Wiretapping

The Florida attorney general has dropped its efforts to compel a reporter’s testimony in the ongoing case against a former aide to the state’s lieutenant governor.

Attorney General Pam Bondi withdrew an appeal Wednesday of a trial judge’s November order, which said that Florida Times-Union reporter Matt Dixon could not be compelled to testify in the state’s case against Carletha Cole.

According to court documents, the state was “voluntarily dismissing” its appeal. The Jacksonville newspaper had planned to fight the appeal.

A New Hampshire activist was found guilty on Monday in connection with recording telephone conversations with public officials without their consent and sentenced to 90 days in jail. A state legislator present in court said the "travesty" fueled him to further push for legislation to change the state's law requiring all-party consent in recordings.

A New Hampshire man is facing up to 21 years in prison if convicted of illegally recording telephone conversations with a high-ranking police official and two school employees.

The jury selection for the trial of blogger and self-proclaimed activist Adam Mueller is scheduled for Aug. 6 at the Hillsborough County Superior Court. Prosecutor Michael Valentine said in an interview that Mueller faces the maximum penalty of 3.5 to 7 years in prison for each of the charges against him.

A Massachusetts attorney arrested for using his cellphone to record police officers while they arrested a man in public received a $170,000 settlement for damages and legal fees from the City of Boston on Monday.

A federal appellate court recently declined to further consider an earlier ruling that journalists and others are sufficiently harmed by the U.S. government’s amended international surveillance law, which provides broader surveillance power with less court oversight, and therefore have standing to challenge it.

Connecticut is considering a bill that would make any police officer "who interferes with a person taking a photographic or digital still or video image" of a police officer performing his or her duties liable for damages, provided the citizen did not obstruct or hinder the police officer's performance. It appears to be the first time such a bill has been considered by a state legislature.

Rap concert organizers did not violate a police official’s privacy when they recorded the officer’s backstage comments and included them in a DVD, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled last week.

However, the 6-1 decision in Bowens v. Ary, Inc. was a narrow one limited to the event in question and stopped short of holding that police officers have no reasonable expectation of privacy when performing their public duties.

The U.S. Court of Appeals in New York (2nd Cir.) ruled on Monday that a legal challenge to the federal government’s amended international surveillance law could move forward, overturning a lower court’s decision that the plaintiffs lacked sufficient legal injury to bring such a claim.

The identities of lobbyists who successfully obtained immunity for telecommunications companies that participated in the warrantless wiretapping scandal should be disclosed so long as they are not protected by national security law, a U.S. Court of Appeal in San Francisco (9th Cir.) said on Wednesday when it asked the lower court to reconsider whether the information should be released.

The New York Times lost its bid to unseal records related to the investigation of a prostitution ring that brought down New York Gov. Elliot Spitzer, after the U.S. Court of Appeals in New York City (2nd Cir.) on Friday overturned a lower court's order.