Privacy Law Commons^™

Sharing More Than You Thought: Facebook Cannot Assert The Party Exception To Avoid Liability Under The Wiretap Act, Emily A. Jordan

Boston College Law Review

On April 9, 2020, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in Davis v. Facebook, Inc. (In re Facebook), held that unauthorized third parties receiving simultaneous, direct copies of a party’s communication do not fall within the scope of the Party Exception of the Wiretap Act, 18 U.S.C. § 2510–2523. In doing so, the Ninth Circuit, based its holding on the legislative history and purpose of the Wiretap Act and reasoned that the Party Exception requires a narrow construction. Further, it held that to interpret the exception as inclusive of actors like Facebook risks ...

Overruling Roe V. Wade: Lessons From The Death Penalty, Paul Benjamin Linton

Pepperdine Law Review

In Furman v. Georgia (1972), the Supreme Court struck down the Georgia and Texas death penalty statutes, thereby calling into question the validity of every other state death penalty statute. In their concurring opinions, Justices Brennan and Marshall expressed the view that, given society’s gradual abandonment of the death penalty, capital punishment violated the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of “cruel and unusual punishments.” Justice Powell and three other justices dissented, arguing that the Court had misread the state of the law regarding society’s acceptance of the death penalty. Four years after Furman, in a quintet of cases, the ...

Finders Keepers: Who Has Say Over Private Property In Space, Jose A. Martin Del Campo

Texas A&M Journal of Property Law

Current space law is unclear as to whether private entities may claim possession of resources extracted from their endeavors in outer space. The lack of certainty prevents private entities from entirely investing in infrastructure and capabilities to access new deposits of resources due to the depletion of minerals and resources on Earth. The establishment of a new space regime devoid of non-appropriation principles found in international law is necessary to motivate private entities to invest the capital in extracting and transporting space resources back to Earth. This Comment seeks to understand how the current framework of space law impacts the ...

Cloudy With A Chance Of Government Intrusion: The Third-Party Doctrine In The 21st Century, Steven Arango

Catholic University Law Review

Technology may be created by humans, but we are dependent on it. Look around you: what technology is near you as you read this abstract? An iPhone? A laptop? Perhaps even an Amazon Echo. What do all these devices have in common? They store data in the cloud. And this data can contain some of our most sensitive information, such as business records or medical documents.

Even if you manage this cloud storage account, the government may be able to search your data without a warrant. Federal law provides little protection for cloud stored data. And the Fourth Amendment may ...

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 ...

Surveillance Capitalism, William Hamilton

Journal of Technology Law & Policy

In 2019, Harvard Business School Professor Shoshana Zuboff published The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. What I hope to accomplish in this short presentation is to unpack some of the salient themes of this interesting, important book. I believe her book will lend context and urgency to this conference. Her book is a combination of excellent research, journalism, and scholarship. It is also a call, a plea, a supplication. Thus, the sub-title, The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power, presages an unrelenting critical study ...

Defending Face-Recognition Technology (And Defending Against It), Henry H. Perritt Jr.

Journal of Technology Law & Policy

This Article looks beneath the surface of attacks on face-recognition technology and explains how it can be an exceptionally useful tool for law enforcement, complementing traditional forensic evidence such as fingerprints and DNA. It punctures myths about the technology and explains how existing rules of criminal procedure, developed for other kinds of forensic evidence, are readily adaptable to face-recognition. It opposes across-the-board restrictions on use of face-recognition technologies and advocates a more sophisticated set of guarantees of defendant access to the information necessary to probe reliability of computerized face-matches. Defendants must have reasonable access to the details of the technology ...

A Faustian Bargain That Undermines Research Participants’ Privacy Rights And Return Of Results, Barbara J. Evans, Susan M. Wolf

Florida Law Review

A 2018 committee report published by the highly respected National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (the Report) recommends stripping research participants of crucial data privacy rights and discarding decades of carefully deliberated consensus guidelines for the ethical return of results and data from research. This Article traces these disturbing recommendations to three root causes: (1) a statement of task that blocked careful and impartial analysis of a disputed legal matter central to the Report; (2) a piecemeal legal analysis that omitted relevant strands of law; and (3) the inappropriate conflation of two distinct concepts—the return of individual research ...

Employee Privacy Rights While Working From Home, Kourtney Speer

GGU Law Review Blog

Over the past few decades and especially under the circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a merger of office and home life. More and more employees are working from home. By bringing work home, employees may be unknowingly bringing a diminished expectation of privacy inside their home as well.

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 ...

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 ...

Dysregulating The Media: Digital Redlining, Privacy Erosion, And The Unintentional Deregulation Of American Media, Jon Garon

Maine Law Review

Netflix, Amazon, YouTube, and Apple have been joined by Disney+, Twitch, Facebook, and others to supplant the broadcast industry. As the FCC, FTC, and other regulators struggle, a new digital divide has emerged. The current regulatory regime for television is built upon the government’s right to manage over-the-air broadcasting. As content producers shift away from broadcast and cable, much of the government’s regulatory control will end, resulting in new consequences for public policy and new challenges involving privacy, advertising, and antitrust law. Despite the technological change, there are compelling government interests in a healthy media environment. This article ...

As Society Strives For Reduced Contact During The Pandemic, How Can Human Microchipping Help?, Nanci K. Carr

Villanova Law Review

No abstract provided.

Can I Have Some Privacy?: A Look Into The Unfortunate Truth Of Pregnancy Tests Throughout Sports And The Negative Impact On Female Athletes, Hannah Rogers

Jeffrey S. Moorad Sports Law Journal

No abstract provided.

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 ...

The Price Of Prime—Consumer Privacy In The Age Of Amazon, Ariana Aboulafia, Greg Fritzius, Tessa Mears, Macy Nix

Mitchell Hamline Law Journal of Public Policy and Practice

No abstract provided.

Cyber-Security, Privacy, And The Covid-19 Attenuation?, Vincent J. Samar

Journal of Legislation

Large-scale data brokers collect massive amounts of highly personal consumer information to be sold to whoever will pay their price, even at the expense of sacrificing individual privacy and autonomy in the process. In this Article, I will show how a proper understanding and justification for a right to privacy, in context to both protecting private acts and safeguarding information and states of affairs for the performance of such acts, provides a necessary background framework for imposing legal restrictions on such collections. This problem, which has already gained some attention in literature, now becomes even more worrisome, as government itself ...

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

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

Dysregulating The Media: Digital Redlining, Privacy Erosion, And The Unintentional Deregulation Of American Media, Jon M. Garon

Faculty Scholarship

Netflix, Amazon, YouTube, and Apple have been joined by Disney+, Twitch, Facebook, and others to supplant the broadcast industry. As the FCC, FTC, and other regulators struggle, a new digital divide has emerged. The current regulatory regime for television is built upon the government’s right to manage over-the-air broadcasting. As content producers shift away from broadcast and cable, much of the government’s regulatory control will end, resulting in new consequences for public policy and new challenges involving privacy, advertising, and antitrust law. Despite the technological change, there are compelling government interests in a healthy media environment. This article ...

Data As The New Oil: A Slippery Slope Of Trade Secret Implications Greased By The California Consumer Privacy Act, Megan Marie Miller

Cybaris®

Following the European model of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the state of California implemented the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) on January 1, 2020. The CCPA allows any California consumer to demand to see all of the information that a company has saved on them; consumers can also request a full list of all the third parties that their data is shared with, sold to, and for what commercial purpose. This paper reviews the implications of a new law on the disclosure of trade secrets like client lists and algorithms that manipulate consumers’ data. Ultimately, the issue comes ...