Law Commons^™

Children Seen But Not Heard, Stacey B. Steinberg

UF Law Faculty Publications

Children are expected to abide by the will of their parents. In the last 200 years, American jurisprudence has given parents the ability to control their children’s upbringing with few exceptions. The principle governing this norm is that parents know best and will use their better knowledge to protect their children’s welfare.

The COVID-19 pandemic, public school rules, and children’s privacy laws offer modern examples of regulations in which the interests of parents and children may not align. Minors may want access to vaccines, despite a parent’s refusal to sign a consent form. Minors may want to talk to their …

Do Ais Dream Of Electric Boards?, Robert J. Rhee

UF Law Faculty Publications

When artificial intelligence (“AI”) acquires self-awareness, agency, and unique intelligence, it will attain ontological personhood. Management of firms by AI would be technologically and economically feasible. The law could confer AI with the status of legal personhood, as it did with the personhood of traditional business firms in the past, thus dispensing with the need for inserting AI as property within the legal boundary of a firm. As a separate and distinct entity, AI could function independently as a manager in the way that legal or natural persons do today: i.e., AI as director, officer, partner, member, or manager. Such …

Shields Up For Software, Derek E. Bambauer, Melanie J. Teplinsky

UF Law Faculty Publications

This Article contends that the National Cybersecurity Strategy's software liability regime should incorporate two safe harbors. The first would shield software creators and vendors from liability for decisions related to design, implementation, and maintenance, as long as those choices follow enumerated best practices. The second—the “inverse safe harbor”—would have the opposite effect: coders and distributors who engaged in defined worst practices would automatically become liable. This Article explains the design, components, and justifications for these twin safe harbors. The software safe harbors are key parts of the overall design of the new liability regime and work in tandem with the …

How Reputational Nondisclosure Agreements Fails (Or, In Praise Of Breach), Mark Fenster

UF Law Faculty Publications

Investigative reporters and the #MeToo movement exposed the widespread use of non-disclosure agreements intended to maintain confidentiality about one or both contracting parties’ embarrassing acts. These reputational NDAs (RNDAs) have been widely condemned and addressed in the past half-decade by legislators, activists, and academics. Their exposure, often via victims’ breaches, revealed a curious and distinct dilemma for the non-breaching party whose reputation is vulnerable to disclosure. In most contracts, non-breaching parties might choose to forgo enforcement because of the cost and uncertain success of litigation and the availability of other pathways to a satisfactory resolution. Parties to a RNDA, by …

A 'Public' Journey Through Covid-19: Donald Trump, Twitter, And The Secrecy Of U.S. Presidents’ Health, Mark Fenster

UF Law Faculty Publications

Donald Trump ignored numerous governance norms in his one term as U.S. President, especially those that prescribe disclosure of official and personal financial information. His brief period of illness from COVID-19, which he broadcast to the world via his Twitter account, revealed the complexity of Trump’s relationship to the concept and norms of transparency that presume information’s necessity for a functional and accountable state. At the same time that Trump offered little in the way of coherent and authoritative information about his health, he also provided an enormous amount of seemingly “inside” and direct accounts of the progress of his …

Secrets Of The Deep: Defining Privacy Underwater, Annie Brett

UF Law Faculty Publications

The drones are coming, But not just to your neighborhood skies – to the world’s oceans. From recreational robots designed to autonomously follow divers and record video of them to low-cost, remotely operated submersibles that put ocean exploration in the hands of the general public to sophisticated military submersibles able to autonomously gather intelligence throughout the oceans, the underwater drone market is exploding. But unlike on land, this explosion has not been accompanied by similar discussion of privacy concerns. Instead, the ocean’s rapid shift away from an inaccessible operational sanctuary is one that is happening largely silently. And it is …

Privacy Revisited: A Global Perspective On The Right To Be Left Alone, Jon L. Mills

UF Law Faculty Publications

Reviewing: Ronald J. Krotoszynski, Jr., Privacy Revisited: A Global Perspective on the Right to Be Left Alone (Oxford University Press 2016).

