Law Commons^™

Promoting Innovation While Preventing Discrimination: Policy Goals For The Scored Society, Danielle K. Citron, Frank Pasquale

Faculty Scholarship

There are several normative theories of jurisprudence supporting our critique of the scored society, which complement the social theory and political economy presented in our 2014 article on that topic in the Washington Law Review. This response to Professor Tal Zarsky clarifies our antidiscrimination argument while showing that is only one of many bases for the critique of scoring practices. The concerns raised by Big Data may exceed the capacity of extant legal doctrines. Addressing the potential injustice may require the hard work of legal reform.

Celebrity Nude Photo Leak: Just One More Reminder That Privacy Does Not Exist Online And Legally, There’S Not Much We Can Do About It, Laurel O'Connor

GGU Law Review Blog

No abstract provided.

Liberty, James E. Fleming, Linda C. Mcclain

Faculty Scholarship

"To secure the blessings of liberty," the Preamble to the US Constitution proclaims, "We the People . . . ordain and establish this Constitution." The Constitution is said to secure liberty through three principal strategies: the design of the Constitution as a whole; structural arrangements, most notably separation of powers andfederalism; and protection of rights. This chapter focuses on this third strategy of protecting liberty, in particular, through the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. We first examine the several approaches taken to the "Incorporation" of certain basic liberties "enumerated" in the Bill of Rights to apply to the state governments. We …

Self, Privacy, And Power: Is It All Over?, Richard Warner, Robert H. Sloan

All Faculty Scholarship

The realization of a multifaceted self is an ideal one strives to realize. One realizes such a self in large part through interaction with others in various social roles. Such realization requires a significant degree of informational privacy. Informational privacy is the ability to determine for yourself when others may collect and how they may use your information. The realization of multifaceted selves requires informational privacy in public. There is no contradiction here: informational privacy is a matter of control, and you can have such control in public. Current information processing practices greatly reduce privacy in public thereby threatening the …

Beyond The Schoolhouse Gates: The Unprecedented Expansion Of School Surveillance Authority Under Cyberbulling Laws, Emily Suski

Faculty Publications

For several years, states have grappled with the problem of cyberbullying and its sometimes devastating effects. Because cyberbullying often occurs between students, most states have understandably looked to schools to help address the problem. To that end, schools in forty-six states have the authority to intervene when students engage in cyberbullying. This solution seems all to the good unless a close examination of the cyberbullying laws and their implications is made. This Article explores some of the problematic implications of the cyberbullying laws. More specifically, it focuses on how the cyberbullying laws allow schools unprecedented surveillance authority over students. This …

"Smile, You're On Cellphone Camera!": Regulating Online Video Privacy In The Myspace Generation, Jacqueline D. Lipton

Akron Law Faculty Publications

In the latest Batman movie, Bruce Wayne’s corporate right hand man, Lucius Fox, copes stoically with the death and destruction dogging his boss. Interestingly, the last straw for him is Bruce’s request that he use digital video surveillance created through the city’s cellphone network to spy on the people of Gotham City in order to locate the Joker. Does this tell us something about the increasing social importance of privacy, particularly in an age where digital video technology is ubiquitous and largely unregulated?

While much digital privacy law and commentary has focused on text files containing personal data, little attention …

“We, The Paparazzi”: Developing A Privacy Paradigm For Digital Video, Jacqueline D. Lipton

Akron Law Faculty Publications

In January 2009, the Camera Phone Predator Alert bill was introduced into Congress. It raised serious concerns about privacy rights in the face of digital video technology. In so doing, it brought to light a worrying gap in current privacy regulation – the lack of rules relating to digital video privacy. To date, digital privacy regulation has focused on text records that contain personal data. Little attention has been paid to privacy in video files that may portray individuals in inappropriate contexts, or in an unflattering or embarrassing light. As digital video technology, including inexpensive cellphone cameras, is now becoming …

Repairing Online Reputation: A New Multi-Modal Regulatory Approach, Jacqueline D. Lipton

Akron Law Faculty Publications

In today’s interconnected digital society, high profile examples of online abuses abound. Cyberbullies launch attacks on the less powerful, often significantly damaging victims’ reputations. Outside of reputational damage, online harassment, bullying and stalking has led to severe emotional distress, loss of employment, physical assault and even death. Recent scholarship has identified this phenomenon but has done little more than note that current laws are ineffective in combating abusive online behaviors. This article moves the debate forward both by suggesting specific reforms to criminal and tort laws and, more importantly, by situating those reforms within a new multi-modal framework for combating …

Proximity-Driven Liability, Bryant Walker Smith

Faculty Publications

This working paper argues that commercial sellers’ growing information about, access to, and control over their products, product users, and product uses could significantly expand their point-of-sale and post-sale obligations toward people endangered by these products. The paper first describes how companies are embracing new technologies that expand their information, access, and control, with primary reference to the increasingly automated and connected motor vehicle. It next analyzes how this proximity to product, user, and use could impact product-related claims for breach of implied warranty, defect in design or information, post-sale failure to warn or update, and negligent enabling of a …

Featuring People In Ads (2014 Edition), Eric Goldman, Rebecca Tushnet

Faculty Publications

This is a book chapter from the 2014 edition of a casebook, Advertising & Marketing Law: Cases and Materials, by Rebecca Tushnet and Eric Goldman. This chapter examines the legal issues arising from featuring people in advertisements, including publicity rights and endorsement/testimonial guidelines.

