Science and Technology Law Commons^™

Calculating Credibility: State V. Sharma And The Future Of Polygraph Admissibility In Ohio And Beyond, Vincent V. Vigluicci

Akron Law Review

Almost a century after its inception, the polygraph test remains one of the most fascinating forms of evidence. Firmly entrenched in popular mythology, the polygraph offers the promise of calculating truth and credibility with scientific certainty, a proposition that continues to capture the public’s imagination. At the same time, the polygraph has also been viewed with great trepidation as a flawed and dangerous instrument of oppression. Commonly called a “lie detector,” the polygraph does not actually detect lying; it measures subtle changes in blood pressure, pulse, respiration, and the skin’s resistance to electricity that are thought to result from the …

Electronic Discovery Bibliography, Paul Richert

Akron Law Review

ELECTRONIC DISCOVERY BIBLIOGRAPHY

Back To The Future: Lorraine V. Markel American Insurance Co. And New Findings On The Admissibility Of Electronically Stored Information, Hon. Paul W. Grimm, Michael V. Ziccardi Esq., Alexander W. Major Esq.

Akron Law Review

Imagine the following hypothetical, patterned on an actual case pending in federal court, and you can begin to appreciate why there is a growing awareness of the need to have clear analytical thinking regarding the admissibility of electronically stored information, variously referred to as “ESI,” “digital,” “electronic,” “computer generated,” or “computer stored” evidence in state and federal courts. ConsumerPro is a corporation that provides installment credit to consumers with poor or un-established credit records to enable them to purchase on credit expensive electronic and computer products like flat screen televisions, computers, and entertainment systems. Under their business plan, a purchaser …

How Privacy Killed Katz: A Tale Of Cognitive Freedom And The Property Of Personhood As Fourth Amendment Norm, Christian M. Halliburton

Akron Law Review

With each passing day, new technologies push the horizons of official government investigative and surveillance activity deeper and deeper into the mind and consciousness of the surveilled subject. While law enforcement agencies have always relied on observing the behavior and activity of suspicious targets, and there has been little judicial ink spent preserving the confidentiality of such observable activity, the law has been slow to respond to rapid increases in the capacity or scope of official observation that the advance of technologically sophisticated surveillance techniques helped facilitate. The sampling of techniques at the center of this Article allow the operators …

Visions Of Deception: Neuroimages And The Search For Truth, Jane Campbell Moriarty

Akron Law Review

As a form of expert testimony, polygraph evidence is riddled with causation problems. A key concern is that it conflates correlation with causation; its design measures anxiety or arousal as manifested in blood pressure, galvanic skin response, and respiration, resting on the assumption that lying will provoke an anxious response. But some polygraph subjects are not anxious and do not exhibit physiological correlates of anxiety. And asking an innocent person “did you kill John Doe” may well evoke an anxious (but believed to be guilty) reaction. Additionally, measuring physiological responses to a question about murder against a control question like …

The Future Of Neuroimaged Lie Detection And The Law, Joelle Anne Moreno

Akron Law Review

News broke during the last week of September 2008 that the Department of Homeland Security has begun testing a new mind-reading device. According to the Department’s website, the Human Factors Directorate of Science and Technology has been working on Future Attribute Screening Technology (FAST).

Although design specifics have not been made public, the MALINTENT prototype is a device that rapidly and remotely measures subjects’ body temperature, heart rate, and respiration. MALINTENT then compares these measurements with a matrix of physiological norms to generate conclusions about each subject’s future dangerousness. MALINTENT’s designers and proponents believe that this new technology will reliably …

Carpe Diem: Privacy Protection In Employment Act, Ariana R. Levinson

Akron Law Review

What these employees have in common is that their employers technologically monitored them, invading their privacy, yet their lawsuits were dismissed.6 Indeed, scholars generally agree that the law in the United States fails to adequately protect private sector employees from technological monitoring by their employers.7 This article proposes a solution: federal legislation intended to permit private sector employers to monitor their employees when necessary but to also provide their employees adequate privacy protection.8 Section II reviews the nature and extent of the problem of technological monitoring of employees by their employers. Section III surveys the laws and proposed legislation that …

Coming To A Car Dealership Near You: Standardizing Event Data Recorder Technology Use In Automobiles, Kara Ryan

Chicago-Kent Law Review

Event Data Recorders are receiving more attention as owners of automobiles have begun to realize that their driving histories are recorded. Event Data Recorders are the “black boxes” in automobiles that are installed in the vast majority of vehicles currently on the road. In the majority of states, the restrictions on what information can be retrieved from Event Data Recorders and used by police officers, advertising firms, and insurance companies remains a gray area. State laws governing Event Data Recorder technology greatly fluctuates by jurisdiction. If Event Data Recorder information falls into the wrong hands, the possession of the data …

Contact That Can Kill: Orders Of Protection, Caller Id Spoofing And Domestic Violence, Gabriella Sneeringer

Chicago-Kent Law Review

The Illinois Domestic Violence Act (IDVA) was created as a means of providing protection and remedies to domestic violence victims through orders of protection. The orders of protection can insulate victims from abusers through a variety of ways such as mandating that the abuser be prohibited from contacting the victim by any means. Under the IDVA, any violation of the order is a crime. As technology advances, abusers begin using more and more technology as a means to circumscribe orders of protection. One such technology, Caller ID spoofing, is particularly problematic. This technology enables abusers to easily contact, stalk and …

New Hardware And Software Innovations (For Volumetric Modeling), A. Keith Turner

Uncovering the Hidden Resource: Groundwater Law, Hydrology, and Policy in the 1990s (Summer Conference, June 15-17)

19 pages (includes illustrations and maps).

