Digital Media and Data Privacy Law Blog

by David Smyth, Securities Enforcement Attorney

On October 31^st, the Federal Trade Commission sued St. Petersburg, Florida-based debt broker Bayview Solutions and two of its principals for posting the debt portfolios of 28,000 consumers online, including their bank account numbers and other identifying information. The “facts” that follow come from the FTC’s complaint. They may not be true!

Bayview’s Business

Bayview buys and sells portfolios of charged-off consumer debt for eventual collection by third-party debt collectors. One means of its business is ... Read More 

The right of journalists to refuse to testify regarding information or sources obtained as part of the news-gathering process, known as the reporter’s privilege, has been recognized by 49 of the 50 states and the District of Colombia. However, these existing protections are only applicable in state court. Federal law offers no statutory reporter’s privilege, leading to high-profile federal court cases in which a journalist is forced to choose between revealing confidential sources or spending time in jail for contempt of court.

The most prominent recent example is the case of ... Read More 

The next time you go for a long hike in a national forest with no cell phone service, you might want to take a drone with you so that you can send for help when you break your leg, dehydrate, and need help.

While you, as a non-commercial drone “hobbyist” or “modeler,” might—emphasis on might—not violate any state or federal law if you were to send a drone to facilitate your rescue, the same cannot be said for many other potential drone operators.  In fact, law enforcement in some states may not be able to send a drone to determine your specific location or provide you with medication ... Read More 

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit denied today a petition for review, en banc, of an earlier decision by a three-judge panel of the Court that had ruled in favor of Aereo and against broadcasters in a case that originated in the Southern District of New York.

On April 1, 2013, the panel concluded in the case that Aereo’s service did not violate the broadcasters’ exclusive right to “publicly perform” their copyrighted television programs. Broadcasters asked the full Second Circuit Court to review that decision, but a majority of judges declined to rehear the ... Read More 

Many journalists, constitutional lawyers, and plain old average Americans have expressed alarm at recent revelations about the Obama Administration’s “unprecedented number of leak investigations.”  Perhaps most notably, James Goodale, who represented the New York Times in the Pentagon Papers case, has argued that the President is on his way to surpassing Richard Nixon as “the worst president ever on issues of national security and press freedom.”

Of primary concern appears to be the Justice Department’s investigation of Fox News reporter James Rosen.  As is ... Read More 

In a unanimous decision authored by Justice Alito, the U.S. Supreme Court today turned away a constitutional challenge to residency requirement of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act.  As we previously reported, the Court granted certiorari in a case brought by non-Virginians challenging that requirement under the Privileges and Immunities Clause and the dormant Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution.  The Court's decision today affirmed a ruling by Fourth Circuit.

Under Section 2.2-3704(A) of the Virginia FOIA statute,

all public records shall be open to inspection and ...

We wrote recently about Sherrod v. Breitbart and O’Connor, the case argued last month in the D.C. Circuit that asks the Court to decide, among other questions, whether the District of Columbia’s anti-SLAPP statute should be applied in federal court.

The federal courts of appeals that have analyzed this question have all agreed that state anti-SLAPP statutes should be applied—at least to some degree—in federal court.  Those cases point to the Ninth Circuit’s 1999 decision in Newsham v. Lockheed Missiles & Space Co., in which the Court held that California’s anti-SLAPP ... Read More 

We would be remiss if we failed to note the recent passing of Anthony Lewis, long-time columnist and Supreme Court reporter for the New York Times.  Lewis died on March 25 at the age of 85.

Lewis won two Pulitzer Prizes and is the author of two of the most widely read books on Supreme Court history – “Gideon’s Trumpet,” which detailed the Court’s 1963 decision in Gideon v. Wainwright guaranteeing legal representation to criminal defendants charged with serious crimes and “Make No Law,” which described the Court’s seminal 1964 decision in New York Times v. Sullivan.  Of ... Read More 

Last week, we made our first foray into Sherrod v. Breitbart and O’Connor, which was argued in the D.C. Circuit several weeks ago and which will, hopefully, address the question whether the District of Columbia’s new anti-SLAPP statute should be applied by a federal court sitting in diversity.

In that post, we noted that the case also presented an interesting timeliness question.  In denying the defendants’ motion to dismiss brought pursuant to the D.C. anti-SLAPP statute, the district court held that the motion was not timely filed.  It is important to understand the unique ... Read More 

Sherrod was ousted from her job as an Agriculture Department rural-development official in 2010 after Breitbart posted an edited video of Sherrod, who is black, supposedly making racist remarks. She ...