Classmates.com’s Facebook Mimicking Prompts Privacy Suit: Via Threat Level.

The long-lost pal locating site, Classmates.com, has been hit with a class action privacy lawsuit alleging the company violated the law when it decided to make user profiles public in order to compete with Facebook.

The suit alleges that Classmates.com duped its paying customers in late January when it sent them an e-mail saying that members would have to opt-out of new Facebook and iPhone apps to keep their data private. That’s a massive change to the site’s privacy policy and violates federal and Washington State privacy and fairness laws, according to the suit (.pdf) filed in a Washington State federal district court March 5.

Classmates.com has long kept user information non-public, and only paying members can read e-mails sent to them by others, see ‘old friends’ on a map, and see who has been looking at their profile. While the site has some 3 million paying users, it’s been eclipsed by sites like Facebook and MySpace, which have more members, more public profiles and don’t charge.

In order to keep up, Classmates.com decided to make “public Classmates content available to people using a variety of sites and devices, including Facebook and the iPhone,” according to a January 30 e-mail sent to users. [ Read more ... ]

The majestic petulance of John Roberts: Via Salon: Glenn Greenwald.

The petulance and sense of self-importance on display here is quite something to behold:

U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts said Tuesday the scene at President Obama's State of the Union address was "very troubling" . . . . Obama chided the court, with the justices seated before him in their black robes, for its decision on a campaign finance case. . . . Responding to a University of Alabama law student's question, Roberts said anyone was free to criticize the court, and some have an obligation to do so because of their positions.
"So I have no problems with that," he said. "On the other hand, there is the issue of the setting, the circumstances and the decorum.
"The image of having the members of one branch of government standing up, literally surrounding the Supreme Court, cheering and hollering while the court -- according the requirements of protocol -- has to sit there expressionless, I think is very troubling."

Supreme Court Takes ‘Informational Privacy’ Case: Via Threat Level.

The U.S. Supreme Court is agreeing to decide how much personal information the federal bureaucracy may acquire on its workers.

The justices, without comment, decided Monday to review a lower-court decision surrounding the concept of so-called “informational privacy.” The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco struck down intrusive background checks last year on nearly three dozen National Aeronautics and Space Administration contractors as being too invasive — calling them an unconstitutional, “broad inquisition.”

The checks sought information from any source surrounding their sex lives, finances and even drug use. The contractors being investigated were not privy to classified information. [ Read more ... ]

Feds Move to Break Voting-Machine Monopoly: Via Threat Level.

Citing anti-competitive concerns, the Justice Department sued Election Systems & Software in order to force the company to divest itself of the voting machine assets it obtained from Premier Election Solutions last year.

The department’s Antitrust Division, along with nine state attorneys general, filed the civil antitrust lawsuit (.pdf) in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., charging that the acquisition threatened competition. The department proposed a settlement that, if accepted, would dissolve the merger and force ES&S to sell its Premier business to a buyer approved by the Justice Department.

“The proposed settlement (.pdf) will restore competition, provide a greater range of choices and create incentives to provide secure, accurate and reliable voting equipment systems now and in the future,” said Molly S. Boast, deputy assistant attorney general for the Antitrust Division in a statement. [ Read more ... ]

Funeral Flap: Justices Weigh Religion, Speech Rights: Via Threat Level.

The Supreme Court agreed Monday to delve into the sensitive question of whether the First Amendment protects anti-gay protesters carrying placards outside military funerals saying “America is Doomed,” “Thank God for 9/11″ and other volatile phrases like “Thank God for dead soldiers.”

The messages and picketing are part of a Kansas church’s belief that the United States’ tolerance for homosexuality is cause for soldiers’ deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The case the justices decided to review Monday tests the boundaries of free speech versus freedom of religion — doctrines embodied in the First Amendment.

Without comment, the justices agreed to review last year’s federal appellate decision overturning a $5 million verdict (.pdf) in favor of a Baltimore father who sued the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka and its pastor, Fred Phelps, in 2006. The father of Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder was awarded damages for, among other things, invasion of privacy and emotional distress for the events that occurred outside his son’s funeral at a Catholic church in Maryland. [ Read more ... ]

DMCA Muscle Strong-Arms DVD Copying: Via Threat Level.

