Privacy

An Academy Award-winning film that addressed “an issue of paramount importance in the Iraq war” is protected speech about a public issue, a federal judge in California ruled yesterday, dismissing a U.S. serviceman's lawsuit alleging “The Hurt Locker” unlawfully benefited from the use of his identity without his consent.

Less than a year after the U.S. Supreme Court held that the First Amendment protects a fringe church’s angry, anti-gay protests at military funerals, a lower federal court struck down a city ordinance that restricted the time and place of the protected picketing activities.

The reality police television show "Cops" did not intrude on a Florida woman's privacy when her interactions with police during a traffic stop were recorded without her knowledge, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday in Spilfogel v. Fox Broadcasting Company.

Online photographs of a bikini-clad woman accompanied by unflattering comments did not invade her privacy, a federal judge in Arizona recently ruled.

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments today in Sorrell v. IMS Health Inc., a case about whether a Vermont statute restricting the commercial dissemination of pharmacy records places unconstitutional restrictions on commercial speech.

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.

The California Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered the state's 3rd District Court of Appeals to revisit the case of a Sacramento juror who was ordered to consent to the release of Facebook posts he had made during a criminal trial in 2010.

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. Constitution protects angry, anti-gay protests at the funerals of fallen soldiers, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Wednesday in a controversial case that pitted free-speech rights against the privacy of grieving family members.