Kashmir Hill

I'm an editor emeritus at Above the Law. I am still a contributor to ATL, but now spend my days at Forbes writing about privacy, technology and the law at The Not-So Private Parts. Follow me on Twitter or friend me on Facebook.

Posts by Kashmir Hill

Courtship Connection SF: You Had Me At ‘Attractive’

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Based on the initial round of Courtship Connection dates in San Francisco, it seems the city has as much chemistry as it does technology start-ups. I hate to break it to non-Californians: not only do those on the Best Coast have great weather, but dating there seems to be a breeze.

That’s based just on the first two lawyer couples I sent out. I hope am sure San Francisco will yield some disasters yet.

I paired up our first set of twenty-somethings based on equal levels of hotness in Facebook photos, and numerous albums that involved traveling and outdoor activities.

Our “lively snowboarder” lady lawyer said she was looking for someone “quiet-er, anti-douchebag, witty, preferably handsome.” Given the opportunity to bed any legal type, living or dead, fictional or real, she chose Atticus Finch, “played by Gregory Peck, natch.” Her date says he’d be a “professor” if he weren’t a corporate lawyer. That seemed Finch-level noble. Professor Biglaw self-described as “witty” — which is what Lady Snowboard is seeking — and “sarcastic, relaxed, well-traveled.” Given the chance to bed a famous legal character, he chose “Marisa Tomei in My Cousin Vinny.” Technically, I think that means he prefers to date a non-lawyer, but things seemed to work out regardless…

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Belvedere ‘Date Rape’ Model Won’t Let Ad Go Down Smoothly

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Belvedere Vodka is still suffering a hangover from the rapey ad it broadcast on its Twitter and Facebook feeds last month. Alicyn Packard, the terrified-looking woman who refuses in the ad to “go down smoothly” on an obliviously-happy bro, has filed a lawsuit in L.A. Superior Court against Belvedere parent company Moet Hennessy USA, reports KTLA. She claims emotional distress after the company used her image without her consent in “an ad that’s so offensive to so many.” (And yet so funny to so many others.)

The ad was up on Twitter and Facebook for only an hour before someone came to his or her (let’s be honest, it was probably “his”) senses and deleted it. But as with heavy drinking, it only takes an hour to make an embarrassing spectacle of yourself….

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Courtship Connection: Moving West

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Happy Valentine’s Day to you if you have a date lined up tonight! For the rest of you, Happy Staying-In-To-Watch-A-Movie-And-Drink-With-Your-Single-Friends Day. Last year, two Washington lawyers actually let me set them up on a V-Day date. This year, with my pool of Chicago candidates, I didn’t bother. I wouldn’t wish the boring Chicago dating scene on my worst enemy. Playing matchmaker and condemning more lonely souls to a yawn-inducing evening is as cruel as running a dog-fighting ring. At least the latter leads to a little biting and scratched backs for the participants.

So Courtship Connection is moving on and heading West. Hey San Francisco, do you have any single types willing to put their love lives into ATL’s not-so-capable hands? Fill out our survey! I will try to send you out on a blind date with a seemingly-compatible fellow legal type. You will dish the dirt afterwards. I will write about it, keeping you anonymous. And ATL commenters will provide their sincere, caring, and helpful commentary.

While waiting for the California girls and boys to jump into our dating pool, I will share with you the final Chicago date. Like the others, it did not go well. Why? Someone’s inferiority complex killed the mood….

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Law Student of the Day: Max Schrems

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Austrian law student and founder of the websit...

Max Schrems, a 24-year-old law student from Austria, has become one of Facebook's fiercest critics.

While most law students are shaking off the winter break and settling back in for the second semester, Max Schrems is busy doing his best to bring Facebook to its knees.

Last year, the 24-year-old University of Vienna law student spent a semester abroad at Santa Clara University in Silicon Valley. His privacy law professor there, Dorothy Glancy, invited a privacy lawyer from Facebook to be eaten alive by speak to the class. Schrems was shocked by the lawyer’s limited grasp of the severity of European data protection laws, and decided to write his final paper for the class on how Facebook was flunking privacy in Europe.

In the course of his research, he discovered that Facebook’s dossiers on individual users are hundreds of pages long, and include information users thought had been deleted. When he returned to Austria last summer, he formed an activist group called Europe v. Facebook (to legitimize his campaign and make it seem like more than just one law student), filed dozens of complaints in Europe about Facebook’s data practices, and publicized his findings online, leading to widespread media attention, a probe by a European privacy regulator, and questions from Congress.

On Monday, Facebook’s European director of policy (and former MP) Richard Allan and another California-based Facebook exec flew to Vienna to meet with Schrems for a whopping six hours to discuss his concerns.

Continue reading at Forbes.com….

Perkins Coie Gets E-Male; Does This Qualify as a Legal Response?

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Just when you thought “revenge porn” couldn’t get worse, IsAnyoneUp came along. In addition to posting user-submitted nude photos — often sent in by someone’s angry ex — the site’s proprietor, Hunter Moore, includes a screenshot of the amateur porn star’s Facebook profile page, so that it’s clear exactly who the person is, where they live (and work), and how to contact him or her. It’s not the only porn website where those featured get “poked,” but the only one where visitors get to do the poking.

Those featured on the site have struggled to get their photos taken down — the most successful legal approach so far has been to claim copyright and issue a DMCA takedown notice. Now Facebook is bringing its legal power to bear. Facebook had its lawyers at Perkins Coie send the site a cease-and-desist notice, saying Moore was violating Facebook’s terms of service by harassing users and posting their content without their consent. Moore immediately posted a copy of the letter to his NSFW site, and was excited to send Perkins lawyer Joseph Cutler a response.

“I replied with a picture of my dick,” he told Gawker. Classy.

Continue reading at Forbes.com….

SCOTUS Not Psyched About Idea Of Government Secretly Putting GPS Trackers On Their Cars

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WASHINGTON - OCTOBER 08: U.S. Supreme Court m...

“If you win this case, there is nothing to prevent the police or government from monitoring 24 hours a day the public movement of every citizen of the United States,” said Justice Breyer.

The Supreme Court justices were decked out in their usual black robes today for U.S. vs Jones [pdf], a case involving the question of whether police need a warrant to attach a GPS tracker to someone’s car. But given their paranoia about possible technology-enabled government intrusions on privacy, it might not have been surprising if they had also been wearing tin foil hats.

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Courtship Connection: If At First You Don’t Succeed, Try to Get Her Wasted

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"My date got leid," says Sexy Screech.

Since the dates in D.C. have been a little more exciting than those in Chicago, I decided to spoil you with one last set-up in the nation’s capital. I brought in a pinch hitter for this one. After a “disarmingly feisty and unabashedly vivacious” female lawyer shot down the frat boy I set her up with, she asked to be set up with someone more her type, “aka really hot, quirky, and a commitment-phobic womanizer.” Pinch Hitter emailed me, saying he fit the profile.

Feist-Master said she was up for round two, but then disappeared off of the face of the earth email. So I decided to pull a switcheroo, pairing the quirky commitment-phobe with another of the many single female lawyers in D.C. I chose a hot, young T-14 grad at a Biglaw firm, who self-described as “optimistic, spontaneous, and active,” and said she would be a journalist if not a lawyer. The two legal eagles both sounded like thrill-seekers to me, so I sent them to The Russia House after work on a Friday and hoped for an epic night.

Epicness ensued. This is the kind of first date story that Wannabe Lara Logan will be able to milk for years…

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Actress To IMDb: ‘I’m Too Old For This Sh*%’

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It’s said that it’s rude to ask a woman her age. In fact, it’s only rude to ask women 30 and over about their digits. It’s far worse, however, to ask a woman with decades under her belt for her age and then to publish it for the world to see. An actress in Texas says it wasn’t just rude but financially costly for her when the movie database IMDB publicized her nearly over-the-hill age in 2008. Cue, Robert Murtaugh.

The Hollywood Reporter has a copy of the actress’s complaint against Amazon.com, which owns the Internet Movie Database, in which she alleges that everyone’s favorite website for figuring out who-that-guy-in-that-one-movie-was-and-what-was-that-other-movie-he-was-in-with-that-girl screwed her over after she signed up for a Pro IMDb account. After entering credit card information and personal details, including her birthdate, to start the account, her age all of a sudden appeared on her public profile page, “revealing to the public that Plaintiff is many years older than she looks,” according to her humble complaint.

