Ethics is Leadership Work; HuffingtonPost.com, 10/31/13

Terry Newell, HuffingtonPost.com; Ethics is Leadership Work: "Pressed in recent days on his reaction to the revelations that the National Security Agency (NSA) has been spying on the personal phone calls of the leaders of friendly governments, President Obama remarked that it is obvious that "what we could do is not necessarily what we should do." From a president who launched his first administration with a clarion call for more ethical governance, it's disconcerting that his NSA team missed this core distinction. That distinction is the classic definition of an ethical dilemma. What you can do is not always what you should do - capability is not character. Nor is this a question of what is legal. It does not appear that the NSA did anything illegal. But not everything that is legal is ethical. Jim Crow laws were legal until the 1960s. Male-only job postings in newspapers were legal even longer. But they were not ethical."

Warily, Schools Watch Students on the Internet; New York Times, 10/28/13

Somini Sengupta, New York Times; Warily, Schools Watch Students on the Internet: "Now, as students complain, taunt and sometimes cry out for help on social media, educators have more opportunities to monitor students around the clock. And some schools are turning to technology to help them. Several companies offer services to filter and glean what students do on school networks; a few now offer automated tools to comb through off-campus postings for signs of danger. For school officials, this raises new questions about whether they should — or legally can — discipline children for their online outbursts. The problem has taken on new urgency with the case of a 12-year-old Florida girl who committed suicide after classmates relentlessly bullied her online and offline... Educators find themselves needing to balance students’ free speech rights against the dangers children can get into at school and sometimes with the law because of what they say in posts on Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr. Courts have started to weigh in."

Stop Watching Us: The Video; Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), 10/23/13

Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF); Stop Watching Us: The Video: "StopWatching.us is a coalition of more than 100 public advocacy organizations and companies from across the political spectrum. Join the movement at https://rally.stopwatching.us. This video harnesses the voices of celebrities, activists, legal experts, and other prominent figures in speaking out against mass surveillance by the NSA. Please share widely to help us spread the message that we will not stand for the dragnet surveillance of our communications."

New code of police ethics follows Plebgate; Guardian, 10/23/13

Sandra Laville, Guardian; New code of police ethics follows Plebgate: "A tough new code of ethics for the police service will be heralded by the home secretary after three officers at the centre of allegations that they lied to discredit Andrew Mitchell refused repeatedly to apologise to him during an interrogation by MPs. Alex Marshall, the chief executive of the College of Policing, will publish the code – equivalent to a Hippocratic oath for police officers – on Thursday and Theresa May is to mark the event with a speech. The much awaited code is designed to force national standards of honesty and integrity on police officers. It is being published as the reputation of the service was put under the spotlight by the Commons home affairs select committee."

Not-So-Great Expectations; Inside Higher Ed, 10/18/13

Colleen Flaherty, Inside Higher Ed; Not-So-Great Expectations: "Politics aside, Slocum’s case and others like it in recent months raise an important question: In the age of social media and smartphones, what expectations – if any – should professors have for privacy for lectures and communications intended for students? Very little, said Slocum – but that’s “an acknowledgement of fact, of the way the Internet works, rather than a normative statement.” Privacy and intellectual property experts agreed, saying that such communications are fair game for students to share. Higher education has a complicated relationship with copyright and other ownership questions, experts said, due to historical concerns about academic freedom. Legally, however, most all of what professors say to students in lectures and in e-mails would pass the "fair use" doctrine test, making it O.K. for students to record, share and comment on even copyrighted material for non-commercial purposes. “All of us have to figure out what our expectations should be in an age of smartphones and the Internet,” said Jessica Litman, a professor of law and information at the University of Michigan who specializes in intellectual property -- professors included."

Some News Organizations Decline to Publish Minors’ Names; New York Times, 10/15/13

Christine Haughney, New York Times; Some News Organizations Decline to Publish Minors’ Names: "The liberal public records laws that have made Florida a helpful destination for media organizations divided journalists this week over the question of whether some public information is too public. On Monday, the Polk County Sheriff’s Office released the names of two girls, ages 12 and 14, charged with a felony in the online bullying related to the suicide in September of 12-year-old Rebecca Sedwick. Carrie Eleazer, a spokeswoman for the Polk County Sheriff’s Office, said that releasing these minors’ names was standard practice for a juvenile “charged with a felony or three or more misdemeanors.” She added that making these names public was simply a result of the broad and open Florida public records laws. “We release juveniles who have been charged with felonies almost every day,” said Ms. Eleazer. But not all news organizations felt comfortable revealing the names."

Felony Counts for 2 in Suicide of Bullied 12-Year-Old; New York Times, 10/15/13

Lizette Alvarez, New York Times; Felony Counts for 2 in Suicide of Bullied 12-Year-Old: "For the Polk County sheriff’s office, which has been investigating the cyberbullying suicide of a 12-year-old Florida girl, the Facebook comment was impossible to disregard. In Internet shorthand it began “Yes, ik” — I know — “I bullied Rebecca nd she killed herself.” The writer concluded that she didn’t care, using an obscenity to make the point and a heart as a perverse flourish. Five weeks ago, Rebecca Ann Sedwick, a seventh grader in Lakeland in central Florida, jumped to her death from an abandoned cement factory silo after enduring a year, on and off, of face-to-face and online bullying... Both were charged with aggravated stalking, a third-degree felony and will be processed through the juvenile court system. Neither had an arrest record."

