No Contempt, No Jail for Spamming a Judge
By David Kravets May 21, 2010 4:30 pm
A federal appeals court has overturned a criminal contempt citation and 30-day sentence issued to a civil litigant who urged his followers to e-mail the judge presiding over the case.
The case tested the reach of judicial contempt authority (.pdf) in the digital age. The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Thursday that, generally, it did not extend beyond the courtroom.
The brouhaha began in February, when TV pitchman Kevin Trudeau asked his radio and web followers to deluge U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman with e-mail so he would side with him in a civil lawsuit.
The Chicago judge’s inbox was flooded with hundreds of messages, and his Blackberry froze. He promptly found Trudeau — who was being sued by the Federal Trade Commission — in contempt of court and sentenced him to jail. The term was stayed pending appeal.
The legal question at issue focused on whether contempt of court can occur in a court’s virtual presence.
“Because the conduct occurred outside the judge’s presence and, rather than being forced to stop proceedings by Trudeau’s behavior, the judge had to actually convene proceedings in order to get Trudeau before the court, summary contempt should never have been an option here,” (.pdf) the Chicago-based appeals court ruled.
Because the contempt citation was so unusual, the court left open the possibility for Judge Gettleman to refer the case to federal prosecutors, which would allow Trudeau a chance to defend himself against the charges.
During oral arguments in the case last month, the judge’s attorney, Gary Feinerman, told the three-judge appellate court that computers are part and parcel to a judge’s courtroom.
“The court, at that point, was under attack,” Feinerman argued, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. He said U.S. Marshals are examining the messages to see if any are threatening.
Kimball Anderson, Trudeau’s lawyer, argued his client could only be sanctioned for courtroom behavior, and only if it affects the “administration of justice.”
Was this lousy lawyering or did it appear worse than it was?
Pennsylvania AG Dropping Twitter Subpoena
Will this be enough to get Congress interested? Fall elections + Publicity suggests Yes!
http://www.pogowasright.org/?p=10468
Facebook likely headed to court over privacy concerns, critics say
May 22, 2010 by Dissent
Sarah Schmidt reports:
Facebook likely will be hauled before a federal judge in Canada by the fall for thumbing its nose at the country’s privacy watchdog, online privacy experts predict.
The furor over privacy settings and how the social networking shares personal information with outside companies has been growing for the past few months, with Canada’s privacy commissioner Jennifer Stoddart now speaking openly about the possibility of a fresh investigation into Facebook for new violations of Canada’s private sector privacy act.
“Although they’ve done some things right, in a few areas, they seem to have gone in the opposite direction, and that’s been disappointing,” spokeswoman Anne-Marie Hayden said Friday.
Read more on Canada.com
(Related) Tim is a pretty knowledgeable guy, but I have to disagree here.
A Contrarian Stance On Facebook and Privacy
Posted by Soulskill on Saturday May 22, @09:18AM
"Amid the uproar over Facebook's privacy maneuvers, Tim O'Reilly offers a contrarian view. He writes: 'The essence of my argument is that there's enormous advantage for users in giving up some privacy online [Sharing information is one thing, losing control of that information is another. I give you my credit card ONLY to pay for a single transaction. If you use it for anything else, I'll sic Guido on you! Bob] and that we need to be exploring the boundary conditions — asking ourselves when is it good for users, and when is it bad, to reveal their personal information. I'd rather have entrepreneurs making high-profile mistakes about those boundaries, [I'd rather have them THINK about what could go wrong and explain the risks to customers before asking them to Opt-In. But that's too much work for the Marketing Department. Bob] and then correcting them, than silently avoiding controversy while quietly taking advantage of public ignorance of the subject, or avoiding a potentially contentious area of innovation because they are afraid of backlash. It's easy to say that this should always be the user's choice, but entrepreneurs from Steve Jobs to Mark Zuckerberg are in the business of discovering things that users don't already know that they will want, and sometimes we only find the right balance by pushing too far, and then recovering.'"
Facebook has confirmed it is working on more changes to its privacy policy in response to feedback from users.
Well, it's a start.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-20005636-245.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
Google rolls out encrypted Web search option
by Elinor Mills May 21, 2010 12:30 PM PDT
Google began offering an encrypted option for Web searchers on Friday and said it planned to roll it out for all of its services eventually.
People who want to use the more secure search option can type "https://www.google.com/" into their browser, scrambling the connection so the words and phrases they search on, and the results that Google displays, will be protected from interception.
… The encryption protects only data in transit between an individual's browser and the Google search server. When people click on a search result and are directed to another Web site, they leave the encrypted channel.
Offering encrypted connections to Google.com means that users in China and other regimes that engage in significant surveillance will--assuming the connection is not blocked in the first place--be able to conduct searches without governments knowing the search terms.
Would you like your doctor to discuss your treatment on Facebook? Why would Twitter be any better? Looks like another “can of worms” area of the law.
E-Health and Web 2.0: The Doctor Will Tweet You Now
By Computerworld Staff May 21, 2010 11:05 am
… American Well partnered with Microsoft to use its HealthVault EMR service, which allows patients to securely store their entire medical history online. Test results and radiological images can also be uploaded to the online records. Patients control access to their information and must specify who can see the records. Google Health is another popular online EMR service also being used to access patient information online.