Those awaiting a legitimate method to duplicate DVDs for personal use likely will have to wait even longer, perhaps forever, after RealNetworks tossed in the white towel and abandoned litigation toward that end.

RealNetworks spent almost two years in a legal battle with the Motion Picture Association of America, which sued the Seattle-based company to block the sale of its DVD-copying software and hardware –- generally known as RealDVD. The company said late Wednesday it was dropping its appeal of an August federal court decision that declared RealDVD an illegal violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998.

The act, which the Hollywood studios strongly lobbied for, prohibits the circumvention of encryption technology. DVDs are encrypted with what is known as the Content Scramble System, and DVD players must secure a license to play discs. RealDVD, U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel ruled, circumvents the CSS technology designed to prevent copying and is therefore a breach of the CSS license.

The litigation cost RealNetworks millions of dollars, including $4.5 million to reimburse the MPAA for its legal costs. The outcome cost Rob Glaser, RealNetworks’ CEO, his job. [ Read more ... ]

Unintended Consequences: 12 Years Under the DMCA: Via EFF.org Updates.

EFF today released Unintended Consequences: 12 Years Under the DMCA. This is the sixth update to the report, which aims to catalog all the reported instances where the DMCA's ban on tampering with DRM have been abused to stymie fair use, free speech, and competition, rather than to attack "piracy."

Congress enacted the DMCA's ban on bypassing DRM at the urging of entertainment industry lobbyists who argued that DRM backed by law would quell digital copyright infringement. Of course, 12 years later, that exactly hasn't worked out. Nor is it likely to ever work out. But lots of industries have recognized that these provisions of the DMCA are good for other things—like impeding scientific research and legitimate competition. The Unintended Consequences report collects these stories, including oldies like Lexmark's effort to block toner cartridge refilling and new cases like the lawsuit against RealDVD. [ Read more ... ]

Flipping Off Cops Is Legal, Not Advised: Via Threat Level.

Flipping the bird, or sticking out the middle finger, is perhaps the oldest insulting gesture on earth. The move dates back to ancient Greece and was adopted by the Romans as digitus impudicus — the impudent finger.

A zillion middle fingers later, an Oregon man is suing suburban Portland cops (.pdf) over his use of the gesture, claiming civil rights violations. Twice he flipped them off for no apparent reason while driving and was pulled over each time — resulting in what he said was a “bogus” traffic citation that was later dismissed, and a tongue lashing he still remembers.

“The guy flew into a road rage,” Robert Ekas, a retired Silicon Valley systems analyst, said in a telephone interview Tuesday.

Lawrence Wolf, a Los Angeles criminal defense attorney, said there was no law against flipping off cops. And in most instances when it leads to an arrest or conviction, the charges are dismissed. But the gesture invites police confrontation, he said.

“It’s certainly not the smartest thing one can do,” Wolf said. [ Read more ... ]

Corporations Hide Flight Records From Public View: Via Center for Media and Democracy - Publishers of PR Watch.

A federal district court ruled that the public interest journalism group ProPublica can obtain a list of corporate-owned airplanes whose flight information was blocked from public view. ProPublica first sought the list in 2008 under the Freedom of Information Act, after the CEOs of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler flew to Washington, D.C. on corporate jets to ask Congress to bail out their companies. Those flights became known because the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) provides real-time flight information that the public could see. But the bad publicity over the flights led General Motors to try and stop the public from tracking its planes in the future. [ Read more ... ]

Ninth Circuit addresses “actual damages” under the Privacy Act: Via Personal Health Information Privacy blog.

I posted this yesterday to PogoWasRight.org but then it dawned on me today that since this involved medical information, I should have posted it here, too:

A new ruling from the Ninth Circuit in Cooper v. FAA addresses the meaning of “actual damages” in the Privacy Act. The case arose when federal agencies shared information without consent in “Operation Safe Pilot:”

Read Original Article:(Via Personal Health Information Privacy blog.)

