Cultivated Compendium

Politico reports that President Barack Obama plans to issue an executive order to develop privacy guidelines for commercial drones. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration would be put in charge of developing the guidelines.

The Federal Aviation Administration faces criticism for lagging in developing regulations about integrating commercial drones into U.S. airspace There is a September 2015 deadline for the FAA to issues rules on the operation of small commercial drones, Politico adds.

At the conclusion of a judicial corruption trial, four Philadelphia Traffic Court judges were found guilty of perjury and giving false statements, but they were found not guilty of other charges, The Legal Intelligencer's P.J. D'Annunzio reports. All of the defendants were found not guilty of the wire and mail fraud, aiding and abetting, and conspiracy charges.
 

Shawn DuBravac, chief economist of the Consumer Electronics Association, posits in Techdirt that the U.S. Supreme Court's rulings that warrants are needed before police may search criminal suspects' cellphones has struck the first blow to protect digital privacy in the era of the Internet of Things, or physical objects being connected to the Internet like smart thermostats, coffee pots and refrigerators: the decision "comes at just the right time, because it's not just our phones that are getting smart. Soon, just about everything we touch will capture data about us. Our cars. Our watches. Our clothing. The fundamental privacies at stake in this ruling transcend far beyond phones. The Supreme Court needed to write its decision with the bigger picture in mind, and it did."

The U.S. Supreme Court is being criticized for not doing enough to open public access to court proceedings by a coalition formed to increase transparency in the judiciary, Legal Times' Tony Mauro reports: "'There remains much to be done to bring the institution in line with our expectations of openness from our nation’s top legal officials,' according to an end-of-term report issued by the Coalition for Court Transparency."

The issues being raised include having cameras present for Supreme Court oral arguments, more explanation on why the justices recuse themselves from cases, and the justices maintaining a no-protest zone in front of the Supreme Court.

Congressional leaders blasted the lack of interoperability between different vendors' electronic health records systems, Politico reports. The harshest criticism came from "Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.), who charged that Verona, Wis.-based Epic Systems, the leading EHR company, was operating 'closed platforms' that did not allow information to easily flow into and out of its electronic health records systems," Politico further reports. Epic is the most highly used electronic health record system, Politico also reports.

The issue of interoperability is a big one with electronic health records: if different systems can't talk to each other, then patients can't benefit from having information that is portable between different healthcare providers or readily available if they need emergency care while traveling.

Just hours after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit threw out the federal tax regulation that implements the Obamacare subsidies available to people with annual incomes of up to 400 percent of the federal poverty level, the Fourth Circuit has upheld them, the National Law Journal's Marcia Coyle reports: "In King v. Burwell, the three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit rejected arguments that the subsidies—tax credits offsetting the cost of insurance for low- and moderate-income persons—are limited only to insurance purchased through state-created exchanges under the health insurance law."
 

A major blow has been delivered today to Obamacare, Reuters reports: "The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit accepted one of the main legal challenges to the policy by conservatives opposed to an expansion of the federal government" and threw out the federal tax regulation that implements Obamacare subsidies available to people with annual incomes of up to 400 percent of the federal poverty level.

The Tenth Circuit has once again acted to strike down a state ban on same-sex marriage. The same panel of judges, 2-1, that voted to strike down Utah's ban on same-sex marriage voted to strike down Oklahoma's ban on same-sex marriage, USA Today's Richard Wolf reports. The dissenting judge, Judge Paul Kelly, is the first federal judge to oppose same-sex marriage in any case, USA Today reports.

Navi Pillay, the United Nations' High Commissioner for Human Rights, argues in a draft report that digital privacy is a human right, the Washington Post reports. Wide-ranging surveillance by the National Security Agency and the United Kingdom's General Communications Headquarters undermine that right, Pillay argues. Pillay's draft report argues "'the best remedy of all is to establish strong legal protections to ensure that such violations do not happen in the first place,'" the Post concludes.

A federal court has dismissed a Texas search-and-rescue group's challenge to the Federal Aviation Adminstration's drone policy, the Wall Street Journal reports. The D.C. Circuit ruled that informal emails from regulators, expressing a view of what the law requires, aren't subject to judicial review.