China seems to have found a reliable legal tool for suppressing dissent. A prominent Chinese human rights lawyer, Pu Zhiqiang, has been arrested after a meeting in a private home to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the killings at Tiananmen Square. The charge? “Illegal access to the personal information of citizens,” a crime punishable by
June 2014
The NYT makes the case for surveillance cameras
The ACLU and EPIC have campaigned long and hard against surveillance cameras in public spaces, and they’ve had considerable success — despite a paucity of actual serious privacy abuses. So it’s worth remembering that all this privacy theater imposes real costs on crime victims.
This story, headlined “After Boy and Girl Are Stabbed, Anger…
“Fast Eddie” Snowden’s Problem with the Truth
The NBC interview with Edward Snowden was instructive in several ways. He continues to present himself as a reasonable man who tried to stop illegal programs but was left with no option but to go public. But the more closely you listen, especially when he says things that can be checked against the record, the…
“Groundhog Day” for Data Breaches
Here we go again. A prominent company suffers a data breach. The company publicly alerts its customers. The company almost immediately finds itself the subject of inquiries from Congress and the target of investigations by regulators. Before long, class action lawyers will crank out complaints as if they’re Mad Libs, filling in the name of…