By Steven J. Porizo
The Terrorist Surveillance Program (TSP) is a high-tech communication signals intelligence program that we still know little about since it remains highly classified to this day. However, we do know that the TSP, by using classified and extremely cutting edge technology, “intercepts without benefit of warrant or other judicial approval, prior or subsequent, the international telephone and internet communications of numerous persons and organizations within this country.” The government on several occasions indicated that the TSP has been in place from at least 2002.
Legal analysis related to the validity of the TSP is an important and contemporary issue. A case that directly challenged the legality of the TSP was decided against the government in a federal District Court and was subsequently appealed to a U.S. Circuit Court. This is an issue that should concern all Americans as it directly impacts the government’s ability to protect its citizens home and abroad, yet also raises privacy concerns that all individuals cherish. Understanding the legal contours of the TSP requires finding a very delicate balance between these two paramount and fundamental objectives. In this case, it appears that the government’s need for intelligence to protect the U.S. and its citizens against future terrorist attacks takes precedence over individual’s privacy interests.
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By Tyson E. Hubbard
How would you feel if your daily travels were tracked and stored in a large computer database? Presumably someone going over the raw data could figure out where you worked, where your kids went to school, where your family lived and at what stores you liked to shop. In the wrong hands, the potential abuses of that sort of information are very scary. What many people do not realize is that it is exactly this type of information that is being collected every day by police officers across the country. New technology which is being heavily marketed to police departments allows a camera mounted on top of a police cruiser to take a picture of your license plate and store that information, complete with time, date and exact latitude and longitude coordinates for your vehicle. This sort of information is gathered anytime your car happens to travel past a police car, or more accurately anytime a police car travels past your car. Think about how many times you pass a police car on the average day: maybe it is on the freeway, or you see a police officer doing speed checks, or you are even going the other direction on the freeway and there is an officer across the median. Maybe as you run your daily errands there is police car that has someone pulled over on the side of the road, or even a cruiser parked at the local donut shop. Then there are the times a police officer drives by your car and you are not even aware. You might be in the parking lot at work or home with the garage door open. Everytime a transaction like this occurs, when your car and a police car are in the same location and the officer’s camera is operational, the information is collected. With the vast amount of information being collected and stored on every driver, police departments across the country have essentially placed tracking devices onto everyone’s vehicles.
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By Catrina Sveum
This book provides an overview of how advances in technology are eroding individual privacy. It explores the tension between individual civil liberties and national security. In addition to describing new threats to privacy, the book focuses on the inability of the law to protect individual privacy in the face of rapidly advancing technology.
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By Robert Sanfilippo
Virtually Obscene is divided into seven chapters. Chapter 1 provides an overview of what the Internet is, describing its origin, structure, and various attempts to regulate it. Chapter 2 provides an overview of the current obscenity standards in the United States and discusses the problems therein, while providing the author’s proposals and alternatives to the current standard. Chapter 3 discusses the First Amendment, particularly the freedom of speech clause and the arguments surrounding it, as well as the author’s reasons why freedom of speech does not protect Internet obscenity. Chapters 4, 5, and 6, introduce and analyze the arguments of Internet obscenity and its harm to children, women and the moral environment, respectively. Chapter 7 concludes with a discussion of why Internet obscenity regulation is “a bad idea.”
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by Zachary M. Mattison
This Note evaluates the practicality of the United States Supreme Court’s First Amendment jurisprudence in light of the crisis of the internet being used as a safe haven for terrorist communication, training, and planning. The author criticizes the modern Clear and Present Danger test and discusses the tension between the First Amendment’s significance to American society and national security concerns involving internet communication.
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By Marc H. Greenberg
Obscenity law has long been marred with inconsistencies and uncertainties, and the water has only been muddied by the advent of the technical age and the multiple legislative attempts to restrict access in public libraries. Furthermore, courts have not adequately resolved the constitutionality of much of the related legislation.
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By Sheila Schwallie
Some governments have already developed opinions and drafted regulations on “designer babies” as bio-technological advances are getting close to making it a reality for parents to design their babies before in vitro fertilization. In the United Kingdom, heavy regulation of sex selection has been requested while the United States has not yet voiced a unified opinion on the issue despite the increasing use of sex selection procedures.
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