Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 14 of 14
Full-Text Articles in Law
Privacy Nicks: How The Law Normalizes Surveillance, Woodrow Hartzog, Evan Selinger, Johanna Gunawan
Privacy Nicks: How The Law Normalizes Surveillance, Woodrow Hartzog, Evan Selinger, Johanna Gunawan
Faculty Scholarship
Privacy law is failing to protect individuals from being watched and exposed, despite stronger surveillance and data protection rules. The problem is that our rules look to social norms to set thresholds for privacy violations, but people can get used to being observed. In this article, we argue that by ignoring de minimis privacy encroachments, the law is complicit in normalizing surveillance. Privacy law helps acclimate people to being watched by ignoring smaller, more frequent, and more mundane privacy diminutions. We call these reductions “privacy nicks,” like the proverbial “thousand cuts” that lead to death.
Privacy nicks come from the …
A Third-Party Doctrine For Digital Metadata, H. Brian Holland
A Third-Party Doctrine For Digital Metadata, H. Brian Holland
Faculty Scholarship
For more than four decades, the third-party doctrine was understood as a bright-line, categorical rule: there is no legitimate privacy interest in any data that is voluntarily disclosed or conveyed to a third party. But this simple rule has dramatic effects in a world of ubiquitous networked computing, mobile technologies, and the commodification of information. The digital devices that facilitate our daily participation in modern society are connected through automated infrastructures that are designed to generate vast quantities of data, nearly all of which is captured, utilized, and stored by third-party service providers. Under a plain reading of the third-party …
The Public Information Fallacy, Woodrow Hartzog
The Public Information Fallacy, Woodrow Hartzog
Faculty Scholarship
The concept of privacy in “public” information or acts is a perennial topic for debate. It has given privacy law fits. People struggle to reconcile the notion of protecting information that has been made public with traditional accounts of privacy. As a result, successfully labeling information as public often functions as a permission slip for surveillance and personal data practices. It has also given birth to a significant and persistent misconception — that public information is an established and objective concept.
In this article, I argue that the “no privacy in public” justification is misguided because nobody knows what “public” …
Byrd V United States: Unauthorized Drivers Of Rental Cars Have Fourth Amendment Rights? Not As Evident As It Seems, Tracey Maclin
Byrd V United States: Unauthorized Drivers Of Rental Cars Have Fourth Amendment Rights? Not As Evident As It Seems, Tracey Maclin
Faculty Scholarship
No discerning student of the Supreme Court would contend that Justice Anthony Kennedy broadly interpreted the Fourth Amendment during his thirty years on the Court. His majority opinions in Maryland v. King, Drayton v. United States and his willingness to join the three key sections of Justice Scalia’s opinion in Hudson v. Maryland, which held that suppression is never a remedy for knock-and-announce violations, are just a few examples of Justice Kennedy’s narrow view of the Fourth Amendment.
In light of his previous votes in search and seizure cases, surprisingly Justice Kennedy, in what would be his final Fourth Amendment …
The Value Of Deviance: Understanding Contextual Privacy, Timothy Casey
The Value Of Deviance: Understanding Contextual Privacy, Timothy Casey
Faculty Scholarship
Recent decisions by the Supreme Court in Carpenter v. United States and the Illinois Supreme Court in Rosenbach v. Six Flags Entertainment Corporation signal a shift in the traditional understanding of what exactly is protected by a privacy interest. Carpenter distinguished between a police officer’s observation of a suspect’s location and a perpetual catalogue of a person’s movements obtained through cell site location information (CSLI). The pervasive and vast quantity of information from CSLI exposed a protected privacy interest. In Rosenbach, the Illinois Supreme Court found the unique and personal quality of biometric information meant that consent and disclosure requirements …
Body Cameras And The Path To Redeem Privacy Law, Woodrow Hartzog
Body Cameras And The Path To Redeem Privacy Law, Woodrow Hartzog
Faculty Scholarship
From a privacy perspective, the movement towards police body cameras seems ominous. The prospect of a surveillance device capturing massive amounts of data concerning people’s most vulnerable moments is daunting. These concerns are compounded by the fact that there is little consensus and few hard rules on how and for whom these systems should be built and used. But in many ways, this blank slate is a gift. Law and policy makers are not burdened by the weight of rules and technologies created in a different time for a different purpose. These surveillance and data technologies will be modern. Many …
When Enough Is Enough: Location Tracking, Mosaic Theory, And Machine Learning, Steven M. Bellovin, Renée M. Hutchins, Tony Jebara, Sebastian Zimmeck
When Enough Is Enough: Location Tracking, Mosaic Theory, And Machine Learning, Steven M. Bellovin, Renée M. Hutchins, Tony Jebara, Sebastian Zimmeck
Faculty Scholarship
Since 1967, when it decided Katz v. United States, the Supreme Court has tied the right to be free of unwanted government scrutiny to the concept of reasonable xpectations of privacy.[1] An evaluation of reasonable expectations depends, among other factors, upon an assessment of the intrusiveness of government action. When making such assessment historically the Court has considered police conduct with clear temporal, geographic, or substantive limits. However, in an era where new technologies permit the storage and compilation of vast amounts of personal data, things are becoming more complicated. A school of thought known as “mosaic theory” …
