Law Commons^™

Workshop | Body Worn Video Recorders: The Socio-Technical Implications Of Gathering Direct Evidence, Katina Michael, Alexander Hayes

Alexander Hayes Mr.

- From in-car video recording to body-worn video recording

- Exploring available technologies: how do they work, pros and cons

- Storing direct evidence in secure storage: factors to consider

- Citizens “shooting” back with POV tech – what are their rights?

- Crowdsourced sousveillance- harnessing public data for forensic profiling

- Police force policies and practices on the application of new media

Criminalizing Revenge Porn, Danielle Keats Citron, Mary Anne Franks

Danielle Keats Citron

Violations of sexual privacy, notably the non-consensual publication of sexually graphic images in violation of someone's trust, deserve criminal punishment. They deny subjects' ability to decide if and when they are sexually exposed to the public and undermine trust needed for intimate relationships. Then too they produce grave emotional and dignitary harms, exact steep financial costs, and increase the risks of physical assault. A narrowly and carefully crafted criminal statute can comport with the First Amendment. The criminalization of revenge porn is necessary to protect against devastating privacy invasions that chill self-expression and ruin lives.

Chasing Bits Across Borders, Patricia L. Bellia

Patricia L. Bellia

As computer crime becomes more widespread, countries increasingly confront difficulties in securing evidence stored in electronic form outside of their borders. These difficulties have prompted two related responses. Some states have asserted a broad power to conduct remote cross-border searches - that is, to use computers within their territory to access and examine data physically stored outside of their territory. Other states have pressed for recognition of a remote cross-border search power in international fora, arguing that such a power is an essential weapon in efforts to combat computer crime. This Article explores these state responses and develops a framework …

Surveillance Law Through Cyberlaw's Lens, Patricia L. Bellia

Patricia L. Bellia

The continuing controversy over the surveillance-related provisions of the USA Patriot Act highlights the depth of Americans' concern about internet privacy. Although calls to limit the government's surveillance powers strike a chord with the public, the legal framework governing surveillance activities is highly technical and poorly understood. The Patriot Act's sunset date provides Congress with an opportunity to revisit that framework.

This Article seeks to contribute to the debate over the appropriate scope of internet surveillance in two ways. First, the Article explores the intricacies of the constitutional and statutory frameworks governing electronic surveillance, and particularly surveillance to acquire electronic …

Federalization In Information Privacy Law, Patricia L. Bellia

Patricia L. Bellia

In Preemption and Privacy, Professor Paul Schwartz argues that it would be unwise for Congress to adopt a unitary federal information privacy statute that both eliminates the sector-specific distinctions in federal information privacy law and blocks the development of stronger state regulation. That conclusion, though narrow, rests on descriptive and normative claims with broad implications for the state-federal balance in information privacy law. Descriptively, Professor Schwartz sees the current information privacy law landscape as the product of successful experimentation at the state level. That account, in turn, fuels his normative claims, and in particular his sympathy with theories of competitive …

Defending Cyberproperty, Patricia L. Bellia

Patricia L. Bellia

This Article explores how the law should treat legal claims by owners of Internet-connected computer systems to enjoin unwanted uses of their systems. Over the last few years, this question has become increasingly urgent and controversial, as system owners have sought protection from unsolicited commercial e-mail and from robots that extract data from Web servers for competitive purposes. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, courts utilizing a wide range of legal doctrines upheld claims by network resource owners to prevent unwanted access to their computer networks. The vast weight of legal scholarship has voiced strong opposition to these cyberproperty …

The Memory Gap In Surveillance Law, Patricia L. Bellia

Patricia L. Bellia

U.S. information privacy laws contain a memory gap: they regulate the collection and disclosure of certain kinds of information, but they say little about its retention. This memory gap has ever-increasing significance for the structure of government surveillance law. Under current doctrine, the Fourth Amendment generally requires government agents to meet high standards before directly and prospectively gathering a target's communications. The law takes a dramatically different approach to indirect, surveillance-like activities, such as the compelled production of communications from a third party, even when those activities yield the same information as, or more information than, direct surveillance activities. Because …

