Privacy Law Commons^™

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 …

Ban Cookie Banners: A Case Study In Tech Regulation, Kate Klonick

Faculty Publications

Few experiences on the modern internet are as universally reviled as the cookie banner. They clutter websites with pop-ups, interrupt user flow, make information harder to access, and demand repetitive, meaningless clicks. What was once heralded as a tool to advance individual autonomy and privacy has, in practice, become a daily annoyance that breeds cynicism with the very concept of consent itself. Cookie banners do not empower; they weary. They do not inform; they obscure. They do not prevent surveillance; they normalize it.

The tragedy of the cookie banner is that it embodies the best intentions but worst solutionism of …

Taxation Of Information And The Data Revolution, Yariv Brauner

UF Law Faculty Publications

Existing and universal income tax rules are inherently incompatible with an economy in which information-based transactions play a significant role. This Article contends that income taxation is incapable of taxing information effectively. It goes on to argue that this incapability currently necessitates reform, and it offers three viable paths to such reform: consumption taxation, data taxes, and formulary taxation. The Article concludes that formulary taxation is currently the most desirable and plausible path to effective reform, owing to its promise to best stabilize and maintain the legitimacy of the international tax regime.

24th Annual Open Government Summit 2022, Roger Williams University School Of Law, Rhode Island Office Of The Attorney General

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Law Library Blog (January 2021): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

Healthy Data Protection, Lothar Determann

Michigan Technology Law Review

Modern medicine is evolving at a tremendous speed. On a daily basis, we learn about new treatments, drugs, medical devices, and diagnoses. Both established technology companies and start-ups focus on health-related products and services in competition with traditional healthcare businesses. Telemedicine and electronic health records have the potential to improve the effectiveness of treatments significantly. Progress in the medical field depends above all on data, specifically health information. Physicians, researchers, and developers need health information to help patients by improving diagnoses, customizing treatments and finding new cures.

Yet law and policymakers are currently more focused on the fact that health …

Saving America’S Privacy Rights: Why Carpenter V. United States Was Wrongly Decided And Why Courts Should Be Promoting Legislative Reform Rather Than Extending Existing Privacy Jurisprudence, David Stone

St. Mary's Law Journal

Privacy rights are under assault, but the Supreme Court’s judicial intervention into the issue, starting with Katz v. United States and leading to the Carpenter v. United States decision has created an inconsistent, piecemeal common law of privacy that forestalls a systematic public policy resolution by Congress and the states. In order to reach a satisfactory and longlasting resolution of the problem consistent with separation of powers principles, the states should consider a constitutional amendment that reduces the danger of pervasive technologyaided surveillance and monitoring, together with a series of statutes addressing each new issue posed by technological change as …

Confiding In Con Men: U.S. Privacy Law, The Gdpr, And Information Fiduciaries, Lindsey Barrett

Seattle University Law Review

In scope, ambition, and animating philosophy, U.S. privacy law and Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation are almost diametric opposites. The GDPR’s ambitious individual rights, significant prohibitions, substantive enforcement regime, and broad applicability contrast vividly with a scattershot U.S. regime that generally prioritizes facilitating commerce over protecting individuals, and which has created perverse incentives for industry through anemic enforcement of the few meaningful limitations that do exist. A privacy law that characterizes data collectors as information fiduciaries could coalesce with the commercial focus of U.S. law, while emulating the GDPR’s laudable normative objectives and fortifying U.S. consumer privacy law with a …

Privacy Statements Under The Gdpr, Mike Hintze

Seattle University Law Review

The need to include specific types of information in a privacy statement is a GDPR compliance obligation that does not get as much attention as some other GDPR requirements. Perhaps that is because privacy statements have been much maligned in recent years. They are too long and full of legalese. Nobody reads them. They are part of a notice and consent approach to privacy that puts an unrealistic burden on consumers to make informed choices. But despite these well-known criticisms, the GDPR doubles down on privacy statements. In fact, gauging by the roughly fourfold increase in privacy statement requirements compared …

The Future Of Facial Recognition Is Not Fully Known: Developing Privacy And Security Regulatory Mechanisms For Facial Recognition In The Retail Sector, Elias Wright

Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal

In recent years, advances in facial recognition technology have resulted in a rapid expansion in the prevalence of private sector biometric technologies. Facial recognition, while providing new potentials for safety and security and personalized marketing by retailers implicates complicated questions about the nature of consumer privacy and surveillance where a “collection imperative” incentivize corporate actors to accumulate increasingly massive reservoirs of consumer data. However, the law has not yet fully developed to address the unique risks to consumers through the use of this technology. This Note examines existing regulatory mechanisms, finding that consumer sensitivities and the opaque nature of the …