FBI Tracks Suspects' Cell Phones Without a Warrant: Via Newsweek.com .

Law enforcement is tracking Americans' cell phones in real time—without the benefit of a warrant.

But many federal magistrates—whose job is to sign off on search warrants and handle other routine court duties—were spooked by the requests. Some in New York, Pennsylvania, and Texas balked. Prosecutors "were using the cell phone as a surreptitious tracking device," said Stephen W. Smith, a federal magistrate in Houston. "And I started asking the U.S. Attorney's Office, 'What is the legal authority for this? What is the legal standard for getting this information?' "

Those questions are now at the core of a constitutional clash between President Obama's Justice Department and civil libertarians alarmed by what they see as the government's relentless intrusion into the private lives of citizens. [ Read more ... ]

Pa. school district denies spying on students with MacBooks: Via Computerworld.

Claims it only remotely activated cameras to locate lost or stolen Apple laptops

A suburban Philadelphia school district yesterday denied it spied on students by remotely activating the cameras on their school-issued MacBook laptops.

In a statement released late Thursday, Christopher McGinley, the superintendent of Lower Merion School District of Ardmore, Pa., admitted that the MacBooks' cameras could be turned on without the user's knowledge, but said that the functionality was part of a security feature.

[...]

Laptop cameras have only been activated for that purpose, McGinley continued. "The District has not used the tracking feature or web cam for any other purpose or in any other manner whatsoever," he said. [ Read more ... ]

Student slaps Google Buzz with privacy lawsuit: Via The Money Times .

Lawsuit against Google

Now a student at Harvard Law School has filed a class action suit against the company for making personal information of the users public.

Law firms in San Francisco and Washington, D.C. have sued Google on behalf of Eva Hibnick.

The 24-year-old law student filed the law suit against the search giant after finding herself automatically opted to the new networking service, without consent. [ Read more ... ]

Redbox, Movie Studios, and Subversion of First Sale: Via EFF.org Updates.

As we've explained before, a number of Hollywood movie studios have been on the war path against Redbox, the kiosk-based DVD rental operation, because Redbox offers DVD new releases for rent at 99 cents per night. Thanks to the first sale doctrine in copyright law, Redbox's business is completely legal—the company buys legitimate DVDs to stock their kiosks. Great for consumers, and a great alternative for those who might otherwise opt for an unauthorized alternative online.

But Hollywood wasn't pleased, and took a number of steps to interfere with Redbox's business, which in turn led to lawsuits. [ Read more ... ]

Pa. schools spy on students using laptop webcams, claims lawsuit: Via Computerworld.

Class-action suit alleges schools remotely activate webcams on school-issued notebooks

Computerworld - A suburban Philadelphia school district remotely activates the cameras in school-provided laptops to spy on students in their homes, a lawsuit filed in federal court Tuesday alleged.

According to the lawsuit filed by a high school student and his parents, the Lower Merion School District of Ardmore, Pa. has spied on students and families by "indiscriminate use of and ability to remotely activate the webcams incorporated into each laptop issued to students by the School District."

Approximately 1,800 students at the district's two high schools have been given laptops as part of a state- and federally-funded "one-to-one" student-to-laptop initiative.

Michael and Holly Robbins of Penn Valley, Pa., said they first found out about the alleged spying last November after their son Blake was accused by a Harriton High School official of "improper behavior in his home" and shown a photograph taken by his laptop.

An assistant principal at Harriton later confirmed that the district could remotely activate the webcam in students' laptops. [ Read more ... ]

Feds Can Search, Seize P2P Files Without Warrant: Via Threat Level.

The authorities do not need court warrants to view and download files trading on peer-to-peer networks, a federal appeals court says.

Wednesday’s 3-0 ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals concerned a Nevada man convicted of possessing child pornography as part of an FBI investigation. Defendant Charles Borowy claimed the Fourth Amendment required court authorization to search and seize his LimeWire files in 2007.

