There’s No App For That: Smartphone Data Privacy and Law Enforcement Searches
Smartphones have become repositories for vast amounts of personal information. As their functionality grows, users store more and more of their details in their smartphone, from friends’ phone numbers, diary entries, photos, and messages, to shopping lists, bank details, and travel plans. At the same time, phone manufacturers and app designers silently gather data on [...]
Facial Recognition Technology and the Next Generation Identification System
Facial Recognition Technology requires a photographic camera combined with face recognition software. The software identifies human faces captured by the camera, and quantifies them using an algorithm. The algorithm measures “nodal points” on the face, such as the distance between the eyes, cheekbone shape, nose width, and jaw shape. The combination of the nodal points [...]
Privacy and the Cloud
With the increased use of cloud storage new questions have arisen related to the privacy and confidentiality of files stored remotely. Although file storage on remote servers is not a new creation, many of the legal doctrines surrounding privacy and confidentiality of files were created without use of the cloud in mind and have not [...]
Forced Decryption and the 5th Amendment: Analytical Issues in the 11th Circuit’s Recent Decision
Last Thursday, the Wall Street Journal and Volokh Conspiracy reported that the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit recently decided that forcing a suspect to decrypt and provide a hard drive when the government did not already know what it contained violates the suspect’s Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination. While most of the Court’s [...]