A Comment On Privacy And Accountability In Black-Box Medicine, Carl E. Schneider

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

Human institutions and activities cannot avoid failures. Anxiety about them often provokes governments to try to prevent those failures. When that anxiety is vivid and urgent, government may do so without carefully asking whether regulation’s costs justify their benefits. Privacy and Accountability in Black Box Medicine admirably labors to bring discipline and rationality to thinking about an important development — the rise of “black-box medicine” — before it causes injuries regulation should have prevented and before it is impaired by improvident regulation. That is, Privacy and Accountability weighs the costs against the benefits of various forms of regulation across the …

"I Want My File": Surveillance Data, Minimization, And Historical Accountability, Douglas Cox

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Trust: A Model For Disclosure In Patent Law, Ari Ezra Waldman

Articles & Chapters

How to draw the line between public and private is a foundational, first-principles question of privacy law, but the answer has implications for intellectual property, as well. This project is the first in a series of papers about first-person disclosures of information in the privacy and intellectual property law contexts, and it defines the boundary between public and non-public information through the lens of social science — namely, principles of trust.

Patent law’s “public use” bar confronts the question of whether legal protection should extend to information previously disclosed to a small group of people. I present evidence that shows …

Trending @ Rwu Law: Linn F. Freedman's Post: The Goal Of Gender Equality In Cybersecurity 08/23/2016, Linn F. Freedman

Law School Blogs

No abstract provided.

Trending @ Rwu Law: Professor David Coombs's Post: Veterans Court's Decision Will Affect Rwu Law's Veterans Disability Field Clinic: 02-24-2016, David Coombs

Law School Blogs

No abstract provided.

Newsroom: Freedman On Credit Reports 02-12-2016, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Privacy And Accountability In Black-Box Medicine, Roger Allan Ford, W. Nicholson Price Ii

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

Black-box medicine—the use of big data and sophisticated machine-learning techniques for health-care applications—could be the future of personalized medicine. Black-box medicine promises to make it easier to diagnose rare diseases and conditions, identify the most promising treatments, and allocate scarce resources among different patients. But to succeed, it must overcome two separate, but related, problems: patient privacy and algorithmic accountability. Privacy is a problem because researchers need access to huge amounts of patient health information to generate useful medical predictions. And accountability is a problem because black-box algorithms must be verified by outsiders to ensure they are accurate and unbiased, …

Social Media And The Job Market: How To Reconcile Applicant Privacy With Employer Needs, Peter B. Baumhart

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In the modern technological age, social media allows us to communicate vast amounts of personal information to countless people instantaneously. This information is valuable to more than just our “friends” and “followers,” however. Prospective employers can use this personal data to inform hiring decisions, thereby maximizing fit and minimizing potential liability. The question then arises, how best to acquire this information? For job applicants, the counter-question is how best to protect the privacy of their social media accounts. As these two competing desires begin to clash, it is important to find a method to mediate the conflict. Existing privacy law, …

Electronic Privacy Information Center V. National Security Agency: How Glomar Responses Benefit Businesses And Provide An Epic Blow To Individuals, Joshua R. Chazen

Journal of Business & Technology Law

No abstract provided.

Four Privacy Myths, Neil M. Richards

Scholarship@WashULaw

Any discussion about privacy today inevitably confronts a series of common arguments about the futility of privacy in our digital age. "Privacy is Dead," we hear, and "people (especially young ones) don’t care about privacy." What’s more, privacy just protects bad behavior because those of us with "nothing to hide have nothing to fear." And anyway, the argument goes, new privacy laws would be bad policy since "privacy is bad for business."

There are other common claims, but these four are perhaps the most common. They are also myths, and in this essay I show why. First, privacy can’t be …

Rethinking Reporter's Privilege, Ronnell Andersen Jones

Michigan Law Review

Forty years ago, in Branzburg v. Hayes, the Supreme Court made its first and only inquiry into the constitutional protection of the relationship between a reporter and a confidential source. This case - decided at a moment in American history in which the role of an investigative press, and of information provided by confidential sources, was coming to the forefront of public consciousness in a new and significant way - produced a reporter-focused "privilege" that is now widely regarded to be both doctrinally questionable and deeply inconsistent in application. Although the post-Branzburg privilege has been recognized as flawed in a …

The Politics Of Privacy In The Criminal Justice System: Information Disclosure, The Fourth Amendment, And Statutory Law Enforcement Exemptions, Erin Murphy

Michigan Law Review

When criminal justice scholars think of privacy, they think of the Fourth Amendment. But lately its domain has become far less absolute. The United States Code currently contains over twenty separate statutes that restrict both the acquisition and release of covered information. Largely enacted in the latter part of the twentieth century, these statutes address matters vital to modern existence. They control police access to driver's licenses, educational records, health histories, telephone calls, email messages, and even video rentals. They conform to no common template, but rather enlist a variety of procedural tools to serve as safeguards - ranging from …