Redskins’ Owner Stubbornly Clings to Wrong Side of History; New York Times, 10/12/13

William C. Rhoden, New York Times; Redskins’ Owner Stubbornly Clings to Wrong Side of History: "[Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder's] refusal to change an offensive name is emblematic of our society’s tendency to wrap ourselves in the armor of self-interest regardless of who might be wounded or offended. Sports has historically been a vehicle to bring us together. Increasingly, the enterprise is becoming one more tool of divisiveness. Those of us who are appealing to Snyder’s sense of ethics and morals are barking up the wrong tree. If this were about morality, Snyder would not need surveys and handpicked American Indians to validate his point. He would stand alone on principle. Snyder’s fight is an economic issue, revolving around licensing, marketing and branding. His stridency is based in money, not morality. When you follow your wallet and ignore your conscience, you’re headed for moral bankruptcy."

A World Without Privacy; New York Times, 10/14/13

Joe Nocera, New York Times; A World Without Privacy: "Dave Eggers’s new novel, “The Circle,” also has three short, Orwellian slogans, and while I have no special insight into whether he consciously modeled “The Circle” on “1984,” I do know that his book could wind up being every bit as prophetic. Eggers’s subject is what the loss of privacy would look like if taken to its logical extreme. His focus is not on government but on the technology companies who invade our privacy on a daily basis. The Circle, you see, is a Silicon Valley company, an evil hybrid of Google, Facebook and Twitter, whose cultures — the freebies, the workaholism, the faux friendliness — Eggers captures with only slight exaggeration. The Circle has enormous power because it has become the primary gateway to the Internet. Thanks to its near-monopoly, it is able to collect reams of data about everyone who uses its services — and many who don’t — data that allows The Circle to track anyone down in a matter of minutes."

Advocacy group asks conventions to ‘protect our secret identities’; ComicBookResoruces.com, 10/15/13

Kevin Melrose, ComicBookResources.com; Advocacy group asks conventions to ‘protect our secret identities’ : "In response to New York Comic Con’s controversial use of attendees’ Twitter accounts to send promotional messages, and the implementation of technology allowing organizers to track individual badges, a staff member for a leading digital-rights group has written an open letter asking all pop-culture conventions to “protect our secret identities.” “You can still have a convention at the cutting edge of culture, without bleeding your attendees’ privacy away,” wrote David Maass, media relations coordinator of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The twin issues are linked to radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips, implemented by NYCC this year in an effort to clamp down on fraudulent badges and badge-sharing among exhibitors."

False equivalence: how 'balance' makes the media dangerously dumb; Guardian, 10/11/13

Bob Garfield, Guardian; False equivalence: how 'balance' makes the media dangerously dumb: "Let us state this unequivocally: false equivalency – the practice of giving equal media time and space to demonstrably invalid positions for the sake of supposed reportorial balance – is dishonest, pernicious and cowardly."

Privacy Fears Grow as Cities Increase Surveillance; New York Times, 10/13/13

Somini Sengupta, New York Times; Privacy Fears Grow as Cities Increase Surveillance: "Federal grants of $7 million awarded to this city were meant largely to help thwart terror attacks at its bustling port. But instead, the money is going to a police initiative that will collect and analyze reams of surveillance data from around town — from gunshot-detection sensors in the barrios of East Oakland to license plate readers mounted on police cars patrolling the city’s upscale hills. The new system, scheduled to begin next summer, is the latest example of how cities are compiling and processing large amounts of information, known as big data, for routine law enforcement. And the system underscores how technology has enabled the tracking of people in many aspects of life."

Opting to Blow the Whistle or Choosing to Walk Away; New York Times, 9/20/13

Alina Tugend, New York Times; Opting to Blow the Whistle or Choosing to Walk Away: "WHISTLE-BLOWERS have been big news lately — from Chelsea Manning, formerly known as Pfc. Bradley Manning, to Edward J. Snowden. Yet, for most people, the question of whether to expose unethical or illegal activities at work doesn’t make headlines or involve state secrets. Stephen Kohn, of the National Whistleblowers Center, says true whistle-blowing is when people report seeing something that is against the law. But that doesn’t make the problem less of a quandary. The question of when to remain quiet and when to speak out — and how to do it — can be extraordinarily difficult no matter what the situation. And while many think of ethics violations as confined to obviously illegal acts, like financial fraud or safety violations, the line often can be much blurrier and, therefore, more difficult to navigate. According to the Ethics Resource Center, a nonprofit research organization, the No. 1 misconduct observed — by a third of 4,800 respondents — was misuse of company time. That was closely followed by abusive behavior and lying to employees. The findings were published in the organization’s 2011 National Business Ethics Survey, which interviewed, on the phone or online, employees in the commercial sector who were employed at least 20 hours a week."

