Wisconsin Cell Phone & Driving Laws

Most of us have seen campaigns against distracted driving, whether on billboards, radio broadcastings, or TV commercials. This year AT&T ran several commercials detailing the stories of distracted drivers or of their family members and how they are coping with the consequences of the driver’s actions. The commercials were very sad and somber.

However, despite these types of campaigns and state laws that outright ban cell phone use while driving or particular types of cell phone usage such as texting, it is all too easy to spot other drivers more preoccupied by whatever activity they are doing on their cell phone than driving. Social media and the hundreds of cell phone applications available only add to the temptation of multi-tasking while driving. For example, such temptations as tweeting, posting a picture on Facebook, or joining the “latest” craze and video blog (vlog) exclusively present themselves to today’s drivers. Vine and Instagram allow users to upload short videos to capture the user’s thoughts/moments in life, and many users seem to enjoy showing their followers whatever is happening on the road or in the car while the driver continues to drive.

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Dean Howard Eisenberg–Appellate Litigator

Howard Eisenberg, dean of Marquette law school from 1995 until his untimely death at age 55 in 2002, was renowned as an appellate litigator. After his death, the American Academy of Appellate Litigators created the Howard Eisenberg Award in his honor to be given annually to the best article on appellate practice and procedure published in a journal. (One of the winners of this award is our own Prof. Oldfather.)

Howard’s talents evidenced themselves early in his career, beginning with a highly successful performance in Moot Court at the University of Wisconsin Law School. The picture below recently resurfaced on the Internet and shows Howard’s championship moot court team from 1970. Howard is the individual on the far right of the photo.

A fuller description of Dean Eisenberg’s career can be found here.

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Why Google’s Wi-Spy Argument Is Stronger Than It First Appears

Google Street View Car(This is Part 2 of 4 posts on the issue of whether the Wiretap Act bars interception of unencrypted wi-fi signals. See Part I.)

When we last tuned in I was explaining the arguments in the Google “Wi-Spy” case, involving Google’s Street View vehicles’ interception of home wireless network transmissions. Google argues that unencrypted wireless network transmissions are not protected by the Wiretap Act. Forget to set your wi-fi password? Then all of your network communications are free for the taking by your neighbor, local hacker, or multi-national conglomerate driving down the street. Sure, that sounds counter-intuitive, Google might admit, but the Wiretap Act is a counter-intuitive statute (they’ve got that part right, at least).

The plaintiffs argue that Google is simply engaged in lawyer games, willfully contorting the statute in order to save its bacon. There’s a provision in the Wiretap Act that (roughly speaking) defines unencrypted communications to be publicly accessible, but it only applies to radio communications. And, the plaintiffs argue, “radio communications . . . readily accessible to the general public” is only used in one place in the statute, a provision that talks only about “governmental, law enforcement, civil defense, private land mobile, or public safety communications system[s].” Home wireless routers clearly aren’t any of those. The exception that Google needs refers to “electronic communication[s] . . . readily accessible to the general public.” There’s no definition for that use of “readily accessible,” however, so the ordinary English reading will have to suffice.

The district court didn’t take quite the same tack as the plaintiffs.

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