Law Commons^™

The Promise And Perils Of Tech Whistleblowing, Hannah Bloch-Wehba

Northwestern University Law Review

Whistleblowers and leakers wield significant influence in technology law and policy. On topics ranging from cybersecurity to free speech, tech whistleblowers spur congressional hearings, motivate the introduction of legislation, and animate critical press coverage of tech firms. But while scholars and policymakers have long called for transparency and accountability in the tech sector, they have overlooked the significance of individual disclosures by industry insiders—workers, employees, and volunteers—who leak information that firms would prefer to keep private.

This Article offers an account of the rise and influence of tech whistleblowing. Radical information asymmetries pervade tech law and policy. Firms exercise near-complete …

Slavery.Ai, Emile Loza De Siles

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

The artificial intelligence market is swarming. Supercharged start-ups, global tech giants, and increasingly algorithmic governments target diverse use cases with new and stunningly innovative AI applications coming online every day. Where people are the computational subjects of those algorithmic machinations, however, there is no law, present or effective, to protect them against great and propagating harms. Consequently, people become data production units, the commoditized of the Data Industrial Complex and unfree, unpaid inputs to AI production.

This Article shares a new and provocative vision. It theorizes that unregulated AI systems and uses are giving rise to an emergent form of …

“Statistics Are Human Beings With The Tears Wiped Away”: Utilizing Data To Develop Strategies To Reduce The Number Of Native Americans Who Go Missing, Lori Mcpherson, Sarah Blazucki

Seattle University Law Review

On New Year’s Eve night, 2019, sixteen-year-old Selena Shelley Faye Not Afraid attended a party in Billings, Montana, about fifty miles west of her home in Hardin, Montana, near the Crow Reservation. A junior at the local high school, she was active in her community. The party carried over until the next day, and she caught a ride back toward home with friends in a van the following afternoon. When the van stopped at an interstate rest stop, Selena got out but never made it back to the van. The friends reported her missing to the police and indicated they …

Passcodes, Protection, And Legal Practicality: The Necessity Of A Digital Fifth Amendment, Ethan Swierczewski

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

No abstract provided.

Taking It With You: Platform Barriers To Entry And The Limits Of Data Portability, Gabriel Nicholas

Michigan Technology Law Review

Policymakers are faced with a vexing problem: how to increase competition in a tech sector dominated by a few giants. One answer proposed and adopted by regulators in the United States and abroad is to require large platforms to allow consumers to move their data from one platform to another, an approach known as data portability. Facebook, Google, Apple, and other major tech companies have enthusiastically supported data portability through their own technical and political initiatives. Today, data portability has taken hold as one of the go-to solutions to address the tech industry’s competition concerns.

This Article argues that despite …

Natural Language Processing For Lawyers And Judges, Frank Fagan

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Law as Data: Computation, Text, & the Future of Legal Analysis. Edited by Michael A. Livermore and Daniel N. Rockmore.

Georgia’S Approach To Proportionality And Sanctions For The Spoliation Of Electronically Stored Information, Matthew Daigle

Georgia State University Law Review

The rapid evolution and implementation of technology in society has resulted in the increasing use of data as evidence in court. While the scope of discovery is limited by, among other things, the burden imposed on the producing party, the sheer magnitude of electronic evidence compared to its physical counterpart necessitates a different framework for evaluating such a burden. Without limiting factors, the discoverability of electronically stored information (ESI) exposes producing parties to liability disproportionate to the value of a case. While the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure have evolved to address the discovery of ESI, the Georgia Civil Practice …

The Limits And Possibilities Of Data-Driven Antitrafficking Efforts, Jennifer Musto Ph.D.

Georgia State University Law Review

An examination of technology in the countertrafficking space reveals recurring tensions between law enforcement and rights-based approaches. It also illuminates assumptions, such as the one that posits more law enforcement-focused, nonstate-actor-supported data-driven efforts are necessary to securing justice for people in trafficking situations. However, a closer look at how technology is used and by whom also invites us to ask different questions and to leverage the power of our all-too-human creative potential in thinking about how to value and prioritize data ethics, transparency, and accountability in future countertrafficking work.

