Colorado court says students can carry guns on campus

DENVER (Reuters) - The University of Colorado overstepped its authority when the school's board of regents imposed a ban on the carrying of concealed weapons at its four campuses, the state's Supreme Court ruled on Monday.

In overturning the policy, the court said that a concealed -carry law passed by the state legislature trumped the school's ban because it did not carve out an exception for the state's flagship university.

"We hold that the (concealed carry law's) comprehensive statewide purpose, broad language, and narrow exclusions show that the General Assembly intended to divest the Board of Regents of its authority to regulate concealed handgun possession on campus," the ruling said.

"This is a victory for gun rights as well as civil rights," said James Manley, an attorney with the Mountain States Legal Foundation that sued on behalf of three students who challenged the ban.

"The University of Colorado has to follow state law and the regents can't ignore that."

Ken McConnellogue, spokesman for the university, said the regents believed as an elected body they had the legal right to set security policy at their campuses.

"We're disappointed that the state supreme court has taken away what the university believed was its statutory and constitutional authority to provide for the safety of our students, faculty, staff and visitors," he said.

Currently, 22 states ban the carrying of concealed weapons on college campuses, and Utah is the only state that explicitly forbids the banning of concealed weapons at its 10 public colleges and universities, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) web site.

Last year, the Oregon Court of Appeals overturned the state university system's ban on carrying guns on campus, the conference said.

Additionally, Wisconsin law allows concealed weapons on college campuses, but schools can forbid weapons inside its buildings if signs are posted outside each facility saying weapons are prohibited.

The Colorado case stemmed from three students with valid concealed-carry permits who sued in 2008 after university police denied them permission to carry their weapons on campus.

The students lost at the trial court level, but the ruling was overturned by the Colorado Court of Appeals. The university appealed that ruling, setting the stage for a review by the state's highest court.

McConnellogue said the regents would meet with the university's legal counsel to decide how to comply with the ruling while maintaining security on campus.

He said it is unclear how the ruling will affect other university properties such as the university's football stadium in Boulder and its hospital in suburban Denver.

(Reporting by Keith Coffman; Editing by Dan Whitcomb and Greg McCune)

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Indian court dismisses Yahoo case

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota
2 March 2012 Last updated at 14:12 GMT Yahoo says there is no document to show that its website has violated any law The Delhi High Court has dismissed a criminal case against Yahoo India which was accused of hosting "objectionable" content on its web pages.

Yahoo was among 21 web firms, including Facebook and Google, accused of hosting material that could cause communal unrest.

Yahoo says there is no document to show that its website has violated any law.

The case was launched by journalist Vinay Rai. A separate civil lawsuit against the internet firms continues.

Judges in India have threatened to block sites that fail to crack down on offensive content.

Last month, Facebook and Google said they had complied with the court directive and removed "objectionable" material.

Late last year, Communications Minister Kapil Sibal met officials from Google, Facebook and other websites and said the government would introduce guidelines to ensure "blasphemous material" did not appear on the internet.

The Delhi High Court in January asked Facebook and Google India to "develop a mechanism to keep a check and remove offensive and objectionable material from their web pages" or "like China, we will block all such websites".

'May be revived'

"The summons issued against Yahoo India is set aside," the Press Trust of India quoted Delhi High Court Justice Suresh Kait as saying.

The judge, however, said that a private complaint against the website could be revived if credible and actionable evidence was filed against it.

Communications Minister Kapil Sibal has taken a strong line on the issue

Yahoo India's lawyer Arvind Nigam said summons were issued against the site "without application of mind by the trial court", he said.

"I wish to know what is the case against me," he added.

Yahoo has always maintained that the complaint filed in the court had nothing to do with its content as it was about alleged objectionable material retrieved from websites like Zombie, Orkut, YouTube, Facebook and Blogspot.

The criminal case has been brought by journalist Vinay Rai.

A separate civil lawsuit, which makes similar accusations, against a number of the same internet companies is proceeding. Yahoo is still involved in that. Microsoft successfully appealed to be dropped from it.

Many firms say it is impossible to pre-filter material.

Google India has argued that it is not feasible to pre-monitor material posted by "billions of people across the globe".

In an earlier court hearing, Google lawyer NK Kaul said that the issue also related "to a constitutional issue of freedom of speech and expression, and suppressing it was not possible as the right to freedom of speech in democratic India separates us from a totalitarian regime like China".

