Privacy

Digital Revenge Is Best Served Viral (Naked Photos Help)

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Social media savvy teen causes national controversy in Australia

‘Tis the season for… lover’s revenge via the Internet. Last week, Elie brought you the tale of a cuckolded man who filmed his wife making out with a fellow SMU Law student (and intervened to throw a weak punch). Then the husband posted the sad, sordid video to YouTube. Because shame makes the hurt go away.

Meanwhile, over in the land down under, a 17-year-old in Melbourne is using her social network savvy to punish a couple of Australian football players who allegedly did her wrong. Kim Duthie claims to have scored with two of the players (and to have had a miscarriage as a result). Feeling used and abused, she’s now using all the digital tools at her disposal — Facebook, YouTube, Formspring, and Twitter — to broadcast her story, as well as a handful of naked photos of the St. Kilda football players. This girl makes Karen Owen look like a saint.

And apparently she didn’t think through the legal implications of putting photos of the football players’ “lands down under” up on her Facebook page…

Read on at Forbes.com.

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Sex Pill Peddler Makes It Hard for the Po-Po to Peep at Your Email

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Why is Bob smiling? Because police now need a warrant to check his email (joke stolen from Julian Sanchez).

Thanks to a huge decision out of the Sixth Circuit, your email and the Fourth Amendment just got better acquainted. The police need to get a warrant to take a peek at the contents of someone’s inbox, writes Judge Danny Boggs — once rumored to be on the SCOTUS shortlist — in the court’s opinion (PDF, via a thrilled EFF).

The court says that the 1986 Stored Communications Act, which grants law enforcement access to email older than 180 days old with a simple subpoena or court order, is unconstitutional, since it enables the police to conduct unreasonable searches.

“This is a very big deal,” writes law professor Paul Ohm. “[T]his is the opinion privacy activists and many legal scholars, myself included, have been waiting and calling for, for more than a decade. It may someday be seen as a watershed moment in the extension of our Constitutional rights to the Internet.”

The case that led to the decision dealt with extensions of a different variety. The defendant that challenged the po-po’s warrantless search of his email is Steven Warshak, the mastermind behind Enzyte, a questionable herbal supplement purported to increase the size of a man’s erection. Sometimes, new constitutional protections pop out of the strangest places…

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Lawsuit of the Day: YouPorn Sued for Sniffing its Users

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YouPorn logo

Image via Wikipedia

I’m not overly familiar with the popular porn spots around the Internetz, but I understand that a good number of people are big fans of the homegrown selections that can be found on YouPorn – essentially YouTube for naked, lascivious types. The site is currently the 72nd most popular site on the Web, according to people who rank that stuff.

Everyone’s turned on by different kinds of things. If you’re a YouPorn visitor, I hope you’re into being “sniffed.”

Last week, over at my list-loving home, I wrote about researchers who discovered that YouPorn is one of a number of sites that exploit a Web security flaw to look at visitors’ Web browsing history. Tech types call it “history sniffing” or “history hijacking.” (If you lust for the technical details of how YouPorn used Javascript to look at the color of visitors’ browser underthings, check that out here.)

YouPorn wanted to know what other porn sites its visitors had been unfaithful with, so it sniffed their browsers for a list of 22 other sexxxy sites. Looks like I’ve helped cause my first class action lawsuit. On Friday, two California men, miffed about getting sniffed, filed a complaint alleging cybercrime and violation of consumer law protections. They’re seeking class action status.

Any other classy YouPorn watchers want to hop on this one?

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Anonymity and the First Amendment

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A liveblog of an interesting panel at the 2010 National Lawyers Convention of the Federalist Society, after the jump.

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Can You Fly the Friendly Skies Without Being Seen Naked?

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TSA's T&A?

Taking off your clothes and getting fondled is usually fun… except when it happens at the airport. Going through security before flights has gotten increasingly humiliating over the years. Watching people prepare themselves for inspection by stripping off their shoes, belts, jackets, and sweaters is like the least sexy and most frustrating strip tease ever.

The TSA’s new whole-body imaging machines make the stripping much more efficient. There are two types of scanners — using either millimeter wave or backscatter technology — which show a person without their clothes on, to reveal a glock, bomb-making materials, or smaller, less intimidating equipment. There are now over 300 of the machines in over 60 airports.

The scanners have been controversial for both privacy and health reasons. Some people aren’t comfortable with a random TSA worker seeing them sans clothing, despite promised privacy protections, such as faces being blurred and the TSA officer who views the image not seeing you in person. And some frequent flyers fear the radiation risks that come with being X-rayed on a regular basis.

A privacy civil rights group, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, is hoping to stay the scans with a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security…

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Child Porn Found by the Geek Squad Can and Will Be Used Against You in a Court of Law

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A Geek Squad employee lives in my neighborhood!

Should there be a siren on that car?

Tech-savvy people who love porn seem to know that one can avoid trouble by keeping the dirty stuff on an external hard drive (an effective tactic, except if you’re an SEC lawyer).

Non-tech-savvy people don’t think about this. And those same people are the types who take their laptops to the Geek Squad when they need computer help. Such a trip to Best Buy led to a 10-year prison sentence for Alabama resident Corey Beantee Melton.

