21st Century Pillow-Talk: Applicability of the Marital Communications Privilege to Electronic Mail

This article is the first to explore whether the marital communications privilege, which protects from disclosure private communications between spouses, should attach to communication sent via Web-based email. Traditionally, the privilege does not attach where a third party learns, either intentionally or inadvertently, the content of an otherwise private communication. In the world of Web-based email, disclosure to a third party is necessary in order for successful communication to occur. Writers of Web-based email draft a message and store it on a third-party Internet Service Provider’s (ISP) server until the recipient reads the message. Even after the email has been delivered, a copy may remain on the ISP’s server indefinitely. This article investigates whether this process is inherently at odds with the marital communications privilege. This article will also explore whether marital communications should continue to be protected despite the privilege’s failure to meet some of its stated purposes

Twenty-First Century Pillow-Talk: Applicability of the Marital Communications Privilege to Electronic Mail

The marital privilege has two parts: the testimonial privilege and the communications privilege. Originally, the testimonial privilege prevented one spouse from testifying against another. According to the United States Supreme Court, spousal disqualification sprang from two canons of medieval jurisprudence: first, the rule that an accused was not permitted to testify in his own behalf because of his interest in the proceeding; second, the concept that husband and wife were one, and that since the woman had no recognized separate legal existence, the husband was that one. Thus, if a husband were not permitted to testify, then his wife, as a part of the husband, likewise should not be permitted to testify. In 1933, the United States Supreme Court abolished the rule disqualifying spouses from testifying in federal court on each other\u27s behalf; however, a privilege remained that prevented either spouse from providing adverse testimony against the other. The rationale for the testimonial privilege is its role in protecting marital harmony and the sanctity of the marital relationship. This Article takes a fresh and innovative look at whether the marital communication privilege should protect communications between husband and wife sent via electronic means. Traditionally, the marital communications privilege is destroyed when a third party, without the knowledge or involvement of the recipient-spouse, intentionally or inadvertently discovers the communication. In the context of electronic communication, where Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have access to otherwise confidential communications, the marital communications privilege may not apply at all. Indeed, it is possible to argue that the marital communications privilege is inherently at odds with this form of communication. This Article has two purposes. First, it explores whether the marital communications privilege currently protects e-mail communication and whether the privilege should protect such communication. Second, it addresses whether the marital communications privilege should continue to exist, considering the traditional purposes of the privilege. Part II of the Article discusses the history of the marital communications privilege. Part III explores the details of e-mail storage and addresses constitutional and statutory provisions outside the context of the marital communications privilege that provide some privacy protection for electronic communications. Part IV takes a critical look at whether the marital communications privilege applies to electronic communication based on more traditional applications of the privilege and highlights three legislative solutions that have been put in place to protect privileged communications made electronically. Part V discusses whether courts should reconsider the marital communications privilege as a whole considering the stated purposes of the privilege

South Pole Telescope Software Systems: Control, Monitoring, and Data Acquisition

We present the software system used to control and operate the South Pole Telescope. The South Pole Telescope is a 10-meter millimeter-wavelength telescope designed to measure anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) at arcminute angular resolution. In the austral summer of 2011/12, the SPT was equipped with a new polarization-sensitive camera, which consists of 1536 transition-edge sensor bolometers. The bolometers are read out using 36 independent digital frequency multiplexing (DfMux) readout boards, each with its own embedded processors. These autonomous boards control and read out data from the focal plane with on-board software and firmware. An overall control software system running on a separate control computer controls the DfMux boards, the cryostat and all other aspects of telescope operation. This control software collects and monitors data in real-time, and stores the data to disk for transfer to the United States for analysis

A Measurement of the Cosmic Microwave Background Damping Tail from the 2500-Square-Degree SPT-SZ Survey

We present a measurement of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature power spectrum using data from the recently completed South Pole Telescope Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SPT-SZ) survey. This measurement is made from observations of 2540 deg^2 of sky with arcminute resolution at 150 GHz, and improves upon previous measurements using the SPT by tripling the sky area. We report CMB temperature anisotropy power over the multipole range 650 < ℓ < 3000. We fit the SPT bandpowers, combined with the 7 yr Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP7) data, with a six-parameter ΛCDM cosmological model and find that the two datasets are consistent and well fit by the model. Adding SPT measurements significantly improves ΛCDM parameter constraints; in particular, the constraint on θ_s tightens by a factor of 2.7. The impact of gravitational lensing is detected at 8.1σ, the most significant detection to date. This sensitivity of the SPT+WMAP7 data to lensing by large-scale structure at low redshifts allows us to constrain the mean curvature of the observable universe with CMB data alone to be Ω_k=-0.003^(+0.014)_(-0.018). Using the SPT+WMAP7 data, we measure the spectral index of scalar fluctuations to be n_s = 0.9623 ± 0.0097 in the ΛCDM model, a 3.9σ preference for a scale-dependent spectrum with n_s < 1. The SPT measurement of the CMB damping tail helps break the degeneracy that exists between the tensor-to-scalar ratio r and n_s in large-scale CMB measurements, leading to an upper limit of r < 0.18 (95% C.L.) in the ΛCDM+r model. Adding low-redshift measurements of the Hubble constant (H_0) and the baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) feature to the SPT+WMAP7 data leads to further improvements. The combination of SPT+WMAP7+H_0+BAO constrains n_s = 0.9538 ± 0.0081 in the ΛCDM model, a 5.7σ detection of n_s < 1, and places an upper limit of r < 0.11 (95% C.L.) in the ΛCDM+r model. These new constraints on n_s and r have significant implications for our understanding of inflation, which we discuss in the context of selected single-field inflation models