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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Covid-19 Pandemic And The Technology Trust Gap, Johanna Gunawan, David Choffnes, Woodrow Hartzog, Christo Wilson
The Covid-19 Pandemic And The Technology Trust Gap, Johanna Gunawan, David Choffnes, Woodrow Hartzog, Christo Wilson
Faculty Scholarship
Industry and government tried to use information technologies to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, but using the internet as a tool for disease surveillance, public health messaging, and testing logistics turned out to be a disappointment. Why weren’t these efforts more effective? This Essay argues that industry and government efforts to leverage technology were doomed to fail because tech platforms have failed over the past few decades to make their tools trustworthy, and lawmakers have done little to hold these companies accountable. People cannot trust the interfaces they interact with, the devices they use, and the systems that power tech …
What Is Privacy? That’S The Wrong Question, Woodrow Hartzog
What Is Privacy? That’S The Wrong Question, Woodrow Hartzog
Faculty Scholarship
Privacy has never had a precise meaning. But in the early 1900s, the concept took on new life as a term of art in legal frameworks. The result has been a bit of a mess, as no singular definition has been adequate for all purposes. Daniel Solove, perhaps the most influential privacy scholar of our day, wrote at the turn of the millennium that privacy was “a concept in disarray.”
In this short essay reflecting upon Solove’s impact on the modern study of information privacy, I argue that the chaos and futility of competing conceptualizations of privacy is why Solove’s …
A Duty Of Loyalty For Privacy Law, Neil M. Richards, Woodrow Hartzog
A Duty Of Loyalty For Privacy Law, Neil M. Richards, Woodrow Hartzog
Faculty Scholarship
Data privacy law fails to stop companies from engaging in self-serving, opportunistic behavior at the expense of those who trust them with their data. This is a problem. Modern tech companies are so entrenched in our lives and have so much control over what we see and click that the self-dealing exploitation of people has become a major element of the internet’s business model.
Academics and policymakers have recently proposed a possible solution: require those entrusted with people’s data and online experiences to be loyal to those who trust them. But many have concerns about a duty of loyalty. What, …