John Yoo Claims Affirmative Action Policies No Longer Necessary

The Philadelphia Inquirer, July 7, 2009 by John Yoo
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/columnists/20090705_Closing_Arguments__No_more_quotas_The_Supreme_Court_in__quot_Ricci_v__DeStefano_quot__dealt_a_final_blow_to_racially_motivated_hiring__This_is_the_dawning_of_post-racial_America_.html

Candidate Obama said it was time to move beyond identity politics…. That requires us to discard extreme measures such as racial hiring and admission quotas or limits on state elections. While they might have been justified in the 1960s, to eliminate segregation root and branch, they are necessary no longer. The Supreme Court has called on the president and Congress to introduce new measures that no longer manipulate race, and it is up to our elected politicians now to answer.

Christopher Hoofnagle Warns Hackers Can Create Fake I.D.s from Partial Social Security Numbers

-NPR.org, July 6, 2009 by Christopher Joyce
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106324377

Chris Hoofnagle, a technology lawyer at the University of California, Berkeley, says computer criminals don’t even have to get the whole, exact Social Security number to create a “fictitious person” and secure a credit card, something he calls “synthetic identify theft.” They can do it with a fake or partial number.

-ScienceNOW, July 6, 2009 by Karen C. Fox
http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2009/706/1

“Using Social Security numbers for both identification and authentication is no longer tenable, because possession of the number—unlike a fingerprint—offers no verification of identity.”

-Wired, July 6, 2009 by Hadley Leggett
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/07/predictingssn/

Privacy law expert Chris Hoofnagle of the University of California, Berkeley, says the response must be drastic. “Their paper points to a radical solution: Perhaps we should stop trying to protect the secrecy of the SSN, and just publish all of them to prevent their use as passwords.”

-KGO-TV, July 13, 2009 by Terry McSweeney
http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/technology&id=6912260

“If you know where someone was born and the month they were born, you can decode at least part of the Social Security number,” said Prof. Chris Hoofnagle, director of Information Privacy Programs at the University of California Berkeley.… “Even if you guess incorrectly, you still may be able to steal identities through a new form of identity theft known as synthetic identity theft, and in this form of the crime you create a new person, you create a fictitious person, using a similar kind of guessing game of Social Security numbers,” said Hoofnagle.

Eric Stern Questions Sanford’s Decision to Bare All About His Extramarital Affair

The Greenville News, July 5, 2009 by Tim Smith
http://www.greenvilleonline.com/article/20090705/NEWS/907050306/

Among public officials, “if so much attention is being drawn to aspects of their personal life that call into question their character, their creditability, their honesty, their integrity—those are core to being able to govern,” Stern said. “If he’s not able to get this resolved and to re-win the trust of the people who elected him, then I’m not sure he can continue to govern the state,” Stern said of Sanford.

Christopher Hoofnagle Disapproves of Sole Reliance on Computers to Track Children’s Trends

The Denver Post, July 5, 2009 by Allison Sherry
http://www.denverpost.com/search/ci_12754951

Beyond privacy, University of California, Berkeley law professor Chris Hoofnagle worries that teachers, case workers and volunteers will rely too heavily on the computer. “Instead of sitting down with a student and asking her about her problems, the first step is to go to the computer,” said Hoofnagle, director of Information Privacy Programs at the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology. “How do you handle a conflict between what the student tells you and what the computer tells you?”

Pamela Samuelson Attacks Google Book Search Settlement

-PC World, July 2, 2009 by Nancy Gohring
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/167830/doj_officially_opens_investigation_into_google_book_search.html

Pamela Samuelson, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, argues that the proposed settlement is in essence a way to monetize so-called orphan works, and that it is questionable whether the deal represents the best interests of the authors of such works. Orphan works are those for which no one claims ownership, because either the author is dead or the publishing house no longer exists.

-Internet Search Engine Database, July 5, 2009 by Kaila Krayewski
http://www.isedb.com/db/articles/2090/1/Google-Book-Search-Settlement-Inquiry-Announced/Page1.html

Samuelson asserts that the settlement would give Google a monopoly over the biggest digital collection of books in the world. The settlement would also allow Google to sell orphan books and subscriptions to them—making it the first company ever with such a right. Another major problem with the settlement is that unless copyright owners opt out of the settlement, they are effectively opting in.

David Gamage Examines California’s Budget Woes

Radio Netherlands Worldwide, July 2, 2009 Host Marijke Peters
http://www.rnw.nl/ar/node/9585

Imagine that a business runs out of money, but still has a bunch of debts. It goes bankrupt. States can’t go bankrupt, so some bills just end up not being paid…. It’s widely agreed that California’s budgeting process is dysfunctional. The combination of the two-thirds majority rules to pass budgets and two political parties that vehemently disagree on taxes and spending, repeatedly create paralysis.

Christopher Edley Calls for Cyber-Campus in Response to Budget Cuts

-Los Angeles Times, July 1, 2009 by Christopher Edley Jr.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-edley1-2009jul01,0,6964045.story

UC XI would have selective admissions; tuition somewhere between community college and the on-campus UC price, part-time and “anytime” options and lectures by the best faculty from the entire UC system. Our online students might miss the keg parties, but they would have the same world-class faculty, UC graduate student instructors and adjunct faculty. The UC XI cyber-campus could be a way to put high-quality higher education within reach of tens of thousands more students, including part-timers, and eventually provide a revenue boost for higher education.

-The Chronicle of Higher Education, July 2, 2009 by Josh Fischman
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/3861/a-california-dream-saving-state-universities-with-an-online-campus

“We’ve had decades of increasing dysfunction in Sacramento and smoldering doubts in some quarters about the value of supporting public education,” Mr. Edley writes. “Now comes the resulting surge in victims — present and future — in families and throughout the economy.” Online learning, he concludes, could save the California dream of a top-notch education for all. The best offense in a crisis, he concludes, “is often innovation.”

-San Jose Mercury News, July 10, 2009 by Lisa M. Krieger
http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_12813681?source=rss

The UC “cybercampus could be a way to put high-quality higher education within reach of tens of thousands more students,” he wrote this week in a Los Angeles Times editorial. An online campus is a way to provide students with an affordable education and build up the middle class.

Jesse Choper Comments on Defamation Lawsuit Filed By Eureka Police Dept. Employee

Times-Standard, July 1, 2009 by Allison White
http://www.times-standard.com/localnews/ci_12729896

U.C. Berkeley law professor Jesse Choper said proving the statements are defamatory depends on whether Hansen is cast as a public official or a private citizen. “If it’s an ordinary citizen, it’s much easier to prove,” he said…. The fact that the comments were made by anonymous users shouldn’t matter legally, he said. “If messages are sent out over the Internet, it doesn’t protect them from making defamatory statements,” he said.

Robert MacCoun Believes Legalizing Marijuana Will Have Minimal Impact on Use

Mother Jones, July 2009 by Kevin Drum
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2009/07/patriots-guide-legalization

The most likely conclusion from the overall data is that if you fully legalized cannabis, use would almost certainly go up, but probably not enormously. MacCoun guesses that it might rise by half—say, from around 15 percent of the population to a little more than 20 percent. “It’s not going to triple,” he says. “Most people who want to use marijuana are already finding a way to use marijuana.”