Privacy Law

Jeffs Wins Appeal of Rape Convictions Based on His Role as Minister at 14-Year-Old’s Wedding

Agreeing with defense lawyers that a claimed marital rape involving two teenagers hadn’t been properly focused upon in jury instructions, the Utah Supreme Court has overturned unusual felony accomplice rape convictions of a religious leader based on his role in promoting an underage marriage between an unwilling 14-year-old and her…

Jul 27, 2010 7:14 PM CDT

Lawyer in School Webcam Spy Case Wants $418K in Legal Fees Now as Case Continues

A lawyer representing a teenage high school student and his family in a would-be class action over alleged illegal spying via school-district-issued laptop computer webcams says he can ill afford to continue with the high-profile civil rights case without being paid. But because a federal judge has ordered the Lower…

Jul 27, 2010 4:57 PM CDT

Privacy Advocates Concerned About New Walmart Smart Tags

New smart tags being added to jeans and underwear in Walmart stores will allow employees to assess when a size or color needs to be restocked with the wave of an electronic wand. Walmart plans to post signs telling customers about the removable tags, the Wall Street Journal reports. But…

Jul 23, 2010 2:04 PM CDT

Naked Cowboy Sues Female Competitor, Says She Stole His Shtick

A New York man who has made a business out of playing a guitar in Times Square while seemingly wearing very little except a cowboy hat and his shoes has filed a federal lawsuit against a female competitor. Best known as the Naked Cowboy, Robert John Burck contends that comedian…

Jul 21, 2010 7:46 PM CDT

ESPN Sportscaster Erin Andrews Sues Hotel Chains Over Stalker’s Secret In-Room Taping

In a lawsuit likely to resonate with other women who travel alone on business, a well-known sportscaster for ESPN sued several hotel chains today in Illinois state court over video footage widely circulated on the Internet in which she is seen in a state of undress while in her room.…

Jul 15, 2010 11:12 PM CDT

Authorities Missed Earlier Chance to ID Suspect in ‘Grim Sleeper’ Killings

Authorities used controversial familial DNA testing to identify Lonnie David Frankin Jr. as a suspect in the “Grim Sleeper” serial murders. But they could have used Franklin’s own DNA, if it had been collected as required under a 2004 law, reports the Los Angeles Times. And doing so might have…

Jul 15, 2010 6:17 PM CDT

Does Bankruptcy Put a Gay Website’s Teen User Info Into Creditors’ Hands?

An effort by bankruptcy creditors to obtain the one valuable asset of a dying website—its database of information about 1 million subscribers and users—is raising privacy concerns both in the United States and abroad. Because the website is for XY Magazine, whose focus is on young men and teenage boys…

Jul 14, 2010 12:27 AM CDT

Facebook Faces Litigation from Canada, Germany Over Privacy Issues

Remember those photos you posted on Facebook years ago? They may have been private then, but they could be public now, according to a pending lawsuit against the super-popular social networking site. In the wake of worldwide concern over Google’s admitted interception of personal data from unsecured Wi-Fi portals in…

Jul 8, 2010 5:57 PM CDT

Supreme Court Rules Against Cop Claiming Privacy Rights in Text Messages

The U.S Supreme Court has found no Fourth Amendment violation in a search of a police-department issued pager that revealed a police officer’s steamy text messages. The Supreme Court said the search of Jeffrey Quon’s pager was justified because there were was a legitimate work-related rationale. The goal was to…

Jun 17, 2010 2:27 PM CDT

Many Wince at Above the Law Blogger’s Chilling Account of Online ‘Stalk’

Law blogger Kashmir Hill thought she had few illusions about Internet privacy, according to her biography page for a True/Slant blog about privacy, technology and the law. But the online research that resulted in the Above the Law editor’s chilling Assembly article about the enormous amount of detailed personal information…

Jun 16, 2010 12:15 AM CDT

Plaintiff Law Firm Bought Competitor Keywords, Too, Argues Defense in Web Ad Suit

In an unusual lawsuit filed in November, a Wisconsin law firm claimed that a competitor had violated state privacy law by purchasing its name from several search engines for use as advertising keywords. By doing so, Cannon & Dunphy improperly arranged to put its own law firm profile atop the…

Mar 15, 2010 5:10 PM CDT

Convicted Germans Seek to Edit History in Suit Against Wikipedia

Two Germans convicted of killing an actor in 1990 are suing Wikipedia’s parent in an effort to force the online, publicly edited encyclopedia to remove their names from an English-language entry about their crime. The plaintiffs, Wolfgang Werlé and Manfred Lauber, say their right to privacy should prevail, the New…

Nov 13, 2009 1:58 PM CST

Airline’s Sham Divorce Case Over Pilot Pension Payments Doesn’t Fly

Nine Continental Airlines pilots apparently thought they had found a wily way to get around benefits rules when they divorced their wives, which allowed the women to collect pension money in a lump sum, and then remarried their ex-spouses. And they were right, according to a federal judge’s ruling yesterday.…

Oct 20, 2009 6:22 PM CDT

Feds Can Monitor Personal E-Mail Sent Privately to Gov’t Workers, DOJ Says

You might think that a private-mail sent to another U.S. citizen’s personal account isn’t subject to government monitoring. But that assumption could be wrong if the recipient is a federal government employee. Both recipients and senders have no reasonable expectation of privacy if an e-mail is opened by a federal…

Sep 21, 2009 4:43 PM CDT

Mont. Town Rescinds Rule Requiring Job Seekers to Reveal Social Web Passwords

Rescinding a controversial hiring policy that one commissioner called “a gross invasion of privacy,” the governing body of Bozeman, Mont., voted yesterday that its human resources department would no longer require job applicants to reveal their personal passwords to social networking websites such as Facebook and MySpace. The 2008 policy…

Jun 23, 2009 9:01 PM CDT