Law Commons^™

The Continuing Battle Over Privacy Vs. Security, Ellen Cornelius

Homeland Security Publications

No abstract provided.

Internet Giants As Quasi-Governmental Actors And The Limits Of Contractual Consent, D. A. Jeremy Telman

Law Faculty Publications

Although the government’s data-mining program relied heavily on information and technology that the government received from private companies, relatively little of the public outrage generated by Edward Snowden’s revelations was directed at those private companies. We argue that the mystique of the Internet giants and the myth of contractual consent combine to mute criticisms that otherwise might be directed at the real data-mining masterminds. As a result, consumers are deemed to have consented to the use of their private information in ways that they would not agree to had they known the purposes to which their information would be put …

Are They Worth Reading? An In-Depth Analysis Of Online Trackers’ Privacy Policies, Candice Hoke, Lorrie Faith Cranor, Pedro Giovanni Leon, Alyssa Au

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

We analyzed the privacy policies of 75 online tracking companies with the goal of assessing whether they contain information relevant for users to make privacy decisions. We compared privacy policies from large companies, companies that are members of self-regulatory organizations, and nonmember companies and found that many of them are silent with regard to important consumer-relevant practices including the collection and use of sensitive information and linkage of tracking data with personally-identifiable information. We evaluated these policies against self-regulatory guidelines and found that many policies are not fully compliant. Furthermore, the overly general requirements established in those guidelines allow companies …

Privacy As Trust: Sharing Personal Information In A Networked World, Ari Ezra Waldman

Articles & Chapters

This Article is the first in a series on the legal and sociological aspects of privacy, arguing that private contexts are defined by relationships of trust among individuals. The argument reorients privacy scholarship from an individual right to social relationships of disclosure. This has implications for a wide variety of vexing problems of modern privacy law, from limited disclosures to “revenge porn.”

The common everyday understanding is that privacy is about choice, autonomy, and individual freedom. It encompasses the individual’s right to determine what he will keep hidden and what, how, and when he will disclose to the public. Privacy …

The Self, The Stasi, The Nsa: Privacy, Knowledge, And Complicity In The Surveillance State, Richard Warner, Robert H. Sloan

All Faculty Scholarship

We focus on privacy in public. The notion dates back over a century, at least to the work of the German sociologist, Georg Simmel. Simmel observed that people voluntarily limit their knowledge of each other as they interact in a wide variety of social and commercial roles, thereby making certain information private relative to the interaction even if it is otherwise publicly available. Current governmental surveillance in the US (and elsewhere) reduces privacy in public. But to what extent?

The question matters because adequate self-realization requires adequate privacy in public. That in turn depends on informational norms, social norms that …

The Cycles Of Global Telecommunication Censorship And Surveillance, Jonathon Penney

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Internet censorship and surveillance is on the rise globally and cyber-warfare increasing in scope and intensity. To help understand these new threats commentators have grasped at historical analogies often with little regard for historical complexity or international perspective. Unfortunately, helpful new works on telecommunications history have focused primarily on U.S. history with little focus on international developments. There is thus a need for further internationally oriented investigation of telecommunications technologies, and their history. This essay attempts to help fill that void, drawing on case studies wherein global telecommunications technologies have been disrupted or censored — telegram censorship and surveillance, high …

Law As An Ally Or Enemy In The War On Cyberbullying: Exploring The Contested Terrain Of Privacy And Other Legal Concepts In The Age Of Technology And Social Media, A. Wayne Mackay

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This article focuses on the role and limits of law as a response to cyberbullying. The problem of cyberbullying engages many of our most fundamental legal concepts and provides an interesting case study. Even when there is general agreement that the problem merits a legal response, there are significant debates about what that response should be. Which level and what branch of government can and should best respond? What is the most appropriate legal process for pursuing cyberbullies—traditional legal avenues or more creative restorative approaches? How should the rights and responsibilities of perpetrators, victims and even bystanders be balanced? Among …

The Cycles Of Global Telecommunication Censorship And Surveillance, Jonathon Penney

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Internet censorship and surveillance is on the rise globally and cyber-warfare increasing in scope and intensity. To help understand these new threats commentators have grasped at historical analogies often with little regard for historical complexity or international perspective. Unfortunately, helpful new works on telecommunications history have focused primarily on U.S. history with little focus on international developments. There is thus a need for further internationally oriented investigation of telecommunications technologies, and their history. This essay attempts to help fill that void, drawing on case studies wherein global telecommunications technologies have been disrupted or censored — telegram censorship and surveillance, high …

Disagreeable Privacy Policies: Mismatches Between Meaning And Users’ Understanding, Joel R. Reidenberg, Travis Breaux, Lorrie F. Cranor, Brian M. French, Amanda Grannis, James T. Graves, Fei Liu, Aleecia Mcdonald, Thomas B. Norton, Rohan Ramanath, N. Cameron Russell, Norman Sadeh, Florian Schaub

Faculty Scholarship

Privacy policies are verbose, difficult to understand, take too long to read, and may be the least-read items on most websites even as users express growing concerns about information collection practices. For all their faults, though, privacy policies remain the single most important source of information for users to attempt to learn how companies collect, use, and share data. Likewise, these policies form the basis for the self-regulatory notice and choice framework that is designed and promoted as a replacement for regulation. The underlying value and legitimacy of notice and choice depends, however, on the ability of users to understand …

Data Breach (Regulatory) Effects, David Thaw

Articles

No abstract provided.

Privacy And The New Press, Lyrissa Lidsky

Faculty Publications

In The First Amendment Bubble, Professor Amy Gajda comprehensively examines privacy threats posed by digital media and “quasi-journalists” and demonstrates how their intrusive practices threaten existing press freedoms.

The Dawn Of Social Intelligence (Socint), Laura K. Donohue

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

More information about citizens’ lives is recorded than ever before. Because the data is digitized, it can be accessed, analyzed, shared, and combined with other information to generate new knowledge. In a post-9/‌11 environment, the legal standards impeding access to such data have fallen. Simultaneously, the advent of global communications and cloud computing, along with network convergence, have expanded the scope of information available. The U.S. government has begun to collect and to analyze the associated data.

The result is the emergence of what can be termed “social intelligence” (SOCINT), which this Article defines as the collection of digital data …

A Conceptual Framework For The Regulation Of Cryptocurrencies, Omri Y. Marian

UF Law Faculty Publications

This Essay proposes a conceptual framework for the regulation of transactions involving cryptocurrencies. Cryptocurrencies offer tremendous opportunities for innovation and development but are also uniquely suited to facilitate illicit behavior. The regulatory framework suggested herein is intended to support (or at least not impair) cryptocurrencies’ innovative potential. At the same time, it aims to disrupt cryptocurrencies’ criminal utility. To achieve these purposes, this Essay proposes a regulatory framework that imposes costs on the characteristics of cryptocurrencies that make them especially useful for criminal behavior (in particular, anonymity) but does not impose costs on characteristics that are at the core of …