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Full-Text Articles in Law
Can Americans Resist Surveillance?, Ryan Calo
Can Americans Resist Surveillance?, Ryan Calo
Articles
This Essay analyzes the ability of everyday Americans to resist and alter the conditions of government surveillance. Americans appear to have several avenues of resistance or reform. We can vote for privacy-friendly politicians, challenge surveillance in court, adopt encryption or other technologies, and put market pressure on companies not to cooperate with law enforcement.
In practice, however, many of these avenues are limited. Reform-minded officials lack the capacity for real oversight. Litigants lack standing to invoke the Constitution in court. Encryption is not usable and can turn citizens into targets. Citizens can extract promises from companies to push back against …
Privacy Harm Exceptionalism, Ryan Calo
Privacy Harm Exceptionalism, Ryan Calo
Articles
“Exceptionalism” refers to the belief that a person, place, or thing is qualitatively different from others in the same basic category. Thus, some have spoken of America’s exceptionalism as a nation. Early debates about the Internet focused on the prospect that existing laws and institutions would prove inadequate to govern the new medium of cyberspace. Scholars have made similar claims about other areas of law.
The focus of this short essay is the supposed exceptionalism of privacy. Rather than catalogue all the ways that privacy might differ from other concepts or areas of study, I intend to focus on the …