KlearGear must pay $306,750 to couple that left negative review

This is the purported Paris address of Descoteaux Boutiques, the parent company of KlearGear.com.

Google

A years-long legal odyssey involving a Utah couple that left a bad review against an online retailer, KlearGear, for an undelivered less-than-$20 order, has finally resulted in monetary damages.

On Wednesday, the judge awarded $306,750 in compensatory and punitive damages plus attorneys fees to Jennifer and John Palmer, who wrote their review in 2009. KlearGear lost in a default judgement in federal court in Utah in May 2014.

The attorney representing the Palmers, Scott Michelman of the advocacy group Public Citizen, told Ars that collecting the money may not be so straightforward.

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Massachusetts high court orders suspect to decrypt his computers

Johan Larsson

Massachusetts' top court ruled, in a 5-2 decision on Wednesday, that a criminal suspect can be ordered to decrypt his seized computer.

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (MSJC) ruling only applies to the state. Various other courts at the state and federal level have disagreed as to whether being forced to type in a decryption password is a violation of the Fifth Amendment right to protect against self-incrimination and its state equivalents (such as Article Twelve of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights). For example, more than two years ago, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a defendant was not obliged to decrypt his hard drive, as doing so would violate his Fifth Amendment rights. However, that ruling only took effect in the 11th Circuit, which covers parts of the southeastern United States. Just last year, a federal judge refused to force a Wisconsin child pornography suspect to decrypt his laptop. Overall, cases involving decryption are still relatively new and rare. The first known one only dates back to 2009.

Privacy advocates lamented the MSJC's new ruling, disagreeing with the court's judgment that an exception to the Fifth Amendment rule, such as a "foregone conclusion," applies here.

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