Privacy Law Commons^™

Defamation, Privacy, And The First Amendment: Cases & Problems (3rd Ed.), George Biashvili

Books

I created this resource in anticipation of teaching my Torts II class, which will primarily explore defamation and privacy torts. Though I searched for a suitable coursebook, I found that none contained all of the opinions I consider essential for teaching the nuances and complexities of these subjects. Additionally, I wanted to spare my students the exorbitant price tags associated with traditional law school texts. Hence, I assembled a collection of relevant privacy and defamation cases that align with the objectives of my course. Each case is accompanied by a set of questions to further stimulate class discussion. Where I …

From Privacy To The Data Economy: The Ftc’S Reframing Of Its Regulatory Priorities, Maria P. Angel

Scholarly Works

This Article argues that the Federal Trade Commission’s turn to “commercial surveillance” reflects a strategic shift away from traditional privacy frameworks toward addressing structural power dynamics in the data economy. Drawing on an analysis of 112 FTC documents, it identifies three core commitments: tackling systemic harms, adopting a political economy lens, and constraining corporate power. The Article contends that this reframing is both necessary in the AI age and should influence the future of privacy regulation in the United States, even amid efforts to limit the FTC’s authority.

Trademark Expansion As An Avenue To Protect Personal Identity Amidst The Rise Of Deepfake Technology, Abigail Sawyer

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

Recent technological advances, often referred to as deepfakes, pose a new legal conundrum. How can individuals protect their identities online? A deepfake is a manufactured image, video, or audio file that appears to attribute words or acts to someone that has never acted in such a manner. Already this technology has been used to extort money and in attempts to spread false information and sway elections. As technology continues to improve, these deepfakes will only become increasingly more convincing. Traditional approaches to identity protection do not address all the various harms or the multi-jurisdictional nature of the harms that deepfakes …

Brokered Violence: Safety For Sale In The Free Marketplace Of Data, Sam Adler, Thomas E. Kadri, Chinmayi Sharma

Popular Media

This article exposes how the unregulated data broker industry fuels violence by selling detailed personal information gathered from public records, social media, and private sources. Drawing on the Minnesota assassinations and other cases, it shows how such data enables stalking, harassment, and targeted attacks. The piece critiques state and federal laws like California’s DELETE Act and New Jersey’s Daniel’s Law for leaving victims to navigate slow, fragmented removal processes. It proposes a centralized victim registry with rapid compliance requirements, shifting responsibility to brokers. Finally, it challenges the industry’s First Amendment defense, urging legal reforms that prioritize public safety over commercial …

The Law Of Digital Resurrection, Victoria J. Haneman

Scholarly Works

The digital right to be dead has yet to be recognized as an important legal right. Artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and nanotechnology have progressed to the point that personal data can be used to resurrect the deceased in digital form with appearance, voice, emotion, and memory recreated to allow interaction with a digital app, chat bot, or avatar that may be indistinguishable from that with a living person. Users may now have a completely immersive experience simply by loading the personal data of the deceased into a neural network to create a chatbot that inherits features and idiosyncrasies of the …

Techno-Legal Solutionism: Regulating Children's Online Safety In The United States, Maria P. Angel, Danah Boyd

Scholarly Works

Convinced that social media is directly harming children, policymakers have started to introduce legislation that requires technology companies to be safe by design through “duty of care” provisions. Unlike regulations that focus on product safety, these bills incorporate technosolutionist logics into regulation by presuming that technology companies can remedy complex harms like mental health duress and bullying if their products were only designed better. In this paper, we unpack the theory of change at the center of the “duty of care” included in the “Kids Online Safety Act” (KOSA). We argue that techno-legal solutionism is both ineffective as a framework …

Redefining The Injury-In-Fact: Treating Personally Identifying Information As Bailed Property, Austin Headrick

Georgia Law Review

There is a long-existing circuit split among federal courts of appeals as to whether an individual has standing under Article III of the United States Constitution when their personally identifying information (PII) is stolen from an entity to which they entrusted it such as a hospital or bank. Federal courts disagree as to whether an individual whose PII has been stolen—without more—has suffered an injury-in-fact, a necessary element of standing. The disagreement between the courts centers on whether the injury-in-fact has already occurred at the time the PII is stolen or whether the injury occurs once the PII has been …

