The Volokh Conspiracy

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Volokh Conspiracy

California crazy meets European crazy in the Mugshots.com case

Episode 218 of the Cyberlaw Podcast

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In this episode, Markham Erickson highlights the Mugshots.com prosecution. The site had a loathsome business model, publishing mugshots for free and charging hundreds of bucks to people who wanted the record of their arrests taken down. Now the owners are being prosecuted in a case that combines the worst of European crazy ("surely criminals have a right to be forgotten") and California crazy ("profits are being earned here – surely that calls for a criminal investigation"). Markham explains why this may be a hard case for California to win – and then joins me in expressing schadenfreude for the owners, whose mugshots are even now spread all across the internet.

Meanwhile, the ZTE mess gets messier as Congress moves to block President Trump's proposed sanctions relief. Democrats are joining national security Republicans to move legislation on the topic. Who says President Trump is the divider-in-chief?

Michael Vatis digs into the FBI's latest high-profile problem: it grossly overstated the number of encrypted phones it encountered last year. Was it a mistake or a misrepresentation? Our panel leans toward mistake.

Michael and I also criticize President Trump's decision to dump government security for his phone. Michael reminds us of the President's scathing treatment of Hillary Clinton's insecure email server and asks why an insecure cell phone is different.

And in a new feature that we still haven't made up our mind about, we do a lightning round of stories we couldn't get to:

Download the 218th Episode (mp3).

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