Cheating’s Surprising Thrill; New York Times, 10/7/13

Jan Hoffman, New York Times; Cheating’s Surprising Thrill: "When was the last time you cheated? Not on the soul-scorching magnitude of, say, Bernie Madoff, Lance Armstrong or John Edwards. Just nudge-the-golf-ball cheating. Maybe you rounded up numbers on an expense report. Let your eyes wander during a high-stakes exam. Or copied a friend’s expensive software. And how did you feel afterward? You may recall nervousness, a twinge of guilt. But new research shows that as long as you didn’t think your cheating hurt anyone, you may have felt great. The discomfort you remember feeling then may actually be a response rewritten now by your inner moral authority, your “should” voice. Unethical behavior is increasingly studied by psychologists and management specialists. They want to understand what prompts people to abrogate core values, why cheating appears to be on the rise, and what interventions can be made. To find a powerful tool to turn people toward ethical decisions, many researchers have focused on the guilt that many adults feel after cheating. So some behavioral ethics researchers were startled by a study published recently in The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology by researchers at the University of Washington, the London Business School, Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania. The title: “The Cheater’s High: The Unexpected Affective Benefits of Unethical Behavior.”"

For Faculty Free Speech, the Tide Is Turning; Chronicle of Higher Education, 9/30/13

Thomas Sullivan and Lawrence White, Chronicle of Higher Education; For Faculty Free Speech, the Tide Is Turning: "Those and other cases prompted the AAUP in 2009 to issue a report observing that "the lower federal courts have so far largely ignored the Garcetti majority's reservation, posing the danger that, as First Amendment rights for public employees are narrowed, so too may be the constitutional protection for academic freedom at public institutions, perhaps fatally." In the past two years, however, the tide appears to have turned. Two recent decisions by federal appellate courts explicitly hold that the Garcetti standard does not apply in faculty-free-speech cases... The trend is encouraging. As a legal principle and sound postulate of institutional governance, academic freedom should be deemed to protect the expression of faculty views even when they are deemed by some to be unhelpful or provocatively stated. This is especially compelling given the uniqueness of our universities as marketplaces of ideas where we seek to discover new knowledge and understanding and make it available to others."

Doctorate furor continues for Fox Chapel Area School District superintendent; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/8/13

Mary Niederberger, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; Doctorate furor continues for Fox Chapel Area School District superintendent: "Legal arguments over whether Fox Chapel Area School District superintendent Anne Stephens must turn her dissertation over to a resident will be made Wednesday in Allegheny County Common Pleas Court. Patricia Weaver of Fox Chapel requested a copy in June after it was disclosed that Ms. Stephens' doctoral degree came from LaSalle University in Mandeville, La., an unaccredited school that was raided in 1996 by the FBI, which claimed it was a diploma mill. Its founder pleaded guilty to fraud and tax evasion."

Mugged by a Mug Shot Online; New York Times, 10/5/13

David Segal, New York Times; Mugged by a Mug Shot Online: "It was only a matter of time before the Internet started to monetize humiliation. In this case, the time was early 2011, when mug-shot Web sites started popping up to turn the most embarrassing photograph of anyone’s life into cash. The sites are perfectly legal, and they get financial oxygen the same way as other online businesses — through credit card companies and PayPal. Some states, though, are looking for ways to curb them. The governor of Oregon signed a bill this summer that gives such sites 30 days to take down the image, free of charge, of anyone who can prove that he or she was exonerated or whose record has been expunged. Georgia passed a similar law in May. Utah prohibits county sheriffs from giving out booking photographs to a site that will charge to delete them. But as legislators draft laws, they are finding plenty of resistance, much of it from journalists who assert that public records should be just that: public. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press argues that any restriction on booking photographs raises First Amendment issues and impinges on editors’ right to determine what is newsworthy. That right was recently exercised by newspapers and Web sites around the world when the public got its first look at Aaron Alexis, the Navy Yard gunman, through a booking photograph from a 2010 arrest."

As F.B.I. Pursued Snowden, an E-Mail Service Stood Firm; New York times, 10/2/13

Nicole Perlroth and Scott Shane, New York Times; As F.B.I. Pursued Snowden, an E-Mail Service Stood Firm: "On Aug. 8, Mr. Levison closed Lavabit rather than, in his view, betray his promise of secure e-mail to his customers. The move, which he explained in a letter on his Web site, drew fervent support from civil libertarians but was seen by prosecutors as an act of defiance that fell just short of a crime. The full story of what happened to Mr. Levison since May has not previously been told, in part because he was subject to a court’s gag order. But on Wednesday, a federal judge unsealed documents in the case, allowing the tech entrepreneur to speak candidly for the first time about his experiences. He had been summoned to testify to a grand jury in Virginia; forbidden to discuss his case; held in contempt of court and fined $10,000 for handing over his private encryption keys on paper and not in digital form; and, finally, threatened with arrest for saying too much when he shuttered his business. Spokesmen for the Justice Department and the F.B.I. said they had no comment beyond what was in the documents. Mr. Levison’s battle to preserve his customers’ privacy comes at a time when Mr. Snowden’s disclosures have ignited a national debate about the proper limits of surveillance and government intrusion into American Internet companies that promise users that their digital communications are secure."

