Privacy

If You Want to Go to the Clubs, Bring Your ID Facebook Page

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Recently, we’ve seen an increasing amount of discussion and controversy about businesses that force people to give up access to private social media information for things like job interviews, and courts that make litigants hand over login info to the opposition.

Now, according to a recent story from across the pond, certain British drinking establishments are asking prospective patrons to pony up their smartphones so bouncers can cross-check their IDs with their Facebook pages. Putting aside the real news here — the fact that apparently 6-year-olds can no longer drink alcohol in English pubs — let’s take a look at the interesting privacy implications this raises…

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Non-Sequiturs: 04.20.12

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At least a Law Hawk is better than a Law Chicken.

* Judge Mark Bennett, no stranger to these pages, issues a controversial ruling on a GPS tracking issue. [Threat Level / Wired]

* 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]

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Another Perspective on the Baylor Law Admissions Data and Affirmative Action

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Last Wednesday, we reported on Baylor Law School’s inadvertent release of personal academic information for its entire admitted class — names, addresses, GPAs, LSAT scores, and scholarship offers. Last Friday, my colleague Elie Mystal used this data to argue in defense of affirmative action.

We believe in offering a wide range of perspectives here at Above the Law. That’s one thing that’s nice about having four full-time writer/editors — myself, Elie, Staci Zaretsky, Chris Danzig — and about a dozen outside columnists.

Today we bring you a different viewpoint on the Baylor law admissions data. Prominent lawyer and blogger Ted Frank, previously profiled in these pages for his work in the class-action area, uses the same data to argue against affirmative action.

Let’s hear what he has to say, shall we?

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Pennsylvania Judge Allows Facebook Fishing in Sucker Punch Lawsuit

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At this point, there is a plethora of viable excuses in litigation to gain access to your opponents’ Facebook pages. Divorce, workplace discrimination, you name it, you can probably gain access somehow.

That said, most often it is defendants asking for social media access, not plaintiffs.

So we were intrigued to hear about a recent decision that allowed a plaintiff unsupervised access to the Facebook account of the man he sued for punching him in the face during a soccer game gone wrong. Why did he get access? Just for the heck of it….

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The Baylor Law Data Dump, Now With Race and Scholarships

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On Wednesday, we reported on Baylor Law School accidentally releasing personal academic information for its entire admitted class. It was a massive screw-up, and on Wednesday, we showed you the GPA and LSAT scores for Baylor’s admitted students (with the students’ names redacted, of course).

But there were other fields available in the accidentally released spreadsheet, including racial categorizations for each student and scholarship information. I didn’t include the race field earlier this week because, frankly, I didn’t want the entire news story (of the screw-up) to be overrun by a discussion about race and affirmative action.

But, look, I ain’t afraid of you people. Getting a complete racial breakdown of the class to go along with their grades and LSAT scores is a look inside the law school admissions process that we don’t often get to see.

So, let’s play our game. Looking at the Baylor numbers, you can see the affirmative action “bump” in LSAT scores, and to my eyes, it really shows how foolish the opponents of affirmative action really are….

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Baylor Law Screw-Up Reveals Personal Data of Entire Admitted Class: Data That We’ve Got

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There are data breaches, and then there are data dummies. The people at Baylor Law seem to be in the latter category.

Nobody was trying to steal the personal information of the admitted students at Baylor Law. But a screw-up by someone at the school resulted in all of the personal information of the admitted class getting transmitted to everybody else in the admitted class.

All of it. Names, addresses, grades, and LSAT scores. Pretty much everything besides social security numbers.

And, we have it….

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Another Massive Data Breach Exposes A Lot Of People’s Credit Card Information; Welcome to the 21st Century

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Last week’s massive credit card data breach was a frustrating reminder that despite everything, all the fights over privacy rights and legislative shouting, if somebody wants to steal an extraordinarily large number of personal consumer information for nefarious purposes, they can probably do it.

As a refresher, on March 30, Global Payments, a third-party payment processor, reported that it had suffered a data breach. Someone gained unauthorized access to company information, a.k.a. private data of people with accounts with major credit card companies such as MasterCard, Visa, American Express, and Discover Financial Services.

So, exactly how many people’s information might have been compromised? Let’s just say it’s more than six figures…

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Why the F*** Was This High School Student Expelled for Tweeting the F-Word?

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Every so often we hear a new story about a student getting suspended / expelled / paddled for some nonsense offense. These days, the disciplinary problems usually are are a result of some alleged electronic misconduct.

A debate usually follows, where people question the legality and general appropriateness of several issues: was the student punished for something he did at school or at home? Was he or she making some kind of threat, whether serious or sarcastic? How much should a school insert itself into its students’ private lives?

Whatever side of those questions you fall on, at least they are valid points to raise. But what about the student who is expelled for a 2:30 a.m. tweet from his home — a tweet that was simply a juvenile exploration on the word “f***”?

You have to be f***ing kidding me.…

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Non-Sequiturs: 03.27.12

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* Alexander Wang says that he wasn’t running a sweatshop and that the former employee making the allegations was actually mean to all the other indentured servants workers. [Fashionista]

* We’re well into the phase of the Trayvon Martin investigation where people are trying to blame the victim, but until they show me a guy who was killed by a pack of Skittles, I really don’t think we’ve learned anything new. [New York Daily News]

* A sports agent tells all. [Legal Blitz]

* You don’t think your Skype chats at work are private, do you? In fairness, who still thinks anything they do at work is private? If you want to keep your privacy, you best work in disguise. I mean, you don’t really think I’m a large black man who talks about race all the time, do you? [Not-So Private Parts / Forbes]

* Defending child pornographers. Somebody has to do it, and I’m so glad it’s not me. [Underdog]

After the jump, we’ve got some video footage of Lat dancing around like heathen as he throws fresh dirt on Dewey’s grave….

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Criminalizing College: BC Football Player Accused of Invasion of Privacy

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If this keeps up, having sex with a person wearing your school's mascot head will be called 'beastiality.'

In the wake of Dharun Ravi getting convicted of a hate crime for a college prank, we’ve got another situation where a college kid could get into a lot of trouble for acting like a college kid.

The Boston Globe reports that Jaryd Rudolph, a 19-year old football player at Boston College, has been charged with a violation of Massachusetts privacy law. His crime? He allegedly recorded a “sexual encounter” between a teammate and a female graduate student.

And by “recorded,” we don’t mean that he took steamy video of a couple in the act of love making. He’s being charged because he allegedly recorded and shared the woman’s “sexual noises.”

So, we’re now one step closer to putting everybody who acts like a teenager, especially teenagers, in jail…

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