Law Commons^™

Così Fan Tutte: A Better Approach Than The Right To Be Forgotten, Martha Garcia-Murillo, Ian Macinnes

School of Information Studies - Faculty Scholarship

In this article, we argue in favor of a macro-societal approach to protect people from the potential harms of personal information online. In the tension between information and privacy, “the right to be forgotten” is not an appropriate solution. Such a micro, individual-based answer puts the burden of protection on each person instead of on external entities that can abuse such knowledge. The personal responsibility to delete personal data is challenging because of the leakage of data that happens through the connections we have with others, many of whom do not share the same privacy preferences. We show that effective …

Carpenter V. United States And The Fourth Amendment: The Best Way Forward, Stephen E. Henderson

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

We finally have a federal ‘test case.’ In Carpenter v. United States, the Supreme Court is poised to set the direction of the Fourth Amendment in the digital age. The case squarely presents how the twentieth-century third party doctrine will fare in contemporary times, and the stakes could not be higher. This Article reviews the Carpenter case and how it fits within the greater discussion of the Fourth Amendment third party doctrine and location surveillance, and I express a hope that the Court will be both a bit ambitious and a good measure cautious.

As for ambition, the Court …

Touch Dna And Chemical Analysis Of Skin Trace Evidence: Protecting Privacy While Advancing Investigations, Mary Graw Leary

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

This Article addresses touch DNA, chemical analysis of skin traces, and the implications for crime scene investigation, arguing that changes in how trace evidence is analyzed require alterations in the law’s approach to its use. Part I discusses the history of traditional DNA analysis. Part II examines the emergence of touch DNA and related technologies and how they differ from traditional DNA analysis. Part III outlines the specific risks created by the collection and storing of results under the current outdated jurisprudence. Part IV focuses on specific risks to suspects and victims of crime. Part V proposes a legal framework …

The Fourth Amendment Disclosure Doctrines, Monu Bedi

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

The third party and public disclosure doctrines (together the “disclosure doctrines”) are long-standing hurdles to Fourth Amendment protection. These doctrines have become increasingly relevant to assessing the government’s use of recent technologies such as data mining, drone surveillance, and cell site location data. It is surprising then that both the Supreme Court and scholars, at times, have associated them together as expressing one principle. It turns out that each relies on unique foundational triggers and does not stand or fall with the other. This Article tackles this issue and provides a comprehensive topology for analyzing the respective contours of each …

Notice And Standing In The Fourth Amendment: Searches Of Personal Data, Jennifer Daskal

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

In at least two recent cases, courts have rejected service providers’ capacity to raise Fourth Amendment claims on behalf of their customers. These holdings rely on longstanding Supreme Court doctrine establishing a general rule against third parties asserting the Fourth Amendment rights of others. However, there is a key difference between these two recent cases and those cases on which the doctrine rests. The relevant Supreme Court doctrine stems from situations in which someone could take action to raise the Fourth Amendment claim, even if the particular third-party litigant could not. In the situations presented by the recent cases, by …

Private Prisons And The Need For Greater Transparency: Private Prison Information Act, Libbi L. Vilher

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

Private prisons are not subject to the same regulations as government prisons. Particularly, private prisons are exempt from the requirements set forth in the Freedom of Information Act and its state equivalents, which provide that the public has an enforceable right to request certain records from government agencies. Numerous efforts made by members of Congress to enact the Private Prison Information Act, a bill that would subject private prisons to disclosure laws found in the Freedom of Information Act, have been unsuccessful. Such efforts to strip the veil of secrecy that shades private prisons from public scrutiny are especially important …

Video Review; Routine Data Sharing Practices Place Video-Streaming Providers In The Crosshairs Of The Video Privacy Protection Act, Jeremiah P. Ledwidge

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

The Video Privacy Protection Act of 1988 (VPPA) creates a private cause of action for any consumer whose personally identifiable information has been disclosed by a video tape service provider to a third party. The rapid growth of media companies that provide free internet-based video-streaming services, and the technologically-advanced advertising methods employed to fund this business model, have created uncertainty regarding the specific consumer segments the VPPA is designed to protect. The extensive role that third-party providers play in the collection, analysis, and segmentation of user data in the personalized advertising process raises justifiable privacy concerns for consumers. Recent VPPA …

