Internet Law Commons^™

“Statistics Are Human Beings With The Tears Wiped Away”: Utilizing Data To Develop Strategies To Reduce The Number Of Native Americans Who Go Missing, Lori Mcpherson, Sarah Blazucki

Seattle University Law Review

On New Year’s Eve night, 2019, sixteen-year-old Selena Shelley Faye Not Afraid attended a party in Billings, Montana, about fifty miles west of her home in Hardin, Montana, near the Crow Reservation. A junior at the local high school, she was active in her community. The party carried over until the next day, and she caught a ride back toward home with friends in a van the following afternoon. When the van stopped at an interstate rest stop, Selena got out but never made it back to the van. The friends reported her missing to the police and indicated they …

Passcodes, Protection, And Legal Practicality: The Necessity Of A Digital Fifth Amendment, Ethan Swierczewski

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

No abstract provided.

Taking It With You: Platform Barriers To Entry And The Limits Of Data Portability, Gabriel Nicholas

Michigan Technology Law Review

Policymakers are faced with a vexing problem: how to increase competition in a tech sector dominated by a few giants. One answer proposed and adopted by regulators in the United States and abroad is to require large platforms to allow consumers to move their data from one platform to another, an approach known as data portability. Facebook, Google, Apple, and other major tech companies have enthusiastically supported data portability through their own technical and political initiatives. Today, data portability has taken hold as one of the go-to solutions to address the tech industry’s competition concerns.

This Article argues that despite …

The Limits And Possibilities Of Data-Driven Antitrafficking Efforts, Jennifer Musto Ph.D.

Georgia State University Law Review

An examination of technology in the countertrafficking space reveals recurring tensions between law enforcement and rights-based approaches. It also illuminates assumptions, such as the one that posits more law enforcement-focused, nonstate-actor-supported data-driven efforts are necessary to securing justice for people in trafficking situations. However, a closer look at how technology is used and by whom also invites us to ask different questions and to leverage the power of our all-too-human creative potential in thinking about how to value and prioritize data ethics, transparency, and accountability in future countertrafficking work.

Digital Colonialism: The 21st Century Scramble For Africa Through The Extraction And Control Of User Data And The Limitations Of Data Protection Laws, Danielle Coleman

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

As Western technology companies increasingly rely on user data globally, extensive data protection laws and regulations emerged to ensure ethical use of that data. These same protections, however, do not exist uniformly in the resource-rich, infrastructure-poor African countries, where Western tech seeks to establish its presence. These conditions provide an ideal landscape for digital colonialism.

Digital colonialism refers to a modern-day “Scramble for Africa” where largescale tech companies extract, analyze, and own user data for profit and market influence with nominal benefit to the data source. Under the guise of altruism, large scale tech companies can use their power and …

The Gdpr: It Came, We Saw, But Did It Conquer?, Leila Javanshir

Seattle University Law Review

On February 1, 2019, the Seattle University Law Review held its annual symposium at the Seattle University School of Law. Each year, the Law Review hosts its symposium on a topic that is timely and meaningful. This year, privacy and data security professionals from around the globe gathered to discuss the current and future effects of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that was implemented on May 25, 2018. The articles and essays that follow this Foreword are the product of this year’s symposium.

Confiding In Con Men: U.S. Privacy Law, The Gdpr, And Information Fiduciaries, Lindsey Barrett

Seattle University Law Review

In scope, ambition, and animating philosophy, U.S. privacy law and Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation are almost diametric opposites. The GDPR’s ambitious individual rights, significant prohibitions, substantive enforcement regime, and broad applicability contrast vividly with a scattershot U.S. regime that generally prioritizes facilitating commerce over protecting individuals, and which has created perverse incentives for industry through anemic enforcement of the few meaningful limitations that do exist. A privacy law that characterizes data collectors as information fiduciaries could coalesce with the commercial focus of U.S. law, while emulating the GDPR’s laudable normative objectives and fortifying U.S. consumer privacy law with a …

Privacy Statements Under The Gdpr, Mike Hintze

Seattle University Law Review

The need to include specific types of information in a privacy statement is a GDPR compliance obligation that does not get as much attention as some other GDPR requirements. Perhaps that is because privacy statements have been much maligned in recent years. They are too long and full of legalese. Nobody reads them. They are part of a notice and consent approach to privacy that puts an unrealistic burden on consumers to make informed choices. But despite these well-known criticisms, the GDPR doubles down on privacy statements. In fact, gauging by the roughly fourfold increase in privacy statement requirements compared …

