Law Commons^™

Technology Integration In Higher Education And Student Privacy Beyond Learning Environments -- A Comparison Of The Uk And Us Perspective, Iria Giuffrida, Alex Hall

Faculty Publications

Technology integration in higher education (HE) has brought immense innovation. While research is investigating the benefits of leveraging, through learning analytics, the data created by the greater presence of technology in HE, it is also analysing the privacy implications of vast universes of data now at the fingertips of HE administrators. This paper argues that student privacy challenges linked to technology integration occur not only within but also beyond learning environments, namely at the enterprise level. By analysing the UK and US legal frameworks surrounding how HE institutions respond to parents demanding disclosure of their adult children's personal data in …

The Tesla Meets The Fourth Amendment, Adam M. Gershowitz

Faculty Publications

Can police search a smart car’s computer without a warrant? Although the Supreme Court banned warrantless searches of cell phones incident to arrest in Riley v. California, the Court left the door open for warrantless searches under other exceptions to the warrant requirement. This is the first article to argue that the Fourth Amendment’s automobile exception currently permits the police to warrantlessly dig into a vehicle’s computer system and extract vast amounts of cell phone data. Just as the police can rip open seats or slash tires to search for drugs under the automobile exception, the police can warrantlessly …

Pure Privacy, Jeffrey Bellin

Faculty Publications

n 1890, Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis began a storied legal tradition of trying to conceptualize privacy. Since that time, privacy's appeal has grown beyond those authors' wildest expectations, but its essence remains elusive. One of the rare points of agreement in boisterous academic privacy debates is that there is no consensus on what privacy means.

The modern trend is to embrace the ambiguity. Unable to settle on boundaries, scholars welcome a broad array of interests into an expanding theoretical framework. As a result, privacy is invoked in debates about COVID-19 contact tracing, police body cameras, marriage equality, facial recognition, …

The Ironic Privacy Act, Margaret Hu

Faculty Publications

This Article contends that the Privacy Act of 1974, a law intended to engender trust in government records, can be implemented in a way that inverts its intent. Specifically, pursuant to the Privacy Act's reporting requirements, in September 2017, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) notified the public that record systems would be modified to encompass the collection of social media data. The notification justified the collection of social media data as a part of national security screening and immigration vetting procedures. However, the collection will encompass social media data on both citizens and noncitizens, and was not explicitly …

Discipline And Policing, Kate Levine

Faculty Publications

A prime focus of police-reform advocates is the transparency of police discipline. Indeed, transparency is one of, the most popular accountability solutions for a wide swath of policing problems. This Article examines the “transparency cure” as it applies to Police Disciplinary Records (“PDRs”). These records are part of an officer’s personnel file and contain reported wrongdoing from supervisors, Internal Affairs Bureaus, and Citizen Complaint Review Boards.

This Article argues that making PDRs public is worthy of skeptical examination. It problematizes the notion that transparency is a worthy end goal for those who desire to see police-reform in general. Transparency is …

Ferpa Close-Up: When Video Captures Violence And Injury, Richard J. Peltz-Steele, Kitty L. Cone

Faculty Publications

Federal privacy law is all to often misconstrued or perverted to preclude the disclosure of video recordings that capture students victimized by violent crime or tortious injury. This misuse of federal law impedes transparency and accountability and, in many cases, even jeopardizes the health, safety, and lives of children. When properly construed, however, federal law is no bar to disclosure and, at least in public schools, works in tandem with freedom of information laws to ensure disclosure. This Article posits that without unequivocal guidance from federal administrative authorities, uncertainty regarding the disclosure of such recordings will continue to linger, jeopardizing …

Orwell's 1984 And A Fourth Amendment Cybersurveillance Nonintrusion Test, Margaret Hu

Faculty Publications

This Article describes a cybersurveillance nonintrusion test under the Fourth Amendment that is grounded in evolving customary law to replace the reasonable expectation of privacy test formulated in Katz v. United States. To illustrate how customary law norms are shaping modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, this Article examines the recurrence of judicial references to George Orwell’s novel, 1984, within the Fourth Amendment context when federal courts have assessed the constitutionality of modern surveillance methods. The Supreme Court has indicated that the Fourth Amendment privacy doctrine must now evolve to impose meaningful limitations on the intrusiveness of new surveillance technologies. …

Protecting Homeowners' Privacy Rights In The Age Of Drones: The Role Of Community Associations, Hillary B. Farber, Marvin J. Nodiff

Faculty Publications

Homeowners' notions of privacy in their dwellings and surroundings are under attack from the threat of pervasive surveillance by small civilian drones equipped with highly sophisticated visual and data-gathering capabilities. Streamlined rules recently issued by the Federal Aviation Administration ("FAA') have unleashed technological innovation that promises great societal benefits. However, the new rules expose homeowners to unwanted snooping because they lack limits on the distance drones may operate from residential dwellings or time of operations. Indeed, our society should not expect a federal agency to deal effectively with the widely diverse issues of drone technology facing the states, given the …