What About Small Businesses? The Gdpr And Its Consequences For Small U.S.-Based Companies, Craig Mcallister

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

Fast-approaching changes to European data privacy law will have consequences around the globe. Historically, despite having dramatically different approaches to data privacy and data protection, the European Union and the United States developed a framework to ensure that the highspeed freeway that is transatlantic data transfer moved uninterrupted. That framework was overturned in the wake of revelations regarding U.S. surveillance practices, and amidst skepticism that the United States did not adequately protect personal data. Further, the European Union enacted the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a sweeping overhaul of the legal data protection landscape that will take effect in May …

The Scrivener’S Secrets Seen Through The Spyglass: Gchq And The International Right To Journalistic Expression, Matthew B. Hurowitz

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

As part of the U.K.’s electronic surveillance program, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), started in 1909 to combat German Spies, now collects metadata from both foreigners and its own citizens. Through the express statutory authority of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act of 2000 (RIPA), and a loophole in section 94 of the Telecommunications Act of 1984, the GCHQ collects metadata, which is all of the information that is extrinsic to the actual contents of a communication. The GCHQ can request an authorization from a public authority—a member of its own staff—to collect traffic data, service use information, or subscriber …

Baking Common Sense Into The Ferpa Cake: How To Meaningfully Protect Student Rights And The Public Interest, Zach Greenberg, Adam Goldstein

Journal of Legislation

No abstract provided.

A Pantomime Of Privacy: Terrorism And Investigative Powers In German Constitutional Law, Russell A. Miller

Russell A. Miller

Germany is widely regarded as a global model for the privacy protection its constitutional regime offers against intrusive intelligence-gathering and law enforcement surveillance. There is some basis for Germany’s privacy “exceptionalism,” especially as the text of the German Constitution (“Basic Law”) provides explicit textual protections that America’s Eighteenth Century Constitution lacks. The German Federal Constitutional Court has added to those doctrines with an expansive interpretation of the more general rights to dignity (Basic Law Article 1) and the free development of one’s personality (Basic Law Article 2). This jurisprudence includes constitutional liberty guarantees such as the absolute protection of a …

An Economic Analysis Of The Law Surrounding Data Aggregation In Cyberspace, Johnathan M. H. Short

Maine Law Review

The emergence of technological advances has traditionally created new and unique legal problems. The solutions to counter these problems are often drawn from our legal traditions and adapted to an ever-modernizing world. However, as Professor Coase opined at the dawn of the communication technology revolution, “lawyers and economists should not be so overwhelmed by the emergence of new technologies as to change the existing legal and economic system without first making quite certain that this is required.” Examination and reflection, in other words, is paramount to instituting a sound legal framework to encompass developing legal problems in technology. This Article …

Desperately Seeking Solutions: Using Implementation-Based Solutions For The Troubles Of Information Privacy In The Age Of Data Mining And The Internet Society, Tal Z. Zarsky

Maine Law Review

Our personal information is constantly being recorded, stored and analyzed. Commercial entities watch our every action, storing this data and analyzing it in conjunction with information acquired from third parties. These entities use this knowledge to their benefit (and at times, our detriment) by discriminating between various customers on the basis of this personal information. At the same time, in the media market, large conglomerates can now provide specifically tailored content to individual customers on the basis of such data, thus potentially controlling their perspectives and impairing their autonomy. The expanding use of data mining applications, which enable vendors to …

Slave To The Algorithm? Why A 'Right To An Explanation' Is Probably Not The Remedy You Are Looking For, Lilian Edwards, Michael Veale

Duke Law & Technology Review

Algorithms, particularly machine learning (ML) algorithms, are increasingly important to individuals’ lives, but have caused a range of concerns revolving mainly around unfairness, discrimination and opacity. Transparency in the form of a “right to an explanation” has emerged as a compellingly attractive remedy since it intuitively promises to open the algorithmic “black box” to promote challenge, redress, and hopefully heightened accountability. Amidst the general furore over algorithmic bias we describe, any remedy in a storm has looked attractive. However, we argue that a right to an explanation in the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is unlikely to present a …

