The Internet is Not a Lawless Prairie: Data Protection and Privacy in Italy

As the Internet has become more pervasive, so too have concerns about the security of personal data online. The rapid evolution of Internet technology has outpaced the legislative process, leaving courts to resolve complex and important questions of policy. Their answers to these questions can have dramatic implications for the future of the Internet as a platform for global communication. The judicial decisions in this area are frequently issued ad hoc by judges who may be unfamiliar with the technology at issue and unaware of the potential ramifications of their rulings. The February 2010 conviction in Italy of three Google executives for violations of data protection laws sparked widespread controversy and criticism on this basis. This Comment argues that the Italian court’s decision is a prominent example of the broader trend of inexpert judicial regulation of the Internet

Hacktivism: A New Breed of Protest in a Networked World

After WikiLeaks released hundreds of thousands of classified U.S. government documents in 2010, the ensuing cyber-attacks waged by all sides in the controversy brought the phenomenon of hacktivism into popular focus. Many forms of hacktivism exploit illegal access to networks for financial gain, and cause expensive damage. Other forms are used primarily to advocate for political or social change. Applicable law in most developed countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom, generally prohibits hacktivism. However, these countries also protect the right to protest as an essential element of free speech. This Note argues that forms of hacktivism that are primarily expressive, that do not cause serious damage, and that do not exploit illegal access to networks or computers, sufficiently resemble traditional forms of protest to warrant protection from the application of anti-hacking laws under widely accepted principles of free speech

Beyond Point Masses. II. Non-Keplerian Shape Effects Are Detectable in Several TNO Binaries

About 40 trans-Neptunian binaries (TNBs) have fully determined orbits with about 10 others being solved except for breaking the mirror ambiguity. Despite decades of study, almost all TNBs have only ever been analyzed with a model that assumes perfect Keplerian motion (e.g., two point masses). In reality, all TNB systems are non-Keplerian due to nonspherical shapes, possible presence of undetected system components, and/or solar perturbations. In this work, we focus on identifying candidates for detectable non-Keplerian motion based on sample of 45 well-characterized binaries. We use MultiMoon , a non-Keplerian Bayesian inference tool, to analyze published relative astrometry allowing for nonspherical shapes of each TNB system’s primary. We first reproduce the results of previous Keplerian fitting efforts with MultiMoon , which serves as a comparison for the non-Keplerian fits and confirms that these fits are not biased by the assumption of a Keplerian orbit. We unambiguously detect non-Keplerian motion in eight TNB systems across a range of primary radii, mutual orbit separations, and system masses. As a proof of concept for non-Keplerian fitting, we perform detailed fits for (66652) Borasisi-Pabu, possibly revealing a J _2 ≈ 0.44, implying Borasisi (and/or Pabu) may be a contact binary or an unresolved compact binary. However, full confirmation of this result will require new observations. This work begins the next generation of TNB analyses that go beyond the point mass assumption to provide unique and valuable information on the physical properties of TNBs with implications for their formation and evolution