The World According to Team Walt; New York Times, 9/28/13

Ross Douthat, New York Times; The World According to Team Walt: "In the online realms where hit shows are dissected, critics who pass judgment on Walt’s sins find themselves tangling with a multitude of commenters who don’t think he needs forgiveness... The allure for Team Walt is not ultimately the pull of nihilism, or the harmless thrill of rooting for a supervillain. It’s the pull of an alternative moral code, neither liberal nor Judeo-Christian, with an internal logic all its own. As James Bowman wrote in The New Atlantis, embracing Walt doesn’t requiring embracing “individual savagery” and a world without moral rules. It just requires a return to “old rules” — to “the tribal, family-oriented society and the honor culture that actually did precede the Enlightenment’s commitment to universal values.” Those rules seem cruel by the lights of both cosmopolitanism and Christianity, but they are not irrational or necessarily false. Their Darwinian logic is clear enough, and where the show takes place — in the shadow of cancer, the shadow of death — the kindlier alternatives can seem softheaded, pointless, naïve."

Expanding Privacy Legislation to Include Ebooks; American Libraries, July/August 2013

Mariam Pera, American Libraries; Expanding Privacy Legislation to Include Ebooks: "While privacy continues to be an issue on the national scene, at least two states—Arizona and New Jersey—have taken steps to expand their library privacy laws to include ebooks... Arizona and New Jersey follow in the footsteps of California, which in 2011 passed the Reader Privacy Act, extending library records protections to print-book and ebook purchases."

Facebook “Like” button just as protected as written speech, court rules; ArsTechnica.com, 9/18/13

Cyrus Farivar, Arstechnica.com; Facebook “Like” button just as protected as written speech, court rules: "In a unanimous decision on Wednesday, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a lower court’s decision, declaring that a Facebook “Like” is protected under the First Amendment, like other forms of speech. The Virginia case involves a former deputy sheriff in Hampton, Virginia, who claimed that he had been fired for “liking” his boss’ rival in a political campaign for county sheriff. In the original lawsuit, a federal district judge tossed the case, saying that a Facebook “Like” was “insufficient speech to merit constitutional protection.”"

Girl’s Suicide Points to Rise in Apps Used by Cyberbullies; New York Times, 9/13/13

Lizette Alvarez, New York Times; Girl’s Suicide Points to Rise in Apps Used by Cyberbullies: "For more than a year, Rebecca, pretty and smart, was cyberbullied by a coterie of 15 middle-school children who urged her to kill herself, her mother said. The Polk County sheriff’s office is investigating the role of cyberbullying in the suicide and considering filing charges against the middle-school students who apparently barraged Rebecca with hostile text messages. Florida passed a law this year making it easier to bring felony charges in online bullying cases...“It’s a whole new culture, and the thing is that as adults, we don’t know anything about it because it’s changing every single day,” said Denise Marzullo, the chief executive of Mental Health America of Northeast Florida in Jacksonville, who works with the schools there on bullying issues. No sooner has a parent deciphered Facebook or Twitter or Instagram than his or her children have migrated to the latest frontier. “It’s all of these small ones where all this is happening,” Ms. Marzullo said. In Britain, a number of suicides by young people have been linked to ask.fm, and online petitions have been started there and here to make the site more responsive to bullying. The company ultimately responded this year by introducing an easy-to-see button to report bullying and saying it would hire more moderators."

Opinion in Google Street View Privacy Case; New York Times, 9/10/13

New York Times; Opinion in Google Street View Privacy Case: "A federal appeals court rejected Google’s bid to dismiss a lawsuit accusing it of violating a federal wiretap law when it collected data for its Street View program."

The NSA's next move: silencing university professors?; Guardian, 9/10/13

Jay Rosen, Guardian; The NSA's next move: silencing university professors? : "In commenting critically on a subject he is expert in, and taking an independent stance that asks hard questions and puts the responsibility where it belongs, Matthew Green is doing exactly what a university faculty member is supposed to be doing. By putting his thoughts in a blog post that anyone can read and link to, he is contributing to a vital public debate, which is exactly what universities need to be doing more often. Instead of trying to get Matthew Green's blog off their servers, the deans should be trying to get more faculty into blogging and into the public arena. Who at Johns Hopkins is speaking up for these priorities? And why isn't the Johns Hopkins faculty roaring about this issue? (I teach at New York University, and I'm furious.)"