Sympathy For The Devil: Gawker, Thiel, And Newsworthiness, Amy Gajda

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Orwell's 1984 And A Fourth Amendment Cybersurveillance Nonintrusion Test, Margaret Hu

Faculty Publications

This Article describes a cybersurveillance nonintrusion test under the Fourth Amendment that is grounded in evolving customary law to replace the reasonable expectation of privacy test formulated in Katz v. United States. To illustrate how customary law norms are shaping modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, this Article examines the recurrence of judicial references to George Orwell’s novel, 1984, within the Fourth Amendment context when federal courts have assessed the constitutionality of modern surveillance methods. The Supreme Court has indicated that the Fourth Amendment privacy doctrine must now evolve to impose meaningful limitations on the intrusiveness of new surveillance technologies. …

Risk And Resilience In Health Data Infrastructure, W. Nicholson Price Ii

Articles

Today’s health system runs on data. However, for a system that generates and requires so much data, the health care system is surprisingly bad at maintaining, connecting, and using those data. In the easy cases of coordinated care and stationary patients, the system works—sometimes. But when care is fragmented, fragmented data often result. Fragmented data create risks both to individual patients and to the system. For patients, fragmentation creates risks in care based on incomplete or incorrect information, and may also lead to privacy risks from a patched together system. For the system, data fragmentation hinders efforts to improve efficiency …

Intellectual Property’S Lessons For Information Privacy, Mark Bartholomew

Mark Bartholomew

There is an inherent tension between an individual’s desire to safeguard her personal information and the expressive rights of businesses seeking to communicate that information to others. This tension has multiplied as consumers generate and businesses collect more and more personal data online, forcing efforts to strike an appropriate balance between privacy and commercial speech. No consensus on this balance has been reached. Some privacy scholars bemoan what they see as a slanted playing field in favor of those wishing to profit from the private details of other people’s lives. Others contend that the right in free expression must always …

When Privacy Almost Won: Time, Inc. V. Hill (1967), Samantha Barbas

Samantha Barbas

Drawing on previously unexplored and unpublished archival papers of Richard Nixon, the plaintiffs’ lawyer in the case, and the justices of the Warren Court, this article tells the story of the seminal First Amendment case Time, Inc. v. Hill (1967). In Hill, the Supreme Court for the first time addressed the conflict between the right to privacy and freedom of the press. The Court constitutionalized tort liability for invasion of privacy, acknowledging that it raised First Amendment issues and must be governed by constitutional standards. Hill substantially diminished privacy rights; today it is difficult if not impossible to recover against …

Saving Privacy From History, Samantha Barbas

Samantha Barbas

No abstract provided.

The Laws Of Image, Samantha Barbas

Samantha Barbas

We live in an image society. Since the turn of the 20th century if not earlier, Americans have been awash in a sea of images throughout the visual landscape. We have become highly image-conscious, attuned to first impressions and surface appearances, and deeply concerned with our own personal images – our looks, reputations, and the impressions we make on others. The advent of this image-consciousness has been a familiar subject of commentary by social and cultural historians, yet its legal implications have not been explored. This article argues that one significant legal consequence of the image society was the evolution …

The Sidis Case And The Origins Of Modern Privacy Law, Samantha Barbas

Samantha Barbas

The American press, it’s been said, is freer to invade personal privacy than perhaps any other in the world. The tort law of privacy, as a shield against unwanted media exposure of private life, is very weak. The usual reason given for the weakness of U.S. privacy law as a bar on the publication of private information is the strong tradition of First Amendment freedom. But “freedom of the press” alone cannot explain why liberty to publish has been interpreted as a right to print truly intimate matters or to thrust people into the spotlight against their will. Especially in …

From Privacy To Publicity: The Tort Of Appropriation In The Age Of Mass Consumption, Samantha Barbas

Samantha Barbas

No abstract provided.

