Looking for a Hoodie With NSA Documents on It? This Is Your Store

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If youve ever dreamt of owning a mouse pad adorned with the contents of leaked classified documents (and who hasnt?) youre in luck. Just in time for the holidays: The Big Data Pawn Shop, an online emporium of useless items screen printed with very important information.

Screenshot: WIRED

The shop is the work of artists Adam Harvey, Sam Lavigne, and Surya Mattu, and its the first installment of an ongoing project dedicated to reframing the discussion around privacy, surveillance, and big data. In the Zazzle store you can buy any number of items emblazoned with text and graphics from the NSA ANT catalogue, a 50-page document leaked last year that details the NSAs technology arsenal. Youll see the pages of the document printed onto ping pong paddles, tank tops, clocks and pillows. I bought a coffee mug, says Harvey.

Repurposing the documents as consumer products could be read as a joke, and Harvey doesnt shy away from the idea that theres a certain lightheartedness to the idea. Its intentionally made to soften the impact of discourse which for the most part is terrifying, he says.

The way he sees it, the conversation could use areframinganyway. After more than a year of heavy media coverage dedicated to privacy and surveillance, Harvey worries people have begun to grow tired of the catch phrases and buzzwords. At the simplest level, I want to continue the conversation about these topics, he says. As heknows through his work with the Privacy Gift shop and his umbrella company Undisclosed, its not just about keeping these ideas relevant, its about making them accessible. And really, what better way to remind us of our discomforting lack of privacy than staring it in the face every day with our morning cup of coffee?

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Looking for a Hoodie With NSA Documents on It? This Is Your Store

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No NSA Reform, No CIA Reform

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The Democrats serving on the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee, led by Diane Feinstein of California, have released their summary report on CIA torture. What is ahead now that the report is out?

Expect a merry season of verbose handwringing, with endless protestations of (momentary) embarrassment and mellifluous promise of immediate betterment. Even emphatic claims of Never Again!

Just dont believe it. All the statements by ever so embarrassed Senators, in the end, are but a highly ritualized form of appearing apologetic.

The news of the future will report that, despite the most earnest commitments to fundamental change of this critically important issue, nothing will happen. There will also be talk to hold an in-depth national conversation, including unrestrained readiness to look deep into our national soul. But that too is bound to be mostly lip service.

Remember the major embarrassment felt about the Snowden revelations that required urgent changes in the law in order to ensure that such gross betrayals of the rights of American citizens would never ever be repeated?

Or the statements that the NSA needed to be reined in? That it was an agency on autopilot? Well, there were high hopes for legislative reforms initially.

There were a spate of news articles and administration statements promising that real reform would come. Some people honestly thought that, given the immensity of the privacy violations by the NSA, this time things would be different.

In a parliamentary democracy, where majorities in the executive and legislative branches are by definition the same, reforms would likely have happened swiftly.

Not so in the United States, with its traditionally gridlocked domestic politics. There, it is never easy to achieve reforms. Still, after Snowdens revelations, many Democrats as well as some very right-wing Republicans, such as Rep. Sensenbrenner in the U.S. House, were adamant that things could not go on like that.

With such a wide-ranging coalition, along the entire U.S. political spectrum, what could possibly go wrong? A lot, as it turns out, led by a willy-nilly Obama Administration that always pretends to stand for principle before turning meek.

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No NSA Reform, No CIA Reform

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KeenON: Journalist and NSA Expert Barton Gellman

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Techonomy is proud to present KeenON, a series ofinterviews by techonologist and author Andrew Keen that explores the intersection of tech, business, and culture.

It isnt surprising that Edward Snowden chose then Washington Post reporterBarton Gellmanas one of the earliest recipients of his leaked NSA documents. Gellman is the author of abest-selling bookabout Dick Cheney as well as manyinfluential articlesabout the war on terror, and thus was a natural choice for Snowden when he sought a trustworthy journalist to publicize the PRISM materials.

