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Full-Text Articles in Privacy Law
Privacy Nicks: How The Law Normalizes Surveillance, Woodrow Hartzog, Evan Selinger, Johanna Gunawan
Privacy Nicks: How The Law Normalizes Surveillance, Woodrow Hartzog, Evan Selinger, Johanna Gunawan
Faculty Scholarship
Privacy law is failing to protect individuals from being watched and exposed, despite stronger surveillance and data protection rules. The problem is that our rules look to social norms to set thresholds for privacy violations, but people can get used to being observed. In this article, we argue that by ignoring de minimis privacy encroachments, the law is complicit in normalizing surveillance. Privacy law helps acclimate people to being watched by ignoring smaller, more frequent, and more mundane privacy diminutions. We call these reductions “privacy nicks,” like the proverbial “thousand cuts” that lead to death.
Privacy nicks come from the …
Against Engagement, Neil Richards, Woodrow Hartzog
Against Engagement, Neil Richards, Woodrow Hartzog
Faculty Scholarship
In this Article, we focus on a key dimension of commercial surveillance by data-intensive digital platforms that is too often treated as a supporting cast member instead of a star of the show: the concept of engagement. Engagement is, simply put, a measure of time, attention, and other interactions with a service. The economic logic of engagement is simple: more engagement equals more ads watched equals more revenue. Engagement is a lucrative digital business model, but it is problematic in several ways that lurk beneath the happy sloganeering of a “free” internet
Our goal in this Article is to isolate …
Kafka In The Age Of Ai And The Futility Of Privacy As Control, Daniel Solove, Woodrow Hartzog
Kafka In The Age Of Ai And The Futility Of Privacy As Control, Daniel Solove, Woodrow Hartzog
Faculty Scholarship
Despite writing more than a century ago, Franz Kafka captured the core problem of digital technologies—how individuals are rendered powerless and vulnerable. Over the past fifty years, and especially in the twenty-first century, privacy laws have been sprouting up around the world. These laws are often based heavily on an Individual Control Model that aims to empower individuals with rights to help them control the collection, use, and disclosure of their data.
In this Article, we argue that although Kafka starkly shows us the plight of the disempowered individual, his work also paradoxically suggests that empowering the individual isn’t the …
Legislating Data Loyalty, Woodrow Hartzog, Neil Richards
Legislating Data Loyalty, Woodrow Hartzog, Neil Richards
Faculty Scholarship
Lawmakers looking to embolden privacy law have begun to consider imposing duties of loyalty on organizations trusted with people’s data and online experiences. The idea behind loyalty is simple: organizations should not process data or design technologies that conflict with the best interests of trusting parties. But the logistics and implementation of data loyalty need to be developed if the concept is going to be capable of moving privacy law beyond its “notice and consent” roots to confront people’s vulnerabilities in their relationship with powerful data collectors.
In this short Essay, we propose a model for legislating data loyalty. Our …
Privacy In Pandemic: Law, Technology, And Public Health In The Covid-19 Crisis, Tiffany Li
Privacy In Pandemic: Law, Technology, And Public Health In The Covid-19 Crisis, Tiffany Li
Faculty Scholarship
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused millions of deaths and disastrous consequences around the world, with lasting repercussions for every field of law, including privacy and technology. The unique characteristics of this pandemic have precipitated an increase in use of new technologies, including remote communications platforms, healthcare robots, and medical AI. Public and private actors are using new technologies, like heat sensing, and technologically-influenced programs, like contact tracing, alike in response, leading to a rise in government and corporate surveillance in sectors like healthcare, employment, education, and commerce. Advocates have raised the alarm for privacy and civil liberties violations, but the …
Gdpr And The Importance Of Data To Ai Startups, James Bessen, Stephen Michael Impink, Lydia Reichensperger, Robert Seamans
Gdpr And The Importance Of Data To Ai Startups, James Bessen, Stephen Michael Impink, Lydia Reichensperger, Robert Seamans
Faculty Scholarship
What is the impact of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regime (“GDPR”) and data regulation on AI startups? How important is data to AI product development? We study these questions using unique survey data of commercial AI startups. AI startups rely on data for their product development. Given the scale and scope of their business models, these startups are particularly susceptible to policy changes impacting data collection, storage and use. We find that training data and frequent model refreshes are particularly important for AI startups that rely on neural nets and ensemble learning algorithms. We also find that firms …
Humans Forget, Machines Remember: Artificial Intelligence And The Right To Be Forgotten, Tiffany Li, Eduard Fosch Villaronga, Peter Kieseberg
Humans Forget, Machines Remember: Artificial Intelligence And The Right To Be Forgotten, Tiffany Li, Eduard Fosch Villaronga, Peter Kieseberg
Faculty Scholarship
To understand the Right to be Forgotten in context of artificial intelligence, it is necessary to first delve into an overview of the concepts of human and AI memory and forgetting. Our current law appears to treat human and machine memory alike – supporting a fictitious understanding of memory and forgetting that does not comport with reality. (Some authors have already highlighted the concerns on the perfect remembering.) This Article will examine the problem of AI memory and the Right to be Forgotten, using this example as a model for understanding the failures of current privacy law to reflect the …
Failing Expectations: Fourth Amendment Doctrine In The Era Of Total Surveillance, Olivier Sylvain
Failing Expectations: Fourth Amendment Doctrine In The Era Of Total Surveillance, Olivier Sylvain
Faculty Scholarship
Today’s reasonable expectation test and the third-party doctrine have little to nothing to offer by way of privacy protection if users today are at least conflicted about whether transactional noncontent data should be shared with third parties, including law enforcement officials. This uncertainty about how to define public expectation as a descriptive matter has compelled courts to defer to legislatures to find out what public expectation ought to be more as a matter of prudence than doctrine. Courts and others presume that legislatures are far better than courts at defining public expectations about emergent technologies.This Essay argues that the reasonable …
Location-Based Services: Time For A Privacy Check-In, Chris Conley, Nicole Ozer, Hari O'Connell, Ellen Ginsburg, Tamar Gubins
Location-Based Services: Time For A Privacy Check-In, Chris Conley, Nicole Ozer, Hari O'Connell, Ellen Ginsburg, Tamar Gubins
Faculty Scholarship
Need to get directions when you are lost? Want to know if your friends are in the neighborhood? Location-based services – applications and websites that provide services based on your current location – can put this information and more in the palm of your hand.
But outdated privacy laws and varying corporate practices could mean that sensitive information about who you are, where you go, what you do, and who you know end up being shared, sold, or turned over to the government.
Can location-based services protect your privacy? Do they? And what can we do to improve the situation? …
The Magic Lantern Revealed: A Report Of The Fbi's New Key Logging Trojan And Analysis Of Its Possible Treatment In A Dynamic Legal Landscape, Woodrow Hartzog
The Magic Lantern Revealed: A Report Of The Fbi's New Key Logging Trojan And Analysis Of Its Possible Treatment In A Dynamic Legal Landscape, Woodrow Hartzog
Faculty Scholarship
Magic Lantern presents several difficult legal questions that are left unanswered due to new or non-existent statutes and case law directly pertaining to the unique situation that Magic Lantern creates. 25 The first concern is statutory. It is unclear what laws, if any, will apply when Magic Lantern is put into use.26 The recent terrorist attacks in the United States have brought the need for information as a matter of national security to the forefront. Congress recently passed legislation (i.e. USA PATRIOT Act) 27 that dramatically modifies current surveillance law, thus further complicating the untested waters of a …