Always strive to learn something useful. --Sophocles

I'm not quite sure what to make of this.

"The Ninth Circuit yesterday issued two decisions in the Electronic Frontier Foundation's lawsuits against the National Security Agency (Jewel v. NSA) and the telecommunications companies (Hepting v. AT&T). EFF had argued in Hepting that the retroactive immunity passed by Congress was unconstitutional. The Ninth Circuit decision (PDF) upholds the immunity and the district court's dismissal of the case. Short of an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, this effectively ends the suit against the telecoms. In much better news, the same panel issued a decision (PDF) reversing the dismissal of the lawsuit against the N.S.A. and remanded the case back to the lower court for more proceedings. These cases have been previously discussed here."

So simultaneously the 9th ruled that Bush's/Congress's retroactive immunity for telco's was legal, and that the case accusing the govt of funneling all communications through NSA monitoring should be sent back to a lower court.

Why do I think a filing with the SCOTUS is not far away?

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/12/dragnet-surveillance-case/

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/12/30/1549228/warrantless-wiretapping-decisions-issued-by-ninth-circuit-court

The Feds want unfettered access, claiming that "...a person has no reasonable expectation of privacy in his movements from one place to another...". I believe that there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in public, in that, if I overhear an adult talking about having sex with a 14 year old, I'll notify the police. I expect that I'll probably have my picture taken without my knowledge when I'm in public or in a store. But there's no need for the government knowing where I'm driving to and from WITHOUT A WARRANT AND PROBABLE CAUSE.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/11/gps-tracking-flourishes/all/1


Roger Easton, the principal inventor of GPS technology, is urging the Supreme Court to not allow such warrantless tracking. "Easton, now 90 and the principal inventor and developer of the Timation Satellite Navigation System at the Naval Research Laboratory more than five decades ago, and the others are telling the high court that its precedent on the topic is outdated, and the government’s reliance on it should be rejected." The case in question involves an appeal by a drug dealer whose movements were tracked without a warrant, whenever he stopped somewhere that could potentially be a cache, the cops got a warrant to search that site for drugs.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/10/gps-inventor-surveillance/


This is not good. Our location is already constantly monitored by our cell phones, I think the FBI needs to step up their investigations a notch and follow the laws that everyone else has to follow.

Basically, they've bought extreme access to some lawmakers to get a bill introduced saying that there are illegal disc pressing plants (where music CD's and movie DVD's are made) that are churning out a Sagan or two of illegal pirated material and costing Hollywood a Sagan or three, and this law will allow law enforcement to raid pressing plants without a warrant and they can seize equipment.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/05/riaa-warrantless-seizures/

I freely admit that piracy is a problem. But I think the ??AA are blowing their problems with piracy totally out of the water. How can Hollywood consistently post record movie box office receipts if they're losing a brazillian dollars to pirates? It don't compute. But this is entirely overboard: if they suspect a plant is illegally pressing discs, then they should report it to law enforcement who can perform surveillance to establish the facts, they can then get a search warrant and raid the place if the evidence merits it. Conducting a raid without a warrant is beyond the pale and I doubt there's any way that such a law would survive challenge.


Meanwhile, the Supreme Court rules 8-1 that in a case where police kicked in a door, without a warrant, and caught the people in the apartment with drugs, that it was not an illegal search.

WHEEEE!

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/05/warrantless-house-search/

The Supreme Court just held up on appeal that contracts that state that arbitration must be used instead of lawsuits is solid. A couple in California sued AT&T for being charged sales tax on “free” phones. It went back and forth in the courts until it worked its way up to SCOTUS, which sided with AT&T.

I'll bet Sony heaved a huge sigh of relief when they heard about this, assuming they have such a clause in their PSN legalese.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/04/scotus-rules-att-can-force-arbitration-block-class-action-suits.ars

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/04/28/1948247/Supreme-Court-ATampT-Can-Force-Arbitration