Laycock, Douglas and Gergen, Mark P. and Rendleman, Doug, Spokeo v. Robins – Brief of Restitution and Remedies Scholars as Amici Curia in Support of Respondent (September 11, 2015). Washington & Lee Legal Studies Paper No. 2015. Available for download at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=26603 “Both consumer protection and restitution may be casualties in a collision with… Continue Reading
Accurate, Focused Research on Law, Technology and Knowledge Discovery Since 2002
Category Archives: Courts
EFF Provides Evidence to Courts on Telecoms Collection of Metadata
“This week EFF presented evidence in two of its NSA cases confirming the participation of Verizon Wireless, Sprint and AT&T in the NSA’s mass telephone records collection under the Patriot Act. This is important because, despite broad public acknowledgement, the government is still claiming that it can dismiss our cases because it has never confirmed… Continue Reading
What Does the Latest Court Ruling on NSA Telephone Metadata Program Mean?
CRS Legal Sidebar – Legal Sidebar What Does the Latest Court Ruling on NSA Telephone Metadata Program Mean? 09/03/2015 “On August 28, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, in Obama v. Klayman, ruled for the government in the ongoing litigation over the National Security Agency’s (NSA’s) telephone metadata program. The… Continue Reading
Report – disparate impact theory and bias whose roots are in algorithms
Lauren Kirchner is a senior reporting fellow at ProPublica., writing in the Atlantic – When Discrimination Is Baked Into Algorithms: “…Over the past several decades, an important tool for assessing and addressing discrimination has been the “disparate impact” theory. Attorneys have used this idea to successfully challenge policies that have a discriminatory effect on certain… Continue Reading
EFF amicus brief in SCOTUS case on seizure of historical cell site records from a cell phone provider
EFF – “Americans have the right to expect that digital records of their daily travels—when they left home, where they went, and how long they stayed—is private information, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) said in an amicus brief filed with the Supreme Court of the United States. Weighing in on one of the most important… Continue Reading
Injunction against metadata collection reversed by U.S. Court of Appeals for D.C. Circuit
EFF – “The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit’s opinion [August 28, 2015] in Klayman v. Obama is highly disappointing and, worse, based on a mistaken concern about the underlying facts. The court said that since the plaintiffs’ phone service was provided by one subsidiary of Verizon—Verizon Wireless—rather than another—Verizon Business—they couldn’t prove that they… Continue Reading
Appeals Court Upholds FTC’s Data Security Authority
EPIC – “A federal appeals court ruled that the Federal Trade Commission can enforce data security standards. In FTC v. Wyndham, the agency sued Wyndham hotels after the company exposed financial data of hundreds of thousands of customers. The company argued that the FTC lacked authority to enforce security standards, but the court disagreed. EPIC… Continue Reading
Mandatory Minimum Sentencing: Federal Aggravated Identity Theft
CRS report vai FAS – Mandatory Minimum Sentencing: Federal Aggravated Identity Theft – Charles Doyle, Senior Specialist in American Public Law. August 20, 2015. “Aggravated identity theft is punishable by a mandatory minimum sentence of imprisonment for two years or by imprisonment for five years if it relates to a terrorism offense. At least thus… Continue Reading
Thousands of Americans cannot make bail each year and end up in jail
The Bail Trap, Nick Pinto, New York Times Magazine, August 15, 2015 “Criminal justice,” President Obama said in a speech to the N.A.A.C.P. last month, “is not as fair as it should be. Mass incarceration makes our country worse off, and we need to do something about it.” Two days after the speech, Obama became… Continue Reading
Central American Deportation Cases Dominate U.S. Immigration Courts
“Persons from Central America continue to outnumber those from Mexico when DHS seeks deportation orders in Immigration Court, according to the latest government data obtained by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC). During the first ten months of fiscal year 2015, 42 percent of DHS filings involved individuals from Central America, primarily Guatemala, El Salvador… Continue Reading
Reducing Mass Incarceration Requires Far-Reaching Reforms
The Prison Population Forecaster – Ryan King, Bryce Peterson, Brian Elderbroom, and Elizabeth Pelletier – “Roughly 2.2 million people are locked up in prison or jail; 7 million are under correctional control, which includes parole and probation; and more than $80 billion is spent on corrections every year. Research has shown that policy changes over… Continue Reading
Court moves mass internet surveillance case one step forward
EFF – Cindy Cohn: “NSA Spying: Government’s Latest Delay Tactic Fails The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit today rejected the government’s latest attempt to delay consideration of whether the NSA’s tapping into the Internet backbone is legal in Jewel v. NSA, clearing the path for the first appellate court decision on… Continue Reading
