US court says 'pocket-dialed' calls are not private

A federal appeals court in Ohio has ruled that a person who accidentally "pocket dials" someone shouldn't expect any overheard conversation to be considered private.

The case involves the chairman of the Airport Board in Kenton, Kentucky, which oversees the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport. The chairman, James Huff, was on a business trip in Italy with his wife and a colleague when he accidentally pocket-dialed the secretary of the airport's CEO back in the U.S.

The secretary, Carol Spaw, said "hello" a few times and soon figured out the call wasn't meant for her. But she overheard Huff and his colleague talking about personnel matters, including the possibility that the airport's CEO -- Spaw's boss -- might be replaced. The inadvertent call continued after Huff got back to his hotel room with his wife.

The call lasted 91 minutes and Spaw stayed on the line the entire time, court records show. Spaw claims that she thought Huff was discussing a plan to illegally discriminate against the CEO, a woman. She says she felt obliged to record the call and report it.

Spaw took handwritten notes for most of the call, but managed to record the last four minutes after a colleague brought her an iPhone. By that time, Huff was back in his hotel room, where he discussed personal matters with his wife Bertha but also shared some details of the personnel discussion from earlier.

Huff and his wife sued Spaw, alleging she had breached their privacy by violating a law often called the Wiretap Act, which prohibits interception of "wire, oral or electronic communications."

However, the catch is that the law applies only where people can show they had a reasonable expectation of privacy. And that's not case with pocket-dialed calls, the appeals court ruled, upholding in part a lower court's decision.

Citing case law, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals said people must "exhibit" that they have an expectation of privacy, by taking reasonable steps to ensure their conversation won't be overheard.

Huff admitted in his deposition that he was aware of the risk of making pocket-dialed calls, and that he'd made them himself in the past. The appeals court noted that methods exist to prevent such calls, including locking a phone or using an app designed for that purpose, but Huff didn't use any of them. So while he may have intended his call to be private, he didn't do enough to show that he had that expectation.

The appeals court drew a parallel with a person not drawing the curtains in their home.

"Under the plain-view doctrine, if a homeowner neglects to cover a window with drapes, he would lose his reasonable expectation of privacy with respect to a viewer looking into the window from outside of his property," the court said.

The same applies to pocket-dialed calls, according to the court. If a person doesn't take reasonable steps to keep their call private, their communications are not protected by the Wiretap Act.

The court also cited a case in which police discovered a defendant's child pornography using Limewire, the peer-to-peer file sharing service. The defendant there claimed the evidence had been gathered in a warrantless search, but a different appeals court said the defendant had failed to demonstrate an expectation of privacy, because he "opened up his download folder to the world."

"The principle that a person does not exhibit a reasonable expectation of privacy when he knew or should have known that the operation of a device might grant others access to his statements or activities" is applicable to the Wiretap Act as well, the appeals court said.

However, it noted, the same may not apply to Huff's wife, Bertha, who couldn't be expected to know that a person she was talking to had a smartphone in their pocket and hadn't taken steps to secure it.

"If Bertha waived her reasonable expectation of privacy from pocket-dials by speaking to a person who she knew to carry a pocket-dial-capable device, she would also waive her reasonable expectation of privacy from recordings and transmissions by speaking with anyone carrying a recording-capable or transmission-capable device, i.e., any modern cellphone," the court said.

"The district court's holding would logically result in the loss of a reasonable expectation of privacy in face-to-face conversations where one party is aware that a participant in the conversation may have a modern cellphone."

That doesn't necessarily mean Spaw is liable, however, because liability applies under the Wiretap Law only when a person "intentionally" uses a "device" to intercept oral communications.

The appeals court sent the case back to the lower court to decide if Spaw's actions -- including transcribing notes from the call and recording part of it -- constituted an "intentional use of a device" to intercept Bertha Huff's communications.

James Niccolai covers data centers and general technology news for IDG News Service. Follow James on Twitter at @jniccolai. James's e-mail address is james_niccolai@idg.com

‘Eaten Alive?’ Discovery Channel to premiere ‘Eaten Alive?’ on 31 December

FIRST TIME EVER ON TELEVISION  ‘Eaten Alive?’ Discovery Channel to premiere ‘Eaten Alive?’ on 31 December


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On 31 December, Discovery Channel will present a never-seen-before deadly encounter - ‘Eaten Alive?’. The programme features snake researcher and conservationist Paul Rosolie, attempting to get eaten by the giant snake - alive. Paul has dedicated his career to study the Giant Green Anaconda, the largest and most powerful snake in the world and the top predator in the Amazon.  This challenge was created to get maximum attention for one of the most beautiful and threatened parts of the world, the Amazon Rainforest and its wildlife.
 
The two-hour special, ‘Eaten Alive?’ will premiere on Wednesday, 31 December at 8 pm on Discovery Channel.
 
Rosolie has specialised in the western Amazon for more than a decade and his efforts have helped bring awareness to the Peruvian Rainforest, the natural habitat of the Giant Green Anaconda.  This year, over a 60-day period, crews chronicled Rosolie's expedition to the hidden realm deep within the Amazonian jungle. It is in this floating forest that Rosolie believes the largest anacondas in the world live and breed and one of the only locations to truly study these elusive and majestic snakes in the wild.  On his previous expedition to this secluded part of the Amazonian jungle, Rosolie was very close to capturing what he believed was the world's largest anaconda, a 25 to 27-foot behemoth that slipped through his hands and nearly dragged him to the bottom of the floating forest.
 
