Since the European Court of Justice (ECJ) startled the Internet sector and world at large last week by its finding in the Google v. AEPD case that there is a “right to be forgotten” under the EU Data Protection Directive, there has been extensive speculation what the decision will mean for Google and other search
May 2014
Is Snowden a Spy?
That’s the possibility raised by Edward Jay Epstein in a (paywalled) Wall Street Journal op-ed. Epstein offers some new evidence for his theory. In particular he says that NSA investigators now know that Snowden’s tactics included breaking into two dozen compartments using forged or stolen passwords. Once there, Snowden loosed an automated “spider” with…
Smith v. Maryland: A good first-order estimate of changing expectations of privacy
Yesterday, I promised a post that would make the positive case for the third-party doctrine and Smith v. Maryland.
The case against it seems pretty obvious. Privacy advocates are glad to tell us that the pace of technological change requires that we expand fourth amendment protections. “We’re putting our entire lives on line,”…
Drawing a line on the third-party doctrine
The third-party doctrine of Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735 (1979), is getting a bad rap from libertarians of the left and the right. Smith holds that the police don’t need a search warrant to get information about me from a third party. If I keep a diary in my desk drawer, the police…
Public Safety, Privacy, and Particularity: A New Approach to Search Warrants for Digital Evidence
In the wake of recent coverage of the “Magistrates Revolt,” BNA has published an article in which my colleague Will Drake and I argue that judges can exercise appropriate oversight of search warrants for digital evidence without imposing search protocols or requiring prosecutors to forego reliance on “plain view.”