The judge in the Colorado case said there was plenty of evidence — a jailhouse recording of the defendant — that the laptop might contain information the authorities were seeking.

The judge ordered Fricosu to surrender an unencrypted hard drive by Feb. 21. The judge added that the government is precluded “from using Ms. Fricosu’s act of production of the unencrypted hard drive against her in any prosecution.”

The fact that you knew the password cannot be used against you, but you can be compelled to provide it, as doing so is not considered a "testimonial" act.

Final Answer: Courts can compel you to disclose your password

Ruffini argued that the controversy over PIPA gives the GOP "a chance to flip the tech community," winning Republicans a new donor base, or at least making it harder for Democrats to raise money in Silicon Valley. He noted that Republican politicans have already begun visiting technology companies seeking support. By picking a fight with the Democratic leadership over PIPA, they could win lasting respect from technologists...

The last week could mark the dawn of a new political alliance between Silicon Valley and the Grand Old Party.

Throwing Hollywood under the bus could pay dividends for GOP

In order to protect itself from piracy, the worldwide recording industry needs a few favors from governments and corporations around the globe, and a major new digital music report (PDF) from the industry's worldwide lobby IFPI lays them out. When placed end-to-end, it's a lengthy list—and its one that comes after a year of surprisingly strong growth for the industry.

After terrific year, music biz demands that world adopt "SOPA plus"

The music industry is unsurprisingly leading the way, demanding a series of changes that would make Bill C-11 look much more like SOPA.

For example, the industry wants language to similar to that found in SOPA on blocking access to websites, demanding new provisions that would "permit a court to make an order blocking a pirate site such as The Pirate Bay to protect the Canadian marketplace from foreign pirate sites."

SOPA is already in effect in the UK due to a court decision there earlier last year.

Michael Geist - The Behind-the-Scenes Campaign To Bring SOPA To Canada

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday the authorities need a probable-cause warrant from a judge to affix a GPS device to a vehicle and monitor its every move.

I think this result is correct and obvious - the act of physically attaching something to a car trespasses the integrity of a private thing (the car) and so is a search under the meaning of the 4th amendment if done in order to obtain information. Alito wrote a concurrence joined by liberal justices in which they offered that the matter should instead have been decided on the basis of the reasonable expectation of privacy that people have in their movements. I'm comfortable with that too, but the conservative case is simpler.

Sotomayor delivers an important solo concurrence in which she attacks the third party doctrine. Judicially, this is unnecessary to resolve this case (and she acknowledges as much), but politically its really important to have a Supreme Court justice making these arguments and it may have an important, positive impact on the future of privacy in the Internet age. She earns a lot of points in my book here:

More fundamentally, it may be necessary to reconsider the premise that an individual has no reasonable expectation of privacy in information voluntarily disclosed to third parties. E.g., Smith, 442 U. S., at 742; United States v. Miller, 425 U. S. 435, 443 (1976). This approach is ill suited to the digital age, in which people reveal a great deal of information about themselves to third parties in the course of carrying out mundane tasks. People disclose the phone numbers that they dial or text to their cellu- lar providers; the URLs that they visit and the e-mail addresses with which they correspond to their Internet service providers; and the books, groceries, and medi- cations they purchase to online retailers. Perhaps, as JUSTICE ALITO notes, some people may find the “tradeoff” of privacy for convenience “worthwhile,” or come to accept this “diminution of privacy” as “inevitable,” post, at 10, and perhaps not. I for one doubt that people would accept without complaint the warrantless disclosure to the Government of a list of every Web site they had visited in the last week, or month, or year. But whatever the societal expectations, they can attain constitutionally protected status only if our Fourth Amendment jurisprudence ceases to treat secrecy as a prerequisite for privacy. I would not assume that all information voluntarily disclosed to some member of the public for a limited purpose is, for that reason alone, disentitled to Fourth Amendment protection. See Smith, 442 U. S., at 749 (Marshall, J., dissenting) (“Privacy is not a discrete commodity, possessed absolutely or not at all. Those who disclose certain facts to a bank or phone company for a limited business purpose need not assume that this information will be released to other persons for other purposes”); see also Katz, 389 U. S., at 351–352 (“[W]hat [a person] seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected”).

Thats not how our law works today, but I think it would work a hell of a lot better if it did.