Whither Moral Courage?; New York Times, 4/27/13

Salman Rushdie, New York Times; Whither Moral Courage? : " Rohinton Mistry’s celebrated novel “Such a Long Journey” was pulled off the syllabus of Mumbai University because local extremists objected to its content. The scholar Ashis Nandy was attacked for expressing unorthodox views on lower-caste corruption. And in all these cases the official view — with which many commentators and a substantial slice of public opinion seemed to agree — was, essentially, that the artists and scholars had brought the trouble on themselves. Those who might, in other eras, have been celebrated for their originality and independence of mind, are increasingly being told, “Sit down, you’re rocking the boat.”... It’s a vexing time for those of us who believe in the right of artists, intellectuals and ordinary, affronted citizens to push boundaries and take risks and so, at times, to change the way we see the world. There’s nothing to be done but to go on restating the importance of this kind of courage, and to try to make sure that these oppressed individuals — Ai Weiwei, the members of Pussy Riot, Hamza Kashgari — are seen for what they are: men and women standing on the front line of liberty. How to do this? Sign the petitions against their treatment, join the protests. Speak up. Every little bit counts."

BBC Won’t Ban ‘Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead,’ Adopted as Anti-Thatcher Anthem; New York Times, 4/12/13

Robert Mackey, New York Times; BBC Won’t Ban ‘Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead,’ Adopted as Anti-Thatcher Anthem: "The BBC on Friday rejected loud calls to ban the song “Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead” from its airwaves after the apparent success of a Facebook campaign to celebrate the death of Margaret Thatcher, the divisive former prime minister, by driving sales of the tune from “The Wizard of Oz” up the British singles chart."

Study of Babies Did Not Disclose Risks, U.S. Finds; New York Times, 4/10/13

Sabrina Tavernise, New York Times; Study of Babies Did Not Disclose Risks, U.S. Finds: "A federal agency has found that a number of prestigious universities failed to tell more than a thousand families in a government-financed study of oxygen levels for extremely premature babies that the risks could include increased chances of blindness or death."

India’s Novartis Decision; New York Times, 4/4/13

Editorial Board, New York Times; India’s Novartis Decision: "The ruling will allow the sale of generic versions of Gleevec in India and other countries where it is not patented at less than one-20th of the roughly $70,000 a year it costs in the United States. It will not affect the price of the drug in America. This case is unique because it concerns an innovative and useful drug whose creation happened to straddle the change in Indian patent law. The ruling is important, nonetheless, because it establishes a limited precedent that requires drug companies to show real improvements in efficacy before they can get patent protection on updates to existing drugs in India. That could help poor patients get drugs at prices they can afford while preserving an incentive for true innovation."

Why Rutgers Blinked; New York Times, 4/5/13

Joe Nocera, Why Rutgers Blinked; Why Rutgers Blinked: "Pernetti is said to be one of the bright lights of college sports. Around the same time as he was dealing with both the Big Ten and the Rice video, he was on a panel at New York University School of Law at which he spoke — passionately, it seemed to me (I was on the same panel) — about the importance of putting the needs of the “student-athlete” first, and hiring “the right people.” Yet, faced with a moment of truth, he blinked. Just like Joe Paterno, another supposed good guy, blinked. Just like they all blink when their professed ideals bump up against the ever-increasing pressure to generate cold, hard cash. The N.C.A.A., it turns out, isn’t the only hypocrite in college sports."

Ex-Schools Chief in Atlanta Is Indicted in Testing Scandal; New York Times, 3/29/13

Michael Winerip, New York Times; Ex-Schools Chief in Atlanta Is Indicted in Testing Scandal: "It is not just an Atlanta problem. Cheating has grown at school districts around the country as standardized testing has become a primary means of evaluating teachers, principals and schools. In El Paso, a superintendent went to prison recently after removing low-performing children from classes to improve the district’s test scores. In Ohio, state officials are investigating whether several urban districts intentionally listed low-performing students as having withdrawn even though they were still in school. But no state has come close to Georgia in appropriating the resources needed to root it out."

The Emily Posts of the Digital Age; New York Times, 3/29/13

Alex Williams, New York Times; The Emily Posts of the Digital Age: "Are manners dead? Cellphones, Twitter and Facebook may be killing off the old civilities and good graces, but a new generation of etiquette gurus, good-manner bloggers and self-appointed YouTube arbiters is rising to make old-fashioned protocols relevant to a new generation... But perhaps the fastest-growing area of social advice — one that has spawned not just videos but also Web sites, blogs and books — is the Internet itself, and the proper displays of what’s been termed “netiquette.” There are YouTube videos on using emoticons in business e-mails, being discreet when posting on someone’s Facebook wall, limiting baby photos on Instagram, retweeting too many Twitter messages and juggling multiple online chats. “We’re living in an age of anxiety that’s a reflection of the near-constant change and confusion in technology and social mores,” said Steven Petrow, an author of five etiquette books including “Mind Your Digital Manners: Advice for an Age Without Rules,” to be published in 2014. (Mr. Petrow is a regular contributor to The New York Times, writing an advice column on gay-straight issues for the Booming blog.)"