Facebook says policies are in place that enable people to report abusive content.

In December, Communications Minister Sibal said: "My aim is that insulting material never gets uploaded. We will evolve guidelines and mechanisms to deal with the issue. [The companies] will have to give us the data, where these images are being uploaded and who is doing it."

Mr Sibal was angered by morphed photos of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi, as well as doctored images of pigs running through Islam's holy city of Mecca.

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Forcing Defendant to Decrypt Hard Drive Is Unconstitutional, Appeals Court Rules

Forcing a criminal suspect to decrypt hard drives so their contents can be used by prosecutors is a breach of the Fifth Amendment right against compelled self-incrimination, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday.

It was the nation’s first appellate court to issue such a finding. And the outcome comes a day after a different federal appeals court refused to entertain an appeal from another defendant ordered by a lower federal court to decrypt a hard drive by month’s end.

Thursday’s decision by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that an encrypted hard drive is akin to a combination to a safe, and is off limits, because compelling the unlocking of either of them is the equivalent of forcing testimony.

The case at hand concerns an unidentified “Doe” defendant believed to be in possession of child pornography on 5 terabytes of data on several drives and laptops seized in a California motel with valid court warrants.

The Atlanta-based circuit held:

First, the decryption and production of the hard drives would require the use of the contents of Doe’s mind and could not be fairly characterized to a physical act that would be non-testimonial in nature. We conclude that the decryption and production would be tantamount to testimony by Doe of his knowledge of the existence and location of potentially incriminating files; of his possession, control and access to the encrypted portions of the drives; and of his capability to decrypt the files.

The court added: “Requiring Does to use a decryption password is most certainly more akin to requiring the production of a combination because both demand the use of the contents of the mind, and the production is accompanied by the implied factual statements noted above that could prove to be incriminatory.”

The defendant in April had refused to comport with a Florida federal grand jury’s orders that he decrypt the data, which was encrypted with TrueCrypt. A judge held him in contempt and jailed him until December 15, when the circuit court released him ahead of Thursday’s ruling.

“The government’s attempt to force this man to decrypt his data put him in the Catch-22 the Fifth Amendment was designed to prevent — having to choose between self-incrimination or risking contempt of court,” said EFF senior staff attorney Marcia Hofmann, who had filed an amicus brief in the case.

In the other decryption case, the Denver-based 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday sided with the government’s contention that Colorado bank-fraud defendant Ramona Fricosu must be convicted before the circuit court would entertain an appeal of a decryption order.

The court did not address the 5th Amendment arguments and instead said the case was not procedurally ripe for appeal.

Fricosu’s attorney, Philip Dubois, said in a telephone interview Friday that new developments in the case may moot the constitutional showdown in his client’s case.

He said a co-defendant, Scott Whatcott, has forwarded passwords to the authorities.

Dubios said it was not immediately known whether those passwords would unlock the hard drive in the Toshiba laptop seized from Fricosu with valid warrants in 2010. If they do, then the 5th Amendment issue is off the table, Dubois said.

If the passwords don’t work, Dubois said, Fricosu “will definitely make her best effort” to decrypt the laptop, although she may have forgotten the password.

U.S. District Judge Robert Blackburn has ordered Fricosu to decrypt the laptop by month’s end.

Dubois said that, on Monday, he would provide Judge Blackburn with the 11th Circuit’s opinion in the child pornography case as part of a last-ditch effort to halt the decryption order.

That said, Blackburn is not bound by the 11th Circuit decision because his court is in the 10th Circuit.

David Kravets is a senior staff writer for Wired.com and founder of the fake news site TheYellowDailyNews.com. He's a dad of two boys and has been a reporter since the manual typewriter days.
Follow @dmkravets and @ThreatLevel on Twitter.

View the original article here

Indian court dismisses Yahoo case

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota
2 March 2012 Last updated at 14:12 GMT Yahoo says there is no document to show that its website has violated any law The Delhi High Court has dismissed a criminal case against Yahoo India which was accused of hosting "objectionable" content on its web pages.

Yahoo was among 21 web firms, including Facebook and Google, accused of hosting material that could cause communal unrest.

Yahoo says there is no document to show that its website has violated any law.

The case was launched by journalist Vinay Rai. A separate civil lawsuit against the internet firms continues.

Judges in India have threatened to block sites that fail to crack down on offensive content.

