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Privacy Law

Robert Sprague

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Full-Text Articles in Law

Employee Electronic Communications In A Boundaryless World, Robert Sprague Dec 2015

Employee Electronic Communications In A Boundaryless World, Robert Sprague

Robert Sprague

In 2007, the National Labor Relations Board decided that an employer could maintain an email communications policy that prohibits nonwork-related messages, even if those messages involved communications otherwise protected under the National Labor Relations Act. In December 2014, the National Labor Relations Board reversed this holding, but in doing so, limited its decision to just workplace email. This article argues that such a prescription is outdated and archaic in light of today’s modern workplace filled with communications devices and systems that blur the distinction between work and personal life. This article explains that such a prescription can cause employees to …


One Hundred Twenty Years Of U.S. Privacy Law Scholarship: A Latent Semantic Analysis, Robert Sprague, Kevin Grauberger, Nicole Barberis Apr 2015

One Hundred Twenty Years Of U.S. Privacy Law Scholarship: A Latent Semantic Analysis, Robert Sprague, Kevin Grauberger, Nicole Barberis

Robert Sprague

This paper reports results from a research project aimed at identifying fundamental privacy law principles derived from the writings of legal scholars and commentators using probabilistic topic modeling, which is comprised of a suite of algorithms that attempt to discover hidden thematic structures in large archives of documents. Topic modeling algorithms are statistical methods that analyze the words of texts to discover topics (themes) contained within, how those topics are connected to each other, and how they change over time. A latent Dirichlet allocation process, which identifies sets of terms that more tightly co-occur, is incorporated into the topic modeling …


Welcome To The Machine: Privacy And Workplace Implications Of Predictive Analytics, Robert Sprague Apr 2015

Welcome To The Machine: Privacy And Workplace Implications Of Predictive Analytics, Robert Sprague

Robert Sprague

Predictive analytics use a method known as data mining to identify trends, patterns, or relationships among data, which can then be used to develop a predictive model. Data mining itself relies upon big data, which is “big” not solely because of its size but also because its analytical potential is qualitatively different. “Big data” analysis allows organizations, including government and businesses, to combine diverse digital datasets and then use statistics and other data mining techniques to extract from them both hidden information and surprising correlations. These data are not necessarily tracking transactional records of atomized behavior, such as the purchasing …


Workplace Data: Law & Litigation (With 2014 Supplement), Robert Sprague Dec 2012

Workplace Data: Law & Litigation (With 2014 Supplement), Robert Sprague

Robert Sprague

Workplace Data: Law and Litigation provides an overview of legal issues associated with employment-related electronically stored information (ESI), focusing on discovery issues in particular. Written for employment and labor law practitioners, this new treatise offers a comprehensive overview of today’s discovery challenges, a detailed statute-by-statute analysis of data retention requirements in federal workplace-related laws, a summary of emerging workplace social media and other technology-related issues and a guide to data protection privacy laws in North America, Europe, Asia and Oceania.


Intrusive Monitoring: Employee Privacy Expectations Are Reasonable In Europe, Destroyed In The United States, Lothar Determann, Robert Sprague Dec 2010

Intrusive Monitoring: Employee Privacy Expectations Are Reasonable In Europe, Destroyed In The United States, Lothar Determann, Robert Sprague

Robert Sprague

This Article examines the contrasting policy and legal frameworks relating to data privacy in the United States and the European Union, with a particular focus on workplace privacy and intrusive surveillance technologies and practices. It examines the U.S. perspective on modern work-related employer monitoring practices, the laws giving rise to possible employee privacy rights, and specific types of employer monitoring that may lead to actionable invasions of employee privacy rights. This article then addresses the issue of employee privacy from the EU perspective, beginning with an overview of the formation of authority to protect individual privacy rights, followed by an …


Invasion Of The Social Networks: Blurring The Line Between Personal Life And The Employment Relationship, Robert Sprague Dec 2010

Invasion Of The Social Networks: Blurring The Line Between Personal Life And The Employment Relationship, Robert Sprague

Robert Sprague

Over one-half billion people worldwide have registered accounts with Facebook, the most popular online social network. This article addresses some of the more significant employment-related legal issues arising from the growing popularity of online social networks. First, the need for employers to investigate the background of prospective employees is examined from the context of employers using online social networks to conduct those investigations. In particular, this article analyzes the degree to which job applicants have privacy rights in the information they post online. This article then examines the interrelationship between online social networks and employees, focusing on limitations faced by …


Preserving Identities: Protecting Personal Identifying Information Through Enhanced Privacy Policies And Laws, Robert Sprague, Corey Ciocchetti Dec 2008

Preserving Identities: Protecting Personal Identifying Information Through Enhanced Privacy Policies And Laws, Robert Sprague, Corey Ciocchetti

Robert Sprague

This article explores the developing phenomenon of the ongoing collection and dissemination of personal identifying information (PII): first, explaining the nature and form of PII, including the consequences of its collection; second, exploring one of the greatest threats associated with data collection - unauthorized disclosure due to data breaches, including an overview of state and federal legislative reactions to the threats of data breaches and identity theft; third, discussing common law and constitutional privacy protections regarding the collection of personal information, revealing that United States privacy laws provide very little protection to individuals; and fourth, examining current practices by online …


Electronic Surveillance In The Global Workplace: Laws, Ethics, Research And Practice, Roland Kidwell, Robert Sprague Dec 2008

Electronic Surveillance In The Global Workplace: Laws, Ethics, Research And Practice, Roland Kidwell, Robert Sprague

Robert Sprague

This paper considers the legal, ethical and cultural factors that must be addressed in evaluating the appropriateness of employing electronic surveillance (ES) in varying international contexts. It critically evaluates the rationale that underlies the use of ES in a variety of settings and types of organisations. It suggests guidelines for the adoption and use of ES and potential directions for future research.


Rethinking Information Privacy In An Age Of Online Transparency, Robert Sprague Dec 2007

Rethinking Information Privacy In An Age Of Online Transparency, Robert Sprague

Robert Sprague

No abstract provided.


Orwell Was An Optimist: The Evolution Of Privacy In The United States And Its De-Evolution For American Employees, Robert Sprague Dec 2007

Orwell Was An Optimist: The Evolution Of Privacy In The United States And Its De-Evolution For American Employees, Robert Sprague

Robert Sprague

This Article argues that the difficulties associated with understanding and applying rights to privacy in modern America, and its near extinction, particularly for employees, are a direct result of the conceptual approach used to determine whether a legal right to privacy exists. This approach was formally adopted in the latter part of the twentieth century and it makes privacy protection dependent upon any given situation, determined by whether there is a reasonable expectation of privacy for that given situation. This makes the current right to privacy in the United States contextual, fluid, and easily subject to elimination. One of the …


Fired For Blogging: Are There Legal Protections For Employees Who Blog?, Robert Sprague Dec 2006

Fired For Blogging: Are There Legal Protections For Employees Who Blog?, Robert Sprague

Robert Sprague

No abstract provided.


From Taylorism To The Omnipticon: Expanding Employee Surveillance Beyond The Workplace, Robert Sprague Dec 2006

From Taylorism To The Omnipticon: Expanding Employee Surveillance Beyond The Workplace, Robert Sprague

Robert Sprague

No abstract provided.