In Leak Case, State Secrecy in Plain Sight; New York Times, 3/24/13

David Carr, New York Times; In Leak Case, State Secrecy in Plain Sight: "Reporters covering the government’s prosecution of Pfc. Bradley Manning, who is being court-martialed for conveying secret information to WikiLeaks, have spent a year trying to pierce the veil of secrecy in what is supposed to be a public proceeding. In pretrial hearings at Fort Meade, Md., basic information has been withheld, including dockets of court activity, transcripts of the proceedings and orders issued from the bench by the military judge, Col. Denise Lind. A public trial over state secrets was itself becoming a state secret in plain sight. Finally, at the end of last month, in response to numerous Freedom of Information requests from news media organizations, the court agreed to release 84 of the roughly 400 documents filed in the case, suggesting it was finally unbuttoning the uniform a bit to make room for some public scrutiny."

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, the Sequel; New York Times, 3/23/13

Rebecca Skloot, New York Times; The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, the Sequel: "Imagine if someone secretly sent samples of your DNA to one of many companies that promise to tell you what your genes say about you. That report would list the good news (you’ll probably live to be 100) and the not-so-good news (you’ll most likely develop Alzheimer’s, bipolar disorder and maybe alcoholism). Now imagine they posted your genetic information online, with your name on it. Some people may not mind. But I assure you, many do: genetic information can be stigmatizing, and while it’s illegal for employers or health insurance providers to discriminate based on that information, this is not true for life insurance, disability coverage or long-term care. “That is private family information,” said Jeri Lacks-Whye, Lacks’s granddaughter. “It shouldn’t have been published without our consent.”"

A Family’s Secrets Bared, on Camera; New York Times, 3/22/13

Elizabeth Jensen, New York Times; A Family’s Secrets Bared, on Camera: "More problematic for the filmmakers was that early on in the filming Darian made a wrenching charge: her father, Anthony Charboneau III, had sexually abused her. As a filmmaker, said Lois Vossen, the series producer of “Independent Lens,” “your natural instinct is to want to use that.” At the same time “you want to help somebody, not put them in harm’s way.” When editing got under way, Ms. Aronson-Rath said, “we had a really robust editorial discussion around both Darian and also her brother. We thought long and hard about it. We listened to David Sutherland for days and days and days about his decision making and the level of access that he had and the trust that he had built between them. And we were convinced that there was a real trust there, that Robin was acting on behalf of her children in a way that was responsible, from what we could tell.”"

Read this: Jane Goodall caught in plagiarism scandal; Washington Post, 3/20/13

Amy Argetsinger, Washington Post; Read this: Jane Goodall caught in plagiarism scandal: "Jane Goodall, the groundbreaking primatologist and wildlife-documentary superstar, is the latest high-profile author caught in a plagiarism scandal — and this one is really embarrassing, reports Steve Levingston. Among the passages her new book apparently rips off (as discovered by a critic for the Washington Post) are ones stolen from Wikipedia, some marketing material for an organic-tea company, and an astrology Web site."

Google Concedes That Drive-by Prying Violated Privacy; New York Times, 3/12/13

David Streitfeld, New York Times; Google Concedes That Drive-by Prying Violated Privacy: "Google on Tuesday acknowledged to state officials that it had violated people’s privacy during its Street View mapping project when it casually scooped up passwords, e-mail and other personal information from unsuspecting computer users. In agreeing to settle a case brought by 38 states involving the project, the search company for the first time is required to aggressively police its own employees on privacy issues and to explicitly tell the public how to fend off privacy violations like this one. While the settlement also included a tiny — for Google — fine of $7 million, privacy advocates and Google critics characterized the overall agreement as a breakthrough for a company they say has become a serial violator of privacy."

Harvard Search of E-Mail Stuns Its Faculty Members; New York Times, 3/10/13

Richard Perez-Pena, New York Times; Harvard Search of E-Mail Stuns Its Faculty Members: "News of the e-mail searches prolonged the fallout from the cheating scandal, in which about 70 students were forced to take a leave from school for collaborating or plagiarizing on a take-home final exam in a government class last year. Harry R. Lewis, a professor and former dean of Harvard College, said, “People are just bewildered at this point, because it was so out of keeping with the way we’ve done things at Harvard.”... Last fall, the administrators searched the e-mails of 16 resident deans, trying to determine who had leaked an internal memo about how the deans should advise students who stood accused of cheating. But most of those deans were not told that their accounts had been searched until the past few days, after The Boston Globe, which first reported the searches, began to inquire about them."

Harvard Searched E-Mails for Source of Media Leaks; New York Times, 3/9/13

Richard Perez-Pena, New York Times; Harvard Searched E-Mails for Source of Media Leaks: "Harvard secretly searched the e-mail accounts of several of its staff members last fall, looking for the source of news media leaks about its recent cheating scandal, but did not tell them about the searches for several months, people briefed on the matter said on Saturday. The searches, first reported by The Boston Globe, involved the e-mail accounts of 16 resident deans, but most of them were not told of the searches until the last few days, after The Globe inquired about them."