Last month, Facebook and Google said they had complied with the court directive and removed "objectionable" material.

Late last year, Communications Minister Kapil Sibal met officials from Google, Facebook and other websites and said the government would introduce guidelines to ensure "blasphemous material" did not appear on the internet.

The Delhi High Court in January asked Facebook and Google India to "develop a mechanism to keep a check and remove offensive and objectionable material from their web pages" or "like China, we will block all such websites".

'May be revived'

"The summons issued against Yahoo India is set aside," the Press Trust of India quoted Delhi High Court Justice Suresh Kait as saying.

The judge, however, said that a private complaint against the website could be revived if credible and actionable evidence was filed against it.

Communications Minister Kapil Sibal has taken a strong line on the issue

Yahoo India's lawyer Arvind Nigam said summons were issued against the site "without application of mind by the trial court", he said.

"I wish to know what is the case against me," he added.

Yahoo has always maintained that the complaint filed in the court had nothing to do with its content as it was about alleged objectionable material retrieved from websites like Zombie, Orkut, YouTube, Facebook and Blogspot.

The criminal case has been brought by journalist Vinay Rai.

A separate civil lawsuit, which makes similar accusations, against a number of the same internet companies is proceeding. Yahoo is still involved in that. Microsoft successfully appealed to be dropped from it.

Many firms say it is impossible to pre-filter material.

Google India has argued that it is not feasible to pre-monitor material posted by "billions of people across the globe".

In an earlier court hearing, Google lawyer NK Kaul said that the issue also related "to a constitutional issue of freedom of speech and expression, and suppressing it was not possible as the right to freedom of speech in democratic India separates us from a totalitarian regime like China".

Facebook says policies are in place that enable people to report abusive content.

In December, Communications Minister Sibal said: "My aim is that insulting material never gets uploaded. We will evolve guidelines and mechanisms to deal with the issue. [The companies] will have to give us the data, where these images are being uploaded and who is doing it."

Mr Sibal was angered by morphed photos of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi, as well as doctored images of pigs running through Islam's holy city of Mecca.

View the original article here

Forcing Defendant to Decrypt Hard Drive Is Unconstitutional, Appeals Court Rules

Forcing a criminal suspect to decrypt hard drives so their contents can be used by prosecutors is a breach of the Fifth Amendment right against compelled self-incrimination, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday.

It was the nation’s first appellate court to issue such a finding. And the outcome comes a day after a different federal appeals court refused to entertain an appeal from another defendant ordered by a lower federal court to decrypt a hard drive by month’s end.

Thursday’s decision by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that an encrypted hard drive is akin to a combination to a safe, and is off limits, because compelling the unlocking of either of them is the equivalent of forcing testimony.

The case at hand concerns an unidentified “Doe” defendant believed to be in possession of child pornography on 5 terabytes of data on several drives and laptops seized in a California motel with valid court warrants.

The Atlanta-based circuit held:

First, the decryption and production of the hard drives would require the use of the contents of Doe’s mind and could not be fairly characterized to a physical act that would be non-testimonial in nature. We conclude that the decryption and production would be tantamount to testimony by Doe of his knowledge of the existence and location of potentially incriminating files; of his possession, control and access to the encrypted portions of the drives; and of his capability to decrypt the files.

The court added: “Requiring Does to use a decryption password is most certainly more akin to requiring the production of a combination because both demand the use of the contents of the mind, and the production is accompanied by the implied factual statements noted above that could prove to be incriminatory.”

The defendant in April had refused to comport with a Florida federal grand jury’s orders that he decrypt the data, which was encrypted with TrueCrypt. A judge held him in contempt and jailed him until December 15, when the circuit court released him ahead of Thursday’s ruling.

“The government’s attempt to force this man to decrypt his data put him in the Catch-22 the Fifth Amendment was designed to prevent — having to choose between self-incrimination or risking contempt of court,” said EFF senior staff attorney Marcia Hofmann, who had filed an amicus brief in the case.

In the other decryption case, the Denver-based 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday sided with the government’s contention that Colorado bank-fraud defendant Ramona Fricosu must be convicted before the circuit court would entertain an appeal of a decryption order.

The court did not address the 5th Amendment arguments and instead said the case was not procedurally ripe for appeal.

Fricosu’s attorney, Philip Dubois, said in a telephone interview Friday that new developments in the case may moot the constitutional showdown in his client’s case.