Privacy Law Issues In Public Blockchains: An Analysis Of Blockchain, Pipeda, The Gdpr, And Proposals For Compliance, Noah Walters

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

Proponents of blockchain proclaim that the technology’s greatest innovation is trust. Blockchain create trust by serving as an indispensable ledger (a central point of truth), for all stakeholders to a transaction. Instead of companies managing and reconciling records of the same transaction in privately held databases, both sides of a transaction are recorded simultaneously on a shared ledger — the blockchain. As a result, the crypto economic environment is characterized by the decentralized coordination of business processes and transactions. Proponents of crypto-economics regard decentralized coordination as an opportunity for new forms of economic innovation, forms designed to increase value for …

Digital Colonialism: The 21st Century Scramble For Africa Through The Extraction And Control Of User Data And The Limitations Of Data Protection Laws, Danielle Coleman

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

As Western technology companies increasingly rely on user data globally, extensive data protection laws and regulations emerged to ensure ethical use of that data. These same protections, however, do not exist uniformly in the resource-rich, infrastructure-poor African countries, where Western tech seeks to establish its presence. These conditions provide an ideal landscape for digital colonialism.

Digital colonialism refers to a modern-day “Scramble for Africa” where largescale tech companies extract, analyze, and own user data for profit and market influence with nominal benefit to the data source. Under the guise of altruism, large scale tech companies can use their power and …

The Gdpr: It Came, We Saw, But Did It Conquer?, Leila Javanshir

Seattle University Law Review

On February 1, 2019, the Seattle University Law Review held its annual symposium at the Seattle University School of Law. Each year, the Law Review hosts its symposium on a topic that is timely and meaningful. This year, privacy and data security professionals from around the globe gathered to discuss the current and future effects of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that was implemented on May 25, 2018. The articles and essays that follow this Foreword are the product of this year’s symposium.

Confiding In Con Men: U.S. Privacy Law, The Gdpr, And Information Fiduciaries, Lindsey Barrett

Seattle University Law Review

In scope, ambition, and animating philosophy, U.S. privacy law and Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation are almost diametric opposites. The GDPR’s ambitious individual rights, significant prohibitions, substantive enforcement regime, and broad applicability contrast vividly with a scattershot U.S. regime that generally prioritizes facilitating commerce over protecting individuals, and which has created perverse incentives for industry through anemic enforcement of the few meaningful limitations that do exist. A privacy law that characterizes data collectors as information fiduciaries could coalesce with the commercial focus of U.S. law, while emulating the GDPR’s laudable normative objectives and fortifying U.S. consumer privacy law with a …

Privacy Statements Under The Gdpr, Mike Hintze

Seattle University Law Review

The need to include specific types of information in a privacy statement is a GDPR compliance obligation that does not get as much attention as some other GDPR requirements. Perhaps that is because privacy statements have been much maligned in recent years. They are too long and full of legalese. Nobody reads them. They are part of a notice and consent approach to privacy that puts an unrealistic burden on consumers to make informed choices. But despite these well-known criticisms, the GDPR doubles down on privacy statements. In fact, gauging by the roughly fourfold increase in privacy statement requirements compared …

Footprints: Privacy For Enterprises, Processors, And Custodians…Oh My!, Blair Witzel, Carrie Mount

Seattle University Law Review

Americans’ interest in privacy—as evidenced by increasing news coverage, online searches, and new legislation—has grown over the past decade. After the European Union enacted the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), technologists and legal professionals have focused on primary collectors of data—known under various legal regimes as the “controller” or “custodian.” Thanks to advances in computing, many of these data collectors offload the processing of data to third parties providing data-related cloud services like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. In addition to the data they have already collected about the data subjects themselves, these companies now “hold” that data on behalf of …

Title 2.0: Discrimination Law In A Data-Driven Society, Bryan Casey

Journal of Law and Mobility

More than a quarter century after civil rights activists pioneered America’s first ridesharing network, the connections between transportation, innovation, and discrimination are again on full display. Industry leaders such as Uber, Amazon, and Waze have garnered widespread acclaim for successfully combatting stubbornly persistent barriers to transportation. But alongside this well-deserved praise has come a new set of concerns. Indeed, a growing number of studies have uncovered troubling racial disparities in wait times, ride cancellation rates, and service availability in companies including Uber, Lyft, Task Rabbit, Grubhub, and Amazon Delivery.

Surveying the methodologies employed by these studies reveals a subtle, but …

Nowhere To Run, Nowhere To Hide.* Applying The Fourth Amendment To Connected Cars In The Internet-Of-Things Era, Gregory C. Brown, Jr.

Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development

(Excerpt)

Part I of this Note will briefly discuss the key components of a Connected Car, identify who collects the data from the Car, and examine the various uses for the data. Part I also explores whether Car owners consent to the collection of their Car’s data. Part II-A will trace the historical development of the automobile exception to the Fourth Amendment, which generally permits law-enforcement officers to conduct a warrantless search of a vehicle. Part II-B will discuss how the Supreme Court has applied the Fourth Amendment to pre-Internet technologies. Part II-C will discuss two recent Fourth Amendment Supreme …

Artificial Intellegence And Policing: First Questions, Elizabeth E. Joh

Seattle University Law Review

Artificial intelligence is playing an increasingly larger role in all sectors of society, including policing. Many police departments are already using artificial intelligence (AI) to help predict and identify suspicious persons and places.1 Increased computational power and oceans of data have given rise to inferences about violence and threats.2 AI will change policing just as it will healthcare, insurance, commerce, and transportation. But what questions should we ask about AI and policing?

The Tortoise And The Hare Of International Data Privacy Law: Can The United States Catch Up To Rising Global Standards?, Matthew Humerick

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

Technological developments spur the development of big data on a global scale. The breadth of data companies collect, maintain, process, and transmit affects nearly every country and organization around the world. Inherent to big data are issues of data protection and transfers to third countries. While many jurisdictions emphasize the importance of protecting consumer data, such as the European Union, others, like the United States, do not. To circumvent this issue, the United States and European Union contracted around data privacy standard discrepancies through the Safe Harbor Agreement, which eased cross-border data transfers. However, the Court of Justice of the …

Regulating Black-Box Medicine, W. Nicholson Price Ii

Michigan Law Review

Data drive modern medicine. And our tools to analyze those data are growing ever more powerful. As health data are collected in greater and greater amounts, sophisticated algorithms based on those data can drive medical innovation, improve the process of care, and increase efficiency. Those algorithms, however, vary widely in quality. Some are accurate and powerful, while others may be riddled with errors or based on faulty science. When an opaque algorithm recommends an insulin dose to a diabetic patient, how do we know that dose is correct? Patients, providers, and insurers face substantial difficulties in identifying high-quality algorithms; they …

Data-Generating Patents, Brenda M. Simon, Ted Sichelman

Northwestern University Law Review

Patents and trade secrets are often considered economic substitutes. Under this view, inventors can decide either to maintain an invention as a trade secret or to seek a patent and disclose to the public the details of the invention. However, a handful of scholars have recognized that because the patent disclosure requirements are not always rigorous, inventors may sometimes be able to keep certain aspects of an invention secret, yet still receive a patent to the invention as a whole. Here, we provide further insight into how trade secrets and patents may act as complements. Specifically, we introduce the concept …

Who's Driving You? Driver Data Remains Unprotected Under Coppa And Shine The Light, Marisa Tashman

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

As our lives become more driven by technology, California’s privacy laws fall short of protecting our personally identifiable information. Vehicles in particular present an increasing privacy concern, as our automobiles become more computer and less car. Cars today have increasingly sophisticated capabilities, stemming from connected technology and sensors, and their ability to capture geolocation and biometric data. This data can be used to make inferences about drivers’ behavioral patterns and daily habits. This Article analyzes whether California’s privacy laws—California Online Privacy Protection Act (“COPPA”) and Shine the Light—adequately address privacy concerns regarding driver data collected by the connected car. This …

The Skeleton Of A Data Breach: The Ethical And Legal Concerns, Hilary G. Buttrick, Jason Davidson, Richard J. Mcgowan

Richmond Journal of Law & Technology

After over thirty data breaches spanning the third and fourth quarter of 2012, Forbes magazine labeled the summer of 2012 as “The Summer of the Data Breach.” Four years later, businesses across multiple industries have suffered brand-image damage and paid millions of dollars in remedial expenses; we are living in the era of the mega breach. In 2014, companies such as Target, Home Depot, JP Morgan Chase, Anthem, Sony, UPS, Jimmy John’s, Kmart, Neiman Marcus, Community Health Systems, and the White House suffered data breaches. The Home Depot breach alone resulted in the loss of “56 million credit card accounts,” …

Wearable Fitness Devices: Personal Health Data Privacy In Washington State, Steven Spann

Seattle University Law Review

Private entities are increasingly targeting individuals in the United States and around the world to gather personal data for such purposes as product development, market identification, and insurance risk assessment. While credit card records and online browsing histories have long been the medium through which this data is gathered, in more recent years, wearable fitness devices have added a new dimension to data production and collection. These devices are capable of gathering a significant amount of data regarding a person’s physical and physiological characteristics, thereby exposing these data producers to personal privacy infringement. Washington State lawmakers and citizens must be …

The Science Behind Breath Testing For Ethanol, Thomas E. Workman Jr.

