August 2012

[Commentary] Many lawmakers in Washington and a few states are eager to approve Internet gambling. But to make it politically palatable, they are first pushing only for online poker. Why that card game and not, say, blackjack? Because, they claim, poker is mainly a game of skill.

Instead, Congress needs to tighten up the 1970 law and reaffirm the 2006 ban rather than buckle under to the million-member-strong Poker Players Alliance. Why further feed the notion that “luck” determines one’s future and that random forces guide events? Government should be affirming the value of ideas and hard work, not a belief in the roll of the dice or the shuffle of a card deck.

California's state legislature passed the Location Privacy Act of 2012 (SB-1434), which would make it mandatory for law enforcement agencies to obtain a warrant before gathering any GPS or other location-tracking data that a suspect's cell phone might be sending back to its carrier. The act, sponsored by State Senator Mark Leno (D-San Francisco), and supported by the ACLU of California and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, passed with strong support by both parties. It now needs to be signed by California's governor to be put into law. But the bill isn't necessarily a straight-shot to penal code glory: the EFF points out that Governor Jerry Brown (D-CA) vetoed California's last attempt at enforcing stricter privacy rules in 2011, when he killed a bill that would have prevented police from searching the phones of apprehended suspects without a warrant.

A train derailment in Maryland cut internet service between the war court compound at Guantánamo Bay and the Pentagon, forcing a day’s delay of pretrial hearings in the Sept. 11 terror case. The delay came as Guantánamo visitors, notably reporters living in a tent city called Camp Justice, began watching National Hurricane Center reports of Tropical Storm Isaac, which threatens to drench the base by the weekend.

Representatives of consumer watchdog groups flipped the agenda at a government meeting designed to produce voluntary, consensus-based user privacy guidelines for mobile applications.

The meeting, held in Commerce Department headquarters, was supposed to deal with potential substance of a privacy policy, but a small group of consumer advocates led by Susan Grant of the Consumer Federation of America threatened a walkout if the meeting didn't turn first to issues of process, including whether there would be detailed briefings from industry on what sorts of data are being collected by mobile applications and how they are used. These briefings, the groups said, are a necessary precursor to any discussion of the substance of a privacy policy, even one that is voluntary and consensus-driven. Officials tried to keep the meeting on track, but, after a vote, the meeting pivoted to deal with issues of process -- the timing of the meetings, the location, whether agendas would be circulated in advance, whether the stakeholders would break into working groups, and whether those working groups would circulate drafts of their findings. In the end, the group voted on a number of process issues to guide the next meeting, set for August 29. Among the decisions, the group agreed that it was important not to veer too far from the agenda at subsequent gatherings.