Keeping an Eye on Online Test-Takers; New York Times, 3/2/13

Anne Eisenberg, New York Times; Keeping an Eye on Online Test-Takers: "The issue of online cheating concerns many educators, particularly as more students take MOOCs for college credit, and not just for personal enrichment. Already, five classes from Coursera, a major MOOC provider, offer the possibility of credit, and many more are expected...The developing technology for remote proctoring may end up being as good — or even better — than the live proctoring at bricks-and-mortar universities, said Douglas H. Fisher, a computer science and computer engineering professor at Vanderbilt University who was co-chairman of a recent workshop that included MOOC-related topics. “Having a camera watch you, and software keep track of your mouse clicks, that does smack of Big Brother,” he said. “But it doesn’t seem any worse than an instructor at the front constantly looking at you, and it may even be more efficient.”"

Senator Seeks More Data Rights for Online Consumers; New York Times, 2/28/13

Natasha Singer, New York Times; Senator Seeks More Data Rights for Online Consumers: "Before his planned retirement from Congress at the end of next year, Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, the West Virginia Democrat, intends to give American consumers more meaningful control over personal data collected about them online. To that end, Mr. Rockefeller on Thursday introduced a bill called the “Do-Not-Track Online Act of 2013.” The bill would require the Federal Trade Commission to establish standardized mechanisms for people to use their Internet browsers to tell Web sites, advertising networks, data brokers and other online entities whether or not they were willing to submit to data-mining. The bill would also require the F.T.C. to develop rules to prohibit online services from amassing personal details about users who had opted out of such tracking."

Alan F. Westin, Who Transformed Privacy Debate Before the Web Era, Dies at 83; New York Times, 2/22/13

Margalit Fox, New York Times; Alan F. Westin, Who Transformed Privacy Debate Before the Web Era, Dies at 83: "Alan F. Westin, a legal scholar who nearly half a century ago defined the modern right to privacy in the incipient computer age — a definition that anticipated the reach of Big Brother and helped circumscribe its limits — died on Monday in Saddle River, N.J. He was 83... A lawyer and political scientist, Mr. Westin was at his death emeritus professor of public law at Columbia, where he had taught for nearly 40 years. Through his work — notably his book “Privacy and Freedom,” published in 1967 and still a canonical text — Mr. Westin was considered to have created, almost single-handedly, the modern field of privacy law. He testified frequently on the subject before Congress, spoke about it on television and radio and wrote about it for newspapers and magazines. “He was the most important scholar of privacy since Louis Brandeis,” Jeffrey Rosen, a professor of law at George Washington University and the legal affairs editor of The New Republic, said in a telephone interview on Thursday. “He transformed the privacy debate by defining privacy as the ability to control how much about ourselves we reveal to others.”"

Rebecca Marino quits tennis following cyberbullying incidents; (Toronto) Star, 2/20/13

Daniel Girard, (Toronto) Star; Rebecca Marino quits tennis following cyberbullying incidents: "Marino, who took a seven-month break from the game beginning in February 2012, said that while she believes “social media is actually a really important part of our society and there can be a lot of good that comes out of it,” it proved too “distracting” to her. She talked of receiving tweets that she should “go die,” “go burn in hell” and had cost bettors lots of money. “That’s just scratching the surface,” she said of the online assaults, but added she still believes she’s a person with “a thick skin.” On Monday, Marino deleted both her Twitter and Facebook accounts. While admitting that “in a way I wish I hadn’t joined social media,” she said she has no regrets about being part of it and may even return one day. Marino said neither social media nor depression, which she said still prevents her from getting out of bed some days, is the main reason she quit. “The reason I’m stepping back is just because I don’t think that I’m willing to sacrifice my happiness and other parts of my life to tennis,” she said."

Canadian ‘pork chop’ bullying video goes viral; (Toronto) Star, 2/21/13

Lesley Ciarula Taylor, (Toronto) Star; Canadian ‘pork chop’ bullying video goes viral: "Canadian poet Shane Koyczan has hit a nerve in the public psyche with his newly illustrated video on bullying. Koyczan, who electrified audiences with his performance at the Vancouver Olympics, describes bullied kids as growing up “believing no one would ever fall in love with us, that we would be lonely forever.” In two days, more than 1 million people have watched the seven-minute video, part of the anti-bullying campaigner’s “To This Day Project.”"

Supreme Court Appears to Defend Patent on Soybean; New York Times, 2/19/13

Adam Liptak, New York Times; Supreme Court Appears to Defend Patent on Soybean: "A freewheeling and almost entirely one-sided argument at the Supreme Court on Tuesday indicated that the justices would not allow Monsanto’s patents for genetically altered soybeans to be threatened by an Indiana farmer who used them without paying the company a fee. The question in the case, Bowman v. Monsanto Company, No. 11-796, was whether patent rights to seeds and other things that can replicate themselves extend beyond the first generation. The justices appeared alert to the consequences of their eventual ruling not only for Monsanto’s very lucrative soybean patents but also for modern agriculture generally and for areas as varied as vaccines, cell lines and software."