Age isn’t just a number, says her counsel, “Internet lawyer” John Dozier, but a $1,075,000 number…

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Courtship Connection: Please Try To Be Less Boring

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At this point in the Courtship Connection Chicago series, I’m shocked that Chicago made it to the Final Four for coolest city for lawyers. I have to assume that those voting weren’t taking the dating scene into consideration. Perhaps Above the Law could start a fund to transplant Big League from D.C. to Chicago, so that she could train her colleagues in how to have an exciting first date. (Step 1: Drink rye whiskey. Step 2: Visit a strip club.) My Chicago daters keep going on “pleasant” dates with “good conversation.” Descriptors like “nice guy” abound in their write-ups. Why do all have to be so darn… Midwestern?

Inspired by ExRated.co, moving forward, I’m going to force nicely ask lawyers in the Windy City to rate their dates (out of five stars), and list their legal eagle match’s best and worst qualities. Should the date not lead to a bedding, it can at least lead to a bettering.

The latest Chicago pairing involved two lawyers in their 20s. Asked why he agreed to be set up by a random legal blogger, our male lawyer, who described himself as “kinetic, adventurous, and faux-angsty,” said, “regardless of the outcome, it’ll probably be a good story, which is generally the important thing.” He asked to be set up with someone “outgoing and hilarious.” Our female lawyer volunteered that she has “HUGE brains.” That seemed like a decent match.

It wasn’t. Emo Lawyer thinks it’s because Mars Attacks didn’t drink enough. Meanwhile, she explained why: she couldn’t stand a second round with him….

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Courtship Connections: Out Of His League

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Happy Tuesday, Above the Law readers. I hope you had a lovely weekend, spent staring deeply into someone’s eyes over a candlelight dinner, or rubbing up against a hard-bodied young thing on a dance floor, or fighting the cold by cuddling on the couch, or — if you live in Florida — doing all those things and more with your favorite barnyard animal for the very last time (legally).

If you had a romance-free weekend, do not despair. Dating sucks sometimes — especially when it’s a date set up by a legal blogger with no particular aptitude for matchmaking. Last week, I thought I had actually done a decent job. I sent two Washington, D.C. lawyers out to Eighteenth Street Lounge on a Thursday night. Halfway through the date, the dude sent me an email, “Going really well so far.”

“I finally have one that’s going well,” I enthused to my boyfriend. “Doubtful,” he responded. “If he’s excited enough to send a mid-date email, that probably means you set him up with someone who’s totally out of his league.”

I should mention that one of the things that I like in a partner is their being slightly more perceptive than me….

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Courtship Connection Chitown: Hush, Puppies

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Sadly, the percentage of Courtship Connection blind dates that lead to second dates is far lower than the percentage of ladies at One First Street, though it’s higher than the ratio of Supreme females to Supreme males dating back to the Court’s beginnings. Barely.

One of the couplings that did beat the odds included two New York lawyers paired because of their shared love of My Cousin Vinny. Seeing that two Chicago early-twenty-somethings had named Vincent Gambini as their fave legal fictional character, I sent these two yutes out on a date, hoping to replicate that success.

She self-described as a “cute fun firecracker” looking for a “hilarious (like really ridiculously funny), goal-oriented, and tall” legal dude. He said he was a “gunner w/sense of humor” whose type is “good-looking, smart, intense but funny.”

Firecrackers + gunners should make for a fiery night, right?

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Courtship Connection Chitown: Nothing To Feel Guilty About

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Courtship Connection blew into the Windy City on the tail end of the summer. (You can still sign up here, single Chicagoans.) This week marks the city’s first two Courtship dates. One couple will go out tonight (good luck!). I’m hoping they have a better time than the two lawyers who met each other in front of a closed restaurant on Monday night.

The two Biglaw associates said there wasn’t “a spark.” Instead of a spark, there was a big height difference. It’s hard out there for the tall lady lawyers….

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