some judicious judicial activity
May. 4th, 2014 07:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
twoeleven...in reverse order
SCOTUSblog discusses former supreme john stevens' statements to the senate's rules and administration, which mentions:
i'd wondered if such things were possible, though i'd thought about it on a state-by-state basis rather than a constituency-by-constituency basis. i'd be just as happy with that, since for some important offices (governors, federal senators) there's no difference.
OTOH, allowing such small groups to donate to campaigns may produce undue influence by a handful of wealthy individuals in those areas, since wealthy people with other political ideas living elsewhere can't oppose them. it also really drives home the importance of constituency boundaries and keeping them away from those who would abuse them by gerrymandering.
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SCOTUSblog also mentions (twice) last week's cases on the privacy of cell phones -- and specifically, smart phones -- carried by people the police arrest. unlike previous oral arguements which have yielded juicy tidbits revealing the how the supremes are planning to rule, the arguements in these cases just show that the judges are trying to figure out how they should treat electronic data.
sure, i'm pleased that they didn't say that the police could do whatever they wanted, but it's not clear how far they'll go in requiring the police to show cause before randomly riffling through people's private information for fun and possible political gain. of course, for those interested in technical rather than legal protection, the old mantra still applies: encrypt, encrypt, ok!
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a couple of months ago, judge lucy koh of the US district court of northern california tossed the attempt to form a single class of people suing google for reading their email. google, for its part, doesn't deny that it routinely reads people's email to advertise at them and build up dossiers on them, but insists that despite federal eavesdropping laws, that its ok, even for people who haven't agreed to its worthless "privacy policy" nor people unaware that gmail is acting as the mail servers for other domains. a number of judges, including judge koh, have called bullshit on this claim. however, that's not what i was interested in now.
i was trying to find out if the plaintiffs have attempted to put together new classes for class-action suits, since the judge canned their attempt to put everybody in one class. i found one attorney's list of current cases, but there's no further information there. the actual court records are behind PACER's paywall, so i can't tell if there's been official action on the case either.
both are unfortunate, since -- if i follow the judge's reasoning correctly -- the single large class could be broken up into a few smaller classes, but each would still hold millions of people. that is: gmail users who were deceived by google's non-disclosure that google was reading their email (as various judges have held), other people sending to gmail addresses (who knew that google was handling the email, but not that google was routinely reading it to keep tabs on them, and people sending email to other addresses handled by gmail (who had no idea at all that google was involved). those should still be large enough to make google regret its nosiness.
SCOTUSblog discusses former supreme john stevens' statements to the senate's rules and administration, which mentions:
Third, Stevens urged members of Congress to enact campaign finance regulations that distinguish between money provided by constituents and others, such as corporations and individuals who live elsewhere. As support for that distinction, he cited a recent decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit – authored by Judge Brett Kavanaugh, a well-respected conservative judge – which upheld a federal prohibition on campaign expenditures by non-citizens to support or oppose candidates for political office. The regulation was justified, Stevens explained, because it advanced the federal interest in preventing foreigners from participating in U.S. elections, but it did not restrict their ability to speak about more general issues. That same logic, in his view, would apply to the distinction that he would draw between constituents and non-voters.while stevens really wanted to push for his laundry list of amendments, i'm intrigued by the idea that current case law permits such a distinction to limit not how much people can spend on elections, but who can.
i'd wondered if such things were possible, though i'd thought about it on a state-by-state basis rather than a constituency-by-constituency basis. i'd be just as happy with that, since for some important offices (governors, federal senators) there's no difference.
OTOH, allowing such small groups to donate to campaigns may produce undue influence by a handful of wealthy individuals in those areas, since wealthy people with other political ideas living elsewhere can't oppose them. it also really drives home the importance of constituency boundaries and keeping them away from those who would abuse them by gerrymandering.
---
SCOTUSblog also mentions (twice) last week's cases on the privacy of cell phones -- and specifically, smart phones -- carried by people the police arrest. unlike previous oral arguements which have yielded juicy tidbits revealing the how the supremes are planning to rule, the arguements in these cases just show that the judges are trying to figure out how they should treat electronic data.
sure, i'm pleased that they didn't say that the police could do whatever they wanted, but it's not clear how far they'll go in requiring the police to show cause before randomly riffling through people's private information for fun and possible political gain. of course, for those interested in technical rather than legal protection, the old mantra still applies: encrypt, encrypt, ok!
---
a couple of months ago, judge lucy koh of the US district court of northern california tossed the attempt to form a single class of people suing google for reading their email. google, for its part, doesn't deny that it routinely reads people's email to advertise at them and build up dossiers on them, but insists that despite federal eavesdropping laws, that its ok, even for people who haven't agreed to its worthless "privacy policy" nor people unaware that gmail is acting as the mail servers for other domains. a number of judges, including judge koh, have called bullshit on this claim. however, that's not what i was interested in now.
i was trying to find out if the plaintiffs have attempted to put together new classes for class-action suits, since the judge canned their attempt to put everybody in one class. i found one attorney's list of current cases, but there's no further information there. the actual court records are behind PACER's paywall, so i can't tell if there's been official action on the case either.
both are unfortunate, since -- if i follow the judge's reasoning correctly -- the single large class could be broken up into a few smaller classes, but each would still hold millions of people. that is: gmail users who were deceived by google's non-disclosure that google was reading their email (as various judges have held), other people sending to gmail addresses (who knew that google was handling the email, but not that google was routinely reading it to keep tabs on them, and people sending email to other addresses handled by gmail (who had no idea at all that google was involved). those should still be large enough to make google regret its nosiness.