In response to my recent missive ("Beating Customs Agents With Your Laptop") about the fourth-amendment-free zone overseen by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Lawrence Friedman at Customs Law sent an email explaining some of what can really happen when you try to apply technogeek law to the real world: In response to your encryption-deleted key suggestion, you might think … [Read more...] about Customs Agents Beat You Back
The Minimum Wage and Unemployment
Columnist Steve Chapman has a piece today complaining that the coming increase in the minimum wage will cause unemployment: Come Friday, the federally mandated minimum wage will jump to $7.25 an hour from $6.55 -- an 11 percent increase. At a time when employers are laying off workers, Washington is going to make it more expensive to keep them. If you're a minimum wage … [Read more...] about The Minimum Wage and Unemployment
The Blogger Identity: Claims
One of the recent kerfuffles in the legal blogosphere (or, if you must, the blawgosphere) is about anonymity. On blogs. Yeah! I know! But they all sound so serious! Dan Hull started it (this time) with his declaration that What About Clients was now a "Wuss-Free Zone." Effective July 1, 2009, and absent compelling reasons, this blog will no longer print any comments of … [Read more...] about The Blogger Identity: Claims
Beating Customs Agents With Your Laptop
[Excuse me while I rant...] I've never been out of the country, so I've never had to deal with the U.S. Customs Service (or whatever self-important name these tax collectors are using lately), but I hate the whole organization on principle anyway because they're a bunch of weasels who insist on conducting unjustified searches of United States citizens. Police need a … [Read more...] about Beating Customs Agents With Your Laptop
1984: Social Media Edition
In George Orwell's famous distopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, one of the most oppressive features of his totalitarian world is the ubiquitous surveillance. Every public place---and every private room as well---is always being monitored through a massive network of two-way video cameras called telescreens. Do anything that angered the tyrannical regime of Big Brother and a … [Read more...] about 1984: Social Media Edition