According to the latest ruling by Second Circuit, the NSA’s collection of massive amounts of phone records violated the US Patriot Act. Although they never reached the constitutional question, the court said that Congress never gave the agency the authority. But Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr, a North Carolina Republican, believes the court had it wrong, and that Section 215, the provision in question, authorizes the NSA to conduct mass collections. The Act is set to expire in a few weeks. Congress will either renew the Act, change it, or eliminate it altogether.
Under Section 215, certain investigators
may make an application for an order requiring the production of any tangible things (including books, records, papers, documents, and other items) for an investigation to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities, provided that such investigation of a United States person is not conducted solely upon the basis of activities protected by the first amendment to the Constitution.
The controversy is over the words “any intangible things,” and in other parts of the Act, the words “information likely to be obtained by such installation and use is relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation.” The court agreeing with privacy advocates that the “relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation” language is too broad. Members of Congress, however, believe that the language is necessary to prevent future terrorist attacks. In any event, any phone record seizure must be preceded by a warrant.
The House is set to vote on the USA Freedom Act. The Freedom Act extends the Patriot Act but removes the power of the NSA to collect bulk phone records.
The Federal Reserve has a lot of power over the economy. It is obligated to promote maximum employment and guard against inflation. In the near term, long-term interest rates, which presently are very low, could rise after the Fed raises its benchmark rate. Rates have been hovering near zero since 2008. Yellen is cautious, however, not to take the market by surprise with any change in monetary policy.
In a recent interview, Yellen said equity market valuations are high and warns of “potential dangers.” Yellen said that “she sees risks as moderated and does not see any bubbles forming, though the central bank is watching the issue closely.”
Posted by Stephanie Simms.
In this article, Ruby Tuesday is facing a civil rights lawsuit for discriminating against male job candidates. The government is suing on behalf of, Andrew Herrera, who worked at an Oregon Ruby Tuesday, and Joshua Bell, who worked at a Ruby Tuesday in Republic, Missouri. They were only allowed to work there for a temporary period of time. What makes the situation worse for Ruby Tuesday is they specifically had an internal job posting that stated only girls should apply to their restaurant. The law of discrimination based on gender states that, employers are prohibited from classifying jobs based on gender, unless employer can prove gender is essential to the job.
The government’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission lawsuit was filed in the federal district court in Oregon. The lawsuit explains how the postings which were passed around to stores within nine states, and their content is a violation to the Equal Opportunity Employment laws from the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1991. EEOC San Francisco Regional Attorney William R. Tamayo stated, “It’s rare to see an explicit example of sex discrimination like Ruby Tuesday’s internal job announcement. . . . This suit is a cautionary tale to employers that sex-based employment decisions are rarely justified and are not consistent with good business judgment.” Everyone is entitled a fair chance when it comes to jobs, because one cannot just tell someone they cannot work somewhere without putting them up to the task. Both of the men say they were denied the opportunity to earn more money because they were not allowed to compete for the jobs.
In the end, Ruby Tuesday hired seven women and no men for the 2013 summer jobs. EEOC’s Seattle Field Office Director, Nancy Sienko said, “[Mr. Herrera] was shocked and angered that Ruby Tuesday would categorically exclude him and other male employees” from a lucrative job. The job announcement was distributed to restaurants located in Oregon, Arizona, Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada and Utah.
The lawsuit does not indicate exactly how much in damages the men were seeking for the discrimination due to their gender.
Stephanie is business administration with a minor in biology at Montclair State University, Class of 2017.
Posted by Nadia Haddad.
“Intellectual Property law works, until it is stretched.” According to a New York Times article, the problem with intellectual property law is that lawyers try to push the idea of I.P. too far in other areas, like software development, because they believe more the better. The article states that a software patent is a good example of a failed “experiment” because no one today can name a major software innovation whose investments relied on a patent. Some software innovations such as Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet, Netscape’s browser, or Google’s search are not responsible for their existence because of a patent. The article mentioned how software patents are expensive, threaten competition, and are occasionally used for accounting fraud.
Intellectual Property plays an important role for all humans in society. In general terms, intellectual property is any product of the human intellect that the law protects from unauthorized use by others. Intellectual property is important because it drives economic growth and competition, as well as creating and supporting high paying jobs.
The mind is the most important thing a human possesses, because that is the root of who you are and what you want to do. We live life through people’s intellectual properties or inventions, which is why we need to protect them.
Nadia is a business administration major with a minor in international business at Montclair State University, Class of 2016.
Posted by Taylor Gonzales.