BlueCross and BlueShield of Minnesota makes the online patient services available to employers, who then offer it to employees. There is a $10 or $20 co-payment fee for members, and nonmembers can use the services for $50 per session. In other states, however, BlueCross and BlueShield offers the services to any member, regardless of employer.
… Jeff Livingston, an obstetrician and gynecologist in Irving, Texas, said his 10-doctor practice has about 600 Facebook fans and more than 1,500 Twitter followers. They not only use the social networking service to communicate through text messaging, but can read and comment on postings about birth control, breast feeding and a variety of other health care topics.
New mothers also share baby photos through a popular Facebook community page created by patients [How secure would that be? Bob] of his practice, MacArthur OB/GYN. And MacArthur OB/GYN’s Facebook fans can connect with one another through the social networking site to discuss their own experiences with medical procedures.
… Livingston said that he is well aware of potential privacy issues but feels that the issue is really much ado about nothing.
“To me, it’s very simple and not controversial, but people like to make it controversial,” he said. “You cannot diagnose, treat or discuss any personal health information in a nonsecure environment. So if a patient asks me a very specific question on Facebook, I cannot answer it legally.” [Even to save a life? Bob]
You no longer need to buy a Politician (they're cheap, but the maintenance is costly) Now you can supply him with pre-written laws (and talking points) that make him look like he understands the topic! Of course, this works both ways... Right Mr. Gore?
http://www.docuticker.com/?p=35627
Ghostwriting the Law for Corporate America
Source: American Association for Justice
The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has secretly taken millions of dollars in corporate money to infiltrate state legislatures and push legislation that, amongst other anti-consumer measures, would give complete immunity to asbestos manufacturers and undermine recently-passed health care reform, according to a new report released today.
(Related) Then there are the traditionalists...
http://www.docuticker.com/?p=35629
Big Bank Lobbyists Fighting Financial Reform Outnumber Pro-Reform Lobbyists by 11-1
This seems to have been a website in Beta. They claim they didn't actually have photos but were going to provide links to them. Coupled with a face recognition tool, this might have been an interesting site for scandal mongers...
ImageLogr Scrapes "Billions" of Images Illegally
Posted by Soulskill on Friday May 21, @04:02PM
"In what must be one of the largest attempts to scrape images from the Web, the site ImageLogr.com 'claims to be scraping the entire "free web" and seems to have hit Flickr especially hard, copying full-sized images of yours and mine to their own servers, where they are hosting them without any attribution or links back to the original image in violation of all available licenses on Flickr.' The site even contains the option to directly download images that ImageLogr has scraped. What makes this endeavor so amazing is that it isn't a case of 'other people gave us millions of infringing images, help us remove the wrong ones,' but one of 'we took all the images on the Web; if we got one of yours, oops!' The former gets some protection from the DMCA, whereas the latter is blatant infringement. ImageLogr's actions have caused a flurry of activity, and the site's owners have subsequently taken it offline, displaying the following message: 'Imagelogr.com is currently offline as we are improving the website. Due to copyright issues we are now changing some stuff around to make people happy. Please check back soon.'"
Another wave of computerization: from Mainframes, which ran applications for the entire organization; to Mini-computers which could support a single department; to microcomputers supporting a single user – now we can use the cloud to do any or all of those things at the same time.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13846_3-20005631-62.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
How Google is redefining the enterprise
by Dave Rosenberg May 21, 2010 12:11 PM PDT
With all of the talk about Android, the open Web, and video taking place at this week's Google I/O conference, big software vendors could have easily been lulled into underestimating how much Google is actually targeting enterprises with new and updated offerings.
That would be a mistake.
Google has become such a prolific creator of technology that suits its own business needs, somewhere down the line it crossed over into the future of the enterprise, or at least a version of the future--one that develops software to consume and manage IT services and resources without having to build your own infrastructure.
… And really, cloud is far more about users than it is vendors. As Forrester Research's James Staten wrote recently, "cloud computing isn't your future--it's a new part of your overall IT portfolio." It's the ability to use cloud services to augment your environment that matters to users. Services such as Amazon EC2, AppEngine, and Rackspace Cloud are all just extensions of your infrastructure.
Apple is the Walmart of Internet music stores? Who'd a thunk it?
Apple's iTunes lead increasing, now selling 26.7% of US music
For my Computer Security students. We'll be pushing this technology into our homes.
http://www.cnet.com/8301-30976_1-20005681-10348864.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
Reporters' Roundtable: Our perilous infrastructure (podcast)
(Related) Computer Forensics this time.
http://www.friedbeef.com/how-to-check-if-your-gmail-account-has-been-hacked/
How to Check if Your Gmail Account Has Been Hacked
(Related) Another simple way to secure sensitive data?
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/penyulocker-lock-encrypt-windows-folder/
Use PenyuLocker To Lock Or Encrypt A Windows Folder
For all my students
http://www.friedbeef.com/7-best-places-to-download-free-textbooks/
7 Best Places to Download FREE Textbooks
Searching for websites like the ones you use?
http://www.friedbeef.com/5-methods-to-find-and-discover-related-sites/
5 Methods to Find and Discover Related Sites
Also try: http://www.similarsites.com/
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