turnbulled

This is a really interesting story.  Justice Scalia maintains that there is no privacy right to the scads of individual items of personal data floating around the Internet.  However, when a Fordham Law School class created a 15 page dossier on Scalia (based on information pulled from public sources on the web) he wasn’t happy.  Justice Scalia objected based on his conclusion that the exercise demonstrated bad judgment (which is, ultimately, protected by the First Amendment).

This is yet another example of the tension between privacy rights and the First Amendment.  Development of frictionless information distribution via the web is gas thrown on the fire of this issue.

Read the following post on AboveTheLaw.com

http://abovethelaw.com/2009/04/fordham_law_compiling_a_dossie.php

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/09/publishingcrime/

A Florida man facing a year in jail for the online posting of a local police officer’s phone number and address is challenging the 37-year-old state law on First Amendment grounds.Arizona is believed to be the only other state with a similar law. A similar Washington state law was overturned on First Amendment grounds in 2004.

The Florida federal court case is being brought by Robert Brayshaw, who posted the personal information of a Florida officer last year on the popular website Ratemycop. The statute does not require that the information be published on the internet. A local judge tossed the case on procedural grounds, saying prosecutors failed to bring the case to trial within Florida’s 90-day speedy trial rules.

Brayshaw’s attorney, James Green, said his 34-year-old client was the only person ever facing trial for allegedly violating the 1972 law that carries a maximum one-year jail term. His client brought suit (.pdf) Friday in federal court to overturn the law in a bid to continue exercising his First Amendment rights of speech, Green said.