So was Snowden a hero? Not surprisingly, Gellman wont be drawn into such a clichd analysis. What he does insist, however, is that Snowden was an important figure who has sparked a massively important conversationone, in his words, with legsthat is still going on today. Its a subject, Gellman insists, that has not only changed the way that Silicon Valley companies like Google and Twitter do their data business with the U.S. government, but may have changed the nature of journalism. Indeed, its such a vital subject that Gellman himself is currently writing a book about what he calls our surveillance-industrial state of affairs. The book, he says, will break new ground in how we imagine our electronically networked world.

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KeenON: Journalist and NSA Expert Barton Gellman

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Woman convicted in Seath Jackson murder seeks post-conviction relief

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Convicted murderer Charlie Ely refuses to answer questions based on fifth amendment rights during the third day of Amber Wright and her brother Kyle Hooper's first degree murder trial at the Marion County Judicial Center in Ocala, FL on Friday June 8, 2012. Wright and Hooper are accused in the brutal slaying of Wright's former boyfriend Seath Jackson in April 2011. The murder occurred at her trailer and she was convicted for her participation. (Alan Youngblood/Ocala Star-Banner)2012

As Michael Bargo's appeal remains pending before the Florida Supreme Court and Amber Wright's case ping-pongs between the trial and appellate courts, a third co-defendant Charlie Ely is trying to get some post-conviction relief of her own.

Ely recently filed a 45-page motion claiming her defense attorney was ineffective in handling her case. She said she is entitled to post-conviction relief in the form of a new trial.

Ely, now 22, was one of five young people charged with first-degree murder in the 2011 death of Seath Jackson, 15. She was found guilty on Sept. 23, 2011, and sentenced to life in prison.

In her motion, Ely, takes issue with her trial counsel's decision to take the case to trial only five months after the murder; failing to dismiss jurors from the panel who gave the appearance they couldn't be unbiased; failing to preserve objections for the appellate record and renew previous objections; and allowing certain incriminating evidence to come before the jury.

Ely argues that these mistakes constitute a violation of her civil rights. The cumulative effect of counsel's errors deprived the defendant of her right to a fair trial, Ely wrote in her motion. She is representing herself on appeal.

She argues that, had her attorney done things differently, perhaps her case's outcome would have been different.

Trial evidence showed Ely aided Wright's attempts to lure Seath to Ely's Summerfield home, where co-defendants Michael Bargo, Justin Soto and Kyle Hooper were. The men were accused of helping beat, shoot and burn his body in a backyard fire pit before placing the ashes in paint buckets and dumping them into a lake at the bottom of a lime rock quarry.

Ely was the first of five teen co-defendants to stand trial. Her attorney did not waive her right to a speedy trial, and therefore the state had to prosecute her within 90 days.

Ely argues that this move left her with a biased jury pool selected from a community still enraged over the highly publicized crime.

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Woman convicted in Seath Jackson murder seeks post-conviction relief

8 candidates running for three seats on Batavia School Board

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BATAVIA Former Batavia High School social studies teacher John Dryden is among eight candidates running for three seats on the Batavia School Board in April.

Monday was the first day for candidates to file for the April 7 consolidated election. They have until Monday to file their nominating petitions.

Because all Batavia school board candidates filed at 8:30 a.m., there will be a lottery at 10 a.m. Friday at the Kane County Clerks Office to determine ballot placement.

Dryden recently retired from Batavia School District 101. He made local and national headlines last year when he instructed his students that they had the Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate themselves before answering an in-class survey about emotional and at-risk behavior.

In addition, Batavia School Board President Cathy Dremel filed to run for re-election, along with board member Melanie Impastato, who was appointed to the board in June 2013 after the resignation of school board member Kathleen Roberts.

Other Batavia School Board candidates include William Bill Gabriel, Ellen Knautz, Christopher Lowe, Michelle Olache and Ron Rechenmacher.

Batavia City Council

In the city of Batavia, Carl Dinwiddie filed a nominating petition for the 1st Ward, and 3rd Ward Alderman Dan Chanzit, 4th Ward Alderman Susan Stark, 5th Ward Alderman Lucy Thelin Atac and 7th Ward Aldermen Dave Brown filed for re-election.

In addition, Michael Russotto and Ron Rechenmacher filed to run in the 6th Ward.

