Privacy Law Commons^™

Having An Affair May Shorten Your Life: The Ashley Madison Suicides, Sakinah N. Jones

Georgia State University Law Review

Ashley Madison is an online dating service originally designed for people in committed relationships who want to cheat on their partners. In 2015, the website claimed to be “100% discreet.” Ashley Madison’s FAQs promised that its users would never compromise their “safety, privacy or security” and would never have to reveal their identities unless they chose to.

Ashley Madison’s concept attracted over forty million ostensibly anonymous members to its site. In July 2015, a group calling itself The Impact Team (Impact) hacked into Ashley Madison’s parent company, Avid Life Media, Inc. (Avid Life), breaching its security walls and reaching directly …

Civil Liberty Or National Security: The Battle Over Iphone Encryption, Karen Lowell

Georgia State University Law Review

On June 5, 2013, Edward Snowden released what would be the first of many documents exposing the vast breadth of electronic surveillance the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the National Security Agency (NSA) had been conducting on millions of United States citizens. Although the federal agencies had legal authority under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to collect metadata from companies such as Verizon, many Americans considered this data collection to be a massive invasion of privacy.

Equipped with the knowledge of sweeping domestic surveillance programs, citizens and technology firms fighting for strong privacy and security protection, have started …

The Privacy Policymaking Of State Attorneys General, Danielle Keats Citron

Notre Dame Law Review

Much as Justice Louis Brandeis imagined states as laboratories of the law, offices of state attorneys general have been laboratories of privacy enforcement. State attorneys general have been nimble privacy enforcers whereas federal agencies have been more constrained by politics. Local knowledge, specialization, multistate coordination, and broad legal authority have allowed AG offices to fill in gaps in the law. State attorneys general have established baseline fair-information protections and expanded the frontiers of privacy law to cover sexual intimacy and youth. Their efforts have reinforced and strengthened federal norms, further harmonizing certain aspects of privacy and data security policy.

Although …

A Healthy Amount Of Privacy: Quantifying Privacy Concerns In Medicine, Ignacio N. Cofone

Cleveland State Law Review

With recent developments in e-health, concerns have been raised regarding the privacy of patients who are monitored with such treatments. I propose a simple method to incorporate these concerns into a standard health impact evaluation, based on quality-adjusted life years and the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio. This method provides a way to objectively value privacy concerns and balance them with health benefits. Hence, it can guide doctors and policymakers into incorporating privacy considerations and making better choices regarding e-health programs. This method can also be tested on existing economic evaluations to compare outcomes and gauge the extent to which privacy issues …

Social Data Discovery And Proportional Privacy, Agnieszka Mcpeak

Cleveland State Law Review

Social media platforms aggregate large amounts of personal information as "social data" that can be easily downloaded as a complete archive. Litigants in civil cases increasingly seek out broad access to social data during the discovery process, often with few limits on the scope of such discovery. But unfettered access to social data implicates unique privacy concerns—concerns that should help define the proper scope of discovery.

The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, as amended in 2015, already contain the tools for crafting meaningful limits on intrusive social data discovery. In particular, the proportionality test under Rule 26 weighs the burdens …

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

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Enhancing Cybersecurity In The Private Sector By Means Of Civil Liability Lawsuits - The Connie Francis Effect, Jeffrey F. Addicott

University of Richmond Law Review

The purpose of this article is to explore the threats posed by

cybersecurity breaches, outline the steps taken by the government

to address those threats in the private sector economy, and

call attention to the ultimate solution, which will most certainly

spur private businesses to create a more secure cyber environment

for the American people-a Connie Francis-styled cyber civil

action lawsuit.

The Regulatory Framework For Aerial Imaging By Recreational Users Of "Drones" In Singapore: Old And Emerging Issues And Some Possible Solutions, Siyuan Chen

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In response to the sudden proliferation of hobbyist unmanned aerial vehicles used for digital imaging – or “drones”, as they are popularly, but rather inaccurately, labelled – the Singapore government enacted the Unmanned Aircraft (Public Safety and Security) Act in 2015 and also amended various existing laws relating to air navigation. However, in view of the rapid evolution in drone technology and the ever-expanding range of useful applications brought about by drones, what are some of the challenges that would be faced when enforcing the law against recreational users of aerial imaging in particular, and what are some of the …

Game Of Phones: The Fourth Amendment Implications Of Real-Time Cell Phone Tracking, Cal Cumpstone

Cleveland State Law Review

With the help of technological advancements, law enforcement can now hijack a targeted individual’s cell phone to ping and track the phone’s exact location in real time. Based upon previous rulings, this new tracking process has apparently fallen into a "grey area" of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. However, real-time cell phone tracking should be a search in terms of the Fourth Amendment and, therefore, require a warrant. Real-time cell phone tracking infringes on an individual’s reasonable expectation of privacy, violates the trespass doctrine as a trespass to chattels, and violates the Kyllo standard by using technology not in general public use …

Privacy By Design: Taking Ctrl Of Big Data, Eric Everson

Cleveland State Law Review

The concept of Privacy by Design is rooted in systems engineering. Yet, it is the legal framework of global privacy that gives new color to this concept as applied to Big Data. Increasingly, the long arm of the law is reaching into Big Data, but it is not simply by matter of regulatory enforcement or civil legal developments that Privacy by Design (PbD) is being thrust into the spotlight once more.

