Search warrant

Paula Broadwell isn’t the only person whose Gmail messages were read by government officials – Google received almost 8,000 e-mail access requests from U.S. state and federal governments in the past six months, according to the latest Google Transparency Report.

Google fully or partially granted 90 percent of the requests made by federal, state and local U.S. governments, according to the report. The requests by stateside governments account for more than a third of requests worldwide.

A federal appellate court held last week that there is no First Amendment right for the media to access police and court documents filed in connection with search warrant proceedings.

The University of California Berkeley Police Department has settled with an independent photographer who sued the department after he was arrested and had his photographs confiscated while covering a protest in 2009. As part of the $162,500 settlement, the department has also agreed to change its policies towards the media and train officers about journalists' legal protections.

A New York criminal court ruled that prosecutors seeking information about a defendant’s Internet activity can subpoena third-party online service provider Twitter. The request is not a government intrusion under the Fourth Amendment, he held, but a federal law requires a search warrant for some recent information.

Affidavits for search warrants for the home, office, locker and safe deposit boxes of an ex-college basketball coach accused of sexual abuse will remain shielded from public view, at least for now, after a federal judge denied four New York-based media organizations’ requests to unseal the documents.