Messenger Library Board in North Aurora

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8 candidates running for three seats on Batavia School Board

Volokh Conspiracy: Reasonable mistake of law can generate reasonable suspicion, Supreme Court holds

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The Supreme Court has handed down Heien v. North Carolina, the Fourth Amendment case I have blogged about a few times on whether the Fourth Amendment is violated when an officer pulls over a car based on a reasonable but mistaken belief that the traffic laws prohibit the drivers conduct. The Court ruled 8-1, per Chief Justice Roberts, that the Fourth Amendment is not violated in such circumstances. Only Justice Sotomayor dissented. The basic reasoning of the case is simple, but it leaves some complications that have some interesting implications for lower courts and for the relationship between Fourth Amendment rights and remedies.

Heres the core of the Chief Justices opinion:

As the text indicates and we have repeatedly affirmed, the ultimate touchstone of the Fourth Amendment is reasonableness. Riley v. California, 573 U. S. ___, ___ (2014) (slip op., at 5) (some internal quotation marks omitted). To be reasonable is not to be perfect, and so the Fourth Amendment allows for some mistakes on the part of government officials, giving them fair leeway for enforcing the law in the communitys protection. Brinegar v. United States, 338 U. S. 160, 176 (1949). . . .

Reasonable suspicion arises from the combination of an officers understanding of the facts and his understanding of the relevant law. The officer may be reasonably mistaken on either ground. Whether the facts turn out to be not what was thought, or the law turns out to be not what was thought, the result is the same: the facts are outside the scope of the law. There is no reason, under the text of the Fourth Amendment or our precedents, why this same result should be acceptable when reached by way of a reasonable mistake of fact, but not when reached by way of a similarly reasonable mistake of law.

The Courts holding raises two major questions. First, how much law does a reasonable police officer know? And second, if a reasonable mistake of law means there was no Fourth Amendment violation, how do we reconcile that with the remedies cases saying that a reasonable mistake of law is a reason why there is no Fourth Amendment remedy? Ill consider each in turn.

(1) How much law does a reasonable police officer know?

If the Fourth Amendment incorporates reasonable mistakes of law, then there must be a standard for how much law a reasonable officer knows. For example, does a reasonable officer just follow the text of the law like a lawyer would? Does he know the major cases interpreting the law? Or does he just know what is taught at the police academy, or maybe what the public thinks the law probably is?

The majority opinion says that the standard is whether it is objectively reasonable for an officer in [the searching officer's] position to think that the conduct violated the law. The opinion explains:

[T]he inquiry is not as forgiving as the one employed in the distinct context of deciding whether an officer is entitled to qualified immunity for a constitutional or statutory violation. Thus, an officer can gain no Fourth Amendment advantage through a sloppy study of the laws he is duty-bound to enforce.

Thats a start, although its still pretty vague. Sloppiness is a relative term. A sloppy study of the law for a lawyer might be a very careful study of the law for a non-lawyer. Whats the reference point to determine sloppiness? The Courts application of the standard at the end of the opinion mostly focuses on the text of the law, and also notes the absence of cases construing the text. So maybe the reasonable officer knows the text and is aware of at least major cases interpreting it? Its hard to say.

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Volokh Conspiracy: Reasonable mistake of law can generate reasonable suspicion, Supreme Court holds

Opinion analysis: Reasonable mistakes of law by police do not violate the Fourth Amendment

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The exercise of police discretion to stop people on the street is front and center in todays headlines. In this case, a North Carolina policeman stopped Heiens car because it had a brake light that did not work. During the stop, Heien consented to a search of the car, which yielded cocaine in a duffle bag and Heiens ultimate conviction for attempted drug trafficking. On appeal, the North Carolina appellate courts surprisingly ruled that the outdated state vehicle code required only one working brake light (a stop lamp, in the words of the statute); therefore, there had been no violation of law that would permit the stop. The officer made no error about the facts; but he had been mistaken about the meaning of the law. However, the North Carolina Supreme Court ruled, the officers mistake about this law was reasonable, and for that reason the Fourth Amendment right to be secure from unreasonable seizures was not violated. This mornings opinion in Heien v. North Carolina affirms that holding.