Privacy's Algorithmic Turn, Maria P. Angel

Scholarly Works

As algorithms have taken over contemporary society, a portion of American privacy law scholars has gradually transformed information privacy into a post- algorithmic concept. Besides enabling individuals to protect their autonomy and attain certain collective benefits, these scholars now expect information privacy to act as the government's tool to protect society against data extraction and its consequent power asymmetries. This Article presents evidence of this transfor- mation-here referred to as "privacy's algorithmic turn"-, identifying its two main features: (1) a change in what is usually considered privacy harms, and (2) a transformation of the tools proposed to protect privacy. Additionally, …

Brokered Abuse, Thomas E. Kadri

Scholarly Works

This chapter examines how data brokers, companies that collect, sell, and trade personal information, enable and intensify interpersonal abuse. The article analyzes the data brokerage industry’s role in undermining personal obscurity, the relative safety that comes from being difficult to find or understand, and explores how current laws not only fail to address these harms but can make them worse. The chapter argues that existing privacy regimes, particularly those requiring victims to request data removal from individual brokers, impose psychological burdens and can retraumatize victims.

Distinguishing Privacy Law: A Critique Of Privacy As Social Taxonomy, Maria P. Angel, Ryan Calo

Scholarly Works

What distinguishes violations of privacy from other harms? This has proven a surprisingly difficult question to answer. For over a century, privacy law scholars labored to define the illusive concept of privacy. Then they gave up. Efforts at distinguishing privacy came to be superseded at the turn of the millennium by a new approach: a taxonomy of privacy problems grounded in social recognition. Privacy law became the field that simply studies whatever courts or scholars talk about as related to privacy.

And it worked. Decades into privacy as social taxonomy, the field has expanded to encompass a broad range of …

Section 230 Reform, Liberalism, And Their Discontents, Mateusz Blaszczyk

Scholarly Works

The Section 230 debate is a proxy for reevaluating constitutional fundamentals. The modern right and the modern left, both attacking Section 230, have abandoned liberalism, together with free speech, public private divide, and the politics of neutrality. Instead of believing in First Amendment value pluralism, each side of the spectrum wishes to realize their own positive normative vision for the political community which, today, is largely defined in the realm of digital culture. Each side recognizes the political other as an enemy to their own utopia, wishing to control, censor, or simply become sovereign thereover. These existential politics of the …

I Spy With My Little--Gps Tracking Device: Why Georgia Should Look To The United Kingdom's Domestic Violence Laws To Deter Innovative Abuses Of Technology, Tyerus Skala

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Does The Right To Privacy Apply To Facial Biometrics? Specifically, When Analyzed Under The European Convention On Human Rights, Grace Callanan

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Private Lives At Home And Public Lives In Court: Protecting The Privacy Of Federal Judges' Home Addresses, Hannah Elias Sbaity

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

Targeted murders of federal judges and their families at their private homes date back to May 29, 1979. Most recently, in July 2020, Judge Esther Salas’s only son, Daniel, was murdered and her husband near-fatally shot at their home. Individuals wishing to inflict such harm or death at federal judges’ homes have been able to do so because of federal judges’ publicly available home addresses. Because personally identifying information (PII) is defined differently from statute to statute, home addresses largely remain public information in most states and can be found in real estate records, data broker websites, social media platforms, …

A Deep Dive Into Technical Encryption Concepts To Better Understand Cybersecurity & Data Privacy Legal & Policy Issues, Anthony Volini

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

Lawyers wishing to exercise a meaningful degree of leadership at the intersection of technology and the law could benefit greatly from a deep understanding of the use and application of encryption, considering it arises in so many legal scenarios. For example, in FTC v. Wyndham1 the defendant failed to implement nearly every conceivable cybersecurity control, including lack of encryption for stored data, resulting in multiple data breaches and a consequent FTC enforcement action for unfair and deceptive practices. Other examples of legal issues requiring use of encryption and other technology concepts include compliance with security requirements of GLBA & HIPAA, …

Bird's-Eye View: A Comparative Examination Of Drone Regulation Through The Lens Of Privacy Protection, Allison Mcgregor

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

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 …

Accountability Of Google And Other Businesses In Colombia: Personal Data Protection In The Digital Age, Maria P. Angel, Vivian Newman-Pont