A major issue in the United States is the suffering economy. There are not many jobs to apply for and even those available do not pay enough to support oneself or their family. To counteract this issue, states have opted to give a higher minimum wage. In Seattle, they have chosen to raise it to $11 per hour this year; they are allowing small businesses to adjust to the set price of $15 per hour over six years and larger businesses get two years to rise up to that amount. Such a change may be good in terms of income for employees, yet it offsets the business and their current budget.
A pizza shop in Seattle has to close down because it is considered a large business and is unable to make the adjustment of the high wage hike within two years. Ritu Burnham, the owner of the shop, stated, “I’ve let one person go since April 1[;] I’ve cut hours since April 1[;] I’ve taken them myself because I don’t pay myself,” she says. “I’ve also raised my prices a little bit[;] there’s no other way to do it” (Patel, 2015).
Legislation that enforces minimum wage seems to be aimed to protect people, except business profits should be taken into account as well. One idea is each business have a set wage that is efficient for them to stay open and large enough to support their employees. That wage would be enforced through a contract, and if the potential employee comes to an agreement with their wage proposal, then they will sign and be hired.
Sometimes the government needs to allow businesses to take care of themselves, especially in hopes of bettering the economy.
Taylor is a marketing major at Montclair State University, Class of 2017.
Posted by Taylor Gonzales.
Uber and Lyft have become new technological businesses that have gotten a lot of attention for offering taxi service straight from your phone. An app is required that allows an account to be made, linked to a credit card, where you are able to request a taxi to a certain location to bring you to another one. It is a business, however, that is not the typical taxi service. Any person who needs extra cash can be a driver when requests to the apps are made. However, the article states, “The state regulates for-hire passenger transportation through the Limousines Transportation Act 271 of 1990 and the Michigan Vehicle Code. All vehicles transporting passengers are defined as limousines under the law and must have a commercial license plate. Drivers are required to have a chauffeur’s license” (Oddy, 2015). Yet, in Michigan for-hire drivers are not required to have a chauffer’s license.
Though it is not illegal in the state of Michigan, as a business, they should realize that it does not reach the moral minimum. The law may not require such a license for their for-hire drivers, however, they should realize that this poses risks for their customers, because Uber’s and Lyft’s employees may not be qualified to fulfill the position safely and successfully. Both businesses should have created an ethical code of conduct that should be followed to ensure the upmost excellence of their business procedures and safety of their customers.
There is a contract between the customer and the provider, even with these types of business, and through that contract they should make an adjustment to ensure that each driver is properly trained and has a chauffeur license regardless of state law. In cases like this, it is not so much that they are breaking the law, but rather not running a morally and ethically stable business.
Taylor is a marketing major at Montclair State University, Class of 2017.
Posted by Sukayna Khalifeh.
Spoofing became illegal in 2010 when an amendment stating that “bidding or offering with the intent to cancel the bid or offer before execution” was added to the Commodity Exchange Act. Navinder Singh Sarao was criminally charged for this so-called spoofing, because he was allegedly driving down the price of stocks of Standard & Poor on purpose by making other traders sell their stocks, and then at the last minute, buy those stocks himself and cancel his hoaxed sell orders. He would make a profit after the price came back up and everything goes back to normal. According to the New York Times (Henning), the government also thinks that he was one of the causes that lead to the “flash crash” in May 2010, where the “Dow Jones industrial average dropped nearly 1,000 points in just a few minutes before quickly recovering.” This was proven not to be the case when the blame was actually pinned on Waddell & Reed Financial in 2010 and Sarao was still placing orders after that yet no sudden drops in the market occurred. This proves the government had made the wrong analysis.
Henning brings up a question of whether there is enough proof to call this process a fraud. If it is constituted as one, then Navinder Singh Sarao might have to be deported to Britain by the government. According to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, since 2009, Sarao had made about $40 million just by spoofing. Sarao counter argues that this is just the way he trades and that he had made this estimated profit within 20 trading days. Henning also describes that the “victims of Mr. Sarao’s orders are not ordinary investors” but they are instead “sophisticated investors who use algorithms that try to predict where the market is headed.” This brings up the fact that these sophisticated or high frequency investors are most likely the ones caught with spoofing charges. So, is this actually affecting or “harming ordinary long-term investors” (Henning)? This type of fraud is still violating the law regardless of who the victims are but according to the New York Times (Henning), these high frequency investors, with their access to data about large orders, could have easily adjusted their algorithms to find out what type of orders Sarao used. In that process, they would not have fell for the scheme.
Also, it is not obligatory that once you enter an order it must be filled. According to the New York Times (Henning), “more than 90 percent [of orders] are estimated to be cancelled.” This is not considered to be spoofing since the order might be filled. Henning views this as an illustration of the “fine line between accepted practices and illegal conduct.”
