Political rivalry in Rhode Island: William H. Vanderbilt vs. J. Howard McGrath: the wiretapping case

The 1939 wiretapping case bared many of the intra- and inter- party struggles that had been festering during the interwar years. Pitting Democrat J. Howard McGrath and Republican William H. Vanderbilt, two energetic and ambitious rival politicians, against each other, this scandal raised the issues of the right to privacy and the legality of using evidence obtained through electronic surveillance. Additionally, the case exposed the heated rivalry between the old and new guard within the Republican Party, while simultaneously restoring harmony among the competing forces within the Democrat Party

Restoring a Public Interest Vision of Law in the Age of the Internet

In November 2003, Mr. Marc Rotenberg, Executive Director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, lectured at Duke Law School on the importance of protecting individual privacy. In his remarks, Mr. Rotenberg recounted the successful campaign against the government\u27s Clipper Chip proposal. He argued that successful public interest advocacy in the Internet age requires the participation of experts from many fields, public engagement, and a willingness to avoid a simple balancing analysis. He further concluded that privacy may be one of the defining issues of a free society in the twenty-first century

Citizens policing the police an evaluation of citizens recording police officer and wiretapping laws

The focus of this thesis is to explore the legality, the issues, and the remedy to a controversial statute in the State of Illinois. This thesis will explain how the First Amendment relates to the Illinois statute and its desire of a citizen is right to report information that is not being granted. Moreover, this paper will further go into a recent legislative bill to amend the Illinois statute, its failure, the media surrounding the issue, and the consequences of amending or not amending the statute. It will further review state law in regard to citizens recording police officers, and explain how some states deal with the statute

Setting the Record Straight: Citizens’ First Amendment Right to Video Police in Public

There is an alarming trend in the United States of citizens being arrested for videotaping police officers in public. Cell phones with video capabilities are ubiquitous and people are using their phones to document the behavior of police officers in a public place. The goal of this paper is to study the trend of citizen arrests currently in the news and recommend solutions to the problem of encroachment upon First Amendment rights through case law