Author Archives: Michael Froomkin

Remove Gmail Chat Annoyance

Posted on February 21, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

Tim Bishop channels Kevin Burton, and explains how to remove a new pesky annoyance for gmail users:

there is a setting hidden at the bottom of the gmail page, down next to the lack of privacy policy, that allows you to do turn chat off, standard without chat. How like Google to try and hide the preference, kinda like refusing to put a delete button in for a year in spite of user demand and utility. It seems like every day Google is getting farther away from its roots in usability.

Thank you guys!

(Incidentally, it sounds like they’re having a lot of fun over there on the west coast. Should I be hoping for a Supernova invite?)

Posted in Internet | 7 Comments

Hamdan Hearing to Go Forward

Posted on February 21, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

The Supreme Court put off deciding the jurisdictional challenge to the Hamdan case today. (This case is the challenge to Guantanamo’s so-called military tribunals, bodies that threaten to give kangaroo courts a bad name.) But rather than reject the government’s claim that Congress removed federal jurisdiction in the recent “Detainee Treatment Act” (AKA the Graham Amendment AKA a Really Bad Move), the Court punted the jurisdictional issue to the hearing on the merits.

This is cautiously good.

Posted in Guantanamo | Comments Off on Hamdan Hearing to Go Forward

Needy and Inappropriate Email from Students?

Posted on February 21, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

The professor blogs are abuzz about To: Professor@University.edu Subject: Why It’s All About Me, a New York Times front-page story about inappropriately needy, rude, or revelatory email from students to professors.

I have only two comments: First, this was an article that was mostly about undergraduates. In my experience this sort of thing is almost never a problem for me with UM law students. On the other hand, I see it all the time in requests I get from undergrads who want to go to law school (or to some other part of UM) and think I will be their research assistant or white pages service. Not to mention the occasional foreign law student or US high school student, who wants me to do their homework for them. Including the the unforgettable one who wrote me during final exam season that my essay on the three top problems in cyberlaw was urgently needed by 2pm that day…

Second, one striking thing about the NYT article (which may explain the above?), is that it it mostly quoted female professors. Could it be that undergraduate students find women more approachable, or look at them and see mommy? Are the students in some sexist manner more willing to bother the women than the men because they see the men as more ‘professional’? Or are the women faculty more willing to speak out about the problem? Or just more likely to feel lingering guilt about not responding–something that the men perhaps tend to dismiss?

Posted in Law School | 1 Comment

More on Mora and the ‘Mora Memo’

Posted on February 20, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

Further to yesterday’s item on Alberto Mora, here are links to Jane Mayer’s article in The New Yorker (these links tend to be perishable), and to the full text of the Mora memo. The Mayer article gives great detail of Mora’s heroic, but unsuccessful, attempts to prevent Cheney’s retainers from dragging us into the muck.

One of the most amazing revelations from the Mayer story is that Mora was part of a working group of DoD lawyers who objected to the torture policy; they were thus removed from the loop. While they thought their objections had stopped the policy going forward, in fact a report approving it was issued in the name of the working group they had been cut out of.

Legal critics within the Administration had been allowed to think that they were engaged in a meaningful process; but their deliberations appeared to have been largely an academic exercise, or, worse, a charade. “It seems that there was a two-track program here,” said Martin Lederman, a former lawyer with the Office of Legal Counsel, who is now a visiting professor at Georgetown. “Otherwise, why would they share the final working-group report with Hill and Miller but not with the lawyers who were its ostensible authors?”

But read the whole Mayer article. Yes, it’s amazing how bad things have gotten. Even so, I refuse to be amazed that good people stood up against it — I’ll just be proud.

Posted in Torture | Comments Off on More on Mora and the ‘Mora Memo’

Senior Navy Lawyer Who Opposed Torture is UM Alum

Posted on February 19, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

One of the Pentagon’s top civilian lawyers repeatedly challenged the Bush administration’s policy on the coercive interrogation of terror suspects, arguing that such practices violated the law, verged on torture and could ultimately expose senior officials to prosecution, a newly disclosed document shows.

I’d just like to note that Alberto J. Mora, the subject of Monday’s NYT article, Senior Lawyer at Pentagon Broke Ranks on Detainees is an alumnus of the University of Miami School of Law.

“Even if one wanted to authorize the U.S. military to conduct coercive interrogations, as was the case in Guantánamo, how could one do so without profoundly altering its core values and character?” Mr. Mora asked the Pentagon’s chief lawyer, William J. Haynes II, according to the memorandum.

Indeed.

Posted in Torture, U.Miami | Comments Off on Senior Navy Lawyer Who Opposed Torture is UM Alum

Avian Flu Avian Flu Avian Flu

Posted on February 19, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

W. David Stephenson blogs on homeland security et al. brings us this really cheerful prediction about avian flu from the Boston Globe:

”We’re not going to have much warning,” [WHO Scientist Dr. Michael] Ryan said. ”One day, two days, maybe three, if we are extremely lucky. Once contagious among humans, the virus will spread like a tsunami. There will be the flash point — probably in Asia, perhaps somewhere else — followed by waves of infection that would hurtle around the world.”

It could be awful:

In worst-case scenarios based on extrapolations from the 1918 outbreak, some epidemiologists predict that a pandemic spawned by bird flu could kill 140 million people in a matter of months, and sicken so many hundreds of millions that some governments and national economies would collapse.

Or it could just be really really bad:

The World Health Organization is urging countries to brace for a ”mild to moderate” pandemic likely to kill 2 million to 7.4 million people, according to Ryan.

”We need to steer away from worst-case scenarios or we’ll end up like deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming truck, too terrified to move,” he said. ”We need preparation, not panic.”

Posted in Science/Medicine | 1 Comment