Law Commons^™

Resilience Grammar: A Value Sensitive Design Method For Resilience Thinking, David G. Hendry, Batya Friedman

Tech Policy Lab

The resilience grammar is a method for bringing a value sensitive design sensibility to resilience thinking. The method provides a systematic process for researchers, designers, and policymakers to identify and trace resilience pathways in the context of real world responses to stressors and obstacles. The grammar is composed of seven statement types, which bring forward aspects of resilience. Each statement type is composed of a connecting phrase and an element, in the form of “resilience connecting-phrase .” In this report, we define each statement type in the resilience grammar, provide two brief illustrations of the grammar in action, and conclude …

Ways To Grow: New Directions For Agricultural Technology Policy

Tech Policy Lab

This whitepaper, which grows out of interdisciplinary research at the University of Washington Tech Policy Lab, argues for a widening of the aperture with respect to contemporary technology policy in agriculture. Emerging technology could, as advertised, reduce costs and increase food production. But the industrial model of agriculture that technology currently supports—focused on faster, more, and cheaper— has its tradeoffs. Precision agriculture remakes the land to serve technology, introduces new sources of instability into agriculture, and contributes to the destabilization and vulnerability of the American food system. Greater resources should be allocated to “civic” agricultural approaches that transition away from …

2021 Biennial Report

Tech Policy Lab

The Tech Policy Lab at the University of Washington has become a leading source for tech policy research and education and an indispensable resource to local, national, and international policymakers. In its seven-year history, the Lab has built a strong network and increased credibility that allows us to work directly with policymakers, publish research and guides on emerging technologies, and provide opportunities for the public to learn from experts. The last two years found not only our state, but our nation and the world in a time of great uncertainty. American society strives to reconcile centuries of racial and other …

Designing Tech Policy: Instructional Case Studies For Technologists And Policymakers, David G. Hendry

Tech Policy Lab

The UW Tech Policy Instructional Case Studies position students to consider the deeply interactional processes of human values and technology. Within pedagogical bounds, students engage both technical and policy elements and develop design solutions. For instructors, the case studies have been written and formatted so that they can be appropriated for varied educational settings.

Each of the tech policy instructional case studies (see Table 1) follow this three-part pattern:

1. Background. The case studies begin with information on the technology and social context at hand. This introduces both the students and the instructor to the technical problem and the social …

Annual Report, 2019 (Five Year Report 2013-2019)

Tech Policy Lab

With this report, we celebrate the Tech Policy Lab’s five-year anniversary. We are deeply grateful to the community for helping us mark this milestone. We came together in the fall of 2013 to create a deeply interdisciplinary research collaboration with real-world impacts. We chose to model our new collaboration on a laboratory—a place to experiment with a distinct interdisciplinary model for research, to develop tangible and innovative new resources, and to train the next generation of tech policy experts. With co-equal faculty directors from three distinct disciplines, and students and faculty from many more, we set out to bridge the …

Annual Report, 2018, University Of Washington School Of Law

Tech Policy Lab

The Tech Policy Lab at the University of Washington has become an indispensable source for tech policy research, education, and local, national, and international thought leadership. The Lab has worked directly with policymakers, published research and guides on emerging technologies, and provided opportunities for the public to learn from experts.

Is Tricking A Robot Hacking?, Ryan Calo, Ivan Evtimov, Earlence Fernandes, Tadayoshi Kohno, David O'Hair

Tech Policy Lab

The authors of this essay represent an interdisciplinary team of experts in machine learning, computer security, and law. Our aim is to introduce the law and policy community within and beyond academia to the ways adversarial machine learning (ML) alter the nature of hacking and with it the cybersecurity landscape. Using the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986—the paradigmatic federal anti-hacking law—as a case study, we mean to evidence the burgeoning disconnect between law and technical practice. And we hope to explain what is at stake should we fail to address the uncertainty that flows from the prospect that …

Annual Report, 2017, University Of Washington School Of Law

Tech Policy Lab

The Tech Policy Lab at the University of Washington has emerged as a leading resource for policymakers interested in wiser and more inclusive technology policy. This year the Lab built on its reputation for excellence in interdisciplinary research, published scholarship and tools to benefit tech policy, and had direct input into policymaking at multiple levels of government.

Diverse Voices: A How-To Guide For Facilitating Inclusiveness In Tech Policy, Lassana Magassa, Meg Young, Batya Friedman

Tech Policy Lab

The importance of creating inclusive policy cannot be overstated. In response to this challenge, the UW Tech Policy Lab (TPL) developed the Diverse Voices method in 2015. The method uses short, targeted conversations about emerging technology with “experiential experts” from under-represented groups to provide feedback on draft tech policy documents. This process works to increase the likelihood that the language in the finalized tech policy document addresses the perspectives and circumstances of broader groups of people— ideally averting injustice and exclusion.

