Law Commons^™

Sexuality’S Promise For Sexual Privacy, Scott Skinner-Thompson

Publications

No abstract provided.

A New Compact For Sexual Privacy, Danielle K. Citron

Faculty Scholarship

Intimate life is under constant surveillance. Firms track people’s periods, hot flashes, abortions, sexual assaults, sex toy use, sexual fantasies, and nude photos. Individuals hardly appreciate the extent of the monitoring, and even if they did, little can be done to curtail it. What is big business for firms is a big risk for individuals. The handling of intimate data undermines the values that sexual privacy secures—autonomy, dignity, intimacy, and equality. It can imperil people’s job, housing, insurance, and other crucial opportunities. More often, women and minorities shoulder a disproportionate amount of the burden.

Privacy law is failing us. Our …

Why Sexual Privacy Matters For Trust, Danielle K. Citron

Faculty Scholarship

Every generation’s intimates have their preferred modes of self-disclosure. Not long ago, intimate partners exchanged love letters and mixed tapes. They spent hours on the phone. Today, they text their innermost thoughts, beliefs, and wishes, sometimes with nude photos attached. They engage in sexually-explicit activity via FaceTime and SnapChat.

Now, as then, the success and integrity of intimate relationships depends upon sexual privacy. Intimate relationships develop as partners grow to trust one another to treat their nakedness, deepest secrets, and sexual desires as they hope rather than as they fear. Handling partners’ personal information with discretion lays the foundation for …

Sexual Privacy, Danielle K. Citron

Faculty Scholarship

Those who wish to control, expose, and damage the identities of individuals routinely do so by invading their privacy. People are secretly recorded in bedrooms and public bathrooms and “up their skirts.” Such images are used to coerce people into sharing nude photographs and filming sex acts under the threat of public disclosure. People’s nude images are posted online without permission. Machine-learning technology is used to create digitally manipulated “deep fake” sex videos that swap people’s faces into pornography.

Each of these abuses is an invasion of sexual privacy—the behaviors, expectations, and choices that manage access to and information about …

When Law Frees Us To Speak, Danielle K. Citron, Jonathon Penney

Faculty Scholarship

A central aim of online abuse is to silence victims. That effort is as regrettable as it is successful. In the face of cyber harassment and sexual privacy invasions, women and marginalized groups retreat from online engagement. These documented chilling effects, however, are not inevitable. Beyond its deterrent function, law has an equally important expressive role. In this article, we highlight law’s capacity to shape social norms and behavior through education. We focus on a neglected dimension of law’s expressive role—its capacity to empower victims to express their truths and engage with others. Our argument is theoretical and empirical. We …

When Law Frees Us To Speak, Danielle Citron, Jonathon Penney

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

A central aim of online abuse is to silence victims. That effort is as regrettable as it is successful. In the face of cyber harassment and sexual privacy invasions, women and marginalized groups retreat from online engagement. These documented chilling effects, however, are not inevitable. Beyond its deterrent function, law has an equally important expressive role. In this article, we highlight law’s capacity to shape social norms and behavior through education. We focus on a neglected dimension of law’s expressive role—its capacity to empower victims to express their truths and engage with others. Our argument is theoretical and empirical. We …

Sexual Privacy, Danielle Keats Citron

Faculty Scholarship

Those who wish to control and expose the identities of women and people from marginalized communities routinely do so by invading their privacy. People are secretly recorded in bedrooms and public bathrooms, and “up their skirts.” They are coerced into sharing nude photographs and filming sex acts under the threat of public disclosure of their nude images. People’s nude images are posted online without permission. Machine-learning technology is used to create digitally manipulated “deep fake” sex videos that swap people’s faces into pornography.

At the heart of these abuses is an invasion of sexual privacy—the behaviors and expectations that manage …

"Revenge Porn" Reform: A View From The Front Lines, Mary Anne Franks

Articles

The legal and social landscape of "revenge porn" has changed dramatically in the last few years. Before 2013, only three states criminalized the unauthorized disclosure of sexually explicit images of adults and few people had ever heard the ternm "revenge porn." As of July 2017, thirty-eight states and Washington, D.C. had criminalized the conduct; federal criminal legislation on the issue had been introduced in Congress; Google, Facebook, and Twitter had banned nonconsensual pornography from their platforms; and the term "revenge porn" had been added to the Merriam- Webster Dictionary. I have had the privilege of playing a role in many …