Voter privacy questions in Virginia

A county electoral board member in Prince William County, Virginia (25 miles south of D.C.) was concerned that allowing electronic signatures to be used in requesting absentee ballots could lead to fraud. To test that theory, the Post reports, the official, "recruited four friends — while the county’s registrar was away — to inspect 151 absentee ballot documents and registration records laden with Social Security numbers and other personal information." 

His fellow board members and the county registrar point out that this action compromised voter privacy and have asked the local commonwealth's attorney and the state AG for an investigation. Seems like they should get one.

The Post has the story.

A snapshot of secret government demands for consumer data, revealed after 11 years

In 2004, an ISP called Calyx Internet Access in New York received a National Security Letter (NSL), a broad government tool for demanding information without judicial approval. In addition to demanding information, the NSL imposed a broad and indefinite gag order on Calyx and its president, Nick Merrill. They remained "John Doe" litigants through years of challenging the NSL and advocating (for instance, in an anonymous op-ed in the Washington Post in 2007) limits on government surveillance.

Now we can finally read what the government asked Calyx for: an attachment to NSL, unsealed this week after 11 years of litigation, shows that the government demanded a wide range of customer information including addresses, screen names, telephone numbers, and what the customer has bought online (the full attachment is here). The ACLU's Jameel Jaffer tells the story of the litigation. Ars Technica's coverage points out that this type of surveillance was no isolated incident -- more than 140,000 NSLs were issued between 2003 and 2005, and NSLs continue in use today.

San Francisco steps back from ban on soda advertising

Courthouse News reports:

    After passing some of the strictest legislation in the nation regulating soda and other sugary drinks, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors on Tuesday unanimously voted to repeal a ban on soft drink ads on city property.
     Days after the board passed the trio of laws in June, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a similar effort to limit ads on public property in Reed v. Town of Gilbert, Arizona.
     The American Beverage Association subsequently sued San Francisco, claiming the legislation violates the First Amendment.

The full story is here.

Restaurant association to sue NYC over sodium disclosure requirement

Yesterday, the National Restaurant Association announced plans to file a lawsuit against New York City's health department over its requirement that chain restaurants post warning labels on foods that contain more than the recommended daily limit for sodium. The rule takes effect today. It requires chain restaurants with 15 or more locations in New York City to display a warning symbol — a salt shaker inside a triangle — if a menu item has more than 2,300 milligrams of salt.

Politico New York has a short story.

Privacy group says Google deceptively tracks students’ Internet browsing

From the Electronic Frontier Foundation press release:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a complaint today with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) against Google for collecting and data mining school children’s personal information, including their Internet searches—a practice EFF uncovered while researching its “Spying on Students” campaign, which launched today.

The campaign was created to raise awareness about the privacy risks of school-supplied electronic devices and software. EFF examined Google’s Chromebook and Google Apps for Education (GAFE), a suite of educational cloud-based software programs used in many schools across the country by students as young as seven years old.

While Google does not use student data for targeted advertising within a subset of Google sites, EFF found that Google’s “Sync” feature for the Chrome browser is enabled by default on Chromebooks sold to schools. This allows Google to track, store on its servers, and data mine for non-advertising purposes, records of every Internet site students visit, every search term they use, the results they click on, videos they look for and watch on YouTube, and their saved passwords. Google doesn’t first obtain permission from students or their parents and since some schools require students to use Chromebooks, many parents are unable to prevent Google’s data collection.

The full release is here.

Using IP law to lower drug prices

...is the tactic described in a Times article over the weekend:

[The] Coalition for Affordable Drugs . . . identif[ies] pharmaceutical patents that they consider weak or abusive. Then they request that a unit of the United States Patent and Trademark Office review the legitimacy of the patents. . . . [Founders] Mr. Bass and Mr. Spangenberg say the coalition’s aim is to bring down drug prices that are kept artificially high by dubious patents.

The Times reports that the Coalition has an impressive 50% success rate in their challenges so far. The article also describes some of the ways industry tries to game the system to keep prices high, including patenting nearly-identical drugs when the original patent is about to expire (which extends the life of the patent), and paying generic competitors to stay off the market ("pay for delay").

Read more here.

Judge Rakoff (of federal district court in New York City) on class actions and deterrence of corporate wrongdoing

In the New York Review of Books, here, reviewing Prof. John Coffee's "The Cure for Corporate Wrongdoing."

"An Unwelcome Loophole for Robocalls"

...in last Wednesday's Times, notes that, "Last month Congress quietly approved a way for computerized callers to tap into the cell phones used by millions of people who owe money on government backed loans."

Read more here.

 

Times: Consumer Bureau Faulted on Auto Lending inquiry

Here. 

 

Montana Standard's Unpersuasive Defense of Its Retroactive Change on Anonymous Commenting

Since I published yesterday’s discussion of the Montana Standard’s retroactive elimination of anonymous commenting on its web site, there have been three informative developments.  First, I was able to speak with the Standard’s editor, David McCumber, mostly off the record so that we could talk through some of the issues in a collegial mannner; second, McCumber submitted a comment on the story, which is now published; and third, Eugene Volokh looked at the situation and noticed an anomaly in the Standard’s Privacy Policy; here is his discussion of that aspect of the situation is here.