Freedom In My Heart, Karen Sandler

Events

No abstract provided.

Loopholes For Circumventing The Constitution: Unrestrained Bulk Surveillance On Americans By Collecting Network Traffic Abroad, Axel Arnbak, Sharon Goldberg

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

This Article reveals interdependent legal and technical loopholes that the US intelligence community could use to circumvent constitutional and statutory safeguards for Americans. These loopholes involve the collection of Internet traffic on foreign territory, and leave Americans as unprotected as foreigners by current United States (US) surveillance laws. This Article will also describe how modern Internet protocols can be manipulated to deliberately divert American’s traffic abroad, where traffic can then be collected under a more permissive legal regime (Executive Order 12333) that is overseen solely by the executive branch of the US government. Although the media has reported on some …

Voluntary Disclosure Of Information As A Proposed Standard For The Fourth Amendment's Third-Party Doctrine, Margaret E. Twomey

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

The third-party doctrine is a long-standing tenant of Fourth Amendment law that allows law enforcement officers to utilize information that was released to a third party without the probable cause required for a traditional search warrant. This has allowed law enforcement agents to use confidential informants, undercover agents, and access bank records of suspected criminals. However, in a digital age where exponentially more information is shared with Internet Service Providers, e-mail hosts, and social media “friends,” the traditional thirdparty doctrine ideas allow law enforcement officers access to a cache of personal information and data with a standard below probable cause. …

International Law Enforcement Access To User Data: A Survival Guide And Call For Action, Kate Westmoreland, Gail Kent

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

Effectively accessing and using online evidence is a critical part of modern investigations and prosecutions, but also has significant implications for users’ privacy. The current system of international sharing of online data in criminal matters is a patchwork of domestic and international law that is slow, uncertain, and not well understood. This article provides an overview of the current system for foreign governments seeking user data from US-based Internet companies. After describing the way in which the system currently operates, it identifies problems with the system, and outlines the reform efforts that are beginning to emerge.

Possession Of "Extreme" Pornography: Where's The Harm?, Jonathan Clough

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

For decades, the traditional Western liberal approach to obscene material has been that while the availability of such material may be restricted, individuals are free to possess it so long as they do not distribute to others. Prior to the advent of the Internet, traditional means of control were effective in limiting the availability of such material. However, free of traditional restrictions the Internet allows easy access to a vast array of pornographic material, some of which challenges the most liberal of societies including images of child abuse, sexual violence, bestiality, and necrophilia.

In 2008, the UK became one of …

Freedom Of Expression, Discrimination, And The Internet: Legislative Responses And Judicial Reactions, Talia Joundi

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

In Part I of this article, I argue that cyber racism is inextricably linked with systemic discrimination. The definition of systemic discrimination relied on was first provided by Judge Abella in the Report of the Royal Commission on Equality in Employment (Abella Report), which states that systemic discrimination points to practices or attitudes that can result in inequality of opportunity for individuals or groups. The Supreme Court of Canada has since adopted this definition, and in some instances, has acknowledged that systemic problems require systemic remedies. The purpose of this discussion is to demonstrate how situating cyber racism within the …

Leaving Dumb Phones Behind: A Commentary On The Warrantless Searches Of Smartphone Data Granted In R. V. Fearon, Jordan Fine

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

Given the incredible rate of smartphone technological evolution, is it about time the Supreme Court of Canada devised a special test to give law enforcement agents significantly more power to search through phone data without a warrant upon arrest of a suspect? In R. v. Fearon, the majority did just that. But this article argues the opposite is true: the increasing potential for immense privacy infringements when police search powerful and constantly evolving technological devices demands a greater limitation to police powers.

In recent cases, the Supreme Court has agreed with the position that limitations are needed concerning computers. Additionally, …

"Three Parent Babies": Techniques Explained, Objections Examined, Rebecca Carr

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

The UK Parliament has approved regulations, which come into force in October 2015, that permit the use of new treatment techniques to prevent the transmission of serious mitochondrial diseases from women to their children. The introduction of these techniques—which are not currently carried out in any country in the world—will fly in the face of the opposition that has been raised since discussions to permit clinical applications of the techniques first arose. After outlining some background to the techniques, this article briefly examines three of the objections that have been made against them: that the safety and effectiveness of the …

Big Storms, Big Debt, And Biggery-Waters: Navigating Florida's Uncertain Flood Insurance Future, Loren M. Vasquez

Seattle Journal of Environmental Law

No abstract provided.

Can Sharks Be Saved? A Global Plan Of Action For Shark Conservation In The Regime Of The Convention On Migratory Species, James Kraska, Leo Chan Gaskins

Seattle Journal of Environmental Law

Shark populations throughout the world are at grave risk; some spe-cies have declined by 95 percent. The most recent IUCN (Interna-tional Union for the Conservation of Nature) assessment by the Shark Specialist Group (SSG) found that one-fourth of shark and ray spe-cies face the prospect of extinction. This article proposes an engage-ment plan to accelerate efforts by states and international organiza-tions to conserve and protect sharks worldwide. Sharks are found throughout all of the world’s oceans, and collec-tively they occupy an indispensable niche as apex predators at the top of the ocean trophic ecosystem. These fish function as an im-portant …