Category «Courts»

Report – The True Cost of Incarceration on Families

Who Pays? The True Cost of Incarceration on Families proves that the costs of locking up millions of people in jail cells is much deeper than we think – when we lock up individuals we also break apart their families and communities. This new report reveals the overwhelming debt, mental and physical ailments and severed family …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Courts, Government Documents, Knowledge Management, Legal Research

Spokeo v. Robins – Brief of Restitution and Remedies Scholars as Amici Curia in Support of Respondent

Laycock, Douglas and Gergen, Mark P. and Rendleman, Doug, Spokeo v. Robins – Brief of Restitution and Remedies Scholars as Amici Curia in Support of Respondent (September 11, 2015). Washington & Lee Legal Studies Paper No. 2015. Available for download at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=26603 “Both consumer protection and restitution may be casualties in a collision with …

Subjects: Courts, Intellectual Property, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Privacy

EFF Provides Evidence to Courts on Telecoms Collection of Metadata

“This week EFF presented evidence in two of its NSA cases confirming the participation of Verizon Wireless, Sprint and AT&T in the NSA’s mass telephone records collection under the Patriot Act.  This is important because, despite broad public acknowledgement, the government is still claiming that it can dismiss our cases because it has never confirmed …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Courts, E-Mail, E-Records, Freedom of Information, Government Documents, Internet, Legal Research, Patriot Act, Privacy

What Does the Latest Court Ruling on NSA Telephone Metadata Program Mean?

CRS Legal Sidebar – Legal Sidebar What Does the Latest Court Ruling on NSA Telephone Metadata Program Mean? 09/03/2015 “On August 28, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, in Obama v. Klayman, ruled for the government in the ongoing litigation over the National Security Agency’s (NSA’s) telephone metadata program. The …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Congress, Courts, Defense, E-Mail, E-Records, Government Documents, Internet, Legal Research, Privacy

Report – disparate impact theory and bias whose roots are in algorithms

Lauren Kirchner is a senior reporting fellow at ProPublica., writing in the Atlantic – When Discrimination Is Baked Into Algorithms: “…Over the past several decades, an important tool for assessing and addressing discrimination has been the “disparate impact” theory. Attorneys have used this idea to successfully challenge policies that have a discriminatory effect on certain …

Subjects: Courts, Knowledge Management, Legal Research

EFF amicus brief in SCOTUS case on seizure of historical cell site records from a cell phone provider

EFF – “Americans have the right to expect that digital records of their daily travels—when they left home, where they went, and how long they stayed—is private information, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) said in an amicus brief filed with the Supreme Court of the United States. Weighing in on one of the most important …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Courts, E-Records, Internet, Legal Research, Patriot Act, Privacy

Injunction against metadata collection reversed by U.S. Court of Appeals for D.C. Circuit

EFF – “The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit’s opinion [August 28, 2015] in Klayman v. Obama is highly disappointing and, worse, based on a mistaken concern about the underlying facts. The court said that since the plaintiffs’ phone service was provided by one subsidiary of Verizon—Verizon Wireless—rather than another—Verizon Business—they couldn’t prove that they …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Courts, Freedom of Information, Government Documents, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Patriot Act, Privacy

Appeals Court Upholds FTC’s Data Security Authority

EPIC – “A federal appeals court ruled that the Federal Trade Commission can enforce data security standards. In FTC v. Wyndham, the agency sued Wyndham hotels after the company exposed financial data of hundreds of thousands of customers. The company argued that the FTC lacked authority to enforce security standards, but the court disagreed. EPIC …

Subjects: Courts, Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, Government Documents, Legal Research, Privacy

Mandatory Minimum Sentencing: Federal Aggravated Identity Theft

CRS report vai FAS – Mandatory Minimum Sentencing: Federal Aggravated Identity Theft – Charles Doyle, Senior Specialist in American Public Law. August 20, 2015. “Aggravated identity theft is punishable by a mandatory minimum sentence of imprisonment for two years or by imprisonment for five years if it relates to a terrorism offense. At least thus …

Subjects: Congress, Courts, Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, Government Documents, ID Theft, Internet, Legal Research

Central American Deportation Cases Dominate U.S. Immigration Courts

“Persons from Central America continue to outnumber those from Mexico when DHS seeks deportation orders in Immigration Court, according to the latest government data obtained by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC). During the first ten months of fiscal year 2015, 42 percent of DHS filings involved individuals from Central America, primarily Guatemala, El Salvador …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Courts, Government Documents, Legal Research

Reducing Mass Incarceration Requires Far-Reaching Reforms

The Prison Population Forecaster – Ryan King, Bryce Peterson, Brian Elderbroom, and Elizabeth Pelletier – “Roughly 2.2 million people are locked up in prison or jail; 7 million are under correctional control, which includes parole and probation; and more than $80 billion is spent on corrections every year. Research has shown that policy changes over …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Courts, Economy, Government Documents, Knowledge Management, Legal Research