Spyware And The Limits Of Surveillance Law, Patricia L. Bellia

Patricia L. Bellia

For policymakers, litigants, and commentators seeking to address the threats digital technology poses for privacy, electronic surveillance law remains a weapon of choice. The debate over how best to respond to the spyware problem provides only the most recent illustration of that fact. Although there is much controversy over how to define spyware, that label encompasses at least some software that monitors a computer user's electronic communications. Federal surveillance statutes thus present an intuitive fit for responding to the regulatory challenges of spyware, because those statutes bar the unauthorized acquisition of electronic communications and related data in some circumstances. Indeed, …

The Fourth Amendment Status Of Stored E-Mail: The Law Professors' Brief In Warshak V. United States, Susan Freiwald, Patricia L. Bellia

Patricia L. Bellia

This paper contains the law professors' brief in the landmark case of Warshak v. United States, the first federal appellate case to recognize a reasonable expectation of privacy in electronic mail stored with an Internet Service Provider (ISP). While the 6th circuit's opinion was subsequently vacated and reheard en banc, the panel decision will remain extremely significant for its requirement that law enforcement agents must generally acquire a warrant before compelling an ISP to disclose its subscriber's stored e-mails. The law professors' brief, co-authored by Susan Freiwald (University of San Francisco) and Patricia L. Bellia (Notre Dame) and signed by …

Fourth Amendment Protection For Stored E-Mail, Patricia L. Bellia, Susan Freiwald

Patricia L. Bellia

The question of whether and how the Fourth Amendment regulates government access to stored e-mail remains open and pressing. A panel of the Sixth Circuit recently held in Warshak v. United States, 490 F.3d 455 (6th Cir. 2007), that users generally retain a reasonable expectation of privacy in the e-mails they store with their Internet Service Providers (ISPs), which implies that government agents must generally acquire a warrant before they may compel ISPs to disclose their users' stored e-mails. The Sixth Circuit, however, is reconsidering the case en banc. This Article examines the nature of stored e-mail surveillance and argues …

Lo Que Siempre Quiso Saber Sobre... Nombres De Dominio Pero Nunca Se Atrevió A Preguntar, Rodolfo C. Rivas Rea Esq., Marco A. Vargas Iñiguez Esq.

Rodolfo C. Rivas

The authors provide a brief overview of the domain name system and its dispute resolution regulation. The authors then delve into the new gTLDs and tackle some of the questions brought forward by its imminent introduction. /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Los autores ofrecen un panorama general del sistema de nombres de dominio y la regulación de sus procedimientos de solución de controversias. Posteriormente, los autores profundizan en los nuevos gTLDs y tratan de responder a algunas de las preguntas presentadas por su inminente introducción.

Undermining Parental Authority, Unethical Advertising And The Accountability Of Self-Regulation: Thomascook.Ca As A Fable, Nachshon Goltz, Peter Neufeld

Nachshon Goltz

This paper demonstrates the shortcomings of Advertising Standards Canada, the Canadian self-regulatory body overseeing advertising to children. It uses a case study initiated by a complaint regarding a parental undermining advertisement. Advertising Standards Canada failure to address this complaint illustrate the greater need for Canada to move away from self-regulation in children advertising to a less de-centralized regulatory regime. This move is increasingly important due to the unprecedented rise in electronic marketing and its ability to use stealth advertising and collect information from its child consumers.

Navigating Through The Fog Of Cloud Computing Contracts, T. Noble Foster

T. Noble Foster

This paper explores legal issues associated with cloud computing, provides analysis and commentary on typical clauses found in contracts offered by well-known cloud service providers, and identifies strategies to mitigate the risk of exposure to cloud-based legal claims in the critical areas of data security, privacy, and confidentiality. While current research offers numerous case studies, viewpoints, and technical descriptions of cloud processes, our research provides a close examination of the language used in cloud contract terms. Analysis of these contract terms supports the finding that most standard cloud computing contracts are unevenly balanced in favor of the cloud service provider. …

