Way back in the callow, innocent days of, um, February 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court delivered its opinion in Clapper v. Amnesty International. The case stemmed from a challenge of the constitutionality of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, 50 U. S. C. §1881a.
If you didn’t pay much attention to the Court’s decision in Clapper back then, you might want to revisit it now that we know we’re all subject to NSA surveillance . . . .
But they can do it. Some phone companies, for a fee, actually have a self-serve website where law enforcement can go in, ping your phone, and know exactly where you are. Pretty neat, huh? So anyway, the answer is, kiss it goodbye.
–Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, discussing the state of third-party privacy in the era of technological surveillance. He adds that “the great libertarian conspiracy” could soon be located “right here.”
I don’t really feel the need to slap a “hero” or “villain” label onto Edward Snowden, the former Booz Allen Hamilton contractor who blew the lid off of the secret government email spying program now known as Prism. I mean, if I have to choose, I go “hero” because I basically don’t trust any program the government won’t even explain to its own people. And I certainly don’t trust anything that’s every come out of a FISA court, because how can I?
But I don’t know that this was the right or only way to bring this important information to light. I believe, I kind of need to believe, that the public’s ability to know and stop potentially massive government overreach rests on more than the good conscious of high school dropouts living in Hawaii. Perhaps so-called “small government” types will join together with progressives in saying that non-public courts issuing secret warrants is probably a bad thing.
With that in mind, I would love to see Snowden evade prosecution. It’s not his fault that he wasn’t able to forge alliance between Ron Paul supporters like himself and progressives who wish that politicians were as afraid of Fourth Amendment as the Second.
But how can he stay free? The Justice Department is loading up charges and Hong Kong just wants what’s good for business. Snowden is already on the move, where should he go? Come on people who went to law school for “international law” get your head out of complex cross border transactions and help this brother out…
Continue reading “Where Can Edward Snowden Go To Stay Above the Law?”
Kids will be kids, right? And sometimes the exuberance of youth (and copious amounts of booze) leads lovestruck young folks to make unwise decisions — like having sex in the street.
In the old days, a beat cop would throw you in the drunk tank and let you cool off… but, oh, how things have changed in the 21st century.
After watching a soccer match at a pub this summer, one of England’s 17 zillion security cameras caught a British couple doin’ the nasty in the street. An officer was sent to break up the party of two.
But that wasn’t the end of it. A randy police employee allegedly downloaded the file, and now he’s in trouble…
“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.
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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