Free Republic

Including the line ‘China was largely right and the United States was largely wrong’ discredits any piece of writing that discusses civil liberties and the rule of law. My former law professor Jack Goldsmith, now at Harvard Law School, and Andrew Keane Woods of the University of Arizona Law School, have a remarkable article in The Atlantic that defends technology companies’ surveillance and speech controls regarding coronavirus information. “Significant monitoring and speech control are inevitable components of a mature and flourishing internet,” they write, “and governments must play a large role in these practices to ensure that the internet is...

Your iPhone will track and record places that you visit most often to provide better location-based data and suggestions across iOS 11. While these suggestions can be super helpful, you may not like the idea of your iPhone and iPad tracking the locations you frequent If you value your privacy more than you do location-based data and suggestions, you can turn the feature off. How to turn off Significant Locations on iPhone and iPad: 1. Launch the Settings app from the Home screen. 2. Tap on Privacy. 3. Tap Location Services at the top. 4. Tap System Services. It's all...

Can cops simply take your cell phone and browse through it to their hearts’ content after they arrest you? Today, in Riley v. California, a unanimous Supreme Court answered that question with a resounding “no.” It’s not only a victory for digital privacy, but an example of the kind of judicial engagement that we desperately need to protect our liberties from unreasonable government interference. In Riley, the Court addressed the question of whether the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement applies to cell phone searches. In two separate cases, individuals were arrested and searched by police. The police took their cell phones...

(Regarding Cellphones) The Supreme Court has handed down a unanimous decision in Riley v. California, and it's good news for digital privacy advocates. The Court decided that once someone is arrested, the police may not search the person's phone without a warrant. The ruling stated that "the term 'cell phone' is often misleading in shorthand; many of these devices are in fact miniature computers that also happen to have the capacity to be used as a telephone. They could just as easily be called cameras, video players, rolodexes, calendars, tape recorders, libraries, diaries, albums, televisions, maps, or newspapers." Before just...