Mr. Plum in the observatory with the … Little Buddy?
Well, this is chilling. We’ve heard a lot recently about the privacy implications of warrantless wire tapping. But this is the first we’ve heard of a murder allegedly committed with the help of a GPS device designed to help parents keep track of their children.
A man is currently facing trial for allegedly shooting his wife’s lover after following her with a Little Buddy GPS device.
And to think, normal people feel bad after occasionally creeping around an ex’s Facebook profile….
* Is it more amusing that law students at the University of Georgia adopted a “Law Hawk” as an unofficial mascot, or that the student newspaper article about it reads like something out of The Onion? You decide. [Red and Black]
* Ogletree Deakins takes Manhattan (and some lawyers from Seyfarth Shaw). [New York Law Journal]
* OK, Marines lawyers. No more excuses, it’s time to suit wire up. Get your tech on, thousands of your jobs may depend on it. [Nightly Business Review]
* A North Carolina judge blocked a death sentence based on racial bias. A lot of people say that everyone’s a little bit racist, but let’s work out our prejudices in the Octagon, not the courtroom, okay? [New York Times]
* In an interview with the UVA Law student newspaper, Lat discusses blogging v. journalism, why you shouldn’t be stupid, and the state of legal education. [Virginia Law Weekly]
* Are you still trying to make sense of the conflicting opinions in United States v. Jones, the GPS tracking case recently decided by the Supreme Court? Professor Barry Friedman has this helpful round-up. [New York Times]
The Supreme Court just handed down a unanimous opinion ruling in one of the most closely watched cases of the year. All the justices agreed on the result, but diverged significantly in reasoning.
This morning, the court issued its decision in United States v. Jones. Police in Washington, D.C. placed a GPS tracking device on the car of Antoine Jones, a nightclub owner, without obtaining a warrant. The GPS device helped law enforcement link Jones to a house used to store drugs and money. He was eventually convicted and sentenced to life in prison. An appeals court later overturned his conviction.
The central issue in Jones was whether attaching a GPS device to a car (i.e., allowing law enforcement 24/7 access to a person’s movements), without obtaining a warrant first, violated the Fourth Amendment.
The case has been heralded as one of the most important privacy cases in recent memory. Wired’s Threat Level blog said Jones “is arguably the biggest Fourth Amendment case in the computer age.” Editor emerita Kashmir Hill attended oral arguments for the case back in November.
What did the justices say? The ruling might surprise you…
“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.
When I come across internet slideshows with titles like “8 Coolest Things Ever” or “Top 10 Reasons Why Lady Gaga Is a Man” or “Yale Law School’s 7 Most Disgraceful Graduates,” I think, “Ugh, not more link bait. I already spend half my time on this trash.” But like everyone else, I click it anyway, feel unsurprisingly disappointed, and then wish for the last 45 seconds of my life back.
When someone sent me “6 Ways Your Car Can Spy on You,” I had little-to-no expectations. But it turned out the little slideshow actually had a few tasty morsels of knowledge.
Keep reading to learn how simply paying bridge tolls keeps you on the grid, and how police can assign liability based on an unexpected similarity between airplanes and your Honda Civic….
Next year, the Supreme Court will decide whether it’s okay for law enforcement to put a GPS tracking device on someone’s car without a warrant. Some courts say yes and some courts say no. If it’s not the po-po tracking you, though, but a spouse who suspects you might be cheating, a New Jersey court says, “Go for it.”
A New Jersey woman hired a private investigator to follow her husband to find out if he was straying. Her husband, Kenneth Villanova, a Gloucester County sheriff’s officer, kept managing to lose the investigator [*insert high-speed car chases here*]. So the investigator, Richard Leonard, advised his client to put a tracking device in her husband’s car, reports the Star-Ledger. She put it in the glove compartment of their jointly-owned GMC Yukon.
Busted: Within two weeks, it revealed Villanova’s car sitting in the driveway of a woman who was not his wife. Oh, the bittersweet pleasure of catching a partner in the act.
