d translate some of Gonzales’s remarks for you:

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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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Privacy of Internet Search Records

Privacy of Internet Search Records

Here are some recent interesting links about the privacy of Internet search records:

Check out Patriot Search for a laugh. It’s a new search engine where your results are reported directly to the government: “Our mission is to provide the best possible search engine to you while at the same time, making sure the government is informed should you search for something obscure, illegal, or unpatriotic.” [Thanks to Scott Forbes for the link.]

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The ChoicePoint Settlement

ChoicePoint Data Breach

Recently, the FTC announced a settlement in its complaint against the data broker ChoicePoint for a data security breach that resulted in over 160,000 people’s personal information being sold to identity thieves. According to the Washington Post:

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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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