Driverless Seattle: How Cities Can Plan For Automated Vehicles, Matthew Bellinger, Ryan Calo, Brooks Lindsay, Emily Mcreynolds, Mackenzie Olson, Gaites Swanson, Boyang Sa, Feiyang Sun

Tech Policy Lab

The advent of automated vehicles (AVs)—also known as driverless or self-driving cars—alters many assumptions about automotive travel. Foremost, of course, is the assumption that a vehicle requires a driver: a human occupant who controls the direction and speed of the vehicle, who is responsible for attentively monitoring the vehicle's environment, and who is liable for most accidents involving the vehicle. By changing these and other fundamentals of transportation, AV technologies present opportunities but also challenges for policymakers across a wide range of legal and policy areas. To address these challenges, federal and state governments are already developing regulations and guidelines …

Toys That Listen: A Study Of Parents, Children, And Internet-Connected Toys, Emily Mcreynolds, Sarah Hubbard, Timothy Lau, Aditya Saraf, Maya Cakmak, Franziska Roesner

Tech Policy Lab

Hello Barbie, CogniToys Dino, and Amazon Echo are part of a new wave of connected toys and gadgets for the home that listen. Unlike the smartphone, these devices are always on, blending into the background until needed. We conducted interviews with parent-child pairs in which they interacted with Hello Barbie and CogniToys Dino, shedding light on children’s expectations of the toys’ “intelligence” and parents’ privacy concerns and expectations for parental controls. We find that children were often unaware that others might be able to hear what was said to the toy, and that some parents draw connections between the toys …

Annual Report, 2016, University Of Washington School Of Law

Tech Policy Lab

The Tech Policy Lab at the University of Washington has had an exciting third year! From organizing national and international policy fora to helping local authorities generate best practices, the Lab continues its record of rigorous, impactful research.

Augmented Reality: A Technology And Policy Primer, Ryan Calo, Tamara Denning, Batya Friedman, Tadayoshi Kohno, Lassana Magassa, Emily Mcreynolds, Bryce Clayton Newell, Jesse Woo

Tech Policy Lab

The vision for AR dates back at least until the 1960s with the work of Ivan Sutherland. In a way, AR represents a natural evolution of information communication technology. Our phones, cars, and other devices are increasingly reactive to the world around us. But AR also represents a serious departure from the way people have perceived data for most of human history: a Neolithic cave painting or book operates like a laptop insofar as each presents information to the user in a way that is external to her and separate from her present reality. By contrast, AR begins to collapse …

Second Annual Report, University Of Washington School Of Law

Tech Policy Lab

The Tech Policy Lab at the University of Washington continues to pick up steam in our second year. We have hosted national policy discussions, collaborated directly with policymakers on open data and other issues, and continue to develop strong, method-based interdisciplinary research.

Crytographic Currencies From A Tech-Policy Perspective: Policy Issues And Technical Directions, Emily Mcreynolds, Adam Learner, Will Scott, Franziska Roesner, Tadayoshi Kohno

Tech Policy Lab

We study legal and policy issues surrounding crypto currencies, such as Bitcoin, and how those issues interact with technical design options. With an interdisciplinary team, we consider in depth a variety of issues surrounding law, policy, and crypto currencies—such as the physical location where a crypto currency’s value exists for jurisdictional and other purposes, the regulation of anonymous or pseudonymous currencies, and challenges as virtual currency protocols and laws evolve. We reflect on how different technical directions may interact with the relevant laws and policies, raising key issues for both policy experts and technologists.

The Lab's First Year, University Of Washington School Of Law

Tech Policy Lab

The Tech Policy Lab at the University of Washington is off to an energetic start, thanks to a transformative founding gift from Microsoft and the efforts of our staff, students, and colleagues. We have hosted important policy conversations, carefully put into place the methods of procedure for true interdisciplinary research, and completed or initiated a variety of important projects around emerging technology policy.

Augmented Reality: Hard Problems Of Law And Policy, Franziska Roesner, Tamara Denning, Bryce Clayton Newell, Tadayoshi Kohno, Ryan Calo

Tech Policy Lab

Augmented reality (AR) technologies are poised to enter the commercial mainstream. Using an interdisciplinary research team, we describe our vision of AR and explore the unique and difficult problems AR presents for law and policy—including around privacy, free speech, discrimination, and safety.