"I've seen first-hand how the Amazon Rainforest is being destroyed.  It is so rampant that we may be the last generation with the opportunity to save it.  People need to wake up to what is going on," said Paul Rosolie. "What better way is there to shock people than to put my life on the line with the largest snake on the planet, the Green Anaconda?"
 
Since Rosolie's goal was to persevere through the constriction and potential ingestion deep into the belly of the beast, he relied on a custom-built suit he designed for his protection.  Constructed by Rosolie and his team of engineers working alongside herpetologists, the suit was built to ensure the snake's safety just as much as it was to protect Rosolie's life.  The highest measured force of an anaconda constriction has been documented at 90psi, which would be the equivalent of having a large school bus on one's chest.  Since anacondas rely on their massive size and power to subdue their prey,  Rosolie risked life and limb in the hopes of measuring the constriction force of a massive anaconda, to gain more insight on its hunting and feeding behaviors, and ultimately, to gain a greater understanding of the inner workings of these majestic creatures. 
 
Both Paul Rosolie and the Giant Green Anaconda are healthy and alive.
Tune in to watch Paul's daring attempt to enter the belly of the beast, and his terrifying encounter with the massive snake.

Backlinks: What they are and how to get them

Sometimes called inbound links, backlinks are the lifeblood of Search Engine Positioning. In order for a website to be on the top of search engines like Google without the webmaster having to pay big money for advertising, the website has to have a large number of backlinks. Backlinks are links on one website that lead back to another website. The more established, high quality, and high Page Rank the website that contains the link has, the more power it has to help the linked website with its search engine position. If the website that is getting backlinks gets many High Quality and High Page Rank backlinks, the better the chance it has of being in a high position on the Search Engines.

How does a webmaster go about getting high quality backlinks to his or her website? There are many ways this can be done. Some people advocate writing and submitting articles, posting on forums, making comments on blogs. Others talk about submitting their website to various Internet directories. One directory that has an excellent reputation is called DMOZ, or the "Open Directory". This directory is probably the most respected directory online today. The websites it contains have all been placed there by human editors; there is no "automation" to this directory. The only drawback that's been discussed about this directory is that it takes so long to have a website included.

Another way that many people build backlinks for their website is to use Social Bookmarking websites. A "Social Bookmark" is a website that usually has a very popular 'community' aspect to it. Users sign up and create profiles on the sites that contain photos and information about themselves. They then can save "bookmarks" of favorite websites which can be itemized by 'tags', which are one or two word descriptions of what the sites contain, and these bookmarks can be saved to a list that's private or can be listed publicly, so that everybody can see it.

With the advent of what is known as Web 2.0, gaining backlinks is easier now than in any time in the history of the internet. Most sites now have an "interactive" quality to them nowadays. Readers can often sign in and create profiles. They then are often allowed to post comments on the stories or articles on the website or blog. In many cases, the website or blog owner responds to these comments; thus making this section of the website or blog a conversation.

Backlinking strategies can be easy and fun and the website owner who is working on getting more backlinks for his website can learn new things, meet new people, and have a tremendous amount of fun doing something that was once a chore: building backlinks.

Obama to sign orders protecting gay employees in govt

WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama plans to sign executive orders on Monday prohibiting discrimination against gay and transgender workers in the US government and its contracting agencies, without a new exemption that was requested by some religious organizations.

Obama's action comes on the heels of the US supreme court's recent ruling in the Hobby Lobby case that allowed some religiously oriented businesses to opt out of the federal healthcare law's requirement that contraception coverage be provided to workers at no extra charge. Senior administration officials said Friday that ruling has no impact on non-discrimination policies in federal hiring and contracting.

They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the plans publicly.

Since Obama announced last month that he would sign the orders, he's faced pressure from opposing flanks over the religious exemption and given no indication of where he would come down. Many religious leaders and conservative groups wanted him to exempt religious organizations from the order, while liberal clergy and gay advocacy groups adamantly opposed such an exemption.

Until last month, Obama long-resisted pressure to pursue an executive order for federal contractors in hopes that Congress would take more sweeping action banning anti-gay workplace discrimination nationwide. A bill to accomplish that goal — the Employment Non-Discrimination Act — passed the Senate last year with some Republican support, but has not been taken up by the Republican-controlled House.

The senior officials said Obama's action planned for Monday at the White House would amend two executive orders. The first, signed by President Lyndon Johnson in 1965, prohibits federal contractors from discriminating based on race, religion, gender or nationality in hiring. Obama plans to add sexual orientation and gender identity to the list of protections, and order the labour department to carry out the order. The officials said that means the change will probably take effect by early next year.

President George W Bush had amended Johnson's order in 2002 to allow religious groups to hire and fire based upon religious identity. Churches also are able to hire ministers as they see fit. The senior administration officials said Obama will not change those exemptions.

The second order Obama will amend was signed by President Richard Nixon in 1969 to prevent discrimination against federal workers based on race, religion, gender, nationality, age or disability. President Bill Clinton added sexual orientation, and Obama will include gender identity in a change to immediately take effect.

Human Rights Campaign president Chad Griffin said: "With two strokes of a pen, the President will have a very real and immediate impact on the lives of millions of LGBT people across the country."

The administration officials said the change for federal contracting will impact some 24,000 companies with 28 million workers, or one-fifth of the US workforce. Many large federal contractors already have employment policies barring anti-gay workplace discrimination, as do 21 states. However, the Williams Institute at UCLA Law School estimates that the executive order would extend protections to about 14 million workers whose employers or states currently do not have such non-discrimination policies.

While few religious organizations are among the biggest federal contractors, they do provide some valued services, including overseas relief and development programs and re-entry programs for inmates leaving federal prisons.