Tag Archives: international law

Supreme Court Timewarp: Revenge of the Computer Nerds

Imagine that you are back in the mid-1980s.  Most people’s knowledge of computers comes from the movie Wargames.  Some larger business and universities had computer networks with employees having work stations, but home computing was just beginning.  Apple had just introduced the McIntosh, but, if you used a Microsoft operating system, you were using MS-DOS.  Additionally, your home computer used a dial-up modem if you wanted to communicate with other computers.  To communicate with another computer, you needed to know the phone number for that computer’s modem.  (If you were just searching to see what was out there, there were techniques and programs known to hackers to find other computers and save those numbers for later use.)  A pre-internet existed through “bulletin board systems” which allowed the posting of messages and downloading and uploading information through that system.

It was in this era that Congress passed the Stored Communications Act of 1986 as Title II of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986.  While there have been some minor changes since 1986, the core provisions of that Act (codified as Sections 2701 through Section 2712 of Title 18 of the United States Code) are essentially the same as they were in 1986.

While most of the provisions of the Stored Communications Act protects the rights of those who use electronic communications, some of the sections (including Section 2703) establish the procedure by which the government can obtain stored communications when needed for a criminal investigation.  The procedures recognize that these communications might be stored in another state and require companies to honor warrants issued in the state in which prosecutors need access to those communications. Continue Reading...

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The Iran Negotiations

One of the big debates in Washington for the past several months have been the on-going negotiations with Iran.  The neo-cons in the Republican Party oppose any deal and have managed to get the Administration to concede that any agreement with Iran will be submitted to Congress.  The problem with this discussion on the news and in D.C. is the framing of this issue as a dispute between Iran on one side and the United States and Israel on the other side.  This framing is completely false.  While the rest of the world is willing to let the United States take the lead in negotiations, the negotiations are a global issue and that fact is key to understanding what options are on the table.

There are two basic facts underlying this dispute.  First, the basic issue is a question of international law — the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and related documents.  Either Iran is sufficiently complying with those terms or it isn’t.  The second issue is that most of the major powers have imposed some degree of sanctions on Iran.  Keeping pressure on Iran requires that everybody stays on board.

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