The San Francisco-based appeals court, however, cited the nation’s legal standard, reiterating that warrants are required if a search “violates a reasonable expectation of privacy.” (.pdf)

Borowy, the court noted, “was clearly aware that LimeWire was a file-sharing program that would allow the public at large to access files in his shared folder unless he took steps to avoid it.”

The defendant, however, claimed he had a reasonable expectation of privacy because he thought he had turned off LimeWire’s share feature. [ Read more ... ]

ACLU, EFF And Others In Court Today To Challenge Google Book Search Settlement: Via American Civil Liberties Union.

Groups And Prominent Authors Say Settlement Doesn't Protect Free Speech Or User Privacy

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: (212) 549-2666; media@aclu.org  

NEW YORK – The American Civil Liberties Union, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Samuelson Law, Technology, and Public Policy Clinic at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law are in federal court today urging a judge to reject the proposed settlement in a lawsuit over Google Book Search because it does not include critical privacy protections for users of the online book materials. The groups filed an objection to the settlement in September 2009 on behalf of a coalition of more than two dozen authors and publishers, including ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero and best-selling novelists Michael Chabon and Jonathan Lethem.

"As digital book programs like Google Book Search advance, more and more people will turn to the Internet for their reading needs. Readers should be able to expect as much privacy when they're reading a book on a Web site as they do in a library or bookstore," said Aden Fine, staff attorney with the ACLU First Amendment Working Group. "People should feel that they are free to read on the Internet without being monitored by private companies or the government." [ Read more ... ]

Discussing Citizens United with Larry Lessig: Via Salon: Glenn Greenwald.

Just in case readers here forgot how angry they were with me for my partial defense of the Citizens United decision, permit me to risk once again provoking the hornets' nest by recommending this 20-minute discussion I had on Monday night with Harvard Law Professor Larry Lessig on The Young Turks.  At The Huffington Post, Lessig wrote this response to the arguments I made about the case, and we had what I thought was a very constructive and enlightening discussion of the relevant issues:

Read Original Article:(Via Salon: Glenn Greenwald.)

Google Books Fosters Intellectual, Legal Crossroads: Via Threat Level.

Nobody in their right mind opposes the intellectual soundness of digitizing the world’s books – even titles gathering dust in the stacks of university libraries — and making them available online.

Yet Google will encounter stiff resistance in a Manhattan federal court Thursday during a marathon hearing that could grant Google the keys to free the written word from a business and intellectual model as old as paper and ink.

“The benefits of approval are bounded only by the limits of human creativity and imagination,” Google told U.S. District Judge Denny Chin in a recent court filing ahead of Thursday’s hearing.

The final word on the so-named “Google Books” plan won’t rest with Judge Chin, and instead likely could fall on the U.S. Supreme Court. [ Read more ... ]

GPS Tracking: Turning Science Fiction Into Reality: Via Blog of Rights: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union.

As a fan of the The Wire, I can find lots of plot twists and exciting scenes that illustrate the basic constitutional balance between the rights of individuals and the power of law enforcement. The Wire portrays police who follow the rules and those who don't as they wiretap, search, photograph and otherwise conduct their investigations into complex criminal cases.

In one episode, Detective Leander Snydor has followed a drug dealer to a house which might link him to other criminal relationships. Snydor skillfully walks past the dealer's car, fixes a GPS tracking system to the underside of the vehicle, and walks away with a whistle.

That might seem like smart cop work when aimed at an enormous, fictional drug ring in the mean streets of Baltimore. But GPS is no longer HBO fiction. In Madison, Wisconsin, where law enforcement agents used GPS to track someone suspected of violating a restraining order without first getting a warrant, it's very, very real. Unfortunately, according to the Wisconsin Court of Appeals, we should let go of the expectation that police need permission to track our movements. [ Read more ... ]

EFF to Wisconsin: Just Say No to Warrantless GPS Tracking: Via EFF.org Updates.

