Science and Technology Law Commons^™

Deepfakes As Tools For Domestic Violence: Toward A Comprehensive Federal Response To Nonconsensual Deepfake Intimate Imagery, Laura Reitze

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

The rise of deepfake technology poses a novel and uniquely insidious manner of perpetrating domestic violence. Nonconsensual intimate imagery (NCII) abuse and “sextortion” are nothing new. But the increasing accessibility of deepfake technology makes it easier for abusers to carry out these forms of violence, sometimes simply with access to publicly available images of a person. As the technology rapidly evolves, the law has struggled to keep up.

This Note explores how existing law inadequately addresses emerging deepfake technology as it relates to domestic violence. Noting the origins of deepfakes in NCII, it begins with an exploration of the connection …

Reimagining International Investment Law For The Age Of Minerals, Taylor Nchako

Washington and Lee Law Review

New technologies––from artificial intelligence (AI) and electric vehicles to medical devices and consumer electronics––demand an ever-increasing amount of minerals like lithium, cobalt, and copper. The United States requires these aptly named “critical” minerals to develop AI infrastructure, advance the clean energy transition, and remain economically competitive. As technology continues to advance at an astonishing pace, the U.S. has grown increasingly interested in securing critical minerals from sources in Africa. To obtain critical minerals, the U.S. must utilize investment treaties in its business dealings with African countries. At the same time, international investment law has garnered increased attention due to a …

Generative Adversarial Discrimination, Josh Fairfield

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

Anti-discrimination law assumes that discrimination can be detected and rectified, that the evidentiary burden of the plaintiff can in fact be met. But the evolutionary logic of AI training causes it to target vulnerable groups, lie about reasoning, and above all resist detection. Because of hidden core prompts in generative AI systems, and how those prompts interact with the nature of AI training and deployment, AI will often actively hide discrimination rather than surface and address it. Stopping this will be difficult. At present, neither humans or AI can detect this emergent dark-pattern behavior. Without legal intervention, the broad use …

Scraping Bad: The Case For A Unified Scraping Framework, Eunchong Moses Park

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

This Note explores the growing legal and regulatory landscapes of web scraping in the United States and argues that web scraping should be regulated through a unified federal framework tailored to its unique technological and economic realities. Web scraping allows organizations to collect massive amounts of data essential to their operational needs—often without the consent of data holders. Thus, web scraping has become a powerful engine of innovation used across virtually every sector of the economy but with a serious risk to privacy and property interests. Yet the current U.S. legal framework lacks a coherent regulating structure. Courts and litigants …

The Last Human Question: Generative Ai's Existential Threat To Consensus And Law, Joshua Fairfield

Scholarly Articles

The true risk of artificial intelligence (“AI”) is not that the toasters will rise up. It is that AI will be competent to perform human tasks and indifferent to human welfare. The risk is that we will be outcompeted by generative automated processes that create output similar to ours (although never the same, as this Article explains), but which need none of the outputs of the economy for food, shelter, or human flourishing. Further, a more precise and existential description of the threat is that generative AI will disrupt and crowd out humanity’s evolutionary superpower, our ability to generate agreement …

Dignity By Design: A Human-Centered Framework For Ethical Ai, Armin Tadayon

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

The launch of ChatGPT in November 2022 has triggered a global arms race–both among private technology companies and between nation states–for dominance in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI). If this nascent technology, which is permeating every aspect of our lives as more companies across multiple sectors deploy it for a variety of functions, malfunctions or behaves in unanticipated ways, it can severely affect individuals in their day-to-day lives with broader consequences for society at large. As such, as AI permeates every aspect of our lives, and in some instances, begins to replace humans and human decision-making, it is imperative …

Global Supply Chain Resilience In Emerging Technologies: A Case Study Of Bitcoin Mining, Kishanthi Parella, Carla L. Reyes

Scholarly Articles

The United States has put into motion bold plans in critical and emerging technologies to bolster its national and economic security.  For example, the federal government created a national bitcoin strategic reserve and a stockpile of other cryptocurrency; while several states have committed to or are considering similar goals.  However, the security of these reserves is dependent on two types of supply chains within the Bitcoin mining industry: analogue supply chains, relating to the physical components needed for Bitcoin mining, and data supply chains, relating to the complex and layered logistical network of actors that create input into …

Immortal Justice: Why The Henrietta Lacks Family Merits Restitution Today, Suzette Malveaux

Scholarly Articles

Almost three quarters of a century have passed since Henrietta Lacks had her cells biopsied from her cervix without her knowledge or consent. Upon discovering that Henrietta’s cells were immortal, scientists have been able to solve the most vexing medical problems of modern times and save countless lives worldwide. Aware of the cells’ scandalous origins, big pharma has nonetheless commercialized and wildly profited from the HeLa cell line without sharing the benefit with Henrietta’s family, who has been left traumatized and destitute by the initial theft.

