Privacy Law Commons^™

What's The Harm? Federalism, The Separation Of Powers, And Standing In Data Breach Litigation, Grayson Wells

Indiana Law Journal

This Comment will argue that the Supreme Court should analyze standing in data breach litigation under a standard that is deferential to state statutory and common law. Specifically, federal standing analysis should look to state law when determining whether an injury is concrete such that the injury-in-fact requirement is met. Some argue that allowing more data breach cases to proceed to the merits could lead to an explosion of successful litigation and settlements, burdening the federal courts and causing economic losses for the breached businesses. These concerns may be valid. But if state law provides a remedy to the harm …

Bitcoin Searches And Preserving The Third-Party Doctrine, Christine A. Cortez

St. Mary's Law Journal

Abstract forthcoming.

Eu Privacy Law And U.S. Surveillance: Solving The Problem Of Transatlantic Data Transfers, Peter Margulies

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Data Autonomy, Cesare Fracassi, William Magnuson

Faculty Scholarship

In recent years, “data privacy” has vaulted to the forefront of public attention. Scholars, policymakers, and the media have, nearly in unison, decried the lack of data privacy in the modern world. In response, they have put forth various proposals to remedy the situation, from the imposition of fiduciary obligations on technology platforms to the creation of rights to be forgotten for individuals. All these proposals, however, share one essential assumption: we must raise greater protective barriers around data. As a scholar of corporate finance and a scholar of corporate law, respectively, we find this assumption problematic. Data, after all, …

Data Autonomy, Cesare Fracassi, William Magnuson

Vanderbilt Law Review

In recent years, “data privacy” has vaulted to the forefront of public attention. Scholars, policymakers, and the media have, nearly in unison, decried the lack of data privacy in the modern world. In response, they have put forth various proposals to remedy the situation, from the imposition of fiduciary obligations on technology platforms to the creation of rights to be forgotten for individuals. All these proposals, however, share one essential assumption: we must raise greater protective barriers around data. As a scholar of corporate finance and a scholar of corporate law, respectively, we find this assumption problematic. Data, after all, …

Chinese Technology Platforms Operating In The United States: Assessing The Threat (Originally Published As A Joint Report Of The National Security, Technology, And Law Working Group At The Hoover Institution At Stanford University And The Tech, Law & Security Program At American University Washington College Of Law), Gary Corn, Jennifer Daskal, Jack Goldsmith, Chris Inglis, Paul Rosenzweig, Samm Sacks, Bruce Schneier, Alex Stamos, Vincent Stewart

Joint PIJIP/TLS Research Paper Series

No abstract provided.

Sales, Acquisitions, And Mergers Of Direct-To-Consumer Genetic Testing Companies: The Risks And A Solution, Alyssa K Mcleod

Texas A&M Law Review

Direct-to-consumer genetic tests have become increasingly popular in the United States within the last few years. However, these tests pose many risks to the consumer, most notably privacy risks. A subset of these privacy risks involves the issue of company mergers, acquisitions, and sales. Many companies in the direct-to-consumer genetic testing market have privacy policies that contain a variation of a “business transfer” clause. These clauses specify that in the event the company goes through a business transition such as a sale, merger, or acquisition, the consumer’s personal information—including the consumer’s DNA—will be among the assets transferred. This Article explores …

Fact Or Phallus? Considering The Constitutionality Of Texas's Cyber-Flashing Law Under The True Threat Doctrine, Brenna Cheyne Miller

Texas A&M Law Review

As societal reliance on digital and online communication continues to grow, courts are grappling with how best to provide legal recourse for novel, technology-related issues while still protecting American citizens’ First Amendment right to free speech. The State of Texas recently enacted Penal Code section 21.19, which criminalizes the transmission of unsolicited sexually explicit images to another person—or as it is commonly known, “cyber-flashing.” Cyber-flashing occurs through digital and online platforms, including text messages, apps, and social media. Section 21.19 is one of the first statutes of its kind in the United States. In the age of “dick pics,” this …

Privacy Losses As Wrongful Gains, Bernard Chao

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

Perhaps nowhere has the pace of technology placed more pressure on the law than in the area of data privacy. Huge data breaches fill our headlines. Companies often violate their own privacy policies by selling customer data, or by using the information in ways that fall outside their policy. Yet, even when there is indisputable misconduct, the law generally does not hold these companies accountable. That is because traditional legal claims are poorly suited for handling privacy losses.

Contract claims fail when privacy policies are not considered contractual obligations. Misrepresentation claims cannot succeed when customers never read and rely on …

Masthead, Editor-In- Chief

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

No abstract provided.