ACLU National, ACLU of Wisconsin, and EFF have filed an amicus brief in the Wisconsin Supreme Court arguing that the law of that state prohibits police from installing a GPS device on you or your car without first getting a warrant from a judge. A growing number of state high courts have decided that their citizens should be protected from suspicionless GPS tracking, recognizing that uninterrupted around-the-clock surveillance is qualitatively different from ordinary police observations of a suspect. In the Wisconsin case, People v. Sveum, we ask the court to follow the example of Washington, New York, and Massachusetts and find that GPS tracking is a search that requires a warrant. EFF participated as amicus in the New York case, People v. Weaver, and is awaiting a decision under the federal Constitution in U.S. v. Jones, a GPS tracking case pending in the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. [ Read more ... ]

EFF Fights Illegal Search of Cell Phone in Thursday Hearing: Via EFF.org Updates.

Redwood City, Calif. - On Thursday, February 18, at 9:00 a.m., the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) will urge a judge in Redwood City, California, to suppress evidence illegally gathered from an iPhone.

In People v. Taylor, police in Daly City, California, seized the suspect's phone during his arrest. Hours later, investigators searched through the data on the device -- including contacts, called phone numbers, emails, text messages, Internet search history, and photos -- without a search warrant. Police later obtained a search warrant for the phone, based in part on information gathered during the initial illegal search.

In Thursday's hearing, EFF Senior Staff Attorney Marcia Hofmann will ask the court to suppress the illegally gathered evidence and quash the warrant based on that improperly collected information. [ Read more ... ]

Any use of this article without the NFL's express written consent is prohibited: Via Law & Disorder Section - Ars Technica.

With the Super Bowl just concluded and baseball's spring training only weeks away, a question occurred to us: whatever happened to the push for copyright holders to tone down their copyright notices?

We hear and see the warnings whenever a football or baseball game is televised, whenever we read books, whenever we watch a movie. These are the sort of warnings that make claims like, "Any other use of this telecast or any pictures, descriptions, or accounts of the game without the NFL's consent is prohibited," despite the apparent wrongheadedness of the statement. [ Read more ... ]

Our human rights vs. The Others: Via Salon: Glenn Greenwald.

(updated below - Update II)

Ten American Baptists were arrested two weeks ago in Haiti on charges that they exploited the chaos in that country by attempting to smuggle 33 young Haitian children across the border without permission -- either to bring them to a life of Christianity or (as some evidence suggests) to filter them into a child trafficking ring.  National Review's Kathryn Jean Lopez is deeply upset by the plight of at least one of the detained Americans, Jim Allen, whom she contends (based exclusively on his family's claims) is innocent.  Lopez demands that the State Department do more to "insist" upon Allen's release, and -- most amazingly of all -- complains about the conditions of his detention.   She has the audacity to cite a Human Rights Watch description of prison conditions in Haiti as "inhumane."  Lopez complains that Allen was waterboarded, stripped, frozen and beaten has "hypertension," was shipped thousands of miles away to a secret black site beyond the reach of the ICRC and then rendered to Jordan allowed to speak to his wife only once in the first ten days of his confinement, and was consigned to years in an island-prison cage with no charges denied his choice of counsel for a few days (though he is now duly represented in Haitian courts by a large team of American lawyers). [ Read more ... ]

Record 13-Year Sentence for Hacker Max Vision: Via Threat Level.

PITTSBURGH — A skilled San Francisco-based computer intruder was sentenced to 13 years in federal prison Friday for stealing nearly two million credit card numbers from banks, businesses and other hackers — receiving the longest hacking sentence in U.S. history.

Max Ray Vision, 37, was also ordered to pay $27.5 million in restitution, and to serve five years under court supervision following his release, during which time he’ll be allowed to use computers only for legitimate employment or education.

Vision, who changed his name from Max Butler shortly before his arrest, ran an online forum for thousands of identity thieves called CardersMarket, where he sold credit card magstripe data to the underground for about $20 a card. He was caught with 1.8 million stolen credit card numbers belonging to 1,000 different banks, who tallied the fraudulent charges on the cards at $86.4 million. [ Read more ... ]