Texas private investigator legislation is causing problems for robo-cop traffic enforcement. A Texas judge said the company running a red-light camera was acting illegally because it did not have a private investigator license. On the basis of this ruling, motorists are challenging traffic tickets. The problem started when the legislature said computer forensics experts needed to be licensed like private eyes. See deails: http://legal-beagle.typepad.com/wrights_legal_beagle/2008/12/e-discovery-forensics-private-investigator-license-for-computer-data-collection-and-assessment.html --Ben

Lori Drew's case holds a lot of lessons for a lot of people. It is about cyberbullying, which is behavior for which society has little tolerance. Cyberbullying is poison for anyone it touches. An institution like Myspace -- or a library or a school, which provides patrons, students or guests access to the Internet -- has plentiful incentive to stamp out cyberbullying within its system and its PCs. Regardless of how the law says it (through a misdemeanor criminal conviction or otherwise), the law has made clear it wants to find a way to punish anyone involved with cyberbullying. --Ben

Data breach notices have a scalability problem. As the number of notices soars, we need to better define what is a serious breach and what is not. Otherwise, the public drowns in breach notices, many of which are insignificant. --Ben http://hack-igations.blogspot.com/2007/12/does-lost-tape-equate-to-lost-data.html

Lori Drew's case is about cyberbullying, which is behavior for which society has little tolerance. Cyberbullying is poison for anyone it touches. An institution like Myspace -- or a library or a school, which provides patrons, students or guests access to the Internet -- has plentiful incentive to stamp out cyberbullying within its system and its PCs. --Ben

To me, it is so obvious the doctored photo (bright, beautiful, shiny, crisp flag in background) is not the original, that this event is not a big deal. The photo feels like a public relations baseball card, with the poetic license normally granted for PR fluff. Still, to prevent arguments about manipulation, one way to preserve a file, such as a jpeg and its metadata, is to sign it with a voice signature. --Ben

Cyberbullying is poison for anyone it touches. An institution like a library or a school, which provides patrons, students or guests access to the Internet, has plentiful incentive to stamp out cyberbullying within its PCs. --Ben

Similar issues apply in state government. On account of Open Records Acts, state governments are wise to insist that employees (including governors) route all business e-mail through a central e-mail archive and to encourage employees to take all personal e-mail to personal accounts. --Ben

A few months ago Google claimed it could impose its legal terms on the public just by publishing the terms. Maybe members of the public can impose their own terms of privacy protection on Google just by publishing those terms! A person might -- for example -- say in her published privacy terms that analytics engines cannot keep records of her activities longer than a week. --Ben http://hack-igations.blogspot.com/2008/05/google-privacy-policy-terms-of-service.html My ideas are not legal advice for any particular situation, just fodder for public discussion.