Dr. Ronald B. Standler
Attorney in Massachusetts
Essays on Privacy Law
Privacy law in the USA has two branches:
- protection for private facts about a person, and
- constitutional privacy law, which limits government intrusion into personal life.
About Dr. Standler
By way of introduction, I:
- programmed computers since 1968
- earned a Ph.D. in physics in 1977,
- was a professor of electrical engineering for ten years,
- wrote more than 30 archival technical papers and one book, and
- am an attorney in Massachusetts since December 1998.
I am licensed to practice law in Massachusetts and
admitted to practice in all state and federal courts in Massachusetts,
as well as the U.S. Supreme Court.
I can easily travel to towns in northeastern Massachusetts, or to the Boston area,
including Cambridge, MA.
My homepage at www.rbs2.com/
contains links to documents with my credentials,
my current fees, how to contact me, and
links to my essays on other topics in law.
Essays on this website are provided only to provide general information
and to communicate my personal comments on interesting topics in
law, technology, and society. Essays on this website are neither
legal advice nor legal opinion. Accessing this website or reading
documents on this website does not create an attorney-client
relationship. See my disclaimer
for details.
All essays at this website are protected by copyright.
I have posted my Terms Of Service
for printing, copying, and distributing my essays
at this website.
I am an attorney only in Massachusetts, so I can not provide
legal advice to people in other states of the USA, unless they have been
injured or sued in Massachusetts, or unless your local attorney hires me as a consultant.
However, I have posted the following hints for
how to find an attorney.
My main essay on privacy law in the USA
includes a review of federal statutes, constitutional law,
and the common law of torts, and also discusses searches of
people's garbage and invasions of privacy by journalists.
I have posted a separate essay on
privacy of e-mail in the USA.
My annotated list of U.S. Supreme Court cases
on fundamental rights under privacy shows the thin scope of constitutional
privacy rights in the USA.
The U.S. Supreme Court has held that the confidentiality or privacy of information
is destroyed by disclosure to a third party. In practice, this rule of law means
that there is no privacy interest in bank account records (e.g., checks, deposit slips,
monthly statements), no privacy interest in a list of telephone numbers dialled from
a home telephone, and no privacy for letters or e-mail after they have been read by the recipient.
I explain the origin of this rule of law about
third-party disclosure
and criticize this rule of law.
This topic has implications for anonymity of screen names and
privacy of search queries on the Internet, freedom from electronic surveillance, and
privacy of library or bookshop records.
My long essay Annotated Legal Cases Involving Right-to-Die in the USA,
quotes from the major cases involving disconnection of life-support
machinery (e.g., ventilator, feeding tube) from patients in a hospital.
I have also posted a companion essay,
Annotated Legal Cases on Physician-Assisted Suicide in the USA.
My essay on
nonconsensual medical experiments on human beings.
I discuss some famous (notorious) cases and then propose a draft of
some rules that might protect research subjects better than the current
rules in the USA.
My essay, Legal Aspects of Searches of Airline Passengers in the USA,
cites and discusses federal cases on searches of passengers at airports,
legal justification for border searches,
importance of the Fourth Amendment, intrusion, legal right to travel,
and, finally, argues that choosing to travel by air does not
automatically give the traveler's consent to a search.
I have posted an essay on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
(FISA),
which allows the U.S. government to conduct electronic surveillance on U.S. citizens
inside the USA without a warrant from a regular court.
I discuss in detail the legal issues:
- whether lawful FISA surveillance can be done if the sole purpose, "primary purpose",
or "a substantial purpose" is the collection of foreign intelligence information.
- whether the secret FISA court issues "warrants" that comply with the Fourth Amendment
to the U.S. Constitution.
- whether the approval by the secret FISA court of nearly all applications for a surveillance order
during 1979-2002 constitutes meaningless, automatic, and unconstitutional
"rubber stamp" approvals.
My essay on FISA concludes with my personal criticisms of this statute. I have a related essay
on the history of National Security Letters,
a type of administrative subpoena, and why they may be unconstitutional.
Copyright 2009 by Ronald B. Standler
This document at http://www.rbs2.com/iprivacy.htm
revised 5 Nov 2009
Contact Dr. Standler.
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