Privacy Law Commons^™

Unfair And Deceptive Robots, Woodrow Hartzog

Faculty Scholarship

Robots, like household helpers, personal digital assistants, automated cars, and personal drones are or will soon be available to consumers. These robots raise common consumer protection issues, such as fraud, privacy, data security, and risks to health, physical safety and finances. Robots also raise new consumer protection issues, or at least call into question how existing consumer protection regimes might be applied to such emerging technologies. Yet it is unclear which legal regimes should govern these robots and what consumer protection rules for robots should look like.

The thesis of the Article is that the FTC’s grant of authority and …

Surveillance As Loss Of Obscurity, Woodrow Hartzog, Evan Selinger

Faculty Scholarship

Everyone seems concerned about government surveillance, yet we have a hard time agreeing when and why it is a problem and what we should do about it. When is surveillance in public unjustified? Does metadata raise privacy concerns? Should encrypted devices have a backdoor for law enforcement officials? Despite increased attention, surveillance jurisprudence and theory still struggle for coherence. A common thread for modern surveillance problems has been difficult to find.

In this article we argue that the concept of ‘obscurity,’ which deals with the transaction costs involved in finding or understanding information, is the key to understanding and uniting …

The Scope And Potential Of Ftc Data Protection, Woodrow Hartzog, Daniel J. Solove

Faculty Scholarship

For more than fifteen years, the FTC has regulated privacy and data security through its authority to police deceptive and unfair trade practices as well as through powers conferred by specific statutes and international agreements. Recently, the FTC’s powers for data protection have been challenged by Wyndham Worldwide Corp. and LabMD. These recent cases raise a fundamental issue, and one that has surprisingly not been well explored: How broad are the FTC’s privacy and data security regulatory powers? How broad should they be?

In this Article, we address the issue of the scope of FTC authority in the areas of …

Disagreeable Privacy Policies: Mismatches Between Meaning And Users’ Understanding, Joel R. Reidenberg, Travis Breaux, Lorrie F. Cranor, Brian M. French, Amanda Grannis, James T. Graves, Fei Liu, Aleecia Mcdonald, Thomas B. Norton, Rohan Ramanath, N. Cameron Russell, Norman Sadeh, Florian Schaub

Faculty Scholarship

Privacy policies are verbose, difficult to understand, take too long to read, and may be the least-read items on most websites even as users express growing concerns about information collection practices. For all their faults, though, privacy policies remain the single most important source of information for users to attempt to learn how companies collect, use, and share data. Likewise, these policies form the basis for the self-regulatory notice and choice framework that is designed and promoted as a replacement for regulation. The underlying value and legitimacy of notice and choice depends, however, on the ability of users to understand …

Confronting Totalitarianism At Home: The Roots Of European Privacy Protections, Hannah Bloch-Wehba

Faculty Scholarship

In the last several years, a consensus has developed that a wide gulf exists between European and American privacy law, although division still exists on whether European law is “more protective” or simply “home to different intuitive sensibilities” than American law. Existing research on the development of European privacy law has focused on two areas: nineteenth-century traditions of honor and dueling, which gave rise to a concept of privacy linked to dignity, and the totalitarian dictatorships of the twentieth century, in reaction to which privacy protected liberty. This Article offers a contrasting view by showing that European privacy law in …