Category: court

And in a victory for journalists, the judge specifically acknowledged the First Amendment implications of cellphone searches too. She cited reporting by The Intercept and VICE about CPB searching journalists’ cellphones “based on these journalists’ ongoing coverage of politically sensitive issues” and warned that those phone searches could put confidential sources at risk. Wednesday’s ruling adds to a stream of cases restricting the feds’ ability to search travelers’ electronics. The 4th and 9th Circuits, which cover the mid-Atlantic and Western states, have ruled that border police need at least “reasonable suspicion” of a crime to search cellphones. Last year, a judge in the Southern District of New York also ruled (PDF) that the government “may not copy and search an American citizen’s cell phone at the border without a warrant absent exigent circumstances.”

As independent contractors, gig workers are not entitled to benefits like sick leave, overtime and workers’ compensation. The SEIU union and four gig workers, ultimately, challenged Prop 22 based on its conflict with the Legislature’s power to administer workers’ compensation, specifically. The law, which passed with 58 percent of the vote in 2020, makes gig workers ineligible for workers’ comp, which opponents of Prop 22 argued rendered the entire law unconstitutional. […] Beyond the implications for gig workers, the heavily-funded Prop 22 ballot campaign pushed the limits of what could be spent on an initiative, ultimately becoming the most expensive measure in California history. Uber and Lyft have both threatened to leave any states that pass laws not classifying their drivers as independent contractors. The decision Thursday closes the door to that possibility for California.

Slashdot reader krakman shares this report from the Washington Post:
“The SEC’s rationale, under which the statute must be construed to broadly cover all systems public companies use to safeguard their valuable assets, would have sweeping ramifications,” [judge] Engelmayer wrote in a 107-page decision. “It could empower the agency to regulate background checks used in hiring nighttime security guards, the selection of padlocks for storage sheds, safety measures at water parks on whose reliability the asset of customer goodwill depended, and the lengths and configurations of passwords required to access company computers,” he wrote. The federal judge also dismissed SEC claims that SolarWinds’ disclosures after it learned its customers had been affected improperly covered up the gravity of the breach…

In an era when deeply damaging hacking campaigns have become commonplace, the suit alarmed business leaders, some security executives and even former government officials, as expressed in friend-of-the-court briefs asking that it be thrown out. They argued that adding liability for misstatements would discourage hacking victims from sharing what they know with customers, investors and safety authorities. Austin-based SolarWinds said it was pleased that the judge “largely granted our motion to dismiss the SEC’s claims,” adding in a statement that it was “grateful for the support we have received thus far across the industry, from our customers, from cybersecurity professionals, and from veteran government officials who echoed our concerns.”

The article notes that as far back as 2018, “an engineer warned in an internal presentation that a hacker could use the company’s virtual private network from an unauthorized device and upload malicious code. Brown did not pass that information along to top executives, the judge wrote, and hackers later used that exact technique.”
Engelmayer did not dismiss the case entirely, allowing the SEC to try to show that SolarWinds and top security executive Timothy Brown committed securities fraud by not warning in a public “security statement” before the hack that it knew it was highly vulnerable to attacks.

The SEC “plausibly alleges that SolarWinds and Brown made sustained public misrepresentations, indeed many amounting to flat falsehoods, in the Security Statement about the adequacy of its access controls,” Engelmayer wrote. “Given the centrality of cybersecurity to SolarWinds’ business model as a company pitching sophisticated software products to customers for whom computer security was paramount, these misrepresentations were undeniably material.”

“Unbeknownst to Plaintiff and other Barnaby website users, and constituting the ultimate violation of privacy, Barnaby allows an undisclosed third-party, Microsoft, to intercept, read, and utilize for commercial gain consumers’ private information about their sexual practices and preferences, gleaned from their activity on Barnaby’s websites,” the complaint states. “This information includes but is not limited to product searches and purchase initiations, as well as the consumer’s unique Microsoft identifier.” The complaint claims that Good Vibrations and Babeland sites have installed trackers using Microsoft’s Clarity software, which does “recording in real time,” and tracks users’ mouse movements, clicks or taps, scrolls, and site navigation. Microsoft says on the Clarity site that it “processes a massive amount of anonymous data around user behavior to gain insights and improve machine learning models that power many of our products and services.”

“By allowing undisclosed third party Microsoft to eavesdrop and intercept users’ PPSI in such a manner — including their sexual orientation, preferences, and desires, among other highly sensitive, protected information — Barnaby violates its Privacy Policies, which state it will never share such information with third parties,” the complaint states. The complaint includes screenshots of code from the sexual health sites that claims to show them using Machine Unique Identifier (“MUID”) cookies that “identifies unique web browsers visiting Microsoft sites,” according to Microsoft, and are used for “advertising, site analytics, and other operational purposes.” The complaint claims that this violates the California Invasion of Privacy Act, the Federal Wiretap Act, and Californians’ reasonable expectation of privacy.

Court-ordered debt payments have consumed a growing share of Brazil’s federal budget. The government estimated it would spend 70.7 billion reais ($13.2 billion) next year on judicial decisions where it can no longer appeal. The figure does not include small-value claims, which historically amount to around 30 billion reais annually. The combined amount of over 100 billion reais represents a sharp increase from 37.3 billion reais in 2015. It is equivalent to about 1% of gross domestic product, or 15% more than the government expects to spend on unemployment insurance and wage bonuses to low-income workers next year. AGU did not provide a reason for Brazil’s rising court costs.

