law

Do you talk to your fellow passengers on public transport or perhaps on your cell phone to your beloved?

Do you enjoy listening in to passengers' conversations? It's so much more interesting than watching them clip their toenails.

Do you even, as I do, talk to yourself on occasion, when there's nothing better to do?

How would you feel if you local police force could listen in? I merely ask this, because of the mundane fact that they might be.

It seems that video surveillance just isn't enough these days. Your local everyday busybody authorities apparently are feeling the need to listen in on buses, just in case someone is discussing yesterday's bank robbery or tomorrow's drug deal.… Read more

Some thieves like to believe they have scruples. They even talk of honor among themselves.

Some, though, see an iPhone and just can't help themselves. Earlier this year, footage emerged of a man stealing an iPhone from a baby in a store. Yet even that pales with a theft that occurred in a Staten Island apartment building lobby.

William Washington, 38, is a quadriplegic. He has cerebral palsy. The only way he communicates is through an iPhone that he keeps on the tray of his wheelchair. He uses a special pointer attached to a headband in order to tap … Read more

California's attorney general filed a lawsuit today against Delta Air Lines for failing to prominently display a privacy policy in its mobile app.

The lawsuit is the first brought under the state's 2004 Online Privacy Protection Act, which requires Web sites and apps that collect personal information from California residents to prominently post a privacy policy, as well as give users the opportunity to read the privacy policy before downloading the app.

The Atlanta-based airline was among 100 app developers and companies warned recently by Kamala Harris' office that they were in violation of California's privacy laws … Read more

European data stored in the "cloud" could be acquired and inspected by U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies, despite Europe's strong data protection laws, university researchers have suggested.

A research paper written by legal experts at the University of Amsterdam's Institute for Information Law and titled "Cloud Computing in Higher Education and Research Institutions and the USA Patriot Act" supports previous reports that the antiterror Patriot Act could theoretically be used by U.S. law enforcement to bypass strict European privacy laws to acquire citizen data within the European Union.

The Patriot Act, … Read more

The U.S. has teamed up with nearly 50 countries around the world in an effort to curb child sexual abuse on the Internet.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and European Union Commissioner for Home Affairs Cecilia Malmstrom today announced a new initiative called the Global Alliance Against Child Sexual Abuse Online. A host of European Union countries have joined the effort. South Korea, Vietnam, Turkey, and Nigeria are among the many non-EU countries that will participate in the alliance.

The alliance will make it easier for the participating countries to work together to identify instances of child sexual … Read more

I have never robbed a bank, but some people find it invigorating.

Different people find different ways of expressing invigoration. So it may well be that one of them -- at least in the case of 19-year-old Hannah Sabata -- involves making a YouTube video boasting about how you've just robbed a bank.

Here, you see, is just such a video. Its contents allegedly fit comfortably with the facts of a robbery at the Cornerstone Bank in Waco, Neb.

Indeed, the Associated Press reports that it was posted the very same day that Sabata was arrested on charges of … Read more

When are rights inhuman? When are legal privileges exactly that -- privileges?

These questions might enter heads on learning of a convicted pedophile who believes Facebook should pay him for his alleged feelings of fear and distress.

The unnamed man demanded that Facebook remove a page called "Keeping our Kids Safe from Predators."

This page served to offer information about pedophiles in Northern Ireland.

He succeeded, only for a new and very similar page to emerge shortly afterward.

A British court held that the information on the original page constituted harassment of the man.

As the BBC reports, … Read more

Samsung has released the results of a four-week audit of 105 suppliers involved in the production of its devices across China.

According to the company, the Samsung audit team was comprised of 121 employees tasked with ensuring that the company's suppliers were compliant with local laws and its own regulations. The company's auditors found no instances of child labor -- a major concern of watchdogs -- but did discover instances where rules and regulations were violated.

"The audit identified several instances of inadequate practices at the facilities, including overtime hours in excess of local regulations, management of … Read more

Government crackdowns on Internet dissidents and bloggers in the United Arab Emirates have finally come to a head. The government made sweeping changes yesterday to the laws that govern what the country's citizens can and can't do on the Web, according to the UAE state news agency WAM.

The most drastic of the changes is jail time for anyone who imitates or pokes fun at the country's leaders. According to WAM, the new laws "stipulate penalties of imprisonment on any person who creates or runs an electronic website or uses any information technology medium to deride … Read more