Scholar Finds Flaws in Work by Archenemy of Comics; New York Times, 2/19/13

Dave Itzkoff, New York Times; Scholar Finds Flaws in Work by Archenemy of Comics: "Carol L. Tilley, an assistant professor at the University of Illinois’s Graduate School of Library and Information Science, reviewed Wertham’s papers, housed in the Library of Congress, starting at the end of 2010, shortly after they were made available to the public. In a new article in Information & Culture: A Journal of History, Dr. Tilley offers numerous examples in which she says Wertham “manipulated, overstated, compromised and fabricated evidence,” particularly in the interviews he conducted with his young subjects. Drawing from his own clinical research and pointed interpretations of comic-book story lines, Wertham argued in the book that comics were harming American children, leading them to juvenile delinquency and to lives of violence, drugs and crime. “Seduction of the Innocent” was released to a public already teeming with anti-comics sentiment, and Wertham was embraced by millions of citizens who feared for America’s moral sanctity; he even testified in televised hearings. Yet according to Dr. Tilley, he may have exaggerated the number of youths he worked with at the low-cost mental-health clinic he established in Harlem, who might have totaled in the hundreds instead of the “many thousands” he claimed. Dr. Tilley said he misstated their ages, combined quotations taken from many children to appear as if they came from one speaker and attributed remarks said by a single speaker to larger groups. Other examples show how Wertham omitted extenuating circumstances in the lives of his patients, who often came from families marred by violence and substance abuse, or invented details outright."

Good Samaritan returns $1,200 he found in hardware store - and gets rude reaction instead of a thank-you; Daily Mail, 2/15/13

Daily Mail; Good Samaritan returns $1,200 he found in hardware store - and gets rude reaction instead of a thank-you: "A Missouri man found an envelope containing $1,200 in his local hardware store last week. But when Kyle Osborn, 29, tracked down and returned the money to its rightful owner, he didn't get the grateful reaction he was expecting. Instead of a smile or a thank you, the man looked at Osborn, who describes himself as 'tattooed, bearded and dirty', and said: 'I hope it's all there.'"

Falling Far Short of the Whole Truth; New York Times, 2/13/13

Russ Buettner, New York Times; Falling Far Short of the Whole Truth: "Questions were asked, which Ms. Sengupta, who was, in fact, in her late 40s at the time, declined to answer. Eventually, it became clear that she had not only shaved nearly two decades off her age but that nearly everything about her work and education history was not as she had claimed. Ms. Sengupta had, in fact, submitted many phony documents. The fraud was so comprehensive that the Bar Standards Board of England and Wales threw out an element of the application process that presumed a certain level of honor among its applicants; the board now requires that college transcripts come directly from the schools in a sealed envelope, without passing through an applicant’s hands."

Prof. bans Fox News: Classes not allowed to cite station; Examiner.com, 2/15/13

Effie Orfanides, Examiner.com; Prof. bans Fox News: Classes not allowed to cite station: "A prof. bans Fox News at West Liberty University and tells her students that the "biased" station makes her "cringe." On Feb. 15, the Daily Called [sic] reported that Stephanie Wolfe, a visiting assistant professor, made her class rules loud and clear, making sure that her students did not cite the news station in any of their work for the semester. "DO NOT use: 1) The Onion — this is not news this is literally a parody 2) Fox News — The tagline “Fox News” makes me cringe. Please do not subject me to this biased news station. I would almost rather you print off an article from the Onion (sic)," reads part of Professor Wolfe's syllabus."

Q. and A. With Viviane Reding; New York Times, 2/2/13

New York Times; Q. and A. With Viviane Reding. "Viviane Reding, the vice president of the European Commission and the justice commissioner of the European Union, was asked to comment on trans-Atlantic data protection issues for the Slipstream column by Natasha Singer in the Sunday Business section. The following is Vice President Reding’s full statement, sent on Jan. 31, 2013. Q. Why do Europeans feel so strongly about privacy and data rights? Why was it important for you to make data protection one of your signature issues? A. Data protection legislation has a long history in Europe: the European Union has had common rules to protect personal data since 1995. Personal data protection is a fundamental right for all Europeans — this is inscribed in the E.U.’s Charter of Fundamental Rights. The principles on which our laws are found are still valid. The main problem is that our rules predate the digital age and it became increasingly clear in recent years that they needed an update."

Data Protection Laws, an Ocean Apart; New York Times, 2/2/13

Natasha Singer, New York Times; Data Protection Laws, an Ocean Apart: "OVER the years, the United States and Europe have taken different approaches toward protecting people’s personal information. Now the two sides are struggling to bridge that divide. On this side of the Atlantic, Congress has enacted a patchwork quilt of privacy laws that separately limit the use of Americans’ medical records, credit reports, video rental records and so on. On the other side, the European Union has instituted more of a blanket regulatory system; it has a common directive that gives its citizens certain fundamental rights — like the right to obtain copies of records held about them by companies and institutions — that Americans now lack."