Chief Justice Roberts announcing the opinion. (Art Lien)

The constitutional law of reasonableness The vague word unreasonable in the Fourth Amendment is a lawyers playground, and questions about what sort of circumstances constitutionally permit law enforcement seizures have thus plagued the federal courts since the Fourth Amendment was adopted. In 1813, Chief Justice John Marshall wrote that the constitutional standard is circumstances which warrant suspicion a relatively unspecific and therefore unhelpful standard. But its unhelpfulness flows from the generality of the amendment itself. It is not judge-made policy; it is constitutional text.

Over the years the Court has honed its thinking about what constitutes probable cause to stop or search (for example, Illinois v. Gates in 1983), and in Terry v. Ohio in 1968 the Court famously ruled that even brief stops on the street require at least specific and articulable reasonable suspicion, not just hunches. The Court has subsequently made clear that even when police are mistaken about facts, their stops do not violate the Constitution if their mistakes are reasonable.

Todays opinion

Today, in an opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts, a majority of eight Justices affirmed that there is no reason why this same result should not apply when reached by way of a similarly reasonable mistake of law. The Court conceded and Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the lone dissenter, agreed that no precedent of the Court has expressly answered this reasonable mistake of law question (scarcely a peep). The Court noted, however, that as early as 1809, the Supreme Court ruled that a reasonable mistake of law about probable cause permitted a customs seizure under a federal statute. By 1860, this general principle had been adopted in numerous [lower court] cases. While acknowledging that the statutory customs cases were not directly on point for the constitutional question, the Court also explained that no decision of this Court in the two centuries since has undermined that understanding that reasonable mistakes of law can excuse governmental action. In fact, the Court explained that in more recent cases, such as Michigan v. DeFillippo, it had found no Fourth Amendment violation even when governmental searches were based on state statutes later declared unconstitutional. (Justice Sotomayor strongly disagreed with this reading.)

Arguing for Heien, attorney Jeffrey Fisher had struggle[d] to limit the Courts ruling solely [to] the exclusionary rule that is, the remedy in lieu of a more general ruling about the right (that is, whether the officers stop was an unreasonable violation of the amendment). This was likely an attempt to preserve some relief for Heien on remand, because North Carolina purportedly has not adopted a good faith exception to the exclusionary rule. But there will be no remand for further proceedings under todays ruling, which flatly affirmed the state courts ruling. The Court said that DeFillippo was plainly a decision about the meaning of probable cause, and thus its holding regarding a reasonable mistake of law cannot be transform[ed] into an exclusionary rule decision. So in this case, because the officers mistake about the meaning of North Carolinas vehicle code was reasonable, there was no violation of the Fourth Amendment in the first place.

(By contrast, the Court also noted that an individual officers mistaken view, no matter how reasonable, that he has complied with the Fourth Amendment, does not undermine a reviewing courts ultimate conclusion that governmental actions have violated the Fourth Amendment even though it might affect the remedy. This significant reservation regarding the scope of the Courts ruling is emphasized in footnote 1 of Justice Elena Kagans concurring opinion, and should not be overlooked.)

The majoritys limitations, and two separate opinions

Importantly, particularly in light of recent controversies, the Court observed that the standard of reasonableness for mistakes of law is not as forgiving as some might have it. An officers legal error must be objectively reasonable, and not based on a particular officers subjective understanding or on a sloppy study of the laws he is duty-bound to enforce. Thus, the Court suggested, an officer must learn[] the law, and I would expect that the familiar standard of a reasonably well-trained officer will be rigorously applied by lower courts when confronted with Heien errors in the future.

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Opinion analysis: Reasonable mistakes of law by police do not violate the Fourth Amendment

Police Mistakes Can Lead to Good Arrests, Court Says

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The Supreme Court ruled Monday that a police officer's mistaken idea of the law doesn't make an arrest and a search invalid, as long as the officer's understanding of the law was reasonable. The case evolved from a traffic stop in 2009, in which Nicholas Heien was pulled over on Interstate 77 in North Carolina by a county sheriff's deputy because one of his brake lights was out. After getting permission to search the car, the deputy found a baggie of cocaine, and Heien was charged with drug trafficking.