In order for Sarao to be extradited to Britain, the Justice Department must prove that he had true intention of not filling the order after entering them in. Also, the British court can block this extradition if it “would not be in the interests of justice” (Henning).
According to the New York Times (Henning), this case took the prosecutors six years to put together and will take them a little while longer to find out if Sarao actually committed fraud.
Sukayna is a double major in finance and management, information and technology (MIT), Class of 2017.
Posted by Sukayna Khalifeh.
According to the New York Times (Peter J. Henning), there are no real findings of liability for violations from the cases arising from the 2008 financial crisis. Henning wrote about two cases in particular that were recently resolved but the top managers in the companies were not held liable. One of them involved fraud charges against Freddie Mac’s former chief executive, Richard F. Syron. This case “concluded only with an acknowledgment that no party is the prevailing party” (Henning). This was concluded because there was “no accepted definition of a subprime mortgage,” so there was no way to prove Syron had intentionally given false accounts of loans. The second case was against Ernst & Young, an auditor of Lehman Brothers. They were charged for accounting fraud but reached a settlement with the government for $10 million instead even though Lehman Brothers set off the financial crisis in September 2008 by going bankrupt. It was the largest bankruptcy in American History according to the New York Times (Henning).
Both of these cases were huge contributors to the financial crisis yet the perpetrators still were not held liable for illegal or dishonest behavior. “Management was aware of accounting maneuvers used to make its finances look stronger than they were,” (Henning) yet the Security Exchange Commission still stopped the investigation on Lehman Brothers in 2012. They were not criminally charged nor was any civil action taken.
Henning also wrote about the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act (FIRREA), which is designed to pursue “cases against banks for violations of the mail and wire fraud statutes.” This has been a successful and helpful tool that prosecutors used against JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup. Although this is a powerful tool, it has not been used to hold individuals for violations. Henning implied that the Justice Department should focus more on individuals in the corporation and charge them for misconduct instead of the corporation as a whole. The guilty individuals inside the company should be held liable for wrongdoing.
Sukayna is a double major in finance and management, information and technology (MIT) at Montclair State University, Class of 2017.
Posted by Stephanie Simms.
Over the past decade or so, Congress has created multiple bills with regard to cybersecurity, but sadly made no progress whatsoever. In December 2014, lawmakers along with the President set aside disagreements over the topic of cybersecurity reform and passed the following into law: (1) National Cybersecurity Protection Act (NCPA); (2) Cybersecurity Enhancement Act of 2014 (CEA); (3) Federal Information System Modernization Act of 2014 (FISMA 2014); (4) Cybersecurity Workforce Assessment Act (CWWA); and (5) Border Patrol Agent Pay Reform Act (BPAPRA).
These bills mentioned above generally address federal government departments with respect to cybersecurity. FISMA 2014, is a revision of the Federal Information Security Management Act 0f 2002 (FISMA) and was meant to “provide a framework for the federal government to assess and ensure its information security controls.” The CWWA and BPAPRA handle cybersecurity workforce issues at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The NCPA focuses only on promoting “information sharing” between the government and the private sector via DHS. The CEA officially is a bill that is governed-focused, but of all the bills passed in December, “it is the one that may have the biggest chances of causing unintentional effects on private sector organizations.”
Stephanie is business administration with a minor in biology at Montclair State University, Class of 2017.
Posted by Kyle Gatyas.
The US vendor of Chinese flooring products, Lumber Liquidators, has been facing an array of lawsuits ranging from allegations of stock price affectations to defective products. More recently, the company not only failed to meet California’s CARB-2 safety standards, but plaintiffs have also claimed exceeding levels of formaldehyde in their products. On March 5, 2015, a class action lawsuit was filed by John and Tracie-Linn Tyrrell because of certain symptoms they were experiencing shortly after John Tyrrell’s son-in-law installed the laminate flooring. They claimed they began having shortness of breath, weakness, fatigue, and incessant coughing and sneezing (Gibb). The lawsuit stated, “despite repeated medical tests, his doctors have not been able to identify the cause of these symptoms.” (Gibb).
The report aired on CBS News on 60 Minutes; it was said that the reason for higher levels of formaldehyde in their products was used to keep the cost down (Gibb). “According to an interview done by 60 Minutes, the amount of formaldehyde in the products is a serious threat because the toxins can escape into the air, making homeowners extremely ill.” (Gibb). The class action lawsuit permits representing any consumer who purchased the Chinese flooring products in the last four years and has had any medical complications. Reimbursement for the material and installation will also be included as damages in the lawsuit.
Kyle is currently undeclared at Montclair State University, Class of 2017.