Privacy Law | Open Access Articles | Digital Commons Network™

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 This article argues that such a prescription is outdated and archaic in light of today’s modern workplace filled with communications devices and systems that blur the distinction between work and personal life.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 …

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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 …

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Self, Privacy, And Power: Is It All Over?, Richard Warner, Robert H. Sloan Oct 2014

Self, Privacy, And Power: Is It All Over?, Richard Warner, Robert H. Sloan

All Faculty Scholarship

The realization of a multifaceted self is an ideal one strives to realize. One realizes such a self in large part through interaction with others in various social roles. Such realization requires a significant degree of informational privacy. Informational privacy is the ability to determine for yourself when others may collect and how they may use your information. The realization of multifaceted selves requires informational privacy in public. There is no contradiction here: informational privacy is a matter of control, and you can have such control in public. Current information processing practices greatly reduce privacy in public thereby threatening the …

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Self, Privacy, And Power: Is It All Over? (With R. Sloan), Richard Warner Dec 2013

Self, Privacy, And Power: Is It All Over? (With R. Sloan), Richard Warner

Richard Warner

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Flawed Transparency: Shared Data Collection And Disclosure Challenges For Google Glass And Similar Technologies, Jonathan I. Ezor Oct 2013

Flawed Transparency: Shared Data Collection And Disclosure Challenges For Google Glass And Similar Technologies, Jonathan I. Ezor

Jonathan I. Ezor

Current privacy law and best practices assume that the party collecting the data is able to describe and disclose its practices to those from and about whom the data are collected. With emerging technologies such as Google Glass, the information being collected by the wearer may be automatically shared to one or more third parties whose use may be substantially different from that of the wearer. Often, the wearer may not even know what information is being uploaded, and how it may be used. This paper will analyze the current state of U.S. law and compliance regarding personal information collection …

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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 …

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Minor Distractions: Children, Privacy And E-Commerce, Anita L. Allen Jan 2001