In 2005, Melton sought the help of Best Buy’s Geek Squad because he was having trouble connecting to the Internet. Their initial assessment indicated the problem was originating from Melton’s DVD drive, so he left his laptop in their care and went on his merry way.

When the Geeks did their diagnostic scans of the computer, they found a pesky virus that appeared to be linked to specific files on Melton’s computer. Those particular files had names of a “very explicit nature,” says a judicial opinion in the case (hat tip: Eric Goldman for sending the opinion my way — see an old post of his for examples of filenames of an explicit nature).

The Geeks freaked — and called in the boys in blue, as they suspected they’d found child porn…

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Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei Could Escape Hate Crime Charges in the Tyler Clementi Case

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Molly Wei didn't stop her friend for using her computer; now she could end up in jail.

Prosecutors looking into Tyler Clementi suicide indicated yesterday that they might not be able to charge Dharun Ravi and Molly Wei with a hate crime. Middlesex County Prosecutor Bruce Kaplan told the Newark Star-Ledger that his office was trying to see if they could charge Ravi and Wei with a second degree bias crime, but so far they don’t have enough evidence to support such a charge.

Right now, Ravi and Wei are charged with invasion of privacy, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in jail.

Given that some people have pushed for prosecution that goes all the way up to homicide charges, the possibility that Ravi and Wei won’t be charged with a hate crime (or burned at the stake, or whatever the hell will satisfy people’s revenge impulse) will disappoint many — perhaps including prosecutor Kaplan, who said: “Sometimes the laws don’t always adequately address the situation. That may come to pass here.”

And sometimes the public’s outrage completely outstrips the actual crime committed. I’ve already shared my thoughts about Dharun Ravi’s crime. Now let’s take a closer look at Molly Wei — a girl who, as far as we know, is guilty of letting a high school buddy use her computer…

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Will the Duke F**k List Lead to Lawsuits?

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Horribly embarrassing for everybody, but this guy (who topped the 'F*** List')

When Tom Wolfe wrote I Am Charlotte Simmons, he interviewed his Duke daughter and Stanford son about their college experiences, and tried to capture what university life would be like for a highly intelligent, young, innocent virgin at an elite school obsessed with frat parties and athletics. It was an enjoyable read. If you want something similar to that, but a non-fiction version with less innocence and more alcohol, check out An education beyond the classroom: excelling in the realm of horizontal academics.

2010 Duke grad Karen Owen facetiously called it her “Senior Honors Thesis.” I summarized it over at my new bloggerly digs:

Owen kept detailed notes on her sexual adventures with 13 members of Duke’s lacrosse, baseball and tennis teams over the last four years. She then put those notes, along with the athletes’ names and photos into a 42-slide PowerPoint presentation, that concludes with a ranking of the 13 on what she calls her “F*** list.” (Congratulations, I suppose, to this guy for topping the list.)

Owen sent it by email to three friends, and then because it was too brilliant, hilarious, and painstakingly-elaborate to keep among four friends, one of them forwarded it on. Like an STD in a frat house, it went viral…

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Invasion of Privacy or College Prank Gone Wrong (or Both)? What to Do With Tyler Clementi’s Roommate

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Tyler Clementi

Over the past few days, we’ve learned a lot about Tyler Clementi, the Rutgers college student and talented violinist who killed himself after his roommate streamed, live on the internet, a hidden webcam video of Tyler hooking up with another man. On September 22, a few days after the incident, Clementi committed suicide by jumping off the George Washington Bridge.

Former ATL editor Kashmir Hill has learned even more. She’s been tracking Clementi’s digital footprints, and found that he went to a message board for gay men seeking counsel after he learned of his roommate’s prank.

I used the word “prank” because that’s how I see the actions of Tyler Clementi’s roommate, Dharun Ravi. Ravi is an 18-year-old kid in his first semester at college. Along with a friend, Molly Wei, Ravi pulled a prank on his new roommate — one that went horribly wrong.

Because Clementi killed himself, the media has worked itself into a rabid lather over Ravi’s and Wei’s actions. The story was all over the New York Times yesterday. Michael Daly criticized Ravi so harshly I thought I was reading about some kind of modern day Billy Zabka in the New York Daily News this morning. Some gay rights groups want Ravi to be charged with a hate crime.

Before we crucify this college freshman, I have a couple of questions…

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A California Judge and a New York Justice Make Different Discoveries

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Tough kitten

Your Facebook profile photo should look like this if you file a personal injury lawsuit.

Kash here. Now that I’ve departed for Forbes, I see that Elie has to take care of the hand jobs around here. I hope you’re all satisfied with his treatment.

Meanwhile, I’m bringing you news of a less salacious sort — a tale of two lawsuits. One involves an artist who wants to get paid for his work and is suing a clothing company for breach of contract. The other features a university employee who wants to get paid for falling out of her allegedly defective chair and has filed a personal injury suit against the chair manufacturer (for breach of contact?).

The former gets to keep his Facebook and MySpace communications private, and the latter has to turn them over. Old electronic communications laws mixed with cutting-edge electronic communication on social networking sites translates into a confusing set of precedents around the country.

The two cases might leave you scratching your head over what’s discoverable in a civil suit, but personal injury lawyers can take away a concrete lesson. In addition to advising your clients to wear a neck brace to court, advise them to always slap one on for Facebook profile photos…

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