Archive for the ‘Privacy (National Security)’ Category

Stanford Law Review Online: The Privacy Paradox 2012 Symposium Issue

posted by Stanford Law Review

Our 2012 Symposium Issue, The Privacy Paradox: Privacy and Its Conflicting Values, is now available online:

Essays

• A Reasonableness Approach to Searches After the Jones GPS Tracking Case by Peter Swire (64 Stan. L. Rev. Online 57);
• Privacy in the Age of Big Data by Omer Tene & Jules Polonetsky (64 Stan. L. Rev. Online 63);
• Yes We Can (Profile You): A Brief Primer on Campaigns and Political Data by Daniel Kreiss (64 Stan. L. Rev. Online 70);
• Paving the Regulatory Road to the “Learning Health Care System” by Deven McGraw (64 Stan. L. Rev. Online 75);
• Famous for Fifteen People: Celebrity, Newsworthiness, and Fraley v. Facebook by Simon J. Frankel, Laura Brookover & Stephen Satterfield (64 Stan. L. Rev. Online 82); and
• The Right to Be Forgotten by Jeffrey Rosen (64 Stan. L. Rev. Online 88).

The text of Chief Judge Alex Kozinski’s keynote is forthcoming.

  February 13, 2012 at 1:04 pm   Posted in: Law Rev (Stanford), Law Rev Contents, Law School, Law School (Scholarship), Media Law, Military Law, Politics, Privacy, Privacy (Consumer Privacy), Privacy (Electronic Surveillance), Privacy (Law Enforcement), Privacy (Medical), Privacy (National Security), Social Network Websites, Supreme Court, Technology, Tort Law   Print This Post   No Comments

Kennedy and Szoka on U.S. v. Jones

posted by Danielle Citron

Charlie Kennedy and Berin Szoka of TechFreedom have an insightful op-ed in c/net yesterday.  It resonates with some of what my co-blogger Dan Solove said in his post and urges Congress to move on ECPA reform.  Here is the piece:

  January 30, 2012 at 10:37 am   Posted in: Privacy, Privacy (Law Enforcement), Privacy (National Security), Uncategorized   Print This Post   One Comment

The Potentially Profound Implications of United States v. Jones

posted by Daniel Solove

I must respectfully disagree with a recent post by Renee Hutchins on our blog about the recent U.S. Supreme Court case, United States v. Jones.    She concludes:

With full knowledge of this history, the Jones decision should give us pause. It is widely believed that the test the court enunciated nearly a half-century ago better protects the privacy interest of citizens in the face of advancing technology. By reverting to the language of trespass, the court this week took a step back when it could have taken a bold step forward. Moreover, by failing to engage the admittedly “thorny” question of whether the monitoring of the GPS device alone violated Mr. Jones’ constitutional rights, the court missed a momentous opportunity to speak clearly in a brave new world.

Although it is true that the majority opinion is narrow, the concurring opinions indicate five votes for a broader more progressive view of the Fourth Amendment, one which breaks from some of the Court’s antiquated notions of privacy. When I read Jones, I see cause for celebration rather than disappointment.

I have long argued that the Court has failed to understand that aggregated pieces of information can together upend expectations of privacy. See Privacy and Power 1434-35 (2001), The Digital Person 44-47 (2004), Understanding Privacy 117-21 (2008).  I have also critiqued what I call the “secrecy paradigm” where the Court has held that privacy is only invaded by revealing previously concealed information.  See The Digital Person 42-44 (2004), Understanding Privacy 106-12 (2008).  I have argued that privacy can be invaded even by public surveillance.  More recently, in Nothing to Hide 178 (2011), I argued:

The problem with the secrecy paradigm is that we do expect some degree of privacy in public.  We don’t expect total secrecy, but we also don’t expect somebody to be recording everything we do. Most of the time, when we’re out and about, nobody’s paying any special attention to us. We do many private things in public, such as buy medications and hygiene products in drug stores and browse books and magazines in bookstores. We expect a kind of practical obscurity—to be just another face in the crowd.

