Category: Law
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Huge Increase in Warrantless Electronic Surveillance
Pen register and trap and trace devices now generally refer to the surveillance of information about—rather than the contents of—communications. Pen registers capture outgoing data, while trap and trace devices capture incoming data. This still includes the phone numbers of incoming and outgoing telephone calls and the time, date, and length of those calls. But…
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Chick-fil-A Wavies 1st Amendment Rights
Chick-fil-A has pledged to stop giving money to anti-gay groups and to back off political and social debates after an executive’s comments this summer landed the fast-food chain smack in the middle of the gay marriage debate. The Civil Rights Agenda, which dubs itself the largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender advocacy group in Illinois,…
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Moneyball in Law Firms
Moneyball is moving onto another major-league diamond: Big Law, where law firm chiefs—under pressure from clients to cut costs—are re-engineering law firm management, much as the Oakland Athletics’ Billy Beane did for baseball. Exploding salaries, frequent roster changes and emphasis on short-term performance in a tight economy are just some of the sports-world realities confronting…
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‘Patent Trolls’ Get Biggest Piece Of Patent Pie
So-called patent trolls – which don’t actually make anything – in recent years received significantly larger damages awards on average than those won by companies that make things, a new report found. Critics of “trolls,” or nonpracticing entities, claim they hold huge numbers of patents and make money by simply attacking others with litigation. During…
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NSA to Spy on Everyone… Everyone.
Under construction by contractors with top-secret clearances, the blandly named Utah Data Center is being built for the National Security Agency. A project of immense secrecy, it is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade. Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world’s communications as…
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Cell Carriers Asked for Your Data
In the first public accounting of its kind, cellphone carriers reported that they responded to a startling 1.3 million demands for subscriber information last year from law enforcement agencies seeking text messages, caller locations and other information in the course of investigations. The cellphone carriers’ reports, which come in response to a Congressional inquiry, document…
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Gotta Love American Ingenuity (& Tax Avoidance)
So I’m reading two stories (here and here) about a new law that will effectively outlaw Roll-Your-Own tobacco stores. It’s something I kinda follow because I always thought it was a decent business model (until the government outlaws your business) and another fine example of what steps people will go through to avoid taxes. In…
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Muslims Attack Christians in Dearborn MI
Very bizarre behavior on the part of the young Muslims. Very bizarre behavior on the part of the local police. The whole thing is very disturbing. I frankly don’t know what to make of it. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnJBW49afzg?rel=0]
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Police Boss: No Emergency = No Police
As Chicago police Superintendent Garry McCarthy tries to streamline the way his department fights violent crime, he is stepping up his potentially controversial plan to reduce his officers’ load of 911 calls. Facing heat over a surge in homicides as he enters his second year in Chicago, McCarthy has expressed frustration over the pace of…
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Compstat
I can’t believe that I have not already written a post on Compstat but I can’t find anything. Grrrrrr!! Ok so, for those that don’t know Compstat is a system of policing accountability which originated in New York with the NYPD. And in case you don’t know Garry McCarthy, the current Chicago Police Superintendent, is…