USA PATRIOT Act » Digital Age Defense

Quicklinks 1/28/2012

Jan 282012

Some items from the past week:

“Police warn buyers about Craigslist robberies,” Bay City News, Jan. 21, 2012. People thinking the car was for sale in another city are lured to Oakland to complete the sale and then robbed.
“When Should Open Source Be Written Into Law?” Jon Buys, GigaOm, Jan. 22, 2012. (h/t @kevinmarks)
“Are We Regulating the Wrong Problem When It Comes to The Cloud?” Carolyn Elefant, Small Firm Innovation, Jan. 23, 2012. Regarding the legal ethics of cloud storage solutions for lawyers.
“Ethiopia: Copyrights and CopyCrimes,” Alemayehu G. Mariam, Merato Blog, Jan. 23, 2012. This article appears to make the argument that critics of an author scanned and posted the book online as part of a deliberate strategy to censor him by bankrupting the publisher. (h/t @contentlawyer)
“Collision in the Making Between Self-Driving Cars and How the World Works,” John Markoff, New York Times, Jan. 23, 2012. (h/t @ContentLawyer). The various legal implications of self-driving cars.
“Jail Time for Man Who Accessed Computer of a Competing Medical Practice,” Colin J. Zick, Security, Privacy, and the Law, Jan. 24, 2012. (h/t @MarieAndreeW)
“Norwegian Data Inspectorate rules use of Google Apps by companies breaches Norweigian law, cites US Patriot Act,” James Firth, Open Digital, Jan. 24, 2012.
“Iran arrests wave of bloggers, writers and programmers,” Cyrus Farivar, Deutsche-Welle, Jan. 24, 2012.
“Illinois Allows Cameras in Trial Courts on Trial Basis,” Molly McDonough, Jan. 24, 2012. On the other hand, in follow-up to this post, “[English] Judge bans tweeting from Harry Redknapp tax trial after reporter tweets name of juror,” Friederike Heine, Legal Week, Jan. 24, 2012. (h/t @kysen)
“Just business: how Russian technology provides the eyes and ears for the world’s Big Brothers,” Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, OpenDemocracy, Jan. 25, 2012. (h/t @sunil_abraham)

Reach of USA PATRIOT Act affects international investment

Examples, Jurisdiction, Privacy from government No Responses »

Dec 102011

From ZDNet, reports that the Dutch government is avoiding doing business with US cloud providers out of concern that the USA PATRIOT Act could make any data it stores subject to disclosure, in possible contravention of European data protection law.

Discussed by the European Parliament’s Privacy Platform earlier this month, the Patriot Act is being investigated by European authorities, after Gordon Frazer, managing director of Microsoft UK, exclusively told ZDNet that the Redmond-based company must comply with Patriot Act requests, and other companies with a U.S. presence must do also.

This contravenes European law, which states that organisations cannot pass on user data to a third-party outside the European zone without the users’ permission.

In a written answer to a parliamentary question, Dutch minister Ivo Opstelten asserted that, in response to previous questions (Dutch): “This basically means that companies from the United States in such bids and contracts are excluded.”