Law Commons^™

Who Owns Data? Constitutional Division In Cyberspace, Dongsheng Zang

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Privacy emerged as a concern as soon as the internet became commercial. In early 1995, Lawrence Lessig warned that the internet, though giving us extraordinary potential, was “not designed to protect individuals against this extraordinary potential for others to abuse.” The same technology can “destroy the very essence of what now defines individuality.” Lessig urged that “a constitutional balance will have to be drawn between these increasingly important interests in privacy, and the competing interest in collective security.” Lessig envisioned that creating property rights in data would help individuals by giving them control of their data. As utopian as property …

Privacy And National Politics: Fingerprint And Dna Litigation In Japan And The United States Compared, Dongsheng Zang

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Drawing cases from two related areas of law-fingerprint and DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) data-this Article proposes a modified framework, built on the Balkin-Levinson emphasis on national politics: First, national politics understood as partisan rivalry cannot account for what I call doctrinal lock-in in this Article, where I will demonstrate that in different stages of American politics-the Lochner era, the New Deal era, and Civil Rights era-courts across the nation ruled predominantly in favor of public data collectors-state and federal law enforcement in fingerprint cases. From the 1990s, when DNA data became hot targets of law enforcement, the United States Supreme Court …

Self-Control Of Personal Data And The Constitution In East Asia, Dongsheng Zang

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No abstract provided.

Privacy, Vulnerability, And Affordance, Ryan Calo

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This essay begins to unpack the complex, sometimes contradictory relationship between privacy and vulnerability. I begin by exploring how the law conceives of vulnerability — essentially, as a binary status meriting special consideration where present. Recent literature recognizes vulnerability not as a status but as a state — a dynamic and manipulable condition that everyone experiences to different degrees and at different times. I then discuss various ways in which vulnerability and privacy intersect. I introduce an analytic distinction between vulnerability rendering, i.e., making a person more vulnerable, and the exploitation of vulnerability whether manufactured or native. I also describe …

Privacy, Public Disclosure, Police Body Cameras: Policy Splits, Mary D. Fan

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When you call the police for help—or someone calls the police on you—do you bear the risk that your worst moments will be posted on YouTube for public viewing? Police officers enter some of the most intimate incidences of our lives—after an assault, when we are drunk and disorderly, when someone we love dies in an accident, when we are distraught, enraged, fighting, and more. As police officers around the nation begin wearing body cameras in response to calls for greater transparency, communities are wrestling with how to balance privacy with public disclosure.

This Article sheds light on the balances …

Push, Pull, And Spill: A Transdisciplinary Case Study In Municipal Open Government, Jan Whittington, Ryan Calo, Mike Simon, Jesse Woo, Meg Young, Perter Schmiedeskamp

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Municipal open data raises hopes and concerns. The activities of cities produce a wide array of data, data that is vastly enriched by ubiquitous computing. Municipal data is opened as it is pushed to, pulled by, and spilled to the public through online portals, requests for public records, and releases by cities and their vendors, contractors, and partners. By opening data, cities hope to raise public trust and prompt innovation. Municipal data, however, is often about the people who live, work, and travel in the city. By opening data, cities raise concern for privacy and social justice.

This article presents …

Can Americans Resist Surveillance?, Ryan Calo

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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 …

Taxation And Surveillance: An Agenda, Michael Hatfield

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Among government agencies, the IRS likely has the surest legal claim to the most information about the most Americans: their hobbies, religious affiliations, reading activities, travel, and medical information are all potentially tax relevant. Privacy scholars have studied the arrival of Big Data, the internet-of-things, and the cooperation of private companies with the government in surveillance, but neither privacy nor tax scholars have considered how these technological advances should impact the U.S. tax system. As government agencies and private companies increasingly pursue what has been described as the “growing gush of data,” the use of these technologies in tax administration …

Privacy Harm Exceptionalism, Ryan Calo

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“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 …

Hands Off Our Fingerprints: State, Local, Andindividual Defiance Of Federal Immigrationenforcement, Christine N. Cimini

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Secure Communities, though little-known outside law-enforcement circles, is one of the most powerful of the federal government’s immigration enforcement programs. Under Secure Communities, fingerprints collected by state and local law enforcement and provided to the Federal Bureau of Investigation for criminal background checks are automatically shared with the Department of Homeland Security, which checks the fingerprints against its immigration database. In the event of a match, an immigration detainer can be issued and an individual held after they would otherwise be entitled to release. Originally designed as a voluntary program in which local governments could choose to participate, the Department …

Sex, Privacy And Public Health In A Casual Encounters Culture, Mary D. Fan

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The regulation of sex and disease is a cultural and political flashpoint and recurring challenge that law's antiquated arsenal has been hard- pressed to effectively address. Compelling data demonstrate the need for attention—for example, one in four women aged fourteen to nineteen is infected with at least one sexually transmitted disease ("STD"); managing STDs costs an estimated $15.9 billion annually; and syphilis, once near eradication, is on the rise again, as are the rates of HIV diagnosis among people aged fifteen to twenty-four. Public health officials on the front lines have called for paradigm changes to tackle the enormous challenge. …

Lost In Translation? Data Mining, National Security And The Adverse Inference Problem, Anita Ramasastry

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To the extent that we permit data mining programs to proceed, they must provide adequate due process and redress mechanisms that permit individuals to clear their names. A crucial criteria for such a mechanism is to allow access to information that was used to make adverse assessments so that errors may be corrected. While some information may have to be kept secret for national security purposes, a degree of transparency is needed when individuals are trying to protect their right to travel or access government services free from suspicion.

Part II of this essay briefly outlines the government's ability to …

Collateralizing Internet Privacy, Xuan-Thao Nguyen

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Collateralizing privacy is a pervasive conduct committed by many on-line companies. Yet most don't even realize that they are engaging in collateralizing privacy. Worse yet, governmental agencies and consumer groups are not even aware of the violation of on-line consumer privacy by the collateralization of privacy. Professor Nguyen argues that collateralizing privacy occurs under the existing privacy regime and the architecture of article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code. Professor Nguyen critiques the violation of privacy through collateralization dilemmas and proposes a solution involving modifications of the contents of the financing statement and security agreement in secured transactions where consumer …

Kathleen A. Sullivan: A True Teacher's Teacher, Christine N. Cimini

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This essay is part of a group of five memorial tributes to Professor Kathleen A. Sullivan of the Yale Law School. The group of tributes reflect on the numerous contributions Professor Sullivan made to her colleagues, students, clients and the clinical education community. In this memoriam tribute, the authors explore three themes that Professor Sullivan cared deeply about: thinking critically about confidentiality, privacy and autonomy; incorporating issues of difference into our teaching and practices; and encouraging people (students, clients and colleagues) to find and assert their own voices, even – and especially – when those voices are different than ours.

Justice Rabinowitz And Personal Freedom: Evolving A Constitutional Framework, Jeff M. Feldman

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This Article honors the contributions former Chief Justice Jay Rabinowitz has made to Alaskan jurisprudence in the areas of individual privacy and freedom of expression. It begins by tracing the development of the Alaska Supreme Court’s protection of individual rights above and beyond that provided by the federal courts.The Article then provides a thorough analysis of two decisions authored by Justice Rabinowitz, Breese v. Smith and Ravin v. State, which have laid the foundation for heightened protection of privacy and freedom of expression rights in Alaska. Next, the Article discusses the influence and application of these two cases on …