Tag Archives: Electronic Communications Privacy Act

  New York County District Attorney Cyrus Vance indicted 63 gang members involved in murders, shootings, assaults, firearms possessions and gun trafficking. Lawyers.com videojournalist Ed Alpern reports that police busted members in some of the city’s most violent street gangs by monitoring Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites. New York City veteran criminal defense attorney, H. Hershel Katz, pointed out that the defendants were from low income projects. He described them as “kids whose life expectancies to them is …

  Are your privacy rights being compromised in the name of law and order? Lawyers.com Editorial Director Betsy Kim provides today’s Newsbreak, a round-up of cases and laws that could impact your Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizure. The U.S. Supreme Court is reviewing a case on whether police need a search warrant for a blood sample from a DUI suspect. Is the right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure under these circumstances outweighed by the …

Google released a transparency report last week showing that government snooping into your personal data is on the rise. The numbers released by the Internet giant show that law enforcement officials in the United States made 8,438 data requests over the second half of 2012, a 6 percent increase from the first six months of the year. Such requests have risen by more than 85 percent since 2010. Of the governmental requests, Google says that it complies with about 89 …

When retired four-star general and former CIA Director David Petraeus resigned from his post this month after admitting to an extramarital affair, one of the more startling revelations was that the dalliance was discovered when the FBI sifted through his private Gmail account.The spy chief had been out-spied. More alarming is that the average American could easily be subjected to the same snooping that Petraeus endured. According to current law, police can access email through a provider, like Yahoo or …

Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, Paypal, investment accounts, frequent flier miles, LexisNexis access — consumers today take advantage of a wealth of online services across a broad swath of industries. But what happens to all those accounts, filled with photos, memories, insights and money, after a person dies? The issue is doubly important for services like Paypal or online bank accounts that contain actual cash assets, but families can gain real or emotional value from the non-monied contents of Facebook or email …