Do-Not-Track As Default, Joshua A.T. Fairfield

Joshua A.T. Fairfield

Do-Not-Track is a developing online legal and technological standard that permits consumers to express their desire not to be tracked by online advertisers. Do-Not-Track has the ability to change the relationship between consumers and advertisers in the information market. Everything will depend on implementation. The most effective way to allow users to achieve their privacy preferences is to implement Do-Not-Track as a default feature. The World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) standard setting body for Do-Not-Track has, however, endorsed a corrosive standard in its Tracking Preferences Expression (TPE) draft. This standard requires consumers to set their privacy preference by hand. This …

Biometric Id Cybersurveillance, Margaret Hum

Margaret Hu

The implementation of a universal digitalized biometric ID system risks normalizing and integrating mass cybersurveillance into the daily lives of ordinary citizens. ID documents such as driver’s licenses in some states and all U.S. passports are now implanted with radio frequency identification (RFID) technology. In recent proposals, Congress has considered implementing a digitalized biometric identification card—such as a biometric-based, “high-tech” Social Security Card—which may eventually lead to the development of a universal multimodal biometric database (e.g., the collection of the digital photos, fingerprints, iris scans, and/or DNA of all citizens and noncitizens). Such “hightech” IDs, once merged with GPS-RFID tracking …

A Comprehensive Approach To Bridging The Gap Between Cyberbullying Rules And Regulations And The Protections Offered By The First Amendment For Off-Campus Student Speech, Vahagn Amirian

Vahagn Amirian

No abstract provided.

Dr. Generative Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Iphone, James Grimmelmann, Paul Ohm

James Grimmelmann

No abstract provided.

Internet Law: Cases And Problems 4.0, James Grimmelmann

James Grimmelmann

In this casebook author James Grimmelmann provides tightly edited cases, focused questions, and topical problems to direct students' attention to critical issues. Mini-essays provide students with the technical background they need to make sense of computer and Internet technologies. Where doctrine has historical roots, the casebook gives students the necessary context.The book covers essential topics but is still short enough that it can be taught in a 3-credit course. The casebook responds to the "law of the horse" critique by embracing the doctrinal diversity of Internet Law. It prepares students for complex, real-life practice by showing how actual Internet cases …

Rankings, Reductionism, And Responsibility , Frank Pasquale

Frank A. Pasquale

After discussing how search engines operate in Part I below, and setting forth a normative basis for regulation of their results in Part II, this piece proposes (in Part III) some minor, non-intrusive legal remedies for those who claim that they are harmed by search engine results. Such harms include unwanted high-ranking results relating to them, or exclusion from a page they claim it is their “due” to appear on. In the first case (deemed “inclusion harm”), I propose a right not to suppress the results, but merely to add an asterisk to the hyperlink directing web users to them, …

Asterisk Revisited: Debating A Right Of Reply On Search Results, Frank Pasquale

Frank A. Pasquale

No abstract provided.

Fighting Cybercrime After United States V. Jones, David C. Gray, Danielle Keats Citron, Liz Clark Rinehart

David C. Gray

In a landmark non-decision last term, five Justices of the United States Supreme Court would have held that citizens possess a Fourth Amendment right to expect that certain quantities of information about them will remain private, even if they have no such expectations with respect to any of the information or data constituting that whole. This quantitative approach to evaluating and protecting Fourth Amendment rights is certainly novel and raises serious conceptual, doctrinal, and practical challenges. In other works, we have met these challenges by engaging in a careful analysis of this “mosaic theory” and by proposing that courts focus …

Fighting Cybercrime After United States V. Jones, David C. Gray, Danielle Keats Citron, Liz Clark Rinehart

Danielle Keats Citron

In a landmark non-decision last term, five Justices of the United States Supreme Court would have held that citizens possess a Fourth Amendment right to expect that certain quantities of information about them will remain private, even if they have no such expectations with respect to any of the information or data constituting that whole. This quantitative approach to evaluating and protecting Fourth Amendment rights is certainly novel and raises serious conceptual, doctrinal, and practical challenges. In other works, we have met these challenges by engaging in a careful analysis of this “mosaic theory” and by proposing that courts focus …

Trusting (And Verifying) Online Intermediaries' Policing, Frank A. Pasquale

Frank A. Pasquale

All is not well in the land of online self-regulation. However competently internet intermediaries police their sites, nagging questions will remain about their fairness and objectivity in doing so. Is Comcast blocking BitTorrent to stop infringement, to manage traffic, or to decrease access to content that competes with its own for viewers? How much digital due process does Google need to give a site it accuses of harboring malware? If Facebook censors a video of war carnage, is that a token of respect for the wounded or one more reflexive effort of a major company to ingratiate itself with the …

