Academic

Peer Spectre Revisited

Posted on November 08, 2010
A few months ago, I did a post on the Peer Spectre program that was prompted by an email.As I explained in that post, the person who sent the email to me said he/she had heard some things about how was used and asked if, IMHO, such activity would violate the 4th Amendment...

More on Restitution and Proximate Cause

Posted on November 05, 2010
A few months ago, I did a post about an Iowa case in which a federal district court judge declined to order the defendant to make restitution to the victim in a child pornography case. The Iowa judge declined to order restitution because she found the government hadn?t proven causation in the case, but noted that other courts have done so...

Hacking and Chess

Posted on November 03, 2010
This post is about a recent decision from the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California: U.S. v. Alexander, 2010 WL 3238961 (2010). As this news story explains, ?Gregory Alexander, of Everett, Wash[ington] was indicted in July 2009 and charged with breaking into the e-mail account of Randall Hough ...

Dynamic IP Address and Probable Cause

Posted on November 01, 2010
@font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }span.documentbody { }div.Section1 { page: Section1; } This post examines a recent Connecticut case in which the defendant claimed a search warrant application was invalid because it did not indicate that the IP address linked to child pornography was ?most likely dynamic?...

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Metadata as a Public Record

Posted on October 29, 2010
@font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }span.documentbody { }div.Section1 { page: Section1; } A recent decision from the Washington Supreme Court considered ?whether metadata is a public record that must be disclosed under the [state] Public Records Act (PRA)?...

Blackberry Seized Lawfully . . . ?

Posted on October 27, 2010
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Blackberry Seized Unlawfully

Posted on October 24, 2010
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Browser Windows and the 4th Amendment

Posted on October 22, 2010
@font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }span.documentbody { }div.Section1 { page: Section1; } This post is about a Kentucky case in which a man who was using a library computer to browse child pornography wound up being indicted on federal charges...

Downloading, Burning and Producing

Posted on October 20, 2010
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Text Messages ?Not Inadmissible Hearsay?

Posted on October 18, 2010
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Source Code, Economic Espionage and Transporting Stolen Property

Posted on October 15, 2010
@font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; } On February 11, 2010, Sergey Aleynikov was indicted on three counts of violating federal criminal law: theft of trade secrets in violation of 18 U...

ShreazaLE and the 4th Amendment

Posted on October 13, 2010
@font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }span.documentbody { }div.Section1 { page: Section1; } This post is about a recent case in which a defendant who was using peer-to-peer file-sharing software to share images of child pornography...

Tracking Devices, Abandoned Property and Bailments

Posted on October 10, 2010
@font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; } You?ve probably seen one of the stories about the California student who found a GPS tracking device on his car...

Yelp, Defamation and the Communications Decency Act

Posted on October 08, 2010
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Computer Virus = New Trial

Posted on October 07, 2010
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Facebook and MySpace Privacy

Posted on October 07, 2010
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"Record Pirating" and the Copyright Act

Posted on October 04, 2010
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OnStar, Rental Vehicles and the 4th Amendment

Posted on September 30, 2010
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MySpace Alibi

Posted on September 29, 2010
@font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }span.documentbody { }div.Section1 { page: Section1; } I?ve done posts on evidentiary use of materials posted on MySpace, but this is about something different: using MySpace as an alibi...

Authenticating Digital Evidence Produced by Yahoo!

Posted on September 27, 2010
@font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }span.documentbody { }div.Section1 { page: Section1; } I?ve done several posts on authenticating digital evidence, including evidence from online sources...

Guilty Pleas and Venue

Posted on September 24, 2010
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Cell-Phone, Privacy and "Injury to a Disabled Individual"

Posted on September 22, 2010
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Legal Ethics and Metadata

Posted on September 20, 2010
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Online "Bookmaking"

Posted on September 17, 2010
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?Evidence of Other Crimes, Wrongs, or Acts? and Email

Posted on September 15, 2010
@font-face { font-family: "Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }span.documentbody { }div.Section1 { page: Section1; } As I noted in an earlier post, Rule 404(b) of the Federal Rules of Evidence provides as follows: Evidence of other crimes, wrongs, or acts is not admissible to prove the character of a person in order to show action in conformity therewith...

Earthquake . . . Cancelled

Posted on September 15, 2010
A little over a year ago I did a post on the 9th Circuit's decision in the Comprehensive Drug Testing case.As I explained in those posts, in the CDT case the 9th Circuit not only rules on the admissibility of certain evidence, it also set out a set of procedures police were required to follow in searching for and/or seizing digital evidence...

Extortion and Extra-Territorial Jurisdiction

Posted on September 13, 2010
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GPS Monitoring Revisited (2010)

Posted on September 09, 2010
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A Note on Scheduling

Posted on September 09, 2010
As you may (or may not) have noticed, my default practice has been to do a blog post three times a week: on Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings.I'm now back from sabbatical (sigh) and the summer break (sigh2) and my schedule tends to be rather hectic, especially on Wednesdays and Fridays...

Nastiness in Legal Academia . . .

Posted on September 08, 2010
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