Despite the passage of time, Henrietta’s family is seeking restitution today from pharmaceutical companies …

Rebooting Administrative Enforcement For The Information Economy, Nina-Simone Edwards

Library Scholarship

This concept paper considers how to strengthen the enforcement of public mandates to deter harmful practices and business models. The paper offers principles for reinvigorated enforcement such as enhanced visibility, the increased use of design as a remedial lever, and personal responsibility for responsible individuals, not only the corporations that employ them.

To advance these principles, we call for new or amended laws that require companies to document how policy becomes code, grant agencies authority to order design changes to products and services, create pathways for charging responsible individuals, and cabin some forms of prosecutorial discretion. We would support these …

Legitimacy And Accountability In The Information-Era Administrative State, Nina-Simone Edwards

Library Scholarship

The current assault on administrative institutions and the rapid influx of automated “solutions” have exacerbated the problems of a system that was already buckling under the strains of functional opacity, technical opacity, unequal access and influence, process proliferation and paralysis, and inaction. An overarching reason for the legitimacy and accountability challenges confronting the administrative state is a paradigm for administrative legitimacy and accountability that is court-centered and no longer fit for purpose.

In this concept paper, we describe two core requirements of legitimacy and accountability–which, as we will explain, are interdependent concepts–and then articulate three component requirements–transparency and demystification, care …

Face Card Declined: The Deepfake Threat To Biometric Security In Financial Systems, Hazel Fernandez

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

Once limited to entertainment and disinformation, deepfakes are now extending into the financial sector, where voice and facial impersonations exploit biometric authentication systems to facilitate fraudulent transactions. This evolution exposes gaps in existing legal and regulatory frameworks, raising critical questions about consumer protection and institutional safeguards. This Note argues for a reconceptualization of deepfake harms as both a privacy and a financial security issue. It examines the illusion of consent generated by synthetic impersonation and insufficient statutory protections. The analysis examines the patchwork of federal, state, and international laws governing data privacy and artificial media, highlighting the gaps that allow …

Data Privacy At The Border: How To Balance National Security Concerns And Privacy Interests When Conducting Forensic Border Searches Of Electronic Devices, Eleni Filley

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

Do you know where your phone is? Can you describe the last five pictures in your camera roll? How many websites have you visited this month? Cell phones are an extension of our person and contain some of our most private data: location, banking, loved ones, sleep statistics, reproductive information, and more. As our technology develops, so too should our laws. This Note explores the lack of privacy protections at the U.S. border and how susceptible our data is to a government search. A Supreme Court ruling recognizing the unique piece of property a cell phone represents, even at a …

Life In Limbo: Cryptocurrency And Fosta As The Pillars Of Cyber-Trafficking, Rebecca Liu

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

As the internet continually advances into Web 3.0, human traffickers thrive in using online platforms to prey on their victims, creating a new form of human trafficking: cyber-trafficking. In 2018, Congress passed the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (“FOSTA”) to dampen the stringent protection that 47 U.S.C. § 230 (“Section 230”) offered to internet intermediaries in cyber-trafficking litigation. However, Congress’s intended effect in passing FOSTA failed, as courts continue to interpret FOSTA narrowly, upholding the stringent protection that Section 230 offers internet intermediaries. Beyond FOSTA’s indifferent impact, governmental bodies struggle adapting to Web 3.0’s landscape, neglecting to intervene with traffickers’ …

Preserving Pixels: The Dmca And The Quest To Preserve Video Gaming’S Legacy, Samantha Ennis

Washington and Lee Law Review

Video games have fundamentally transformed how humans learn, play, and connect, becoming essential cultural artifacts that warrant careful preservation for present and future study. Yet, video game preservation has emerged as a critical challenge for cultural institutions as the medium rapidly evolves and early works become inaccessible due to technological obsolescence and legal barriers. Without immediate action to address the limitations of current Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”) exemptions for video game preservation, libraries, archives, and museums risk permanently losing access to historically significant games, with studies showing 87% of pre-2010 video games are already inaccessible. Congress should amend the …

Unraveling The War Powers Resolution’S Role In Cyber Warfare, Zach Irwin

Washington and Lee Law Review

The evolution of warfare in the digital age has transformed the battlefield. Conflicts are fought with advanced technology, and traditional combat activities grow increasingly obsolete. This shift raises a critical question: Has the existing legal framework, including foundational war powers legislation, kept pace with this technological transformation? In exploring the governance of cyber warfare under the War Powers Resolution, this Note begins by examining the unique characteristics and devastating potential of cyber warfare. The analysis then turns to the War Powers Resolution, providing a historical overview of its enactment, a textual analysis of its provisions, and an exploration of how …