Given that Big Data is considered miniscule in contrast to future data environments, PbD is simply the right thing to do. This paper aims to explore the origin of …

It Depends: Recasting Internet Clickwrap, Browsewrap, "I Agree," And Click-Through Privacy Clauses As Waivers Of Adhesion, Charles E. Maclean

Cleveland State Law Review

Digital giants, enabled by America’s courts, Congress, and the Federal Trade Commission, devise click-through, clickwrap, browsewrap, "I Agree" waivers, and other legal fictions that purport to evidence user "consent" to consumer privacy erosions. It is no longer enough to justify privacy invasions as technologically inevitable or as essential to the American economy. As forced consent is no consent at all, privacy policies must advance with the technology. This article discusses adhesion waivers, the potential for FTC corrective action, and a comparison to privacy policies of the European Union.

Newsroom: Cybersecurity: Obama's Conflicted Legacy 02-17-2017, Peter Margulies

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Privacy Law's Precautionary Principle Problem, Adam Thierer

Maine Law Review

Privacy law today faces two interrelated problems. The first is an information control problem. Like so many other fields of modern cyberlaw—intellectual property, online safety, cybersecurity, etc.—privacy law is being challenged by intractable Information Age realties. Specifically, it is easier than ever before for information to circulate freely and harder than ever to bottle it up once it is released. This has not slowed efforts to fashion new rules aimed at bottling up those information flows. If anything, the pace of privacy-related regulatory proposals has been steadily increasing in recent years even as these information control challenges multiply. This has …

Privacy And Security In The Cloud: Some Realism About Technical Solutions To Transnational Surveillance In The Post-Snowden Era, Joris V.J. Van Hoboken, Ira S. Rubinstein

Maine Law Review

Since June 2013, the leak of thousands of classified documents regarding highly sensitive U.S. surveillance activities by former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden has greatly intensified discussions of privacy, trust, and freedom in relation to the use of global computing and communication services. This is happening during a period of ongoing transition to cloud computing services by organizations, businesses, and individuals. There has always been a question of inherent in this transition: are cloud services sufficiently able to guarantee the security of their customers’ data as well s the proper restrictions on access by third parties, including governments? …

The Promise And Shortcomings Of Privacy Multistakeholder Policymaking: A Case Study, Omer Tene, J. Trevor Hughes

Maine Law Review

With formal privacy policymaking processes mired in discord, governments and regulators in the United States and Europe have turned to the private sector seeking assistance and solutions. Multistakeholder-driven self-regulation and co-regulation have been pursued in a variety of contexts ranging from online privacy and transparency for mobile applications to protection of transborder data flows. This article focuses on one such process, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) discussion of a Do Not Track (DNT) standard, as a case study. It critically analyzes the procedural pitfalls, which hampered the quest to reach a compromise solution acceptable by groups with diametrically opposed …

Local Law Enforcement Jumps On The Big Data Bandwagon: Automated License Plate Recognition Systems, Infomation Privacy, And Access To Government Information, Bryce Clayton Newell

Maine Law Review

As government agencies and law enforcement departments increasingly adopt big-data surveillance technologies as part of their routine investigatory practice, personal information privacy concerns are becoming progressively more palpable. On the other hand, advancing technologies and data-mining potentially offer law enforcement greater ability to detect, investigate, and prosecute criminal activity. These concerns (for personal information privacy and the efficacy of law enforcement) are both very important in contemporary society. On one view, American privacy law has not kept up with advancing technological capabilities, and government agencies have arguably begun to overstep the acceptable boundaries of information access, violating the privacy of …

The Glass House Effect: Big Data, The New Oil, And The Power Of Analogy, Dennis D. Hirsch

Maine Law Review

One hears with some frequency today that “data is the new oil.” Recently, Virginia Rometty, IBM’s Chief Executive Officer, updated the phrase, explaining that Big Data is the new oil. Most people who have used the analogy do so in order to convey Big Data’s tremendous value. Data is an essential resource that powers the information economy much like oil has fueled the industrial economy. Big Data promises a plethora of new uses—the identification and prevention of the pandemics, the emergence of new businesses and business sectors, the improvement of health care quality and efficiency, and enhanced protection of the …

Privacy And Common Law Names: Sand In The Gears Of Identification, Adam Candeub

Florida Law Review

During the last two decades, law and regulation have expanded to require real name identification in virtually every aspect of life—from online purchases to healthcare. This slow, subtle transformation has rendered a de facto nullity the Constitution’s anonymity protection against compelled identity disclosure. This evolution also has rendered impracticable the traditional, but mostly forgotten, common law rights to use whatever name one wishes—the de facto right to pseudonymity. This common law right facilitates anonymity, which, in turn, facilitates privacy.

This Article argues that the continued vitality of common law name rights, particularly in light of recent First Amendment jurisprudence, establishes …

Manhattan_Project.Exe: A Nuclear Option For The Digital Age, David Laton

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

This article explores the possible implications and consequences arising from the use of an artificial intelligence construct as a weapon of mass destruction. The digital age has ushered in many technological advances, as well as certain dangers. Chief among these pitfalls is the lack of reliable security found in critical information technology systems. These security gaps can give cybercriminals unauthorized access to highly sensitive computer networks that control the very infrastructure of the United States. Cyberattacks are rising in both frequency and severity and the response by the U.S. has been ineffective. A cyber-weapon of mass destruction (CWMD) implementing an …

Is Wifi Worth It: The Hidden Dangers Of Public Wifi, Ellie Shahin

Catholic University Journal of Law and Technology

No abstract provided.