• The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed an amicus brief with the US Supreme Court last week in City of Ontario v. Quon, Case 08-1332. EFF said that text messages should be entitled to constitutional privacy protections prohibiting warrantless law enforcement searches. As part of its filing, EFF took issue with the practice of the City of Ontario, California in monitoring of officers’ text messages; these officers are expressly permitted to use paging devices for personal use. The case is on appeal from the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit which held that the City violated the officers’ Fourth Amendment rights.
  • In the latest on the battle between Google, Inc. and the Chinese government over censorship, the company has moved its operations from mainland China to Hong Kong. The company announced in January of this year that it would stop obeying Chinese censorship laws and would leave the country if the government attempted to force Google’s continued compliance with heavy-handed regulations. Last week the company announced that uncensored search results would be made available to mainland users via its Hong Kong-based service, Google.com.hk.