Riding On Horseback To The Moon: Consent Searches In The Age Of Smartphones And Digital Tracking, Jonathan Kerr

Washington and Lee Law Review

In 2014, when the Supreme Court ruled in Riley v. California that police must get a warrant before conducting a search of a cell phone, Chief Justice John Roberts described comparing a search of data on a cell phone to a search of other physical items as “like saying a ride on horseback is materially indistinguishable from a flight to the moon.” A decade later, an overwhelming majority of Americans carry cell phones that contain an ever-expanding set of data showing their habits, routines, and the minutiae of their everyday lives, offering a potential wealth of information to law enforcement …

Regulating Robo-Advisors In An Age Of Generative Artificial Intelligence, Daniel Schwarcz, Tom Baker, Kyle Logue

Washington and Lee Law Review

New generative artificial intelligence (“AI”) tools can increasingly engage in personalized, sustained, and natural conversations with users. This technology has the capacity to reshape the financial services industry, making customized expert financial advice broadly available to consumers. However, AI’s ability to convincingly mimic human financial advisors also creates significant risks of large-scale financial misconduct. Which of these possibilities becomes reality will depend largely on the legal and regulatory rules governing “robo-advisors” that supply fully automated financial advice to consumers.

This Article consequently critically examines this evolving regulatory landscape, arguing that current U.S. rules fail to adequately limit the risk that …

Clean Data: Recursion As Pollution In Environmental Ai, Joshua Fairfield

Scholarly Articles

If “data is the new oil,” then corruption in the data used to train artificial intelligence (AI) constitutes a new form of pollution. Environmental AI has traditionally been discussed in terms of its indirect effects on the environment—the irony of burning power, processor cycles, and heat to produce solutions to stop and heal environmental damage. But there is a deeper problem. When environmental AI suggests interventions, its outputs are written onto the landscape. If that landscape is then read as data to retrain AI, there is a risk of model collapse and catastrophic forgetting, as the snake devours its own …

Foreword: 2024 Ira C. Rothgerber Jr. Conference: Artificial Intelligence And The Constitution, Suzette Malveaux

Scholarly Articles

For the first time, the Byron R. White Center for the Study of American Constitutional Law and the Silicon Flatirons Center for Law, Technology, and Entrepreneurship came together to hold a joint conference on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Constitution. We decided to merge our annual conferences to explore one of the most important and consequential intersections of our time: AI and the Constitution—topics we study and deeply care about. During this time of rapid and profound technological transformation, it is even more imperative that we come out of our academic silos and work together.

The partnership was destined. The …

Home—The Final Frontier: Why Privacy Means Protecting Workers' Rights To Time And Space, Joshua Fairfield, Amanda Reilly

Scholarly Articles

This article critiques the failure of current privacy frameworks to protect workers—especially teleworkers—from the growing encroachment of employer surveillance into their homes. It argues that prevailing privacy regimes, including notice-and-choice models and the GDPR, inadequately address the systemic power asymmetries in the employment relationship, often enabling rather than restricting invasive monitoring. Drawing from labor law traditions, the authors propose a rights-centered framework that views time and space as essential for human dignity and autonomy. They call for a non-negotiable floor of protections, including surveillance-free periods, bans on data commodification, and the establishment of an enforcement inspectorate. By reframing privacy not …

Faking It: A Proposed Solution To Counter Nonconsensual Pornographic Deepfakes, Rena Song

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

2024 Louise A. Halper Award Winner for Best Student Note.

Deepfakes have become popular due to their user-friendly nature and accessibility, allowing anyone to create one by installing deepfake software programs on their phones or laptops. Deepfake software programs allow creators to create hyper-realistic multimedia featuring anyone whose image they can find. Some industries have drawn positive uses from deepfakes; however, deepfakes also create harms that can have detrimental effects on people’s mental health, employment, and reputation. Women and children, including those without a large online presence, have become the target for nonconsensual pornographic deepfakes. Congress has yet to pass …

Unveiling The Environmental Impact Of Large Language Models On Indigenous Communities: A Call For Action And Liability, Nina-Simone Edwards

Library Scholarship

Large Language Models (LLMs) have rapidly gained popularity for their language generation and comprehension capabilities, promising increased efficiency in various sectors. However, while celebrated for their transformative potential, LLMs exacerbate current climate issues. This Article highlights the detrimental environmental footprint of LLMs, with a focus on their role in escalating climate change and their disproportionate effects on Indigenous communities. These communities, closely tied to their land, bear the brunt of environmental degradation, further aggravated by LLM-induced emissions.