In Justice Alito’s concurring opinion, he seemingly recognizes both of the concept of aggregation and the fact that the extent of the surveillance matter more than merely whether it occurs in public or private:

Under this approach, relatively short-term monitoring of a person’s movements on public streets accords with expectations of privacy that our society has recognized as reasonable.  But the use of longer term GPS monitoring in investigations of most offenses impinges on expectations of privacy.  For such offenses, society’s expectation has been that law enforcement agents and others would not—and indeed, in the main, simply could not—secretly monitor and catalogue every single movement of an individual’s car for a very long period.

Justice Sotomayor discusses this passage with approval in her concurrence, indicating five votes for this view.  Indeed, she would go even further than Justice Alito.

I see profound implications in Jones for the future direction of the Fourth Amendment and privacy law more generally.  I explain this in detail in a recent essay, United States v. Jones and the Future of Privacy Law: The Potential Far-Reaching Implications of the GPS Surveillance Case, Bloomberg BNA Privacy & Security Law Report (Jan. 30, 2012).  From the essay:

The more contextual and open-ended view of privacy articulated by Justice Alito has five votes on the Court.  This is a sophisticated view of privacy, one that departs from the antiquated notions the Court has often clung to.  If this view works its way through Fourth Amendment law, the implications could be quite profound.  So many of the Court’s rationales under the reasonable expectation of privacy test fail to comprehend how technology changes the dynamic of information gathering, making it ruthlessly efficient and making surveillance pervasive and more penetrating.  We might be seeing the stirrings of a more modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, one that no longer seems impervious to technological development.

I continue:

Read the rest of this post »

  January 29, 2012 at 1:18 pm   Posted in: Constitutional Law, Criminal Procedure, Privacy, Privacy (Electronic Surveillance), Privacy (Law Enforcement), Privacy (National Security)   Print This Post   One Comment

Cybersecurity Puzzles

posted by Derek Bambauer

Cybersecurity is in the news: a network intrusion allegedly interfered with railroad signals in the Northwest in December; the Obama administration refused to support the Stop Online Piracy Act due to worries about interfering with DNSSEC; and the GAO concluded that the Department of Homeland Security is making things worse by oversharing. So, I’m fortunate that the Minnesota Law Review has just published the final version of Conundrum (available on SSRN), in which I argue that we should take an information-based approach to cybersecurity:

Cybersecurity is a conundrum. Despite a decade of sustained attention from scholars, legislators, military officials, popular media, and successive presidential administrations, little if any progress has been made in augmenting Internet security. Current scholarship on cybersecurity is bound to ill-fitting doctrinal models. It addresses cybersecurity based upon identification of actors and intent, arguing that inherent defects in the Internet’s architecture must be remedied to enable attribution. These proposals, if adopted, would badly damage the Internet’s generative capacity for innovation. Drawing upon scholarship in economics, animal behavior, and mathematics, this Article takes a radical new path, offering a theoretical model oriented around information, in distinction to the near-obsession with technical infrastructure demonstrated by other models. It posits a regulatory focus on access and alteration of data, and on guaranteeing its integrity. Counterintuitively, it suggests that creating inefficient storage and connectivity best protects user capabilities to access and alter information, but this necessitates difficult tradeoffs with preventing unauthorized interaction with data. The Article outlines how to implement inefficient information storage and connectivity through legislation. Lastly, it describes the stakes in cybersecurity debates: adopting current scholarly approaches jeopardizes not only the Internet’s generative architecture, but also key normative commitments to free expression on-line.

Conundrum, 96 Minn. L. Rev. 584 (2011).

Cross-posted at Info/Law.