Sharenting: Children's Privacy In The Age Of Social Media, Stacey B. Steinberg

UF Law Faculty Publications

Through sharenting, or online sharing about parenting, parents now shape their children’s digital identity long before these young people open their first email. The disclosures parents make online are sure to follow their children into adulthood. Indeed, social media and blogging have dramatically changed the landscape facing today’s children as they come of age.

Children have an interest in privacy. Yet a parent’s right to control the upbringing of his or her children and a parent’s right to free speech may trump this interest. When parents share information about their children online, they do so without their children’s consent. These …

Privacy, Copyright, And Letters, Jeffrey L. Harrison

UF Law Faculty Publications

The focus of this Essay is the privacy of letters – the written manifestations of thoughts, intents, and the recollections of facts directed to a person or a narrowly defined audience. The importance of this privacy is captured in the novel Atonement by Ian McEwan and in the film based on the novel. The fulcrum from which the action springs is a letter that is read by someone to whom it was not addressed. The result is literally life-changing, even disastrous for a number of characters. One person dies, two people seemingly meant for each other are torn apart and …

Did Privacy Cause Identity Theft?, Lynn M. Lopucki

UF Law Faculty Publications

This essay argues that the decline of public identities over the past three decades, combined with increasing secrecy in the process of identification, is the root cause of the burgeoning problem of identity theft. Identity theft is easy because impersonation increasingly takes place in private transactions that are invisible to the victim. The essay compares two proposed solutions: Professor Daniel Soloves' architectural approach and the author's Public Identity System. Both would make the identification process transparent to the person identified, put imposters at risk by requiring personal appearances, and ban the use of social security numbers as passwords. But the …

Human Identification Theory And The Identity Theft Problem, Lynn M. Lopucki

UF Law Faculty Publications

This paper builds on the theory of human identification proposed by Professor Roger Clarke and uses the product as the basis for a proposed solution to the identity theft problem. The expanded theory holds that all human identification fits a single model. The identifior matches the characteristics of a person observed in a first observation with the characteristics of a person observed in a second observation to determine whether they are the same person. From the theory it follows that a characteristic used for identification in the credit reporting system, such as social security number, mother's maiden name and date …

The Undue Burden: Parental Notification Requirements For Publicly Funded Contraception, Stephanie Bornstein

UF Law Faculty Publications

This article analyzes the legal impact of legislative proposals in 1998 and 1999 to require parental notification for minors seeking publicly funded contraception. Part I explores the history of Title X and some of its amendments, the HHS interpretive “squeal rule,” and the federal courts' rejection of the HHS rule based on the congressional intent behind Title X. Part II focuses on the Parental Notification Act of 1998 and its likelihood for success against a constitutional challenge, based on an analysis of precedent on parental consent requirements for contraception and abortion. Part III discusses the change in the legislative and …

Commentary On Financial Privacy, Lynn M. Lopucki

UF Law Faculty Publications

My three criticisms are this: First, Peter frames the problem as privacy versus government surveillance, thus ignoring the best solution to the problem, which is to make more information public. Second, Peter exaggerates the human need for privacy by presenting the need as immutable and essentially coextensive with embarrassment. People do not need nearly the privacy they think they do. Third, if Peter’s broad view of privacy holds, then you can forget about the information age.

Sex, Lies, And Genetic Testing: What Are Your Rights To Privacy In Florida?, Jon L. Mills

UF Law Faculty Publications

Individual and human rights in this country have evolved from national movements and national standards. The Fourteenth Amendment's application of rights to the states was a landmark in human rights, guaranteeing all citizens, no matter their state of residence, a baseline of protection. The Federal Constitution was the protector-“states' rights” was the code phrase for discrimination. But in the American crucible of cultural diversity a national standard for “community” may result in the lowest common denominator or a definition based on averaging. Would it not be better when the most individual of rights, privacy, is implicated to define that right …