Category Archives: Blogs

A noble effort by Paul Ohm at Freedom to Tinker, Being Acquitted Versus Being Searched (YANAL):

With this post, I'm launching a new, (very) occasional series I'm calling YANAL, for “You Are Not A Lawyer.” In this series, I will try to disabuse computer scientists and other technically minded people of some commonly held misconceptions about the law (and the legal system).

Funnily enough, that's how I got my start as an Internet lawyer. Back in the early '90s there were a lot of software engineers writing a great deal of nonsense about the US Constitution on USENET. When they used these mistaken priors to (mis)explain the law relating to the Clipper Chip, I decided to write a short 10-12 page article on the regulation of cryptography, just to set the record straight.

One hundred and sixty pages (and one case of carpal tunnel) later, I had an article.

Good luck, Paul, you'll need it!

Say hello to Overruled, which looks to be a feisty progressive law blog.

Crooked Timber, the only group blog I have ever imagined I might enjoy being a part of (not that they asked), is having a bunch of online luminaries do a very fun discussion of Charles Stross's writings; see Charles Stross book event for details.

Recommended, although I should note that while I read Stross, I'm not a Strossian myself.

I'm delighted to see that the “Great Grimmelmann” moniker that I launched some time ago is now catching on.

I doubt it will do as well as the “the Great Firewall of China” — which I believe I may have been the first to use — but there's plenty of time, he's so young.

NYT, For a Washington Job, Be Prepared to Tell All, reports on the very detailed questionnaire being required of applicants for jobs in the Obama admin. This is one group that will be vetted thoroughly! (Even so, given the numbers, odds are something on someone will slip through the cracks, and by the strange logic of politics, the fact that Team Obama took responsibility for vetting will mean that the press will treat the failure as more significant than if they hadn't tried so hard. Go figure.)

The NYT article has this arresting graphic, which suggests that bloggers just might have a little trouble getting a policy (as opposed to blogger outreach) job: