Miss. Attorney General wants Google to do more to fight intellectual property violations

Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood is working to force Google to enact protections for intellectual property. According to the Associated Press, Hood, intellectual property committee chair and president-elect of the National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG), is wanting Google to work harder to remove illegally copied materials from their search engine. "They're still not helping on music, movies, software," Hood said, even citing a case where someone bought fake contact lenses that damaged an eye. Earlier this year, several attorneys...

Read More

Listen in to cyberbullying, sexting discussion

Update: The discussion can be found in the MPB archive here: http://mpbonline.org/inlegalterms/lt102913/. Be sure to tune in tomorrow morning (Oct. 29) at 10am (CDT) for a discussion about cyberbullying, sexting, and digital stalking and harassment with cybercrime expert Priscilla Grantham. Here's the link to listen live to Mississippi Public Broadcasting: http://mpbonline.org/Programs/listen_live. Priscilla and I were colleagues at the National Center for Justice and the Rule of Law where she was a senior research attorney and taught...

Read More

New CFAA Case: Complaint alleges "crippling, simultaneous, mass departure," along with destruction of documents and data

On 10/8/13 an interesting new complaint was filed \alleging, inter alia, violations of the CFAA. An order in the case was recently issued, summarizing the dispute as follows: "the very core of Cunningham Lindsey’s claims and request for a preliminary injunction is that Vericlaim intentionally and unlawfully focused its efforts at recruiting and encouraging a mass exodus of Cunningham Lindsey employees during the late summer of 2013." The Complaint...

Read More

Featured Paper: The Legislative Response to Mass Police Surveillance

Stephen Rushin has a forthcoming paper in the Brooklyn Law Review entitled: The Legislative Response to Mass Police Surveillance. The abstract is below: Police departments have rapidly adopted mass surveillance technologies in an effort to fight crime and improve efficiency. I have previously described this phenomenon as the growth of the digitally efficient investigative state. This new technological order transforms traditional law enforcement by improving the efficiency of everyday policing activities and retaining copious amounts of...

Read More

Third Circuit: Warrant required for GPS tracking (Katzin); answers what Sup. Ct. reserved in Jones

The Third Circuit issued its opinion in United States v. Katzin, today, holding that a warrant based on probable cause must be obtained by law enforcement to track a car with GPS (to comport with the Fourth Amendment). This is the first circuit court decision to plow head on into the issue the Supreme Court reserved judgment on in United States v. Jones. The majority opinion was written by Judge Greenaway, Jr, with a concurrence in part/dissent in part by Judge Van Antwerpen. The opinion is quite lengthy - 61 pages for the majority, 55 for the...

Read More

Featured Papers: iOS Anti-Forensics, Google Drive Forensics, and Cell Phone Searches

Here's a roundup of new papers on SSRN: IOS Anti-Forensics: How Can We Securely Conceal, Delete and Insert Data? Abstract: With increasing popularity of smart mobile devices such as iOS devices, security and privacy concerns have emerged as a salient area of inquiry. A relatively under-studied area is anti-mobile forensics to prevent or inhibit forensic investigations. In this paper, we propose a "Concealment" technique to enhance the security of non-protected (Class D) data that is at rest on iOS devices, as well as a "Deletion" technique to...

Read More

Wisconsin Supreme Court hears oral arguments in cell phone tracking case, State v. Tate

On October 9th, the Wisconsin Supreme Court heard oral arguments in State v. Tate, a case addressing whether the lower court properly denied defendant's motion to suppress evidence from a warrant that allowed police to track the location of the defendant's cell phone. The defendant frames the issue of the case in his brief (attached below) as follows Police obtained a court order to track a cell phone because the person in possession of the phone was suspected of a homicide. However, neither the location  data itself, nor the phone’s location,...

Read More

Recent Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology issue focuses on cybercrime

Volume 103, Issue 3 of the Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology, a student-run publication at Northwestern University School of Law, features a variety of articles tackling the complexities of cybercrime. The issue is the culmination of a Symposium held at Northwestern University on February 1, 2013. As the Symposium Editor, Lily Katz, states in her Forward, the Symposium intended to address the "important conceptual, doctrinal, and empirical legal questions" raised by cybercrime. The issue features a great line-up...

Read More

Ohio appellate court affirms motion to suppress regarding GPS evidence

The Court of Appeals of Ohio recently held that in the absence of a binding precedent, evidence obtained as a result of an improperly used GPS device should not be allowed in court under the Davis good faith rule. State v. Allen, 2013 Ohio 4188 (Ohio Ct. App. 2013). Since the decision in United States v. Jones, the most debated GPS-related issue has been what to do in situations where a GPS device was used prior to the Supreme Court's decision without a search warrant in the absence of binding precedent. Some courts have held that the overwhelming...

Read More

CFAA claim dismissed in Givaudan Fragrances Corp. v. Krivda

On September 26, 2013, the court in Givaudan Fragrances Corp. v. Krivda issued an order dismissing Givaudan's claim that one of its former employees, James Krivda, violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (18 U.S.C. § 1030). This dismissal, granted by Judge Peter Sheridan of the District Court of New Jersey, provides yet another example of a court distinguishing between “unauthorized use of information” and the “unauthorized access to information” when interpreting the CFAA. According to the court order (and this 2009 opinion, which provides...

