georgia
Court: State Can Dump Non-Sex Offenders Into Registry
Georgia’s Supreme Court is upholding the government’s right to put non-sex offenders on the state’s sex-offender registry, highlighting a little-noticed (but growing) nationwide practice. Atlanta criminal defense attorney Ann Marie Fitz estimated that perhaps thousands of convicts convicted of non-sexual crimes have been placed in sex-offender databases. Fitz represents a convict who was charged with false imprisonment when he was 18 for briefly detaining a 17-year-old girl during a soured drug deal.
Continue reading »Lawsuits: AT&T collects illegal taxes on Internet access
AT&T’s wireless unit has been hit by numerous federal lawsuits over the last month, each arguing that the mobile telephony giant is illegally collecting nonexistent “taxes” on phone data access plans. The cases have been filed in states as varied as Georgia, Indiana, and Alabama, but all make the same charges against AT&T—and all use the same idiosyncratic spelling of “I-Phone.” That’s because the same lawyers are involved in each one.
Continue reading »R.E.M.: Everybody Hurts (without network neutrality)
Net neutrality isn’t just an issue for policy wonks and communications lawyers, and the boys from R.E.M. want the FCC to know just how crucial a neutral ‘Net remains for artists of all stripes. Or, to put it another way: it’s the end of the world as we know it (without network neutrality).
Continue reading »Nation’s First Open Source Election Software Released
LOS ANGELES — A group working to produce an open and transparent voting system to replace current proprietary systems has published its first batches of code for public review. The Open Source Digital Voting Foundation (OSDV) announced the availability of source code for its prototype election system Wednesday night at a panel discussion that included Mitch Kapor, creator of Lotus 1-2-3 and co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation; California Secretary of State Debra Bowen; Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder Dean Logan; and Heather Smith, director of Rock the Vote. The OSDV, co-founded by Gregory Miller and John Sebes, launched its Trust the Vote Project in 2006 and has an eight-year roadmap to produce a comprehensive, publicly owned, open source electronic election system.
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