Brain-Computer-Interfacing & Respondeat Superior: Algorithmic Decisions, Manipulation, And Accountability In Armed Conflict, Salahudin Ali

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

This article examines the impact that brain-computer-interfacing platforms will have on the international law of armed conflict’s respondeat superior legal regime. Major Ali argues that the connection between the human brain and this nascent technology’s underlying technology of artificial intelligence and machine learning will serve as a disruptor to the traditional mental prerequisites required to impart culpability and liability on commanders for actions of their troops. Anticipating that BCI will become increasingly ubiquitous, Major Ali’s article offers frameworks for solution to BCI’s disruptive potential to the internal law of armed conflict.

Seeing (Platforms) Like A State: Digital Legibility And Lessons For Platform Governance, Neil Chilson

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

The growing backlash against Big Tech companies is a symptom of digital technology increasing the world’s legibility. James C. Scott’s book, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, explores how past governments responded to increased legibility – for good and for ill. This article shows how Scott’s historical lessons can guide governments and tech platforms as they seek to improve the human condition online.

Hybrid Ip Rights For Software, Apis, And Guis: Understanding Copyright's Paradigm Shift, Howard Skaist

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

The non-literal scope of protection for software is intricate legally and is intricate technical. Thus, despite literally decades of court decisions and a mountain of legal scholar written on the subject in that time, it appears that there is still no consistent agreement about it, as evidenced by the Google v. Oracle which has percolated in the courts for nearly a decade and is now being heard by the US Supreme Court (oral argument was on October 7, 2020). However, the thesis of this article that a legal construct is capable of being formulated that is analytically consistent and that …

"Times They Are A Changin'" - Can The Ad Tech Industry Survive In A Privacy Conscious World?, Meaghan Donahue

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

The "ad tech ecosystem" is a web of interconnected technologies and intermediaries that facilitate targeted advertising based on consumer data, and supports the free internet while providing users with promotional content relevant to their interests. However, in recent years, lawmakers and consumer advocates have highlighted the dangers associated with the unregulated use of consumer data for advertising purposes, prompting a flurry of legislative action at both the state and federal levels. These various laws and proposed bills impose new challenges on the ad tech industry--threatening to fundamentally change the way the business operates. However, through innovation and creative thinking, the …

Table Of Contents, Editor-In- Chief

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

No abstract provided.

Reasonable Expectations Of Privacy In An Era Of Drones And Deepfakes: Expanding The Supreme Court Of Canada’S Decision In R V Jarvis, Suzie Dunn, Kristen Mj Thomasen

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Perpetrators of Technology-Facilitated gender-based violence are taking advantage of increasingly automated and sophisticated privacy-invasive tools to carry out their abuse. Whether this be monitoring movements through stalker-ware, using drones to non-consensually film or harass, or manipulating and distributing intimate images online such as deep-fakes and creepshots, invasions of privacy have become a significant form of gender-based violence. Accordingly, our normative and legal concepts of privacy must evolve to counter the harms arising from this misuse of new technology. Canada’s Supreme Court recently addressed Technology-Facilitated violations of privacy in the context of voyeurism in R v Jarvis (2019). The discussion of …

A New Common Law Of Web Scraping, Benjamin L.W. Sobel

Lewis & Clark Law Review

The Clearview AI facial recognition scandal is a monumental breach of privacy that arrived at a particularly inopportune time. A shadowy company reportedly scraped billions of publicly-available images from social media platforms and compiled them into a facial recognition database that it made available to law enforcement and private industry. To make matters worse, the scandal came to light just months after the Ninth Circuit’s decision in hiQ v. LinkedIn, which held that scraping the public web probably does not violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). Before hiQ, the CFAA would have seemed like the surest route to …

Regulating Data Breaches: A Data Superfund Statute, Kyle Mckibbin

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law

Collecting and processing large amounts of personal data has become a fundamental feature of the modern economy. Personal data, combined with good data analytics, are valuable to businesses as they can provide highly detailed information about individual preferences and behaviors. This data collection can also be valuable to the consumer as it generates innovative products and digital platforms. The era of big data promises great rewards, but it is not without its costs. Data breaches, or the release of personal data into unwanted hands, are pervasive and increasingly massive in scale. Despite the personal privacy harm caused by data breaches, …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Catalyzing Privacy Law, Anupam Chander, Margot E. Kaminski, William Mcgeveran

Publications

The United States famously lacks a comprehensive federal data privacy law. In the past year, however, over half the states have proposed broad privacy bills or have established task forces to propose possible privacy legislation. Meanwhile, congressional committees are holding hearings on multiple privacy bills. What is catalyzing this legislative momentum? Some believe that Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which came into force in 2018, is the driving factor. But with the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) which took effect in January 2020, California has emerged as an alternate contender in the race to set the new standard for …