Scholarly Works

In this document we analyze the privacy policies of 30 companies with data-driven business models that collect data in Colombia and identify practices that have not been sufficiently contemplated by the personal data protection regime currently applicable in our country. But what has been done in Colombia to guarantee these rights in the digital economy framework? In this document, we explore the degree of preparedness of our legal personal data protection regime and data protection authorities for tackling the risks that the digital era poses to different values and rights, thereby holding accountable the companies with data-driven business models (DDBM). …

Mind Your Businesses: Why Georgia Companies Should Worry About European Privacy Law, Emily E. Seaton

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

The End Of Miller’S Time: How Sensitivity Can Categorize Third-Party Data After Carpenter, Michael Gentithes

Georgia Law Review

For over 40 years, the Supreme Court has permitted
government investigators to warrantlessly collect
information that citizens disclose to third-party service
providers. That third-party doctrine is under significant
strain in the modern, networked world. Yet scholarly
responses typically fall into unhelpfully extreme camps,
either championing an absolute version of the doctrine
or calling for its abolition. In Carpenter v. United
States, the Court suggested a middle road, holding that
some categories of data—such as digital location
information collected from cell phones—do not neatly
fall into the third-party doctrine’s dichotomy between
unprotected, disclosed information and protected,
undisclosed information. But the majority …

Cybersecurity, Shareholders, And The Boardroom: An Analysis Of Current And Proposed Measures For Protecting Corporate Intellectual Property, Kathryn V. Wymer

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

A Duty To Safeguard: Data Breach Litigation Through A Quasi-Bailment Lens, Miles Christian Skedvold

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

Victims And Press After War: Tensions Between Privacy, Historical Truth And Freedom Of Expression, Vivian Newman-Pont, Maria P. Angel, Maria Ximena Davila

Scholarly Works

The drive to conduct this research was born out of the tension that developed on May of 2017 in the context of the journalistic coverage of the exhumations of those who died in the Bojayá massacre.   Thus, this document has the purpose of asking and answering, from a socio-legal perspective, the following question: How can the events related to the armed conflict and to the transition to peace be narrated without violating the right to privacy of the victims? Or, how can a journalist record a dramatic event or recount an injuste that moves readers while respecting the limits of …

Judicial Oversight Of Interception Of Communications In The United Kingdom: An Historical And Comparative Analysis, David G. Barnum

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Simon Didn't Say: When Reconstruction Of A Private Search Goes Awry Under The Private Search Doctrine, John G. Chambers

Georgia Law Review

A privateparty conducting an unreasonablesearch of an
individual need not fear the Fourth Amendment as the
proscriptions therein are applicable against only the
government. The government, however, need not fear the
Fourth Amendment where it replicates that private party's
unreasonable search. As such, the Fourth Amendment is
not offended where the government directs the private

party to "reconstruct" its initial search. This
reconstruction doctrine breeds many questions in
application, particularly in the digital context. In
grappling with these questions, this Note demonstrates
that the current law provides no satisfying answers. It
proposes a new test to assess reconstructed private party …

The Georgia Open Records Law Electronic Signature Exception: The Intersection Of Privacy, Technology, And Open Records, Michael L. Van Cise

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

Balancing A Right To Be Forgotten With A Right To Freedom Of Expression In The Wake Of Google Spain V. Aepd, Shaniqua Singleton

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Taking A Bite Out Of Michael Vick's Publicity Rights: An Analysis Of How Teh Right Of Publicity Should Be Treated After A Celebrity Is Convicted Of A Crime, Stephen Reginald Fowler

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

Rights Of Publicity: A Practitioner's Enigma, Gil N. Peles Esq.

Journal of Intellectual Property Law

No abstract provided.

All Blogs Go To Heaven: Preserving Valuable Digital Assets Without The Uniform Fiduciary Access To Digital Assets Act's Removal Of Third Party Privacy Protections, Elizabeth D. Barwick

Georgia Law Review

In the age of the Internet, most of us live our lives largely online. As such, one would expect a concomitant increase in concern for privacy, but this is not necessarily the case. It seems that the instantaneous and anonymous nature of the Internet has given rise to thoughtless sharing that simply did not exist when it was necessary to put pen to paper. Understanding that a great deal of our day-to-day activities are now carried out over the Internet, it makes sense that our families and heirs would want or need access to our accounts in the event of …