But it turned out North Carolina law did not require cars to have two brake lights. The state law said they must have "a" stop lamp on the rear and elsewhere referred to "the" stop lamp, meaning the deputy was apparently wrong about the law. Heien's lawyer backed by civil liberties groups said if a law wasn't being broken, there was no authority to arrest him or conduct a search. But by a 8-1 vote, the Supreme Court said the arrest and the search were valid, even if the officer was wrong about the law. The Fourth Amendment bars "unreasonable" searches and seizures, the court said. "To be reasonable is not to be perfect, and so the Fourth Amendment allows for some mistakes on the part of government officials," said the opinion, written by Chief Justice John Roberts.

The lone dissenter, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, said an officer's mistake about the law, no matter how reasonable, "cannot support the individualized suspicion necessary" to justify an arrest. The nation's courts were sharply divided on this issue, though most said if an officer is wrong, the arrest doesn't count.

Supreme Court opinion: Heien vs. North Carolina

Pete Williams

First published December 15 2014, 8:18 AM

Excerpt from:

Police Mistakes Can Lead to Good Arrests, Court Says

Gavin Seim sponsors I-594, Second Amendment Rally in Olympia, Washington. Lawlessness Ensues! – Video

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Gavin Seim sponsors I-594, Second Amendment Rally in Olympia, Washington. Lawlessness Ensues!
On December 13th, 2014, about a thousand 2nd Amendment and Freedom Advocates converged on the Washington State Capitol Grounds to protest the useless and impotent legislation of Initiative...

By: Rogue Reflections

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Gavin Seim sponsors I-594, Second Amendment Rally in Olympia, Washington. Lawlessness Ensues! - Video

Gun nuts racial duplicity: How Ferguson and Garner undermined their Second Amendment crusade

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Gun extremists, whose grasp of constitutional law and American history is typically as firm as their grasp on empathy and decency, have been telling us for some time that a well-armed populace is necessary to keep tyranny at bay. The recent announcements that white police officers would not face trial for shooting unarmed black men would seem to provide a good opportunity for these anti-oppression patriots to protest governmental abuse.

Sure, armed white private citizens have been conspicuously absent from the struggle against actual governmental oppression in U.S. history Native American genocide, Jim Crow, womens subjugation, Japanese internment camps but things might be different this time, right?

After all, Open Carry Texas recently planned to educate the black residents of Houstons Fifth Ward about their gun rights by marching with semiautomatic rifles and a bullwhip through their residential streets, and gun rights activists frequently inform us that their struggle for guns everywhere is just like the struggle for black civil rights, because endangering the public with loaded firearms is, apparently, just like not being white.

So how did gun extremists react to the news that Darren Wilson would not face trial for killing an unarmed fellow citizen? Lets first turn to CJ Grisham, the head of Open Carry Texas whose Facebook profile photo shows him being arrested after he baited the police into a confrontation over a toy gun at the Texas Capitol, and who recently opined that three cop cars at the mall parking lot on Black Friday shows that America is a police state.

Racists will most likely begin rioting, wrote Grisham after the grand jury announcement. This is one of those instances I would stand in arms at the side of the police.

Meanwhile, Kory Watkins, Grishams fedora-sporting protg and head of Open Carry Tarrant County, marked the occasion of the Ferguson announcement by going cop-blocking, his new, crowd-funded freedumb hobby in which he monitors a police scanner, then shows up to pester the police with a camera and his gun, for which, notably, the police have never shot him. On the night of the Ferguson announcement Watkins and his well-regulated militia took to the streets of Arlington to warn misbehaving drivers of speed traps. Then, on his way home from fighting the oppression of traffic laws, Watkins was hit by a drunk driver and his car was totaled. Although he longs for a libertarian utopia in which all policing is performed by vigilantes, he called the police anyway and was slapped with a $300 ticket. I have no DL, he explained to his groupies. I dont ask permission to drive a car I paid for on a road I paid for, he said, before his acolytes opened a charity page to pay for his car.