Network Accountability For The Domestic Intelligence Apparatus, Danielle Citron, Frank Pasquale

Frank A. Pasquale

A new domestic intelligence network has made vast amounts of data available to federal and state agencies and law enforcement officials. The network is anchored by “fusion centers,” novel sites of intergovernmental collaboration that generate and share intelligence and information. Several fusion centers have generated controversy for engaging in extraordinary measures that place citizens on watch lists, invade citizens’ privacy, and chill free expression. In addition to eroding civil liberties, fusion center overreach has resulted in wasted resources without concomitant gains in security. While many scholars have assumed that this network represents a trade-off between security and civil liberties, our …

Internet Nondiscrimination Principles: Commercial Ethics For Carriers And Search Engines, Frank Pasquale

Frank A. Pasquale

Unaccountable power at any layer of online life can stifle innovation elsewhere. Dominant search engines rightly worry that carriers will use their control of the physical layer of internet infrastructure to pick winners among content and application providers. Though they advocate net neutrality, they have been much less quick to recognize the threat to openness and fair play their own practices may pose. Just as dominant search engines fear an unfairly tiered online world, they should be required to provide access to their archives and indices in a nondiscriminatory manner. If dominant search engines want carriers to disclose their traffic …

Federal Search Commission? Access, Fairness, And Accountability In The Law Of Search, Oren Bracha, Frank Pasquale

Frank A. Pasquale

Should search engines be subject to the types of regulation now applied to personal data collectors, cable networks, or phone books? In this article, we make the case for some regulation of the ability of search engines to manipulate and structure their results. We demonstrate that the First Amendment, properly understood, does not prohibit such regulation. Nor will such interventions inevitably lead to the disclosure of important trade secrets. After setting forth normative foundations for evaluating search engine manipulation, we explain how neither market discipline nor technological advance is likely to stop it. Though savvy users and personalized search may …

Dominant Search Engines: An Essential Cultural & Political Facility, Frank Pasquale

Frank A. Pasquale

When American lawyers talk about "essential facilities," they are usually referring to antitrust doctrine that has required certain platforms to provide access on fair and nondiscriminatory terms to all comers. Some have recently characterized Google as an essential facility. Antitrust law may shape the search engine industry in positive ways. However, scholars and activists must move beyond the crabbed vocabulary of competition policy to develop a richer normative critique of search engine dominance. In this chapter, I sketch a new concept of "essential cultural and political facility," which can help policymakers recognize and address situations where a bottleneck has become …

Internet Policy’S Next Frontier: Data Caps, Tiered Service Plans, And Usage-Based Broadband Pricing, Daniel A. Lyons

Daniel Lyons

Usage-based pricing has rapidly become one of the most controversial topics in Internet policy. Both wired and wireless broadband providers are migrating from flat-rate pricing to a variety of consumption-based pricing models. Some consumer groups have viewed the change to usage-based pricing with skepticism, fearing it will usher in an era of higher prices, deteriorating service, and increasingly anticompetitive conduct. This article evaluates the merits of data caps, tiered-service plans, and other usage-based pricing strategies. It finds that usage-based broadband pricing is not inherently anti-consumer or anti-competitive. Rather, it reflects a cluster of pricing strategies through which a broadband company …

The Challenge Of Voip To Legacy Federal And State Regulatory Regimes, Daniel A. Lyons

Daniel Lyons

No abstract provided.

Finding Privacy In A Sea Of Social Media And Other E-Discovery, Allyson Haynes Stuart

Allyson Haynes Stuart

This article looks at the case law governing discovery of social media, and finds several problems. First, many courts are improperly requiring a threshold showing that relevant information exists in public portions of the user’s social media account before allowing such discovery. Second, they allow overbroad discovery, often requiring a litigant to turn over its username and password to the other party. At the same time, parties are seeking such information directly from social media sites, attempting an end-run around the relevancy requirement and increasing motion practice. The article argues that, instead, social media discovery should be treated like other …