Read More

District court holds that parody social media accounts do not violate the CFAA

In Matot v. CH, No. 6:13-cv-153 (D. Ore. 2013), the district court held that the creation of parody social media accounts does not violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). Last year, the Ninth Circuit adopted a reading of the CFAA that does not allow for the law to be applied to the violation of a website's terms of service. United States v. Nosal, 676 F.3d 854 (9th Cir. 2012). A broad reading would allow such violations (for example, falsifying your age on a dating website) to be punishable under the CFAA through criminal and civil action....

Read More

Illinois App. Ct.: Defendant not guilty on two counts of CP possession for storing same image twice in the same medium

In State v. Sedelsky, No. 2-1-1042 (Ill. App. Ct. 2013), an Illinois appellate court held that the conviction for two counts of possession of child pornography cannot stand when the counts are "based on possession of an identical image stored in the same digital medium." The two images were saved under two different file names - yngbigirl1_0_50465483.jpg and yngbigirl1_0_50577108.jpg. The appellate court found that the statute was "unclear" on this issue, requiring the court to "adopt a construction that favors defendant." We agree...

Read More

On remand, federal judge increases young CP offender sentence, notes guidelines 'unnecessarily crush the lives of our young'

More than two years ago, then 89-year-old U.S. District Judge Jack Weinstein ruled in a 401-page opinion that imposing the statutory minimum five-year sentence to a 19-year-old offender was "cruel and unusual" punishment, and Judge Weinstein chose to ignore the law on constitutional grounds. The Second Circuit recently reversed his decision, and he reluctantly changed the sentence. Upon resentencing the defendant in the remand, Judge Weinstein did not issue a similarly lengthy opinion, but he chose to restate some of his main arguments. The effect...

Read More

2nd Cir. vacates CP producer's penis measurement sentencing condition imposed for failing to give notice of move

In 2001, Alabama resident David McLaurin was convicted of producing child pornography and sentenced to ten years in prison. Most of the time was suspended, but he later served more time for failing to notify the state when he moved to a different county. He moved to Vermont in 2011, notified the authorities of the move, but he did not fill out the proper paperwork which violated the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act. McLaurin was found "unlikely to reoffend again" but was sentenced to prison and supervised release for the paperwork...

Read More

Court dismisses most of teen's suit for use of bikini-clad photo from Facebook in high school "Internet Safety" class

(Updated 10/9/13 - see end of post) ** Relevant documents: Complaint, Def. Renewed Rule 12(b)(6) MTD, Pl. Opp. to MTD, and Order ** A federal court on Sept. 30th granted a motion to dismiss (in large part) a Georgia teen's lawsuit for multiple causes of action arising out of a Technology Instructor's use of a photo of her he obtained from her Facebook page; the photo was used in an "Internet Safety" class to illustrate that what you post online...

Read More

2nd Circuit reverses decision to hold defendant jointly and severally liable for child pornography victim's losses

In United States v. Lundquist, No. 11-5379 (2d Cir. 2013), the Second Circuit held that a child pornography possessor could not be held jointly and severally liable for harm to the victim. Lundquist was convicted of receipt and possession of child pornography. Among the images in his possession was one of the "Amy" series. Amy was victimized by her uncle and has sought for years to obtain restitution from those who continue to download images of her. Her total damages have been calculated at $3,381,159. Courts have debated many issues regarding...

Read More

Federal Ct. in web scraping case: accusations of "hacking" and "theft" could be defamatory, but privileged under facts

** All docs for the case here:  Def. Motion for Summary Judgment, Motion in Opposition to SJ, Def. Reply to Pl. Opp, and the Order/Memorandum Opinion ** Can accusing someone of harvesting data from a publicly accessible webpage, by referring to that conduct as "hacking" and/or "theft," be a defamatory statement? Under the facts noted below, a federal court just said "yes," but ultimately found the statements privileged. There is an interesting discussion in the opinion about "protecting" website data with an exclusion in robots.txt (although,...

Read More

Recent News: Lavabit, Silk Road, and Calif. revenge porn bill

Lavabit used 4-point type in attempt to prolong Snowden SSL key release Edward Snowden's e-mail provider, now-defunct Lavabit, attempted to defy the government's request for Snowden's SSL keys by printing the 2,560 characters in 11 pages of 4-point type. That way, the FBI would have to retype the key manually. Read more from Wired. Silk Road closed by FBI, others promptly take its place The FBI shut down Silk Road earlier this week, but the Huffington Post reports that many alternatives exist, and black market vendors have already made the move. “I...

Read More

EFF files amicus brief in Massachusetts cell site data case

The Electronic Frontier Foundation recently filed an amicus brief in a Massachusetts appellate case regarding cell site location data. The trial court in Commonwealth v. Augustine had suppressed two weeks' worth of cell site data, finding that a search warrant was necessary to obtain it. The government then appealed. According to the EFF release: In our amicus brief, we urge the SJC to affirm the trial court, arguing that people maintain a reasonable expectation of privacy in their location—even their public movements—since society would...

Read More