Footprints: Privacy For Enterprises, Processors, And Custodians…Oh My!, Blair Witzel, Carrie Mount

Seattle University Law Review

Americans’ interest in privacy—as evidenced by increasing news coverage, online searches, and new legislation—has grown over the past decade. After the European Union enacted the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), technologists and legal professionals have focused on primary collectors of data—known under various legal regimes as the “controller” or “custodian.” Thanks to advances in computing, many of these data collectors offload the processing of data to third parties providing data-related cloud services like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. In addition to the data they have already collected about the data subjects themselves, these companies now “hold” that data on behalf of …

Artificial Intellegence And Policing: First Questions, Elizabeth E. Joh

Seattle University Law Review

Artificial intelligence is playing an increasingly larger role in all sectors of society, including policing. Many police departments are already using artificial intelligence (AI) to help predict and identify suspicious persons and places.1 Increased computational power and oceans of data have given rise to inferences about violence and threats.2 AI will change policing just as it will healthcare, insurance, commerce, and transportation. But what questions should we ask about AI and policing?

The Tortoise And The Hare Of International Data Privacy Law: Can The United States Catch Up To Rising Global Standards?, Matthew Humerick

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

Technological developments spur the development of big data on a global scale. The breadth of data companies collect, maintain, process, and transmit affects nearly every country and organization around the world. Inherent to big data are issues of data protection and transfers to third countries. While many jurisdictions emphasize the importance of protecting consumer data, such as the European Union, others, like the United States, do not. To circumvent this issue, the United States and European Union contracted around data privacy standard discrepancies through the Safe Harbor Agreement, which eased cross-border data transfers. However, the Court of Justice of the …

Wearable Fitness Devices: Personal Health Data Privacy In Washington State, Steven Spann

Seattle University Law Review

Private entities are increasingly targeting individuals in the United States and around the world to gather personal data for such purposes as product development, market identification, and insurance risk assessment. While credit card records and online browsing histories have long been the medium through which this data is gathered, in more recent years, wearable fitness devices have added a new dimension to data production and collection. These devices are capable of gathering a significant amount of data regarding a person’s physical and physiological characteristics, thereby exposing these data producers to personal privacy infringement. Washington State lawmakers and citizens must be …

Seeking Privacy: Examining A Role For The Fiduciary In Protecting Personal Information, Marcey L. Grigsby

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Voice Over Internet Protocol And The Wiretap Act: Is Your Conversation Protected?, Daniel B. Garrie, Matthew J. Armstrong, Donald P. Harris

Seattle University Law Review

10101101: Is this sequence of digits voice or data? To a computer, voice is a sequence of digits and data is a sequence of digits. The law has defined 10101101 to be data, and 10101001 to be voice communications. Courts have constructed a distinction between data, 10101101, and voice, 10101001. However, that distinction is blurred when voice and data are simultaneously transmitted through the same medium. The courts forbid third parties to tap or monitor voice communications, yet permit data packets to be tracked, stored, and sold by third parties with the implied consent of either party engaged in the …

Integrated Servies Digital Network: Issues And Options For The World's Future Communications Systems, A. M. Rutkowski

Michigan Journal of International Law

There has been virtually no public discussion of the significant public policy issues raised because of the intimidating nature of network engineering which forms the basis for nearly all the current dialogue. This paper discusses current ISDN developments, and sets forth an analytical framework within which these issues may be discussed.

The International Application Of The Second Computer Inquiry, Robert M. Frieden

Michigan Journal of International Law

This article chronicles the FCC's attempt to confront the confluence of telecommunications and data processing technologies by fashioning a regulatory scheme designed primarily for the United States. The Commission has chosen to apply this scheme, without significant qualification, internationally. Given the different objectives and structure of United States and foreign communications industries, the FCC's system cannot be transplanted abroad without prior consultation and substantial modification. After reviewing the international problems created by the Commission's application abroad of its newly developed scheme, this article concludes with recommendations for resolving these conflicts that currently threaten the well-being of carriers, customers, and international …