Privacy Law Commons^™

The Privacy Cost Of Currency, Karin Thrasher

Michigan Journal of International Law

Banknotes, or cash, can be used continuously by any person for nearly every transaction and provide anonymity for the parties. However, as digitization increases, the role and form of money is changing. In response to pressure produced by the increase in new forms of money and the potential for a cashless society, states are exploring potential substitutes to cash. Governments have begun to investigate the intersection of digitization and fiat currency: Central Bank Digital Currencies (“CBDC”).

States have begun researching and developing CBDCs to serve in lieu of cash. Central banks are analyzing the potential for a CBDC that could …

What's The Harm? Federalism, The Separation Of Powers, And Standing In Data Breach Litigation, Grayson Wells

Indiana Law Journal

This Comment will argue that the Supreme Court should analyze standing in data breach litigation under a standard that is deferential to state statutory and common law. Specifically, federal standing analysis should look to state law when determining whether an injury is concrete such that the injury-in-fact requirement is met. Some argue that allowing more data breach cases to proceed to the merits could lead to an explosion of successful litigation and settlements, burdening the federal courts and causing economic losses for the breached businesses. These concerns may be valid. But if state law provides a remedy to the harm …

The “P” Isn’T For Privacy: The Conflict Between Bankruptcy Rules And Hipaa Compliance, Sophie R. Rogers Churchill

Washington and Lee Law Review

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) included a now-ubiquitous provision designed to protect the privacy of patients’ protected health information. The provision prohibits covered entities, including health care providers and their agents, from disclosing any demographic information that may identify a patient and that relates to that patient’s medical care. The provision is broad and can include such simple information as which doctor a patient consults or the date of a patient’s consultation with a physician.

Unfortunately, such protections become impracticable in the bankruptcy setting. When a health care provider files bankruptcy, it files a host …

أحكام المسؤولیة القانونیة للروبوت الطبي, زینب مسعود علي

Theses

تعتبر الروبوتات الطبیة من أحدث تقنیات الذكاء الاصطناعي، والتي یتم استخدامھا في العدید من المجالات الطبیة كروبوتات الرعایة الصحیة التي تعتني بكبار السن أو المعاقین، والروبوتات الجراحیة التي یتم استخدامھا في العملیات الجراحیة. وتثیر الروبوتات الطبیة العدید من الإشكالیات القانونیة، منھا ما یتعلق بالجوانب الأخلاقیة ومنھا ما یتعلق بالجوانب الاجتماعیة، والمسؤولیة عن الأخطاء الطبیة التي تسببھا الروبوتات.

وعلیھ یسلط ھذا البحث الضوء على موضوع الروبوتات الطبیة، والنظام العام والإطار القانوني لھذه الروبوتات والمسؤولیة المترتبة علیھا. ویعرض ھذا البحث للإطار القانوني الحالي لروبوتات العنایة الصحیة والروبوتات الجراحیة، وإسقاطھا على قانون المسؤولیة الطبیة في دولة الإمارات، والبحث في الطبیعة القانونیة والأساس القانوني …

Bitcoin Searches And Preserving The Third-Party Doctrine, Christine A. Cortez

St. Mary's Law Journal

Abstract forthcoming.

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 Court held that …

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 …

Eu Privacy Law And U.S. Surveillance: Solving The Problem Of Transatlantic Data Transfers, Peter Margulies

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Hacks, Leaks, And Data Dumps: The Right To Publish Illegally Acquired Information Twenty Years After Bartnicki V. Vopper, Erik Ugland, Christina Mazzeo

Washington Law Review

This Article addresses a fluid and increasingly salient category of cases involving the First Amendment right to publish information that was hacked, stolen, or illegally leaked by someone else. Twenty years ago, in Bartnicki v. Vopper, the Supreme Court appeared to give broad constitutional cover to journalists and other publishers in these situations, but Justice Stevens’s inexact opinion for the Court and Justice Breyer’s muddling concurrence left the boundaries unclear. The Bartnicki framework is now implicated in dozens of new cases— from the extradition and prosecution of Julian Assange, to Donald Trump’s threatened suit of The New York Times …

Revising Reasonableness In The Cloud, Ian Walsh

Washington Law Review

Save everything—just in case––and search for it later. This is a modern mantra fueled by the ubiquity of smartphones, laptops, tablets, and free or low-cost data storage that leads users to store massive amounts of data in the cloud. But when users trust third-party cloud storage providers with private communications, they also surrender Fourth Amendment constitutional certainty. Existing statutory safeguards for these communications are lower than Fourth Amendment warrant and probable cause standards; this permits the government to seize large quantities of users’ private communications stored in the cloud with only minimal justification. Due to the revealing nature of such …

Data Autonomy, Cesare Fracassi, William Magnuson

Vanderbilt Law Review

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, …

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 …

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 results …

Chinese Technology Platforms Operating In The United States: Assessing The Threat (Originally Published As A Joint Report Of The National Security, Technology, And Law Working Group At The Hoover Institution At Stanford University And The Tech, Law & Security Program At American University Washington College Of Law), Gary Corn, Jennifer Daskal, Jack Goldsmith, Chris Inglis, Paul Rosenzweig, Samm Sacks, Bruce Schneier, Alex Stamos, Vincent Stewart

Joint PIJIP/TLS Research Paper Series

No abstract provided.

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 “dick pics,” this …

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 transferred. This Article explores …

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 explores the …