Kramer is facing 13 felony charges alleging he violated a New Hampshire law against attempting to deter someone from voting using misleading information. He also faces 13 misdemeanor charges accusing him of falsely representing himself as a candidate by his own conduct or that of another person. The charges were filed in four counties and will be prosecuted by the state attorney general’s office. Attorney General John Formella said New Hampshire was committed to ensuring that its elections “remain free from unlawful interference.”

Kramer, who owns a firm that specializes in get-out-the-vote projects, did not respond to an email seeking comment Thursday. He told The Associated Press in February that he wasn’t trying to influence the outcome of the election but rather wanted to send a wake-up call about the potential dangers of artificial intelligence when he paid a New Orleans magician $150 to create the recording. “Maybe I’m a villain today, but I think in the end we get a better country and better democracy because of what I’ve done, deliberately,” Kramer said in February.

T-Mobile and Verizon agreed to pay $4.1 million each while AT&T agreed to pay a little over $2 million. The settlement includes AT&T subsidiary Cricket Wireless and Verizon subsidiary TracFone. The settlement involves 49 of the 50 US states (Florida did not participate) and the District of Columbia. The states’ investigation found that the three major carriers “made several misleading claims in their advertising, including misrepresenting ‘unlimited’ data plans that were actually limited, offering ‘free’ phones that came at a cost, and making false promises about switching to different wireless carrier plans.”

“AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile lied to millions of consumers, making false promises of free phones and ‘unlimited’ data plans that were simply untrue,” James said. “Big companies are not excused from following the law and cannot trick consumers into paying for services they will never receive.” The carriers denied any illegal conduct despite agreeing to the settlement. In addition to payments to each state, the carriers agreed to changes in their advertising practices. It’s unclear whether consumers will get any refunds out of the settlement, however. These are the following changes the three carriers agreed upon, as highlighted by the NY attorney general’s office:
– “Unlimited” mobile data plans can only be marketed if there are no limits on the quantity of data allowed during a billing cycle.
– Offers to pay for consumers to switch to a different wireless carrier must clearly disclose how much a consumer will be paid, how consumers will be paid, when consumers can expect payment, and any additional requirements consumers have to meet to get paid.
– Offers of “free” wireless devices or services must clearly state everything a consumer must do to receive the “free” devices or services.
– Offers to lease wireless devices must clearly state that the consumer will be entering into a lease agreement.
– All “savings” claims must have a reasonable basis. If a wireless carrier claims that consumers will save using its services compared to another wireless carrier, the claim must be based on similar goods or services or differences must be clearly explained to the consumer.

The advertising restrictions are to be in place for five years.

U.S. Judge Failla “cleared the Securities and Exchange Commission to proceed with its lawsuit alleging that the giant crypto broker and exchange Coinbase has been dealing in securities without a license.”

What’s important about Failla’s ruling is that she dismissed out of hand Coinbase’s argument, which is that cryptocurrencies are novel assets that don’t fall within the SEC’s jurisdiction — in short, they’re not “securities.” Crypto promoters have been making the same argument in court and the halls of Congress, where they’re urging that the lawmakers craft an entirely new regulatory structure for crypto — preferably one less rigorous than the existing rules and regulations promulgated by the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission…

Failla saw through that argument without breaking a sweat. “The ‘crypto’ nomenclature may be of recent vintage,” she wrote, “but the challenged transactions fall comfortably within the framework that courts have used to identify securities for nearly eighty years….” Since Congress hasn’t enacted regulations specifically aimed at crypto, Coinbase said, the SEC’s lawsuit should be dismissed. The judge’s opinion of that argument was withering. “While certainly sizable and important,” she wrote, “the cryptocurrency industry ‘falls far short of being a “portion of the American economy” bearing vast economic and political significance….'”

Failla’s ruling followed another in New York federal court in which a judge deemed crypto to be securities. In that case, Judge Edgardo Ramos refused to dismiss SEC charges against Gemini Trust Co., a crypto trading outfit run by Cameron and Tyler Winkelvoss, and the crypto lender Genesis Global Capital. The SEC charged that a scheme in which Gemini pooled customers’ crypto assets and lent them to Genesis while promising the customers high interest returns is an unregistered security. The SEC case, like that against Coinbase, will proceed….

The hangover from March continued into this month. On April 5, a federal jury in New York found Terraform Labs and its chief executive and major shareholder, Do Kwon, liable in what the SEC termed “a massive crypto fraud….” The value of UST fell in effect to zero, the SEC said, “wiping out over $40 billion of total market value … and sending shock waves through the crypto asset community.”

In now unsealed court documents reviewed by Forbes, Google was ordered to hand over the names, addresses, telephone numbers, and user activity of Youtube accounts and IP addresses that watched select YouTube videos, part of a larger criminal investigation by federal investigators.

The videos were sent by undercover police to a suspected cryptocurrency launderer… In conversations with the bitcoin trader, investigators sent links to public YouTube tutorials on mapping via drones and augmented reality software, Forbes details. The videos were watched more than 30,000 times, presumably by thousands of users unrelated to the case. YouTube’s parent company Google was ordered by federal investigators to quietly hand over all such viewer data for the period of Jan. 1 to Jan. 8, 2023…

“According to documents viewed by Forbes, a court granted the government’s request for the information,” writes PC Magazine, adding that Google was asked “to not publicize the request.”
The requests are raising alarms for privacy experts who say the requests are unconstitutional and are “transforming search warrants into digital dragnets” by potentially targeting individuals who are not associated with a crime based simply on what they may have watched online.
That quote came from Albert Fox-Cahn, executive director at the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, who elaborates in Forbes’ article. “No one should fear a knock at the door from police simply because of what the YouTube algorithm serves up. I’m horrified that the courts are allowing this.”

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the article.