University of Massachusetts Law Review

Nationwide, law enforcement officers utilize breath-test machines to identify suspected drunk drivers. When defense attorneys represent a client who has been charged with alcohol related driving crimes, it is important to understand the science and methodology behind alcohol breath-testing, and specifically the functionality of the device used to test their client. This article explains the various methods of testing and types of devices used, as well as their effectiveness, by examining the scientific principles associated with common testin measures. This article serves as an aid to the practicing attorney who, by understanding the science and methodology of breath-testing, will be …

Enhancing The Teaching Of Lawyering Skills And Perspectives Through Virtual World Engagement, Andrea M. Seielstad

University of Massachusetts Law Review

Educators from around the globe are rapidly utilizing and transforming virtual worlds, such as Second Life, with innovative teaching strategies. Mediation and dispute resolution, and associated communication and problem-solving skills, are particularly well suited for developing in virtual worlds, as are other lawyering skills such as, interviewing, counseling, and trial advocacy. The opportunities for students and faculty to engage in cross-cultural exchange and networking are another selling feature of virtual world engagement. Virtual worlds offer particular promise for those seeking innovative and cost-effective ways to integrate more professional training and skills development into the law school curriculum. Moreover, as more …

Measuring The Next 30 Years, Beth Locker, Andrew Barclay

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The last thirty years have seen many changes in the field of child protection, as child welfare law and policy have been undergoing nearly constant change. Those changes, however, have rarely been supported by data or scientific research; rather, they seem to have been largely driven by individual perception of events and gut instincts resulting in what has become essentially a folklore-based system. By focusing on data and scientific research, we hope for better outcomes, but short of that, we at least hope to know whether, and why, outcomes change. The move towards data collection and analysis has begun, but …

Seeking Privacy: Examining A Role For The Fiduciary In Protecting Personal Information, Marcey L. Grigsby

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

Voice Over Internet Protocol And The Wiretap Act: Is Your Conversation Protected?, Daniel B. Garrie, Matthew J. Armstrong, Donald P. Harris

Seattle University Law Review

10101101: Is this sequence of digits voice or data? To a computer, voice is a sequence of digits and data is a sequence of digits. The law has defined 10101101 to be data, and 10101001 to be voice communications. Courts have constructed a distinction between data, 10101101, and voice, 10101001. However, that distinction is blurred when voice and data are simultaneously transmitted through the same medium. The courts forbid third parties to tap or monitor voice communications, yet permit data packets to be tracked, stored, and sold by third parties with the implied consent of either party engaged in the …

Electronic Discovery Sanctions In The Twenty-First Century, Shira A. Scheindlin, Kachana Wangkeo

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

At the federal level, the Civil Rules Advisory Committee has responded to the "unique and necessary feature of computer systems--the automatic recycling, overwriting, and alteration of electronically stored information"--with a proposed amendment to Rule 37. The proposed Rule 37(f) would shield litigants from sanctions for the destruction of electronic data if the party "took reasonable steps to preserve the information after it knew or should have known the information was discoverable in the action" and "the failure resulted from the loss of the information because of the routine operation of the party's electronic information system." The safe harbor provision would …

Theorizing Behavioral Law And Economics: A Defense Of Evolutionary Analysis And The Law, Neel P. Parekh

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Behavioral law and economics (BLE) provides a steady stream of empirical evidence that counters the predictions of law and economics. Despite this research and data, however, many theorists argue that BLE ultimately fails because it posits no underlying theory. This Note argues that perspectives from evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology, and the brain sciences can provide the missing motivational theory for BLE's empirical findings. The Note also examines the implications a more consistent and reasoned consideration of evolutionary analysis and the law (EA) has for our legal regime. In theorizing BLE and defending EA, this Note aims to show how evolutionary …