  January 24, 2012 at 4:13 pm   Posted in: Anonymity, Architecture, Articles and Books, Current Events, Cyberlaw, Innovation, Intellectual Property, Law Rev (Minnesota), Military Law, Politics, Privacy (National Security), Technology, Web 2.0   Print This Post   No Comments

Needed Steps Forward on the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board

posted by Danielle Citron

Thanks to terrific privacy blogger Melissa Ngo and privacy scholar and change maker Peter Swire, I’ve learned about some exciting developments about the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board.  One might say: “Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, what?”  And that ignorance would not be surprising–it’s been dormant for too long, at least until some recent activity.  The 9/11 Commission recommended the creation of a privacy and civil liberties oversight board, which was created in 2004 and placed within the White House.  The original Board members included Carol E. Dinkins, of Texas, Chairwoman; Alan Charles Raul, of the District of Columbia, Vice Chairman; Theodore B. Olson, of Virginia; and Francis X. Taylor, of Maryland. The Chairwoman and Vice Chairman were confirmed by the Senate on February 17, 2006.  In 2008, Congress passed and President Bush signed the “Implementing the 9/11 Commission Recommendations Act of 2007,” which took the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board out of the White House and established it “as an independent agency within the executive branch.”  One of the Board’s tasks was to review the FBI’s use of national security letters.  Terms for the original board expired in January 2008, but President Bush delayed the nomination of new board members for many months and none were confirmed by the Senate.  That’s pretty much where things stayed–a Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board with no members and no action.

Last year, President Obama nominated the terrific James X. Dempsey, Vice President for Public Policy at the Center for Democracy and Technology, and Elisebeth Collins Cook, who worked in the Justice Department in the Bush administration. In turn, privacy groups, including Melissa Ngo’s Privacy Lives, called for the nomination and confirmation of  experts to the board.   In December 2011, the White House has announced that President Obama has sent more nominations to the oversight board to the Senate: Rachel L. Brand, of Iowa, to be a Member of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board for a term expiring January 29, 2017; David Medine, of Maryland, to be Chairman and Member of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board for a term expiring January 29, 2018, and Patricia M. Wald, of the District of Columbia, to be a Member of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board for a term expiring January 29, 2013.  It’s a terrific group, and hopefully the Senate won’t take its time moving forward.

Without question, this is a crucial step forward.  We need oversight on a host of issues, from airport screening and cyber security to fusion centers.  As my co-blogger Frank Pasquale and I have documented, state run and federally funded fusion centers are in dire need of accountability, network accountability to be precise.  At any one of the existing 72 fusion centers, one might find state law enforcement working alongside DHS, FBI, and DEA agents as well privacy security analysts.  In the case of the Washington Joint Analytical Center, an employee from Boeing is co-located at the fusion center, having access to information from the fusion center and sharing Boeing’s intelligence capabilities.  As a Boeing executive said, the company hopes to “set an example of how private owners of critical infrastructure can get involved in such centers to generate and receive criminal and anti-terrorism intelligence.”  Let’s think through what this means: private sector partners have access to intelligence that certain individuals, possibly job candidates, pose potential “threats.”  We’ve seen from fusion center blunders that ordinary citizens engaging in political speech have been placed on watch lists.  In one case, the Maryland fusion center shared inaccurate and damaging information with the Information Sharing Environment.  It reported to the DEA and NSA and others that 53 activists from Greenpeace and Moms Against the War, including two Catholic nuns and a Democratic candidate for local office, were “terrorists.”  And as we have seen, much to the chagrin of serious Republican contender Ron Paul, the Missouri Information Analysis Center’s 2009 report to highway patrolmen explained that “violent extremists” typically associate with third party candidates, such as Ron Paul and Bob Barr, and that “potential threats” included anti-immigration and anti-tax advocates.  According to the report, violent extremists could be identified through their use of bumper stickers  indicating support for libertarian groups.  In a similar vein, a California fusion center warned local police to expect violence at antiwar protests: “You can make an easy kind of link that, if you have a protest group protesting a war where the cause that’s being fought against is international terrorism, you might have terrorism at that protest.  You can almost argue that a protest against the war is a terrorist act.”  Ever hear about the First Amendment’s freedom of expression and association?  Oversight is in order.

H/T: Peter Swire

Wikimedia Commons Image (NJ fusion center)

  January 12, 2012 at 11:30 am   Posted in: Civil Rights, Constitutional Law, Privacy, Privacy (National Security)   Print This Post   4 Comments

Two New Cases Regarding NSA Surveillance

posted by Daniel Solove

The 9th Circuit has decided a pair of cases involving the NSA Surveillance Program.