Some hatriots actually showed up at protests around the country with guns predictably, they were there to menace protesters rather than to stand in solidarity against governmental oppression. Jumping at the possibility of hunting black people, Oath Keepers went to St. Louis and stood on rooftops threatening to shoot looters. In Dallas, the armed open carry group Come and Take It stalked protesters as they marched against the non-indictment, claiming to be protecting private property against riots, despite the fact that the marchers were peaceful and that nobody gave Come and Take It the legal authority to use lethal force to protect strangers property. This didnt stop right-wing media like Intellihub from claiming that the vigilantes prevented a looting free-for-all and race war on the streets of Dallas.

Other guns-everywhere patriots took to social media to post racist memes, swapping photos of monkeys swarming cars, doctored photos of Mike Browns body, and cops dispersing a crowd by dropping job applications on them generally relishing the fact that an armed agent of the government had gotten away with killing someone, and that a militarized police force was tear-gassing their fellow citizens. When a video showing a car barreling through nonviolent protesters went viral, liberty lovers in gun rights groups responded predictably: FUCK THEM!

I LOVE IT! FUCKING WORTHLESS MUNKEES wrote a gun extremist whose profile photo is a skull and whose cover photo is a picture of the baby Jesus. I was hoping youd see the windshield get holes from the inside out, commented the secret groups admin, who has aspirations to be a cop. Whats the difference between a deer in the road and black rioters? Nothing, you hit the gas for both, commented another. Later a news story broke about a pregnant black woman who was a passenger in a car in St. Louis and lost an eye when police shot her in the face with a beanbag. Commenters who regularly expose their children to guns said, Dont feel for the bitch at all. Call CPS endangerment of a child and Her pregnant ass should have been at home.

Ferguson provides us with yet more evidence that what gun extremists mean by freedom is really the freedom to insist on the special social and economic supremacy of armed white men its not about fighting oppression, its about violently intimidating a nation with changing demographics into recognizing the continued special status of white conservative men. When gun extremists see Wilson and Brown, they dont care about oppression because they dont see themselves as the oppressed party. They identify with the white man with the gun, because, for them, now as always, white and might make right.

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Gun nuts racial duplicity: How Ferguson and Garner undermined their Second Amendment crusade

Los Angeles Court Says Condom-less Sex Isnt Protected Free Speech

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by Maurice Bobb 2 hours ago

The adult entertainment industry has been arguing against a law that would require porn actors to wear condoms, but they suffered another setback when the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in Los Angeles rejected their First Amendment argument on Monday (Dec. 15).

Simply put, the adult entertainment industrys position revolves around the idea that condomless sex is part of their right to free speech. Vivid Entertainment and the other plaintiffs in the suit were seeking relief from the 2012 law (Measure B), which was voter-initiated, in response to the widespread transmission of sexually transmitted diseases among porn industry workers.

While the entertainment industry is indeed content-based though, the 9th Circuit ruled that speech that is sexual or pornographic in nature earns an exception to free speech when the primary motivation behind the regulation is to prevent secondary effects like STDs, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Vivid also argued that condomless sex onscreen is essential because it projects a particular fantasy for viewers, one where sex doesnt have real-life consequences like disease or pregnancy.

But ninth Circuit Judge Susan Graber saw the safe-sex precaution a different way, and explained in part in the ruling:

To determine whether conduct is protected by the First Amendment, we ask not only whether someone intended to convey a particular message through that conduct, but also whether there is a great likelihood that the message would be understood by those who viewed it. Here, we agree with the district court that, whatever unique message Plaintiffs might intend to convey by depicting condomless sex, it is unlikely that viewers of adult films will understand that message. So condomless sex is not the relevant expression for First Amendment purposes; instead, the relevant expression is more generally the adult films erotic message.

The federal courts decision means that the law requiring porn actors wear condoms during their onscreen expressions doesnt conflict with their First Amendment rights.

Outside of the legal ramifications of the ruling and the effect it will have on the porn industrys fanbase, the question we have to admit to wondering about is: Did the justices have to actually watch porn to rule on this matter?

