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The New York Times notes something that I think could be called a trend:

In the last year, 15 states have enacted laws that expand the right of self-defense, allowing crime victims to use deadly force in situations that might formerly have subjected them to prosecution for murder.

The Florida law, which served as a model for the others, gives people the right to use deadly force against intruders entering their homes. They no longer need to prove that they feared for their safety, only that the person they killed had intruded unlawfully and forcefully. The law also extends this principle to vehicles.

In addition, the law does away with an earlier requirement that a person attacked in a public place must retreat if possible. Now, that same person, in the law's words, "has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force." The law also forbids the arrest, detention or prosecution of the people covered by the law, and it prohibits civil suits against them.

The central innovation in the Florida law, said Anthony J. Sebok, a professor at Brooklyn Law School, is not its elimination of the duty to retreat, which has been eroding nationally through judicial decisions, but in expanding the right to shoot intruders who pose no threat to the occupant's safety.

"In effect," Professor Sebok said, "the law allows citizens to kill other citizens in defense of property."

The National Rifle Association tracks legislative movement on gun and self-defense issues.

NFL Restricts Your Right to Shoot

With the NFL preseason now upon us, it appears the NFL's silly territorial decision not to allow local TV cameras on the sidelines is going to stick. TV stations are furious, but have no leverage.

Some have told me they considered boycotting the games but, that effectively shoots them in the foot. Games are big news/revenue/ratings, and local TV stations have to cover them even if they don't like the rules. The locals may still get post-game field access, but may not shoot game footage.

It will be interesting to see if there is less hometown-media boosterism from irritable TV sportsfolks who only have network feeds to pull from this year, while their print brothers and sisters are free to shoot whatever they wish during games, just as they always have.

The reason for the ban was explained this way in a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel story:

The NFL's director of media services said the policy was put in place to protect "the intellectual property rights (that) belong to the rights holders during a live broadcast and the NFL."

See more coverage from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and  Nashville Scene.

A May 2006 story from The Cincinnati Post included this passage:

"It's very troubling. There is no upside at all for local affiliates or for viewers. This is a no-win situation for football fans," said WCPO-TV (Channel 9) general manager Bill Fee. "The viewer will receive less information. It's all about the NFL wanting to control their content.

"Particularly for a station like Channel 9, where we have an hour of 'Sports of All Sorts' on Sunday night, a lot of the Bengals stories are what happens on the sidelines. Everyone is going to see the action on the field, but not every one is going to see the players talking to each other or what Chad Johnson's doing behind the bench. A lot of the local information we want to report is what's happening on the sidelines."

See a protest statement from National Press Photographers Association, from the Society of Professional Journalists and another from Radio-Television News Directors Association. None of those letters did anything to change the NFL owners' decision to "alleviate the sidelines of congestion" during games.

The RTNDA letter said, in part:

When electronic journalists are denied the ability to report on a news event with their own microphones, cameras and production crews, it allows newsmakers to determine the content of the news, a result that is inconsistent with our society's democratic values. This week's decision gives no weight to the public's interest in the free flow of information and access to events that define our national culture.

As a vital and highly respected American institution, the National Football League should not be in a position of subverting the American tradition of a free press.

Because your policy distinguishes between still photography and video cameras, it discriminates against television journalists, and interferes with the public's ability to get information from a wide variety of sources.

By banning local television coverage, this policy harms the local stations' ability to serve the public and has the potential to damage the bonds between the NFL franchise and the community.

Unimpressed with the protests, NFL owners yawned and ordered another cocktail. 

Your Car is Watching You

Al's Morning Meeting reader Margot Roosevelt, from Time magazine, followed up -- with some new twists -- on an Al's Morning Meeting story some time back about how cars, now equipped with devices similar to flight recorders on airplanes, can tell on you.

Unlike airplanes, the automotive black boxes do not record voices or location of the vehicle. The information the black boxes record includes data on speed, braking and acceleration in the few seconds leading up to a crash.

Few Americans realize that their cars can tattle on them. But among those in the know -- civil libertarians, law enforcement agents and consumer advocates -- a debate is surging over the black boxes technically called event-data recorders (EDRs). While some welcome them as a safety measure, others fear them as an Orwellian intrusion. Nearly one-third of vehicles on the road today -- and 64 percent of this year's models -- contain the little-noticed chips and sensors. Unlike flight recorders on airplanes, these microcomputers don't capture voices, but they can retain up to 20 seconds of data on speed, braking and acceleration in the lead-up to a crash. For virtually all Ford and General Motors cars, and for a few models from other automakers, accident investigators can buy a modem-like device to plug laptops into EDRs and download the information.

This week, the federal government is expected to issue rules requiring automakers to standardize the recorders and make the information uniformly downloadable with commercial software. Thus, some manufacturers who have guarded black-box data as proprietary will have to make it accessible. In a nod to critics, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration would also mandate that the devices be disclosed to car buyers.

The new regulations are likely to make the black boxes better known and therefore even more controversial. Some consumer advocates, such as Public Citizen's Joan Claybrook, want tougher rules compelling automakers to install EDRs in every car because objective crash data will lead to the design of safer cars and highways. Privacy activists want the government to prevent police and insurance companies from checking drivers' black boxes without permission. "We have a surveillance monster growing in our midst," says Barry Steinhardt of the American Civil Liberties Union. "These black boxes are going to get more sophisticated and take on new capabilities."

In 2004, California became the first state to require manufacturers to tell vehicle owners whether event data recorders were installed in cars. The National Conference of State Legislatures has a long list of proposed laws in several states that would require various levels of disclosure. You will need to double-check the status of legislation in your state, since some parts of this page have not been updated in a year or so.

Law.com has a look at the legal issues involved in gleaning evidence from automotive black boxes. C/Net also does a nice job of looking at the legal and ethical issues involved. 

Minority Women Leaving Large Law Firms

The American Bar Association just published a new study, which shows that non-white women are leaving big law firms in droves.

The study found:

• Forty-four percent of women lawyers of color working in a large law firm reported that they had been passed over for desirable assignments, compared to 39 percent of white women, 25 percent of men of color and only 2 percent of white men. 
• Sixty-two percent of women of color disclosed that they had been excluded from formal and informal networking opportunities, compared to 60 percent of white women, 31 percent of men of color and 4 percent of white men
• Thirty-one percent of women of color reported receiving at least one unfair performance evaluation, compared to 25 percent of white women, 21 percent of men of color and less than 1 percent of white men.

The study [PDF] cited data gathered in the late 1990s by the National Association of Law Placement, which found that 86 percent of minority female associates at private law firms left their jobs within eight years of being hired.

Editor's Note: Al's Morning Meeting is a compendium of ideas, edited story excerpts and other materials from a variety of Web sites, as well as original concepts and analysis. When the information comes directly from another source, it will be attributed and a link will be provided whenever possible. The column is fact-checked, but depends upon the accuracy and integrity of the original sources cited. Errors and inaccuracies found will be corrected.