He said a co-defendant, Scott Whatcott, has forwarded passwords to the authorities.

Dubios said it was not immediately known whether those passwords would unlock the hard drive in the Toshiba laptop seized from Fricosu with valid warrants in 2010. If they do, then the 5th Amendment issue is off the table, Dubois said.

If the passwords don’t work, Dubois said, Fricosu “will definitely make her best effort” to decrypt the laptop, although she may have forgotten the password.

U.S. District Judge Robert Blackburn has ordered Fricosu to decrypt the laptop by month’s end.

Dubois said that, on Monday, he would provide Judge Blackburn with the 11th Circuit’s opinion in the child pornography case as part of a last-ditch effort to halt the decryption order.

That said, Blackburn is not bound by the 11th Circuit decision because his court is in the 10th Circuit.

David Kravets is a senior staff writer for Wired.com and founder of the fake news site TheYellowDailyNews.com. He's a dad of two boys and has been a reporter since the manual typewriter days.
Follow @dmkravets and @ThreatLevel on Twitter.

View the original article here

India court orders river project

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota
27 February 2012 Last updated at 12:38 GMT By linking rivers, India wants to tackle the cycle of flood and drought India's Supreme Court has ordered the government to implement an ambitious project to link major rivers in the region "in a time-bound manner".

The court also appointed a committee to plan and implement the project.

The judges said the project had been long delayed, resulting in an increase in its cost.

In 2002, the government announced plans to link major rivers in the region to reduce persistent water shortages in parts of India after a court order.

The project was announced by then-Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee who said the scheme will "free India from the curse of floods and droughts".

He also set up a task force to get the project going.

But the project has remained on paper for the last 10 years.

Project opposed

On Monday, the three-judge bench, headed by Chief Justice SH Kapadia, said the central and the state governments should participate for the "effective" implementation of the river-linking project "in a time-bound manner".

It is not clear what timeframe the court envisions.

"We direct the Union of India to forthwith constitute a committee for interlinking of rivers," the bench said, adding that "we direct the committee to implement the project".

The project aims to link 30 major rivers and will involve diverting the Ganges and the Brahmaputra - two of India's biggest rivers.

It requires the construction of large dams within India, Nepal and Bhutan, requiring international agreements with these countries.

The project was opposed by India's neighbours and environmentalists.

Bangladesh said diversion of water from these rivers would harm its interests - while environmentalists said the project would cause an ecological disaster.

But India says it must enhance its irrigation potential to meet its demand for grain to feed an estimated population of 1.5 billion by 2050.

The river-linking project was first devised in India in 1980 and has been under discussion ever since.

View the original article here

Indian court condemns crackdown

24 February 2012 Last updated at 04:31 GMT Thousands of Baba Ramdev's followers joined him in his protest against corruption India's Supreme Court has ordered the prosecution of policemen who were involved in a midnight crackdown on an anti-corruption protest led by yoga guru Baba Ramdev in June last year.

The court said the crackdown "struck at the foundation of democracy".

Around 30 people were injured as police fired tear gas to disperse thousands of his supporters.

A 51-year-old woman who was seriously injured in the incident died in hospital in September.

The crackdown was widely criticised. India's prime minister said it was "unfortunate" but that there had been no alternative.

Judges BS Chauhan and Swatanter Kumar said the police crackdown at Delhi's Ramlila grounds was an "assault on the very basic democratic values enshrined in our constitution" and could have been avoided.

'Unjustified and brutal'

They said the police had indulged in "unjustified and brutal acts" towards sleeping supporters by baton-charging them and using tear gas to chase them out of the protest venue.

"It is evident that it was not a case of emergency... It is a glaring example of trust deficit between the people governing and the people being governed," the judges said.

The court ordered the criminal prosecution of policemen and supporters of Baba Ramdev who had "behaved violently" during the incident. It also blamed the yoga guru for the violence.

The court also ordered compensation of 500,000 rupees ($10,200) to be paid to the family of Raj Bala, the woman who died in the incident.

The government had justified the crackdown, saying that the yoga guru had reneged on his promises during negotiations.

Authorities said that Baba Ramdev had gathered 50,000 people at a ground in Delhi after seeking permission for a yoga camp to be attended by 5,000 people.

The yoga guru has millions of supporters and his daily TV programme is watched by millions across India.

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Chinese Court Says Apple Can Sell iPads in Shanghai

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