16th Annual Open Government Summit: Access To Public Records Act & Open Meetings Act, 2014, Department Of Attorney General, State Of Rhode Island

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Ubiquitous Privacy, Thomas P. Crocker

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Systematic Ict Surveillance By Employers: Are Your Personal Activities Private?, Arlene J. Nicholas

Faculty and Staff - Articles & Papers

This paper reviews the various methods of information and communications technology (ICT) that is used by employers to peer into the work lives and, in some cases, private lives of employees. Some of the most common methods – such as computer and Internet monitoring, video surveillance, and global positioning systems (GPS) – have resulted in employee disciplines that have been challenged in courts. This paper provides background information on United States (U.S.) laws and court cases which, in this age of easily accessible information, mostly support the employer. Assessments regarding regulations and policies, which will need to be continually updated …

Deconstructing The Relationship Between Privacy And Security [Viewpoint], Gregory Conti, Lisa A. Shay, Woodrow Hartzog

Faculty Scholarship

From a government or law-enforcement perspective, one common model of privacy and security postulates that security and privacy are opposite ends of a single continuum. While this model has appealing properties, it is overly simplistic. The relationship between privacy and security is not a binary operation in which one can be traded for the other until a balance is found. One fallacy common in privacy and security discourse is that trade-offs are effective or even necessary. Consider the remarks of New York Police Department Commissioner Ray Kelly shortly after the Boston Marathon bombing, “I'm a major proponent of cameras. I …

The Historical Significance, Modernization, And Future Of The Video Privacy Protection Act, Erika Williams

GGU Law Review Blog

In the twenty first century, we are accustomed to the privacy protections that prohibit video rental service companies from releasing our consumer service history to other sources without first obtaining our written, signed consent. However, most consumers likely do not know the historical significance of why we came to appreciate these privacy protections or what the exact terms of these privacy protections are.

Using Copyright To Combat Revenge Porn, Amanda Levendowski

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Over the past several years, the phenomenon of “revenge porn” – defined as sexually explicit images that are publicly shared online, without the consent of the pictured individual – has attracted national attention. Victims of revenge porn often suffer devastating consequences, including losing their jobs, but have had limited success using tort laws to prevent the spread of their images. Victims need a remedy that provides takedown procedures, civil liability for uploaders and websites, and the threat of money damages. Copyright law provides all of these remedies. Because an estimated 80 percent of revenge porn images are “selfies,” meaning that …

The Right To Be Let Alone: The Kansas Right Of Privacy, J. Lyn Entrikin

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Pretrial Detention And The Right To Be Monitored, Samuel R. Wiseman

Scholarly Publications

Although detention for dangerousness has received far more attention in recent years, a significant number of non-dangerous but impecunious defendants are jailed to ensure their presence at trial due to continued, widespread reliance on a money bail system. This Essay develops two related claims. First, in the near term, electronic monitoring will present a superior alternative to money bail for addressing flight risk. In contrast to previous proposals for reducing pretrial detention rates, electronic monitoring has the potential to reduce both fugitive rates (by allowing the defendant to be easily located) and government expenditures (by reducing the number of defendants …

The 1 Percent Solution: Corporate Tax Returns Should Be Public (And How To Get There), Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Ariel Siman

Articles

The justification for publishing corporate tax returns is that corporations are given immense benefits by the state that bestows upon them unlimited life and limited liability, and therefore they owe the public the information of how they treat the state that created them. Tax returns, like the financial disclosures that publicly traded corporations must file with the SEC, also provide useful information to shareholders, creditors, and the investing public.

Common And Uncommon Families In The American Constitutional Order, Linda C. Mcclain

Faculty Scholarship

This essay reviews Professor Mark E. Brandon’s aptly named book, States of Union: Family and Change in the American Constitutional Order, which challenges the familiar story that the U.S. constitutional and political order have rested upon a particular, unchanging form of family – monogamous, heterosexual, permanent, and reproductive – and on the family values generated by that family form. That story also maintains that such family form and the legal norms that sustained it remained relatively undisturbed for centuries until the dramatic transformation spurred in part, beginning the 1960s, by the U.S. Supreme Court’s constitutionalizing of family and marriage through, …

Metadata: Piecing Together A Privacy Solution, Chris Conley

Faculty Scholarship

Imagine the government is constantly monitoring you — keeping track of every person you call or email, every place you go, everything you buy, and more — all without getting a warrant. And when you challenge them, they claim you have no right to expect this kind of information to be private. Besides, they’re not actually listening to what you say or reading what you write, so what’s the big deal anyhow?