Villanova was not pleased. He sued his wife and Leonard for invasion of privacy and for causing him “substantial and permanent emotional distress.” My married colleague Matt Herper has (jokingly) remarked to me before that there is no privacy in marriage. Asked to clarify, Herper says: “There’s no presumption of privacy, or right to it. If invading a spouse’s privacy is an offense, it’s probably a smaller one than expecting to keep very many secrets.”
The New Jersey appellate judges came to the same conclusion, but with slightly different reasoning…
* Apple was hit with a lawsuit by parents angry that their credit cards were being used by their stupid kids to buy dumb swag in iPhone games. [Time]
* An Italian fortune, an American woman, and the suggestion that paternity sometimes cannot be forcefully established by the simple query “Who dat is?” [New York Times]
* When police use GPS to lojack hoes that drive Volvos and Rodeos, can they do it without a warrant? [WSJ Law Blog]
* An article about the ABA Commission on Ethics 20/20, or something like that. I’m not sure as I dozed off halfway through, like I regularly did during Ethics class in law school. [ABA Journal]
Eric Holder
* This post details various sports goings-on, like the possible move of the Sacramento Kings and former linebacker and all-around gentleman Bill Romanowski. Because Lat demands all the sports coverage we can find. [Am Law Daily]
* A possible explanation for Geoffrey Fieger’s outstanding website content. Smoking only the finest sticky icky. [Chicago Tribune]
* Eric Holder failed to pay taxes on his dead mother’s house. Until he did. Then the Post ran a story about when he didn’t. After he did. Super cool story, Post. [New York Post]
A college graduate without student loan debt is akin to reading a kind quote about Kim Kardashian in a tabloid—it’s rare.
In the past eight years, student loan debt has nearly tripled to a whopping $1.1 trillion, and in the past 10 years, the percentage of 25-year-olds with such debt has risen from 25% to 43%
It’s gotten so bad, in fact, that New York Fed economists warned last month that the burden of student debt could stilt consumer spending by twentysomethings, as well as further hamper the recovery of the housing market and economy.
To get a better idea of what massive student loan debt (we’re talking over $100,000 massive) looks like, we talked to an attorney who graduated with a large student loan debt. We also consulted LearnVest Planning Services CFP® Katie Brewer to see just how their repayment plans stack up.
S. Fischer, 36, Attorney Graduated: 2001
How Much I Borrowed: $100,000
What I Still Owe: $45,000
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Ed. note: The Asia Chronicles column is authored by Kinney Recruiting. Kinney has made more placements of U.S. associates, counsels and partners in Asia than any other recruiting firm in each of the past six years. You can reach them by email: asia@kinneyrecruiting.com.
Deal flow has clearly picked recently up for most US associates, counsels and partners in Hong Kong/China and Singapore. We are on the phone with a lot of these folks on a daily basis, many of whom we have known for years. Further, the head of our Asia team, Evan Jowers, and Kinney’s founder and president, Robert Kinney, frequently meet in person with leading US partners in Asia to assess their needs and keep on top of the inside scoop at as many firms as possible. The need for legal recruiting help in Asia from experienced recruiters appears to be live and well. In March, Evan and Robert were in Beijing at such meetings, in April, Evan was in Hong Kong, and for half of June Evan will be in Shanghai and Hong Kong. Thus its pretty easy for us to tell when there has been an across-the-market pick up in capital markets and corporate work.
On an average day in Asia when Evan and Robert visit firms, they typically have 5 to 9 meetings a day, mostly with US partners in the market. The reason they have these meetings is not simply because Kinney makes a lot of US attorney placements in Asia and that a particular firm may have openings; instead these are just visits with friends. After years of working together as business partners, the folks at Kinney are actually these peoples’ friends. The firms Kinney work closely with in Asia (which is just about every law firm – call us if you want to know the one firm in the world we will never place anyone with again, ever, and why) look forward to the visits, or at least act like they do. After seven years in the market, many of the client partners are former associate candidates. Also, these US partners see Kinney as a very good source of market information as well, because they know how deep their contacts are in the market and how frequently they are speaking to counterparts at peer firms.
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