Contemplating The Use Of Classified Or State Secret Information Obtained Ex Parte On The Merits In Civil Litigation: Bl(A)Ck Tea Society V. City Of Boston, Brian M. Tomney

Maine Law Review

In Bl(a)ck Tea Society v. City of Boston, the First Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed, without dissent, a district court's ruling denying protesters at the 2004 Democratic National Convention a preliminary injunction designed to force the City of Boston to modify its designated demonstration zone (DZ) and remove some of the draconian security measures surrounding the zone. The injunction was denied by Judge Woodlock after he personally inspected the DZ and determined that, given “constraints of time, geography, and safety,” there were no viable alternatives—to site location or construction of the DZ itself—that could reasonably occur before the convention started. …

Collection Of Cryptocurrency Customer-Information: Tax Enforcement Mechanism Or Invasion Of Privacy?, Austin Elliott

Duke Law & Technology Review

After granting permission to the Internal Revenue Service to serve a digital exchange company a summons for user information, the Federal District Court for the Northern District of California created some uncertainty regarding the privacy of cryptocurrencies. The IRS views this information gathering as necessary for monitoring compliance with Notice 2014-21, which classifies cryptocurrencies as property for tax purposes. Cryptocurrency users, however, view the attempt for information as an infringement on their privacy rights and are seeking legal protection. This Issue Brief investigates the future tax implications of Notice 2014-21 and considers possible routes the cryptocurrency market can take to …

When Fame Takes Away The Right To Privacy In One's Body: Revenge Porn And Tort Remedies For Public Figures, Caroline Drinnon

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

No abstract provided.

Blethen Maine Newspapers, Inc. V. State: Balancing The Public's Right To Know Against The Privacy Rights Of Victims Of Sexual Abuse, Kenleigh A. Nicoletta

Maine Law Review

In Blethen Maine Newspapers, Inc. v. State, a sharply divided Maine Supreme Judicial Court, sitting as the Law Court, held that release of records relating to Attorney General G. Steven Rowe's investigation of alleged sexual abuse by Catholic priests was warranted under Maine's Freedom of Access Act (FOAA). Although such investigative records are designated confidential by statute, the majority held that the public's interest in the contents of the records mandated their disclosure after all information identifying persons other than the deceased priests had been redacted. The concurrence asserted that the majority had reached the correct conclusion, but in so …

Who Are The Real Cyberbullies: Hackers Or The Ftc? The Fairness Of The Ftc’S Authority In The Data Security Context, Jaclyn K. Haughom

Catholic University Law Review

As technology continues to be an integral part of daily life, there lies an ever-increasing threat of the personally identifiable information of consumers being lost, stolen, or accessed without authorization. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is the U.S. government’s primary consumer protection agency and the country’s lead enforcer against companies subject to data breaches. Although the FTC lacks explicit statutory authority to enforce against data breaches, the Commission has successfully relied on Section 5 of the FTC Act (FTCA) to exercise its consumer protection power in the data security context. However, as the FTC continues to take action against businesses …

الخطأ الطبي: دراسة في قانون المسؤولية الطبية الإماراتي لسنة 2016, خلود هشام خليل عبد الغني

Private Law Theses

The purpose of this study is to identify the medical error in the light of the provisions of the civil laws and the basic principles established by the jurisprudence and the law in order to assess the medical error and the extent of entitlement to compensation and the amount of this compensation in the light of the discretionary power of the judge.

The most important conclusion of the study is that medical responsibility in UAE legislation is often a tort liability, although there is a contractual relationship between the patient and the health establishment. And that in some cases the …

Algorithmic Jim Crow, Margaret Hu

Faculty Publications

This Article contends that current immigration- and security-related vetting protocols risk promulgating an algorithmically driven form of Jim Crow. Under the “separate but equal” discrimination of a historic Jim Crow regime, state laws required mandatory separation and discrimination on the front end, while purportedly establishing equality on the back end. In contrast, an Algorithmic Jim Crow regime allows for “equal but separate” discrimination. Under Algorithmic Jim Crow, equal vetting and database screening of all citizens and noncitizens will make it appear that fairness and equality principles are preserved on the front end. Algorithmic Jim Crow, however, will enable discrimination on …