What do you think? Should condomless sex be protected under the First Amendment?

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Los Angeles Court Says Condom-less Sex Isnt Protected Free Speech

Sonys Legal Threats in Hacking Scandal Face First Amendment Hurdle

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Would Sony Pictures Entertainment have a legal basis to stop news media from publishing stories about company secrets unearthed in the giant hacking scandal?

As WSJ reported, Sonys lawyer, David Boies, sent a letter Sunday to media outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and Bloomberg News, warning them not to publish or use anything discovered in the trove of internal files stolen in last months Sony cyberattack and leaked online.

The effort by Sony to keep a lid on the hacked documents has renewed First Amendment questions over the legality of publishing information stolen by hackers. Legal experts say Sony and Mr. Boies probably wouldnt get very far in court if the company followed through with a lawsuit.

It would be very hard for Sony to block media outlets from publishing most anything thats in the public interest, University of Minnesota Law School professor William McGeveran, who specializes in information law and data privacy, told Law Blog. And courts, he said, are quite deferential to the established media and its judgment about whats newsworthy.

UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh, over at the Washington Posts Volokh Conspiracy blog, also says that Sony most likely wouldnt have a legal leg to stand on.Thats true, he said, at least as to most of the information that media outlets would want to publish.

He and Mr. McGeveran point to two key legal precedents.

The first is Bartnicki v. Vopper, a Supreme Court case from 2001. The high court ruled 6-3 in favor of a radio broadcaster that aired a cellphone conversation between a teachers union president and a top union negotiator that someone else had recorded illegally. In this situation, in which the station played no part in the illegal interception, First Amendment interests trumped privacy concerns.

A strangers illegal conduct does not suffice to remove the First Amendment shield from speech about a matter of public concern, wrote then-Justice John Paul Stevens for the majority.

The other case is a U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruling from 1969 involving a lawsuit filed by then-U.S. Sen. Thomas J. Dodd against two investigative reporters, Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson, over articles they published based on leaked documents that ex-staffers had purloined from the Connecticut lawmakers office.

When information is on a matter of public concern, the court held, the fact that it was illegally leaked doesnt make publishing it an invasion of privacy, writes Mr. Volokh, summing up the decision.

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Sonys Legal Threats in Hacking Scandal Face First Amendment Hurdle

Tech companies vs. net neutrality, Microsoft accepts Bitcoin, Sony DDoS ‘s torrent sites – Video

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Tech companies vs. net neutrality, Microsoft accepts Bitcoin, Sony DDoS #39;s torrent sites
Over 60 companies write a letter to the FCC against reclassifying the Internet as a utility; Microsoft now accepts Bitcoin; Sony is using DDoS attacks to dis...

By: NCIXcom

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Tech companies vs. net neutrality, Microsoft accepts Bitcoin, Sony DDoS 's torrent sites - Video

The Bitcoin Group #60 — Pirate Bay Still Down – The CIA Tortures – Hong Kong – Reddit Bitcoin Tip? – Video

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The Bitcoin Group #60 -- Pirate Bay Still Down - The CIA Tortures - Hong Kong - Reddit Bitcoin Tip?
THIS WEEK: ---------------------------- THE PIRATE BAY HAS NOT BEEN RESURRECTED YET http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-has-not-been-resurrected-yet-141...

By: World Crypto Network

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The Bitcoin Group #60 -- Pirate Bay Still Down - The CIA Tortures - Hong Kong - Reddit Bitcoin Tip? - Video

The Bitcoin Group #50 – 76 Million Hacked – FBI Silk Road Evidence? – Butterfly Labs – US Military – Video

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The Bitcoin Group #50 - 76 Million Hacked - FBI Silk Road Evidence? - Butterfly Labs - US Military
THIS WEEK: ---------------------------- Issue 1 -- Cyberattack Against JPMorgan Chase Affects 76 Million Households http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/10/02/jpmorgan-discovers-further-cyber-security...

By: thebitcoingroup

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The Bitcoin Group #50 - 76 Million Hacked - FBI Silk Road Evidence? - Butterfly Labs - US Military - Video