Evidence Faulted in Detainee Case – NYTimes.com:
With some derision for the Bush administration’s arguments, a three-judge panel said the government contended that its accusations against the detainee should be accepted as true because they had been repeated in at least three secret documents.
The court compared that to the absurd declaration of a character in the [...]
Balkinization – Grading the California same-sex marriage opinion:
The California Supreme Court’s opinion is distressingly conclusory. It combines a tortured and probably unsalvageable substantive due process analysis with a strange, ultimately barely successful equal protection argument. If it is persuasive, it is barely so. Law professors are grumpy people who care less about whether you’ve argued [...]
Law Blog – WSJ.com : Defense Department Jettisons Charges Against ’20th Hijacker’:
On the Gitmo front, the last several weeks have brought the Bush administration a series of legal defeats. First, Gitmo’s former chief prosecutor turned against the Pentagon, testifying that political interference had tainted the military commissions, set up to prosecute detainees. Then a key [...]
Feb 272008
kottke.org: When you die, become an intellectual property donor.:
Why let all of your ideas die with you? Current Copyright law prevents anyone from building upon your creativity for 70 years after your death. Live on in collaboration with others. Make an intellectual property donation. By donating your IP into the public domain you will “promote [...]
WSJ.com – High Court Says No to Wiretapping, Yes to Exclusionary Rule:
Yesterday, the Supreme Court granted cert in a case that, commentators say, gives them an opporunity to carve out more exceptions to the “exclusionary rule,” a criminal procedure doctrine that excludes evidence obtained from an unlawful search. At the same time, the Court, without [...]
Jan 272008
WaPo – Bush Order Expands Network Monitoring:
President Bush signed a directive this month that expands the intelligence community’s role in monitoring Internet traffic to protect against a rising number of attacks on federal agencies’ computer systems.
Somehow, I am not reassured by this news.
Balkinization – Three concepts of surveillance in the National Surveillance State:
In this article with Sandy Levinson and on the pages of this blog I’ve [Professor Balkin] been arguing that the United States is gradually moving from a National Security State to a National Surveillance State, which uses new information technologies and both public action and [...]
The Register: No email privacy rights under Constitution, US gov claims
On October 8, 2007, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati granted the government’s request for a full-panel hearing in United States v. Warshak case centering on the right of privacy for stored electronic communications. At issue is whether the [...]
Oct 182007
PBS FRONTLINE – Cheney’s Law:
For three decades Vice President Dick Cheney conducted a secretive, behind-closed-doors campaign to give the president virtually unlimited wartime power. Finally, in the aftermath of 9/11, the Justice Department and the White House made a number of controversial legal decisions. Orchestrated by Cheney and his lawyer David Addington, the department interpreted [...]
American Civil Liberties Union – Hundreds of New Documents Reveal Expanded Military Role in Domestic Surveillance:
New documents uncovered as a result of an American Civil Liberties Union and New York Civil Liberties Union lawsuit reveal that the Department of Defense secretly issued hundreds of national security letters (NSLs) to obtain private and sensitive records of [...]
Oct 162007
Secrecy News – Implementing Domestic Intelligence Surveillance:
Upon lawful request and for a thousand dollars, Comcast, one of the nation’s leading telecommunications companies, will intercept its customers’ communications under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
The cost for performing any FISA surveillance “requiring deployment of an intercept device” is $1,000.00 for the “initial start-up fee (including the first [...]
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