Category Archives: Uncategorized

Google loses its bid for Supreme Court review in “Street View” case

You may remember that, last September, we told you about a 9th Circuit decision holding that Google violated federal Wiretap Act when it collected individual consumers' unencrypted wi-fi data while capturing "Street View" photographs. Here's what the 9th Circuit said at the time: In the course of capturing its Street View photographs, Google collected data […]

One journalist’s experiment with web privacy shows how bad it is… but also that it might improve

NPR reporter Steve Henn (who has covered both economics and technology) conducted an experiment: he asked a couple computer experts to follow his internet traffic for a week and see how much they could learn. The answer? A whole lot. They ended up knowing so much about Henn and his movements that they could have […]

In Facebook privacy case, a procedural win for class action objectors’ appellate rights

When a group of class-action objectors appealed the settlement of the privacy case against Facebook for (among other things) the unlawful use of minors’ images for advertising without parental consent, class counsel sought to impose on each objector-appellant an appeal bond of $32,000. (For more background, see here.) One of class counsel’s arguments was that […]

Supreme Court: closely-held corporations with religious objections are exempt from Obamacare contraception mandate

Key holdings of today's 5-4 decision: corporations are entitled to protection under the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act; requiring closely-held corporations to pay for contraception despite their owners' have sincere religious objections  is a substantial burden on religious freedom; government's program is not narrowly tailored. However, the majority opinion suggests that the Department of Health […]

A mid-season baseball tort

As we hit the middle of the U.S. major-league baseball season, I wanted to update our readers on the latest baseball-related (but not baseball-inherent) tort. As any major-league baseball consumer knows, at many major-league stadiums, between innings, fans are bombarded with hot dogs (and/or t-shirts) propelled into the stands from large bazooka-style air guns. At […]

Fed Up — the movie about sugar’s relationship to the obesity epidemic

We posted yesterday about the New York Court of Appeals' decision invalidating the New York City Board of Health's ban on the sale of large sugary drinks. The Board of Health targeted sugar because it believed that the best science shows that excessive sugar consumption is at the root of the obesity epidemic. There's a […]