Prosecutors Are Shaping Privacy Law
I'm surprised, but glad, that a federal magistrate judge would take the time to write out an article like this. It feels odd to me that a judge - someone who is supposed to be neutral - would openly take a stance that prosecutors are overstepping their boundaries within matters of policy. (Of course, one of the functions of a judge is to say when a prosecutor has crossed the line as a matter of law.)<p>I saw a video (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXAkXyysfFU" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXAkXyysfFU</a>) discussing one of this judge's recent opinions regarding a series of copyright infringement lawsuits. Orenstein dismissed 13 suits from one single copyright holder against numerous "John Doe" defendants, in which the rights holder conflated people who subscribed to internet service as being the same people who actually committed copyright infringement. Since the plaintiff had no evidence to show that the subscriber and infringer were the same person, Orenstein dismissed the suit without the defendant even knowing he or she was being sued - but Orenstein's basic knowledge, allowing him to make such a ruling unprompted, is the exception, not the rule.<p>We can't depend on having judges like Orenstein or William Alsup or even the Supreme Court to enact good privacy policy. Policymaking is the job of Congress, and while I am happy to see recent Congressional oversight hearings regarding facial recognition, TSA, and the like, I wish that Congress would take bolder stances against police and prosecutorial overreach.