Science and Technology Law Commons^™

City Of Los Angeles V. Patel: The Upcoming Supreme Court Case No One Is Talking About, Adam Lamparello

Adam Lamparello

Focusing solely on whether a hotel owner has a reasonable expectation of privacy in a guest registry is akin to asking whether Verizon Wireless has a reasonable expectation of privacy in its customer lists. The answer to those questions should be yes, but the sixty-four thousand dollar question—and the proverbial elephant in the room—is whether hotel occupants and cell phone users forfeit their privacy rights simply because they check into the Beverly Hills Hotel or call their significant others from a Smart Phone on the Santa Monica Freeway. Put differently, a hotel owner’s expectation of privacy in a guest registry …

City Of Los Angeles V. Patel: The Upcoming Supreme Court Case No One Is Talking About, Adam Lamparello

Adam Lamparello

Focusing solely on whether a hotel owner has a reasonable expectation of privacy in a guest registry is akin to asking whether Verizon Wireless has a reasonable expectation of privacy in its customer lists. The answer to those questions should be yes, but the sixty-four thousand dollar question—and the proverbial elephant in the room—is whether hotel occupants and cell phone users forfeit their privacy rights simply because they check into the Beverly Hills Hotel or call their significant others from a Smart Phone on the Santa Monica Freeway.

Put differently, a hotel owner’s expectation of privacy in a guest registry …

The Internet Is The New Public Forum: Why Riley V. California Supports Net Neutrality, Adam Lamparello

Adam Lamparello

Technology has ushered civil liberties into the virtual world, and the law must adapt by providing legal protections to individuals who speak, assemble, and associate in that world. The original purposes of the First Amendment, which from time immemorial have protected civil liberties and preserved the free, open, and robust exchange of information, support net neutrality. After all, laws or practices that violate cherished freedoms in the physical world also violate those freedoms in the virtual world. The battle over net neutrality is “is absolutely the First Amendment issue of our time,” just as warrantless searches of cell phones were …

Riley V. California: Privacy Still Matters, But How Much And In What Contexts?, Adam Lamparello, Charles E. Maclean

Adam Lamparello

Private information is no longer stored only in homes or other areas traditionally protected from warrantless intrusion. The private lives of many citizens are contained in digital devices no larger than the palm of their hand—and carried in public places. But that does not make the data within a cell phone any less private, just as the dialing of a phone number does not voluntarily waive an individual’s right to keep their call log or location private. Remember that we are not talking exclusively about individuals suspected of committing violent crimes. The Government is recording the calls and locations of …

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?

Big Data Distortions: Exploring The Limits Of The Aba Leatpr Standards, Andrew Ferguson

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

This article examines the American Bar Associations’ Standards for Criminal Justice proposed Law Enforcement Access to Third Party Records (LEATPR). The article was written to be part of an Oklahoma Law Review Symposium on the subject of the LEATPR Standards. The article explores how the ABA LEATPR Standards can survive the impact of big data policing. Big data policing, as described here, involves utilizing vast, networked databases to investigate and also predict criminal activity. Big data policing involves the use of not just third party, but "fourth party" commercial aggregators as well as de-identified data sets, that eventually can be …

Orwellian Surveillance Of Vehicular Travels, Sam Hanna

Sam Hanna

What would someone learn about you if all your automobile travels were ubiquitously tracked beginning today? Creating an indefinite database of a person’s previous automobile travels to formulate deductions on intimate details of people's lives is precisely what law enforcement agencies are currently able to accomplish with automatic license plate recognition (“ALPR”). With the ubiquity of ALPR cameras, continuous government surveillance of automobile travels is no longer a figment of the imagination. Consequently, the judicial and legislative branches of government must embark on balancing the private and public interests implicated by this technology. Failure to set suitable boundaries around the …

Our Records Panopticon And The American Bar Association Standards For Criminal Justice, Stephen E. Henderson

Stephen E Henderson

"Secrets are lies. Sharing is caring. Privacy is theft." So concludes the main character in Dave Egger’s novel The Circle, in which a single company that unites Google, Facebook, and Twitter – and on steroids – has the ambition not only to know, but also to share, all of the world's information. It is telling that a current dystopian novel features not the government in the first instance, but instead a private third party that, through no act of overt coercion, knows so much about us. This is indeed the greatest risk to privacy in our day, both the unprecedented …