Agonistic Privacy & Equitable Democracy, Scott Skinner-Thompson

Publications

This Essay argues that legal privacy protections—which enable individuals to control their visibility within public space—play a vital role in disrupting the subordinating, antidemocratic impacts of surveillance and should be at the forefront of efforts to reform the operation of both digital and physical public space. Robust privacy protections are a touchstone for empowering members of different marginalized groups with the ability to safely participate in both the physical and digital public squares, while also preserving space for vibrant subaltern counterpublics. By increasing heterogeneity within the public sphere, privacy can also help decrease polarization by breaking down echo chambers and …

The Small-Er Screen: Youtube Vlogging And The Unequipped Child Entertainment Labor Laws, Amanda G. Riggio

Seattle University Law Review

Family vloggers are among the millions of content creators on YouTube. In general, vloggers frequently upload recorded videos of their daily lives. Family vloggers are unique because they focus their content around their familial relationships and the lives of their children. One set of family vloggers, the Ace Family, has recorded their children’s lives from the day they were born and continue to upload videos of each milestone, including “Elle Cries on Her First Rollercoaster Ride” and “Elle and Alaïa Get Caught Doing What!! **Hidden Camera**.” Another vlogging couple, Cole and Savannah LaBrant, post similar content, including videos titled “Baby …

Digital Gatekeepers, Thomas E. Kadri

Scholarly Works

If in William Blackstone's time we might have thought of a person's home as their castle, in Mark Zuckerberg's time we might say that their website is too. Under cyber-trespass laws like the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, courts have treated online platforms as digital gatekeepers--as property owners that may permit and restrict access to websites much like landowners may do with private land in the real world. If platforms withhold their consent through words or inference, cyber-trespass laws let them enforce their preferences about who may access their services and gather information from the internet. Concerned about reputations and …

Data Governance And The Elasticity Of Sovereignty, Roxana Vatanparast

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

Traditionally, the world map and territorially bounded spaces have dominated the ways in which we imagine how states govern, make laws, and exercise their authority. Under this conception, reflected in traditional international law principles of territorial sovereignty, each state would have exclusive authority to govern and make laws over everything concerning the land within its borders. Yet developments like the proliferation of data flows, which are based on divisible, mobile, and interconnected components of data, are not territorially bounded. This presents a challenge to the traditional bases for territorial sovereignty and jurisdiction under international law, which some scholars claim is …

Easing The Burdens Of A Patchwork Approach To Data Privacy Regulation In Favor Of A Singular Comprehensive International Solution—The International Data Privacy Agreement, Scott Resnick

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

Data privacy has become one of the premier hot-button issues in today’s increasingly digital human experience. Legislatures around the globe have attempted to act swiftly in an effort to safeguard the highly coveted personal information of their citizens and combat misuse at the hands of international businesses operating with an online presence. Since the European Union’s enactment of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in 2018, countries around the globe have been grappling with how best to replicate the EU’s leading data privacy regulation while providing the same or greater level of transparency into data collection practices. While a mere …

The Ftc And Ai Governance: A Regulatory Proposal, Michael Spiro

Seattle Journal of Technology, Environmental, & Innovation Law

No abstract provided.

Richard Susskind, Online Courts And The Future Of Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), David Cowan

Canadian Journal of Law and Technology

There are times when the essential nature of something is simply viewed as ‘nice to have’ until a paradigmatic shift turns the essential into a necessity, and necessity in technological change is not so much the mother of invention as the parent of behavioural change. This point is made clear by the Covid-19 pandemic, which has forced courts to put online and remote working at centre stage. There is a natural yearning to go back to ‘normal,’ but questions arise as to whether online courts are a good idea and whether attempts to work online and remotely will survive the …

Data Of The Dead: A Proposal For Protecting Posthumous Data Privacy, Kate C. Ashley

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.

Enough Is As Good As A Feast, Noah C. Chauvin

Seattle University Law Review

Ipse Dixit, the podcast on legal scholarship, provides a valuable service to the legal community and particularly to the legal academy. The podcast’s hosts skillfully interview guests about their legal and law-related scholarship, helping those guests communicate their ideas clearly and concisely. In this review essay, I argue that Ipse Dixit has made a major contribution to legal scholarship by demonstrating in its interview episodes that law review articles are neither the only nor the best way of communicating scholarly ideas. This contribution should be considered “scholarship,” because one of the primary goals of scholarship is to communicate new ideas.

Preservation Requests And The Fourth Amendment, Armin Tadayon

Seattle University Law Review

Every day, Facebook, Twitter, Google, Amazon, ridesharing companies, and numerous other service providers copy users’ account information upon receiving a preservation request from the government. These requests are authorized under a relatively obscure subsection of the Stored Communications Act (SCA). The SCA is the federal statute that governs the disclosure of communications stored by third party service providers. Section 2703(f) of this statute authorizes the use of “f” or “preservation” letters, which enable the government to request that a service provider “take all necessary steps to preserve records and other evidence in its possession” while investigators seek valid legal process. …