Failing Expectations: Fourth Amendment Doctrine In The Era Of Total Surveillance, Olivier Sylvain
Failing Expectations: Fourth Amendment Doctrine In The Era Of Total Surveillance, Olivier Sylvain
Faculty Scholarship
Today’s reasonable expectation test and the third-party doctrine have little to nothing to offer by way of privacy protection if users today are at least conflicted about whether transactional noncontent data should be shared with third parties, including law enforcement officials. This uncertainty about how to define public expectation as a descriptive matter has compelled courts to defer to legislatures to find out what public expectation ought to be more as a matter of prudence than doctrine. Courts and others presume that legislatures are far better than courts at defining public expectations about emergent technologies.This Essay argues that the reasonable …
The Right To Quantitative Privacy, Danielle K. Citron, David Gray
The Right To Quantitative Privacy, Danielle K. Citron, David Gray
Faculty Scholarship
We are at the cusp of a historic shift in our conceptions of the Fourth Amendment driven by dramatic advances in surveillance technology. Governments and their private sector agents continue to invest billions of dollars in massive data-mining projects, advanced analytics, fusion centers, and aerial drones, all without serious consideration of the constitutional issues that these technologies raise. In United States v. Jones, the Supreme Court signaled an end to its silent acquiescence in this expanding surveillance state. In that case, five justices signed concurring opinions defending a revolutionary proposition: that citizens have Fourth Amendment interests in substantial quantities of …
Fighting Cyber-Crime After United States V. Jones, Danielle K. Citron, David Gray, Liz Rinehart
Fighting Cyber-Crime After United States V. Jones, Danielle K. Citron, David Gray, Liz Rinehart
Faculty Scholarship
In a landmark non-decision last term, five Justices of the United States Supreme Court would have held that citizens possess a Fourth Amendment right to expect that certain quantities of information about them will remain private, even if they have no such expectations with respect to any of the information or data constituting that whole. This quantitative approach to evaluating and protecting Fourth Amendment rights is certainly novel and raises serious conceptual, doctrinal, and practical challenges. In other works, we have met these challenges by engaging in a careful analysis of this “mosaic theory” and by proposing that courts focus …
A Shattered Looking Glass: The Pitfalls And Potential Of The Mosaic Theory Of Fourth Amendment Privacy, Danielle K. Citron, David Gray
A Shattered Looking Glass: The Pitfalls And Potential Of The Mosaic Theory Of Fourth Amendment Privacy, Danielle K. Citron, David Gray
Faculty Scholarship
On January 23, 2012, the Supreme Court issued a landmark non-decision in United States v. Jones. In that case, officers used a GPS-enabled device to track a suspect’s public movements for four weeks, amassing a considerable amount of data in the process. Although ultimately resolved on narrow grounds, five Justices joined concurring opinions in Jones expressing sympathy for some version of the “mosaic theory” of Fourth Amendment privacy. This theory holds that we maintain reasonable expectations of privacy in certain quantities of information even if we do not have such expectations in the constituent parts. This Article examines and explores …
The Fight To Frame Privacy, Woodrow Hartzog
The Fight To Frame Privacy, Woodrow Hartzog
Faculty Scholarship
The resolution of a debate often hinges on how the problem being debated is presented. In psychology and related disciplines, this method of issue presentation is known as framing. Framing theory holds that even small changes in the presentation of an issue or event can produce significant changes of opinion. Framing has become increasingly important in discussions about privacy and security. In his new book, "Nothing to Hide: The False Tradeoff Between Privacy and Security," Daniel Solove argues that if we continue to view privacy and security as diametrically opposed to each other, privacy will always lose. Solove argues that …
Fighting Cybercrime After United States V. Jones, David C. Gray, Danielle Keats Citron, Liz Clark Rinehart
Fighting Cybercrime After United States V. Jones, David C. Gray, Danielle Keats Citron, Liz Clark Rinehart
Faculty Scholarship
In a landmark non-decision last term, five Justices of the United States Supreme Court would have held that citizens possess a Fourth Amendment right to expect that certain quantities of information about them will remain private, even if they have no such expectations with respect to any of the information or data constituting that whole. This quantitative approach to evaluating and protecting Fourth Amendment rights is certainly novel and raises serious conceptual, doctrinal, and practical challenges. In other works, we have met these challenges by engaging in a careful analysis of this “mosaic theory” and by proposing that courts focus …
The Magic Lantern Revealed: A Report Of The Fbi's New Key Logging Trojan And Analysis Of Its Possible Treatment In A Dynamic Legal Landscape, Woodrow Hartzog
The Magic Lantern Revealed: A Report Of The Fbi's New Key Logging Trojan And Analysis Of Its Possible Treatment In A Dynamic Legal Landscape, Woodrow Hartzog
Faculty Scholarship
Magic Lantern presents several difficult legal questions that are left unanswered due to new or non-existent statutes and case law directly pertaining to the unique situation that Magic Lantern creates. 25 The first concern is statutory. It is unclear what laws, if any, will apply when Magic Lantern is put into use.26 The recent terrorist attacks in the United States have brought the need for information as a matter of national security to the forefront. Congress recently passed legislation (i.e. USA PATRIOT Act) 27 that dramatically modifies current surveillance law, thus further complicating the untested waters of a …