By Stephen Anson

Many Americans know that the Fourth Amendment protects them from unreasonable searches and seizures by the state officials, but most are unaware that this protection is greatly reduced in the context of border crossings. Normally, a police officer or other official needs a warrant or probable cause to search someone’s laptop or other electronic device. However, when a U.S. citizen returns to the United States through an international border, the border officials may search and copy the traveler’s data without these traditional safeguards.

This loophole in data security is important to many professionals since it increases the risk that confidential information may get into the wrong hands. Business travelers, lawyers, doctors, or other professionals may have confidential or privileged information on their laptops or hard drives that they don’t want others to see or that they are obligated by law or contract to protect. Some travelers may simply have sensitive personal information on their computers, such as financial documents, medical records, or personal correspondence, which they wish to keep private. Regardless the types of documents travelers have in their possession, they all are at risk of being searched and copied at the border.

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By Amanda Brings

The eight-year legal battle between Google and the Authors Guild has come to an end. On November 14, 2013, federal district judge Denny Chin granted Google’s motion for summary judgment, holding that Google Books, Google’s massive book digitization project, falls under the fair use defense to copyright infringement.

This ruling marks the end of a lawsuit initiated in 2005 by the Authors Guild, an organization representing the interests of authors in copyright protection. The Authors Guild alleged Google committed copyright infringement by digitally reproducing millions of copyrighted books, making them available to the public for online searching, and displaying “snippets” of the books, all without obtaining permission from the copyright holder. Google’s asserted in defense that Google Books constitutes a fair use of the copyrighted books because it makes use of them only for the purpose of allowing readers to find books, not to read them in their entirety.

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By Annie Allison

One rapper’s dying wishes may sabotage toy company GoldieBlox’s parody of the Beastie Boys song “Girls.” Both sides are getting no sleep while arguing the merits of fair use to protect a commercial recasting of the sexist 80’s track as an empowerment anthem for young ladies.

The internet has been in an uproar for weeks over toy maker GoldieBlox’s YouTube video showing young girls building a Rube Goldberg–style machine to the tune of the Beastie Boys’ 1989 rap song “Girls,” with altered lyrics making it clear that girls can do more than “do the laundry” and “do the dishes.”  GoldieBlox, which has used versions of songs by Queen and other pop artists in its previous online videos, posted its now controversial commercial, titled “Princess Machine,” on November 17^th and garnered more than 8 million YouTube views in just ten days. Following threats from Beastie Boys lawyers, the GoldieBlox legal team filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court asserting its right to use the music in the video under the doctrine of fair use.

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Photo Cred: qz.com

By Max Burke

My housemates and I were both happy and perplexed when our landlord installed a new washing machine in our basement. We were pleased to see the rattling, coin-operated dinosaur gone, but we were puzzled by the sleek machine of the future that took its place. “That thing can connect to the Internet?” Yes, it can. Our washing machine, along with an ever-growing number of consumer products, is a part of the Internet of Things.

The Internet of Things (IT)—which was the subject of discussion at a recent Federal Trade Commission (FTC) public workshop—generally refers to a worldwide network of real world objects that can collect, share, and control each other’s data. Nearly anything, from egg cartons to people to soil, can theoretically be a part of IT. Though it is still in its infancy, IT is expected to grow to a network of 30 to 50 billion devices by 2020. Such vast interconnectedness has many potential benefits, but, like other watershed technologies, IT will have enormous implications for issues of privacy, data security and physical safety. The problems will only be magnified when IT meets Augmented Reality—which is the combining of a surrounding physical environment with computer-generated imagery.

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By Chris Young

Edward Snowden, traitor-cum-hero, has, at the very least, set some interesting things in motion.  Since his meteoric rise (or fall), we have discovered that the National Security Agency has repeatedly pressured service providers, inter alios, to turnover vast and diverse amounts of personal data. This new state of affairs leaves many wondering if there are constitutional limits to these actions and, ultimately, are such actions even legal?

On Monday, Nov. 18, 2013, The Supreme Court denied cert in In re Electronic Privacy Information Center, a direct challenge to the National Security Agency’s (NSA) broad domestic-surveillance programs. Rather than finesse a costly test suit through the lower federal courts, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, an advocacy group, directly implored the nation’s highest court to force a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court Judge (handpicked by C.J. Roberts) to vacate its judgment requiring Verizon to turnover a broad swatch of data to the NSA. Specifically, the petition asked the justices to consider (1) “[w]hether the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court exceeded its narrow statutory authority to authorize foreign intelligence surveillance, under 50 U.S.C. § 1861, when it ordered Verizon to disclose records to the National Security Agency for all telephone communications ‘wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls’”; and (2) “[w]hether Petitioner is entitled to relief pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1651(a) to vacate the order of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, or other relief as this Court deems appropriate.”

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