Privacy Law Commons^™

Content Moderation As Surveillance, Hannah Bloch-Wehba

Faculty Scholarship

Technology platforms are the new governments, and content moderation is the new law, or so goes a common refrain. As platforms increasingly turn toward new, automated mechanisms of enforcing their rules, the apparent power of the private sector seems only to grow. Yet beneath the surface lies a web of complex relationships between public and private authorities that call into question whether platforms truly possess such unilateral power. Law enforcement and police are exerting influence over platform content rules, giving governments a louder voice in supposedly “private” decisions. At the same time, law enforcement avails itself of the affordances of …

Automation In Moderation, Hannah Bloch-Wehba

Faculty Scholarship

This Article assesses recent efforts to encourage online platforms to use automated means to prevent the dissemination of unlawful online content before it is ever seen or distributed. As lawmakers in Europe and around the world closely scrutinize platforms’ “content moderation” practices, automation and artificial intelligence appear increasingly attractive options for ridding the Internet of many kinds of harmful online content, including defamation, copyright infringement, and terrorist speech. Proponents of these initiatives suggest that requiring platforms to screen user content using automation will promote healthier online discourse and will aid efforts to limit Big Tech’s power.

In fact, however, the …

Deep Fakes: A Looming Challenge For Privacy, Democracy, And National Security, Danielle K. Citron, Robert Chesney

Faculty Scholarship

Harmful lies are nothing new. But the ability to distort reality has taken an exponential leap forward with “deep fake” technology. This capability makes it possible to create audio and video of real people saying and doing things they never said or did. Machine learning techniques are escalating the technology’s sophistication, making deep fakes ever more realistic and increasingly resistant to detection. Deep-fake technology has characteristics that enable rapid and widespread diffusion, putting it into the hands of both sophisticated and unsophisticated actors. While deep-fake technology will bring with it certain benefits, it also will introduce many harms. The marketplace …

Global Platform Governance: Private Power In The Shadow Of The State, Hannah Bloch-Wehba

Faculty Scholarship

Online intermediaries—search engines, social media platforms, even e-commerce businesses—are increasingly required to make critical decisions about free expression, individual privacy, and property rights under domestic law. These requirements arise in contexts that include the right to be forgotten, hate speech, “terrorist” speech, and copyright and intellectual property. At the same time, these disputes about online speech are increasingly borderless. Many laws targeting online speech and privacy are explicitly extraterritorial in scope. Even when not, some courts have ruled that they have jurisdiction to enforce compliance on a global scale. And governments are also demanding that platforms remove content—on a global …

Sexual Privacy, Danielle Keats Citron

Faculty Scholarship

Those who wish to control and expose the identities of women and people from marginalized communities routinely do so by invading their privacy. People are secretly recorded in bedrooms and public bathrooms, and “up their skirts.” They are coerced into sharing nude photographs and filming sex acts under the threat of public disclosure of their nude images. People’s nude images are posted online without permission. Machine-learning technology is used to create digitally manipulated “deep fake” sex videos that swap people’s faces into pornography.

At the heart of these abuses is an invasion of sexual privacy—the behaviors and expectations that manage …

"Free Speech, First Amendment, And New Media For Cons And Festivals" From Pop Culture Business Handbook For Cons And Festivals, Jon Garon

Faculty Scholarship

This article is part of a series of book excerpts from The Pop Culture Business Handbook for Cons and Festivals, which provides the business, strategy, and legal reference guide for fan conventions, film festivals, musical festivals, and cultural events.Although most events are organized by private parties, the location of these events in public venues and the crowd management issues involving free speech make First Amendment and free speech issues a critical component of event management. This excerpt provides a framework for understanding the legal and security issues involving free speech at public events.

The Privacy Policymaking Of State Attorneys General, Danielle Keats Citron

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Present Of Newsworthiness, Amy Gajda

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

William H. Sorrell, Attorney General Of Vermont, Et Al. V. Ims Health Inc., Et Al. - Amicus Brief In Support Of Petitioners, Kevin Outterson, David Orentlicher, Christopher T. Robertson, Frank A. Pasquale

Faculty Scholarship

On April 26, 2011, the US Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the Vermont data mining case, Sorrell v. IMS Health Inc. Respondents claim this is the most important commercial speech case in a decade. Petitioner (the State of Vermont) argues this is the most important medical privacy case since Whalen v. Roe.

The is an amicus brief supporting Vermont, written by law professors and submitted on behalf of the New England Journal of Medicine

Second Class For The Second Time: How The Commercial Speech Doctrine Stigmatizes Commercial Use Of Aggregated Public Records, Brian N. Larson, Genelle I. Belmas

Faculty Scholarship

This Article argues that access to aggregated electronic public records for commercial use should receive protection under the First Amendment in the same measure as the speech acts the access supports. In other words, we view commercial access to aggregated public records as an essential means to valuable speech. For many, however, the taint of the commercial speech doctrine is turning all “information flows” into commercial ones. This, in turn, is threatening the access to government records.