Carpenter Privacy Case Vexes Justices, While Tech Giant Microsoft Battles Government In Second U.S. Supreme Court Privacy Case With International Implications, Richard J. Peltz-Steele

Faculty Publications

Fall 2017 saw a major privacy case with international implications reach the U.S. Supreme Court this term, Carpenter v. United States. Now a second such case pits the Government against Big Tech in United States v. Microsoft. Carpenter is a criminal case involving federal seizure of cell phone location data from service providers. Arising under the “reasonable grounds” provision of the Stored Communications Act (SCA), the case accentuates Americans’ lack of constitutional protection for personal data in third-party hands, in contrast with emerging global privacy norms. The second major privacy case headed for Supreme Court decision in 2018 also arises …

The Law And Policy Of People Analytics, Matthew T. Bodie, Miriam A. Cherry, Marcia L. Mccormick, Jintong Tang

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

Recently, leading technology companies such as Google and IBM have started experimenting with "people analytics," a new data-driven approach to human resources management. People analytics is just one example of the phenomenon of "big data," in which analyses of huge sets of quantitative information are used to guide a variety of decisions. Applying big data to workplace situations could lead to more effective work outcomes, as in Moneyball, where the Oakland A's baseball franchise used statistics to assemble a winning team on a shoestring budget. People analytics is the name given to this new approach to personnel management …

The Positive Law Model Of The Fourth Amendment, William Baude, James Y. Stern

Faculty Publications

For fifty years, courts have used a “reasonable expectation of privacy” standard to define “searches” under the Fourth Amendment. As others have recognized, that doctrine is subjective, unpredictable, and conceptually confused, but viable alternatives have been slow to emerge. This Article supplies one.

We argue that Fourth Amendment protection should be anchored in background positive law. The touchstone of the search-and-seizure analysis should be whether government officials have done something forbidden to private parties. It is those actions that should be subjected to Fourth Amendment reasonableness review and the presumptive requirement to obtain a warrant. In short, Fourth Amendment protection …

The Pond Betwixt: Differences In The U.S.-Eu Data Protection/Safe Harbor Negotiation, Richard J. Peltz-Steele

Faculty Publications

This article analyzes the differing perspectives that animate US and EU conceptions of privacy in the context of data protection. It begins by briefly reviewing the two continental approaches to data protection and then explains how the two approaches arise in a context of disparate cultural traditions with respect to the role of law in society. In light of those disparities, Underpinning contemporary data protection regulation is the normative value that both US and EU societies place on personal privacy. Both cultures attribute modern privacy to the famous Warren-Brandeis article in 1890, outlining a "right to be let alone." But …

Corporate Avatars And The Erosion Of The Populist Fourth Amendment, Avidan Cover

Faculty Publications

The current state of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence leaves it to technology corporations to challenge court orders, subpoenas, and requests by the government for individual users’ information. The third-party doctrine denies people a reasonable expectation of privacy in data they transmit through telecommunications and Internet service providers. Third-party corporations become, by default, the people’s corporate avatars. Corporate avatars, however, do a poor job of representing individuals’ interests. Moreover, vesting the Fourth Amendment’s government-oversight functions in corporations fails to cohere with the Bill of Rights’ populist history and the Framers’ distrust of corporations.

This article examines how the third-party doctrine proves unsupportable …

An Overview Of Canadian Privacy Law For Pharmaceutical And Device Manufacturers Operating In Canada, Erika Lietzan, John K. Fuson

Faculty Publications

On April 13, 2000, the Canadian Parliament enacted by Royal Assent the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA). The Act requires private organizations to comply with a code of “fair information practice,” which mandates individual consent for the collection, use, and disclosure of personal information. PIPEDA complements the Federal Privacy Act, which places similar obligations on government institutions. On January 1, 2002, the Act began to apply to personal information (including personal health information) collected, used, or disclosed by a federal work, undertaking, or business, and personal information (including personal health information) disclosed by any organization for consideration …

Prying, Spying And Lying: Intrusive Newsgather And What The Law Should Do About Them, Lyrissa Lidsky

Faculty Publications

The media's use of intrusive newsgathering techniques poses an increasing threat to individual privacy. Courts currently resolve the overwhelming majority of conflicts in favor of the media. This is not because the First Amendment bars the imposition of tort liability on the media for its newsgathering practices. It does not. Rather, tort law has failed to seize the opportunity to create meaninful privacy protection. After surveying the economic, philosophical, and practical obstacles to reform, this Article proposes to rejuvenate the tort of intrusion to tip the balance between privacy and the press back in privacy's direction. Working within the framework …