This morning’s Boston Globe reports on the criminal prosecution and college disciplinary proceeding simultaneously pending against two Wentworth Institute of Technology male students who had the bad sense (and bad grace) to videotape two female Massachusetts College of Art and Design students having an intimate moment in bed in a dormitory within all-too-easy sight range.

The ACLU has found itself a strong test case for determining whether a student’s right to privacy is violated when he or she is “outed” to the community by their school. A principal in Memphis, Tennessee, apparently in order to cut down on public displays of affection in school, asked her staff to put together a list of school couples, both straight and gay, and then posted that list publicly, thereby outing an untold number of student romances, including that of a 17-year old gay student, who is now suing for damages.

The New York Times is reporting that a group from Princeton has developed a way of reading encrypted data off of computer memory by literally freezing the data in place -- with liquid nitrogen -- before the data, in temporary storage, is erased. Private data thieves or government investigators could easily bypass sophisticated cryptographic systems with a cheap can of compressed air, potentially exposing private materials to unauthorized eyes.

Harvey and I have an article on Simon Glik in today's Phoenix, following up on some of the post-trial coverage we've featured on this blog. In the piece we argue that the legislature needs to change the state wiretapping law in order to better guarantee robust citizen oversight of police and other public officials.

Over at the law blog Concurring Opinions, Daniel Solove points to an AP article reporting that “Amtrak will start randomly screening passengers' carry-on bags this week in a new security push that includes officers with automatic weapons and bomb-sniffing dogs patrolling platforms and trains.” Solove sees a parallel between this and the New York subway’s security push, which he says was “largely symbolic.

This past weekend, my research assistant James Tierney and I published an op-ed in the Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly about the dubious arrest and prosecution of local attorney Simon Glik under the state "wiretapping" statute. The op-ed (and the news article that David Frank of the Lawyers Weekly wrote to accompany our piece) lays out the facts in some detail, but here's a summary:

By Harvey Silverglate

I was reminded of the convoluted mish-mash that First Amendment law has become (thanks, in large measure, to courts not taking seriously the First Amendment's admonition that the legislature "shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press") after I read Geoff Edgers' article in yesterday's Boston Globe

It is all too true that when it comes to questions of constitutional rights, the devil (or the angel, as the case may be) can be in the details. This seems the case with the new Boston Police Department initiative that would allow police officers to visit homes where they receive a tip that a minor might have hidden a gun, or where the parent suspects such and is willing to ask for police intervention.