This Article first dissects the interplay between environmental justice and technological innovation, advocating for a reevaluation of the trust relationship between tribal nations …

Mechanisms For Including Publics In Administrative Governance, Nina-Simone Edwards

Library Scholarship

This project’s fourth concept paper rethinks public participation in administrative processes. Although participation mechanisms are theoretically designed to enable those affected by regulations to influence their development, it is often extremely difficult for members of the public to meaningfully engage with agencies. After discussing institutional failures of current participation mechanisms, this report develops a set of principles to guide the redesign of public participation mechanisms. These include involving publics earlier in the process, building both public and regulatory capacity for meaningful, two-way communication, and reframing expertise as a public good.

The paper then proposes specific mechanisms to optimize communication between …

Designing Policymaking Mechanisms For Regulatory Dynamism, Nina-Simone Edwards

Library Scholarship

The project’s third concept paper focuses on the design of regulatory policymaking mechanisms that translate decisions about public values–such as “avoid deceiving consumers”–into operationalized forms that support iteration and experimentation. It outlines a set of foundational principles for a dynamic, effective regulatory toolkit that empowers regulators to act sooner, experiment, create governance seams, mandate beneficial friction, and extend regulatory authority in ways that mirror the scale and interdependence of digital supply chains.

To support this expanded regulatory toolkit, the paper recommends empowering regulators to mandate data flow restrictions, to develop design requirements for both user-facing and technical interfaces, to require …

Generative Artificial Intelligence And Copyright In The Film And Media Industry, Victor A. Oberting Iv

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

The development of generative artificial intelligence (“GAI” or “generative AI”) introduces compelling benefits and capabilities to filmmakers and artists, but also brings complications regarding copyright of creative works. The American film and media industry in particular illustrates the scope of GAI’s legal, economic, and ethical implications. Though GAI may exhibit characteristics of independent agency or intent, GAI models are best understood as a new set of tools that serve a diverse range of applications in the creative process. The potential benefits of this set of tools can only be realized, then, if the filmmakers who use them are not unreasonably …

Unfenced: The Fourth Circuit Gives Geofencing Its First Appellate Go-Ahead In United States V. Chatrie, Jordan Wallace-Wolf

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

In United States v. Chatrie, the Fourth Circuit issued the first federal appellate opinion on the Fourth Amendment status of geofencing queries. The opinion is significant because geofences present a conceptual challenge to the framework of Carpenter v. United States, the reigning Supreme Court precedent on the Fourth Amendment status of digital searches. That opinion held that long-term tracking of a target individual was a search. However, geofencing reveals information about an indeterminate number of individuals for only a short time, in virtue of their being at a target location during a target span of time. Does the …

Artificial Fiduciaries, Zhaoyi Li

Washington and Lee Law Review

The rapid development of technology in the last decade has affected all levels of society. Corporate governance has not been immune to these changes. In the future, Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) fiduciaries may be technologically capable of serving as independent corporate directors. This could be an effective way to address the challenge of the absence of truly independent directors in the traditional governance framework. Artificial fiduciaries could also offer a way to mitigate agency costs and improve overall corporate governance. However, traditional corporate law lacks solutions for coping with the integration of AI into corporate governance.

Currently, there is little scholarship …

Back To The Future: Revisiting State Constitutions To Protect Against New Technological Intrusions, Matthew Radford

Washington and Lee Law Review

The Fourth Amendment is crucial for protecting Americans from government intrusion. However, new technologies such as pole cameras, reverse keyword searches, and geofence searches provide new ways for governments to gather information about individuals. As these new technologies develop, the Fourth Amendment has struggled to advance alongside this new technology.

Thankfully, the Fourth Amendment is not the only protection Americans have from government intrusion. Every single state has its own state constitution and analog to the Federal Fourth Amendment. In fact, some states had their own analog amendments even before the adoption of the Federal Fourth Amendment. While oftentimes the …

The Brain Is In Your Court: Evaluating Intellectual Property Infringement Audience Through The Lens Of Neuroscience, Madyson Kent

Washington and Lee Law Review

To protect creations of the mind, the law needs to understand the mind. Thankfully, the rapidly emerging field of neuroscience provides an invaluable glimpse into the inner workings of the human brain. Now that scientific instruments provide a window into the living brain, it is time to reexamine the way intellectual property law decides the outcomes of infringement lawsuits.

Critically examining neuroscience in the context of the law helps to answer the most fundamental question in an intellectual property lawsuit: Was there infringement? A judicial hesitancy to understand the thought processes of artists and creators results in relying on the …

Slavery.Ai, Emile Loza De Siles

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

The artificial intelligence market is swarming. Supercharged start-ups, global tech giants, and increasingly algorithmic governments target diverse use cases with new and stunningly innovative AI applications coming online every day. Where people are the computational subjects of those algorithmic machinations, however, there is no law, present or effective, to protect them against great and propagating harms. Consequently, people become data production units, the commoditized of the Data Industrial Complex and unfree, unpaid inputs to AI production.

This Article shares a new and provocative vision. It theorizes that unregulated AI systems and uses are giving rise to an emergent form of …