Warrants Needed for GPS Monitoring, Supreme Court Rules | Threat Level | Wired.com

Ron Paul gave a shout-out to anti-SOPA activists during his post-primary speech last night, though he accidentally referred to the bill as the “Stop Online Gambling Act.”

Foreign online gambling websites would probably be among the first kinds of sites added to the SOPA/PIPA Internet blacklist once it is enabled, so this misstatement by Ron Paul actually sheds some light on the real scope of this debate.

Ron Paul's prescient SOPA gaffe

Next time you’re waiting in the security line in an airport, why don’t you pull out your smartphone and count all the radiation being emitted by those body scanners and x-rays? There’s an app for that, courtesy of Mr. [Rolf-Dieter Klein].

The app works by blocking all the light coming into a phone’s camera sensor with a piece of tape or plastic. Because high energy radiation will cause artifacts on the CMOS camera sensor inside the phone, radiation will be captured as tiny specks of white light.

Turn your camera phone into a Geiger counter - Hack a Day

From solstice to solstice, this six month long exposure compresses time from the 21st of June till the 21st of December, 2011, into a single point of view. Dubbed a solargraph, the unconventional picture was recorded with a pinhole camera made from a drink can lined with a piece of photographic paper. Fixed to a single spot for the entire exposure, the simple camera continuously records the Sun's path each day as a glowing trail burned into the photosensitive paper.

APOD: 2012 January 21 - Days in the Sun

This article from Ars is an excellent summary of the problems with the political process that was used to craft and debate SOPA and PIPA, as well as various issues with the way the law approaches the problem.

Involve all stakeholders: By "involve all stakeholders," we don't mean what Washington usually means: put multiple behemoth corporations in a room to work out a deal.

The public has a serious stake in Internet issues and needs meaningful participation. Note: Google is not our champion or spokesperson, and it does not stand in for the public interest.

Open drafting: We need to work on principles in public, then move towards legislation, not introduce maximalist legislation and make small concessions.

Hold real hearings: the recent hearings on SOPA and PIPA have been a joke. SOPA's was really just embarrassingly one-sided. Everyone knows that hearings aren't actually a way for representatives to learn about issues, but the House Judiciary Committee didn't have to prove it so obviously.

Is this really two much to ask in a Democracy? Or are we just pretending at this point?

Gold Star: Post-SOPA: the path forward for addressing piracy

Its no secret that many leaders in Silicon Valley have libertarian leanings. Ask a startup cofounder or venture capitalist what the government can do to help promote innovation and you are likely to hear that the best thing it can do is get the heck out of the way. It is often said that the tech industry isn't engaged in Washington, and when technology business interests do have money to spend funding policy analysis it is often directed at organizations that focus on arguing against government regulation.

Progressives have not done a good job articulating how their ideas can compliment technology business interests. In order to successfully engage the tech industry, progressives will have to find ways to challenge the assumption that the government that best promotes innovation is the one that governs least. In fact, there are many ways in which a progressive policy agenda can support innovation, particularly by focusing on the security and freedom of individual people, both as citizens and as workers.

The technology industry improves our standard of living by making things more efficient through disruptive, competitive innovation, often at the hands of startup companies. Starting a company to pursue an idea is a risky endeavor. Venture capitalists expect 90% failure rates, and people who work for these companies often end up self employed or unemployed for periods of time.

Consider the various dilemmas faced by a person who has a secure job at a large company and an exciting new idea that might change his or her industry.

One challenge might be access to healthcare. A person with a pre-existing medical condition might think twice about quitting a secure job to start a company if it might be difficult or impossible to obtain health insurance on the individual market. This is also true for employees that startup might hire as it grows, as small companies cannot bargain with insurers on a level playing field with large employers. By advocating for universal healthcare, progressives help ensure that people can get the medical care that they need regardless of what sort of work they choose to do - opening up doors for people who want to strike out and do something risky.

Other facets of the social safety net that progressives advocate, such as unemployment insurance and programs that help people avoid foreclosure, also help limit the personal risks that are taken by people who want to go work for risky, innovative companies that are very likely to fail.

Labor and employment contract laws also play a role. Startups flourish in states that limit the enforcement of non-compete contracts - states where individual people have the right to quit their job at one company and go work for a competitor if they want to.

Startups also benefit from limits to Intellectual Property covenants in employment contracts. Most people have to work for a living. Chances are that someone who has an innovative idea will hav... [ Read More (0.3k in body) ]