Comments for Info/Law

Comment on The Obama Administration and Chutzpah by Links, 5/22/12 « naked capitalism

Links, 5/22/12 « naked capitalism — Tue, 22 May 2012 09:57:06 +0000

[...] The Obama Administration and Chutzpah Info/Law… shocker that Obama lied about his transparency agenda. [...]

Comment on The Myth of Perfection by medlaw

medlaw — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 20:11:40 +0000

“Privacy discourse too is obsessed with perfection.” I believe that is a simplistic analysis of the true state of affairs. If I understand the author correctly, his point is that policy makers error in using draconian measures to catch very low instances of unlawful behavior, much like the phrase using a ‘using a cannon to kill a mosquito’. That assumes that the real quarry of the government action was the mosquito. The evils of child pornography are oft used as a justification for the statutory rollback of individual liberties and privacy rights. Perhaps the real aim of the legislation is destruction of personal liberties and privacy with stated justifications mere red herrings. If true, then myth of perfection in the law is not the problem. The problem is government authoritarianism.

Comment on Hollywood Comes to Brooklyn by Art Brodsky: The Long and Winding Road To A Bad Call On 'Piracy' | USA Press

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 03:50:45 +0000

[...] few weeks, he’s been to the University of Michigan, the University of North Carolina, Yale, Brooklyn Law School and the University of Virginia (UVA). Next month, at least, he will be able to stick close to [...]

Comment on Hollywood Comes to Brooklyn by Art Brodsky: The Long and Winding Road To A Failed 'Piracy' Policy | USA Press

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 21:39:40 +0000

[...] few weeks, he’s been to the University of Michigan, the University of North Carolina, Yale, Brooklyn Law School, the University of Virginia (UVA). Next month, at least, he will be able to stick close to [...]

Comment on Hollywood Comes to Brooklyn by Paramount exec faces skeptical crowds on post-SOPA outreach tour : Information Technology Leader

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 09:27:22 +0000

[...] remarks had completely ignored limitations on copyright such as fair use. According to an account by Mazzone’s colleague Derek Bambauer, Perry responded by saying that Paramount “wants [...]

Comment on Hollywood Comes to Brooklyn by Advanced Web Service » Paramount exec faces skeptical crowds on post-SOPA outreach tour

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 06:50:21 +0000

Comment on Hollywood Comes to Brooklyn by » Link Roundup for April 11th from 17:13 to 17:13 Brooklyn Law Incubator and Policy Clinic

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 01:17:30 +0000

[...] Info/Law » Hollywood Comes to Brooklyn – [...]

Comment on Do Reactions To Drug-Sniffing Dogs Say More About Drug Policy Than Privacy? by Dave

Dave — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 12:28:45 +0000

You may wish to reconsider your presentation of false-positive rates. Under your scenarios, the number of false alerts is dependent on the reliability of the dog AND on the number of cases in which drugs are really present. A more realistic (and more usual) presentation of the false positive rate is based on the number of sniffs conducted.

For example, suppose a million sniffs are conducted. In your 1% scenario, if there are 100 alerts then there will be 1 false positive (1% of 100) and 99 drug carriers; and if there are 10,000 alerts there will be 100 false positives. In the 10% scenario these figures rise to 10 and 1000, respectively.

More usually, though, the false alert rate is given with respect to the number of tests, so if a million sniffs are conducted, then a 1% false alert rate would result in 10,000 false alerts — perhaps acceptable if there were 990,000 drug carriers among the 1 million sniffed, but disproportionate if there were only, say, 100. The 10% rate would be correspondingly more alarming.

Comment on Do Reactions To Drug-Sniffing Dogs Say More About Drug Policy Than Privacy? by Mark

Mark — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 17:13:42 +0000

I enjoyed your article, but suggest that it contains a fallacy where you suggest: ‘If the dog is truly infallible, a right to privacy is indistinguishable from a right to get away with crime’.

A police officer with an infallible dog may harass somebody by carrying out frequent searches or may discriminate against a category of people by selecting them for searches. That would constitute a breach of privacy that does not presuppose any crime.

Note, the victim need not even be present for this to constitute harassment. If the police were to frequently visit my doorstep while I am away that would send an unwelcome message to my neighbours.

To counter this the rule should be that you may only deploy an infallible dog when you already have due cause to conduct a search.

Comment on Santorum: Please Don’t Google by medlaw

medlaw — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 18:37:25 +0000

It’s an interesting issue in that Google has become akin to a quasi-government entity (like a public utility) and we don’t want government entities involved in censorship … which is really what were are discussing in regard to google placing artificial filters into its search results. The 911 example demonstrates the problem with this arrangement. A strong majority of the US population believes it is baseless to claim the US government was involved in either carrying out or covering up the attack. However, outside the United States, it is a different story in that 911 conspiracy theories are accept by a sizable percentage of the population. How about global warming deniers? Hard core conservatives do not accept the overwhelming verdict of science.

Google is already evolving personalized search results based on the profile they are building on data collection for each users. I think the direction this is all heading is that google tailor filters of the type we are discussing for the user. Thus, the issue is much more complicated that manual correction of a few egregious search results such as that for “Santorum”.