Surrender And Subordination: Birth Mothers And Adoption Law Reform, Elizabeth J. Samuels

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

For more than thirty years, adoption law reform advocates have been seeking to restore for adult adoptees the right to access their original birth certificates, a right that was lost in all but two states between the late 1930s and 1990. The advocates have faced strong opposition and have succeeded only in recent years and only in eight states. Among the most vigorous advocates for access are birth mothers who surrendered their children during a time it was believed that adoption would relieve unmarried women of shame and restore them to a respectable life. The birth mother advocates say that …

Geographically Restricted Streaming Content And Evasion Of Geolocation: The Applicability Of The Copyright Anticircumvention Rules, Jerusha Burnett

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

A number of methods currently exist or are being developed to determine where Internet users are located geographically when they access a particular webpage. Yet regardless of the precautions taken by website operators to limit the locations from which they allow access, it is likely that users will find ways to gain access to restricted content. Should the evasion of geolocation constitute circumvention of access controls so that § 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA") applies? Because location data can properly be considered personally identifiable information ("PII"), this Note argues that § 1201 should not apply absent a …

Information Escrows, Ian Ayres, Cait Unkovic

Michigan Law Review

A variety of information escrows - including allegation escrows, suspicion escrows, and shared-interest escrows - hold the promise of reducing the first-mover disadvantage that can deter people with socially valuable private information from disclosing that information to others. Information escrows allow people to transmit sensitive information to a trusted intermediary, an escrow agent, who only forwards the information under prespecified conditions. For example, an allegation escrow for sexual harassment might allow a victim to place a private complaint into escrow with instructions that the complaint be lodged with the proper authorities only if the escrow agent receives at least one …

Privacy Policies, Terms Of Service, And Ftc Enforcement: Broadening Unfairness Regulation For A New Era, G. S. Hans

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

This Note examines website privacy policies in the context of FTC regulation. The relevant portion of Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act, 15 U.S.C. § 45(a), uses the following language to define the scope of the agency's regulatory authority: "Unfair methods of competition in or affecting commerce, and unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce, are hereby declared unlawful." Specifically, this Note analyzes the FTC's power to regulate unfair practices (referred to as the FTC's "unfairness power") granted by Section 5, and also discusses the deception prong of Section 5, which allows the agency to …

Property As Control: The Case Of Information, Jane B. Baron

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

If heath policy makers' wishes come true, by the end of the current decade the paper charts in which most of our medical information is currently recorded will be replaced by networked electronic health records ("EHRs").[...] Like all computerized records, networked EHRs are difficult to secure, and the information in EHRs is both particularly sensitive and particularly valuable for commercial purposes. Sadly, the existing federal statute meant to address this problem, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 ("HIPAA"), is probably inadequate to the task.[...] Health law, privacy, and intellectual property scholars have all suggested that the river …

No Cause Of Action: Video Surveillance In New York City, Olivia J. Greer

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

In 2010, New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly announced a new network of video surveillance in the City. The new network would be able to prevent future terrorist attacks by identifying suspicious behavior before catastrophic events could take place. Kelly told reporters, "If we're looking for a person in a red jacket, we can call up all the red jackets filmed in the last 30 days," and "[w]e're beginning to use software that can identify suspicious objects or behaviors." Gothamist later made a witticism of Kelly's statement, remarking, "Note to terrorists: red jackets are not a good look for …

Protecting Anonymous Expression: The Internet's Role In Washington State's Disclosure Laws And The Direct Democracy Process, Karen Cullinane

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Note proposes that the Washington State Legislature amend its Public Records Act to exempt from public disclosure personal information legally required to be disclosed by signers of referendum petitions. This Note also proposes that the Washington State Legislature designate an electronic system, to be detailed in its election law, by which referendum petitions can be checked for fraud without violating the right to anonymous expression protected by the First Amendment. Part I describes Washington State's referendum process and the path of Doe v. Reed, the case animating the reform presented in this Note. Part II illustrates how the rise …

A Path Toward User Control Of Online Profiling, Tracy A. Steindel

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

Online profiling is "the practice of tracking information about consumers' interests by monitoring their movements online." A primary purpose of online profiling is to "deliver advertising tailored to the individual's interests," a practice known as online behavioral advertising (OBA). In order to accomplish this, publishers and advertisers track a individual's online behavior using cookies and other means. Publishers and advertisers aggregate the information, often compile it with information from offline sources, and sort individuals into groups based on characteristics such as age, income, and hobbies. Advertisers can then purchase access to these consumer groups, controlling their selections with such specificity …