Unfortunately, this scenario is more real than imaginary. Government agencies ranging from the NSA to local police departments have taken advantage of weak or uncertain legal protections for …

Growing Ideas - Confidentiality: Respecting The Privacy Of All Families, University Of Maine Center For Community Inclusion And Disability Studies

Early Childhood Resources

Care and education professionals routinely receive confidential information about children and families as part of their work. Maintaining confidentiality is important both legally and ethically.

Intellectual Property’S Lessons For Information Privacy, Mark Bartholomew

Journal Articles

There is an inherent tension between an individual’s desire to safeguard her personal information and the expressive rights of businesses seeking to communicate that information to others. This tension has multiplied as consumers generate and businesses collect more and more personal data online, forcing efforts to strike an appropriate balance between privacy and commercial speech. No consensus on this balance has been reached. Some privacy scholars bemoan what they see as a slanted playing field in favor of those wishing to profit from the private details of other people’s lives. Others contend that the right in free expression must always …

Personal Curtilage: Fourth Amendment Security In Public, Andrew Ferguson

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Do citizens have any Fourth Amendment protection from sense-enhancing surveillance technologies in public? This article engages a timely question as new surveillance technologies have redefined expectations of privacy in public spaces.This article proposes a new theory of Fourth Amendment security based on the ancient theory of curtilage protection for private property. Curtilage has long been understood as a legal fiction that expands the protection of the home beyond the formal structures of the house. Curtilage recognizes a buffer zone beyond the four corners of the home that deserves protection, even in public, even if accessible to public view. Based on …

Keep Your Eyes On Eyes In The Sky, Hillary B. Farber

Faculty Publications

To date, eight states have passed bills regulating domestic drone use by government and private individuals. This leaves us with a question: If a city of more than 60,000 residents and a global company with a customer base in the hundreds of millions are racing to the sky, how are we as a commonwealth of 6.6 million to truly launch ourselves into the debate and protect what little privacy we have left?

On Business Torts And The First Amendment, Richard J. Peltz-Steele

Faculty Publications

A gaping question in free speech law surrounds the application of the First Amendment defense in business torts. The pervasiveness of communication technologies, the flourishing of privacy law, and the mere passage of time have precipitated an escalation in tort cases in which communication, and what the defendant may allege is free speech, lies at the heart of the matter.

The New American Privacy, Richard J. Peltz-Steele

Faculty Publications

The European Union sparked an intercontinental furor last year with proposed legislation to supersede the 1995 Data Protection Directive (DPD). The EU Parliament approved legislation in a 49-3 committee vote in October. The text, which is not yet published in its current draft at the time of this writing, may yet be amended before being accepted by the union’s 28 member states. The legislation is billed a money saver because it would harmonize EU member states’ data protection laws, which have diverged under the DPD umbrella. The business community is not convinced, fearful that costly new demands will strain balance …

Your View: ‘Do Not Track’ Should Apply To Drivers, Too, Hillary B. Farber

Faculty Publications

Location tracking data can reveal quite a bit of information about a person when it is all pieced together. Just by knowing where and when a person frequents certain places we can know about his/her recreational habits, religious affiliations, professional affiliations, relationship status, personal health and hygiene, social preferences and contacts, and so much more. That is why it is so important to regulate the use of location tracking technology. There are a variety of efforts afoot to rein in government use of such technology – this op-ed is concerned with automated license plate readers.

When Enough Is Enough: Location Tracking, Mosaic Theory, And Machine Learning, Steven M. Bellovin, Renée M. Hutchins, Tony Jebara, Sebastian Zimmeck

Faculty Scholarship

Since 1967, when it decided Katz v. United States, the Supreme Court has tied the right to be free of unwanted government scrutiny to the concept of reasonable xpectations of privacy.^[1] An evaluation of reasonable expectations depends, among other factors, upon an assessment of the intrusiveness of government action. When making such assessment historically the Court has considered police conduct with clear temporal, geographic, or substantive limits. However, in an era where new technologies permit the storage and compilation of vast amounts of personal data, things are becoming more complicated. A school of thought known as “mosaic theory” …

Big Data's Other Privacy Problem, James Grimmelmann

Faculty Scholarship

Big Data has not one privacy problem, but two. We are accustomed to talking about surveillance of data subjects. But Big Data also enables disconcertingly close surveillance of its users. The questions we ask of Big Data can be intensely revealing, but, paradoxically, protecting subjects' privacy can require spying on users. Big Data is an ideology of technology, used to justify the centralization of information and power in data barons, pushing both subjects and users into a kind of feudal subordination. This short and polemical essay uses the Bloomberg Terminal scandal as a window to illuminate Big Data's other privacy …