Day archives: February 23rd, 2020

Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues February 22, 2020

Via LLRX – Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues February 22, 2020 – Privacy and security issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the …

Subjects: Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, E-Commerce, Privacy

Oversight Subcommittee Seeks Information About Ring’s Agreements with Police, Local Governments

Washington, D.C. (Feb. 19, 2020)—”Today, Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy, sent a letter to Amazon seeking information about its subsidiary Ring Inc.’s partnerships with city governments and local police departments, along with the company’s policies governing the data it collects. Ring sells internet-connected home surveillance equipment, such …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Congress, Cybersecurity, Defense, E-Records, Government Documents, Legal Research, Privacy

Elephant behavior toward the dead

Washington Post – An elephants story does not end when it dies See also Goldenberg, S.Z., Wittemyer, G. Elephant behavior toward the dead: A review and insights from field observations. Primates 61, 119–128 (2020). “Many nonhuman animals have been documented to take an interest in their dead. A few socially complex and cognitively advanced taxa—primates, …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Environmental Law

Use Amazon, Uber or Walmart.com? You’ve probably signed away your right to sue them

CNN Business: “Tucked into the sign-up process for many popular e-commerce sites and apps are dense terms-of-service agreements that legal experts say are changing the nature of consumer transactions, creating a veil of secrecy around how these companies function. The small print in these documents requires all signatories to agree to binding arbitration and to …

Subjects: Courts, E-Commerce, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research

Ring and Nest helped normalize American surveillance

Washington Post – a nation of voyeurs – For all the worries about hacking, owners of Internet-connected cameras say they love watching people silently from afar — often their own family members. Amazon’s Ring, Google’s Nest and other Internet-connected cameras — some selling for as little as $59 — have given Americans the tools they …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, E-Commerce, E-Records, Privacy

Forest Service says Appalachian Trail isn’t “land” in pipeline fight at SCOTUS

Quartz: “It’s not every Supreme Court brief that goes off the beaten legal path, supplementing jurisprudence with humor and spicing up statutory interpretation with devastating wit. But the filing from environmentalists fighting the US Forest Service (USFS) over its grant of a license for a gas pipeline through the Appalachian Trail is one such gem.  …

Subjects: Climate Change, Courts, Environmental Law, Government Documents, Legal Research

Financial Secrecy Index 2020

Tax Justice Network – “The Financial Secrecy Index ranks jurisdictions according to their secrecy and the scale of their offshore financial activities. A politically neutral ranking, it is a tool for understanding global financial secrecy, tax havens or secrecy jurisdictions, and illicit financial flows or capital flight. The index was launched on 18 February 2020. The …

Subjects: Economy, Financial System, Legal Research