In Jewel v. NSA, the 9th Circuit concluded that plaintiffs had standing to raise constitutional challenges against NSA telephone surveillance:

At issue in this appeal is whether Carolyn Jewel and other residential telephone customers (collectively “Jewel”) have standing to bring their statutory and constitutional claims against the government for what they describe as a communications dragnet of ordinary American citizens.  In light of detailed allegations and claims of harm linking Jewel to the intercepted telephone, internet and electronic communications, we conclude that Jewel’s claims are not abstract, generalized grievances and instead meet the constitutional standing requirement of concrete injury.

In In re NSA Telecommunications Litigation, the 9th Circuit held that § 802 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (“FISA”), 50 U.S.C. § 1885a (the FISA Amendments
Act) is constitutional.  The Act retroactively immunized telecommunication companies for cooperating with the NSA.

  December 29, 2011 at 9:20 pm   Posted in: Privacy, Privacy (Electronic Surveillance), Privacy (Law Enforcement), Privacy (National Security)   Print This Post   One Comment

New Edition of Information Privacy Law Casebooks

posted by Daniel Solove

The new edition of my casebook, Information Privacy Law (4th edition) (with Paul M. Schwartz) is hot off the presses.  And there’s a new edition of my casebook, Privacy, Information, and Technology (3rd edition) (with Paul M. Schwartz).   Copies should be sent out to adopters very soon.  If you’re interested in adopting the book and are having any difficulties getting a hold of a copy, please let me know.

You also might be interested in my concise guide to privacy law, also with Paul Schwartz, entitled Privacy Law Fundamentals.   This short book was published earlier this year.  You can order it on Amazon or via IAPP.  It might make for a useful reference tool for students.

 

  December 13, 2011 at 1:31 am   Posted in: Articles and Books, Privacy, Privacy (Consumer Privacy), Privacy (Electronic Surveillance), Privacy (Gossip & Shaming), Privacy (ID Theft), Privacy (Law Enforcement), Privacy (Medical), Privacy (National Security)   Print This Post   No Comments

Stanford Law Review Online: The Drone as Privacy Catalyst

posted by Stanford Law Review

The Stanford Law Review Online has just published a piece by M. Ryan Calo discussing the privacy implications of drone use within the United States. In The Drone as Privacy Catalyst, Calo argues that domestic use of drones for surveillance will go forward largely unimpeded by current privacy law, but that the “visceral jolt” caused by witnessing these drones hovering above our cities might serve as a catalyst and finally “drag privacy law into the twenty-first century.”

Calo writes:

In short, drones like those in widespread military use today will tomorrow be used by police, scientists, newspapers, hobbyists, and others here at home. And privacy law will not have much to say about it. Privacy advocates will. As with previous emerging technologies, advocates will argue that drones threaten our dwindling individual and collective privacy. But unlike the debates of recent decades, I think these arguments will gain serious traction among courts, regulators, and the general public.

Read the full article, The Drone as Privacy Catalyst by M. Ryan Calo, at the Stanford Law Review Online.

  December 12, 2011 at 4:52 pm  Tags: academia, Brandeis, Constitutional Law, drones, Kyllo, Privacy, surveillance, UAVs, Warren  Posted in: Constitutional Law, Law Rev (Stanford), Law School (Law Reviews), Privacy (Consumer Privacy), Privacy (Electronic Surveillance), Privacy (National Security), Technology   Print This Post   No Comments

FTC Facial Recognition Event

posted by Daniel Solove

Today, I’ll be speaking at Face Facts: A Forum on Facial Recognition Technology, an event organized by the FTC.

Here’s the agenda.

The event will be webcast here.

 

  December 8, 2011 at 1:44 am   Posted in: Conferences, Privacy, Privacy (Electronic Surveillance), Privacy (Law Enforcement), Privacy (National Security)   Print This Post   No Comments

United States v. Jones and GPS Surveillance

posted by Daniel Solove

Over at the American Constitution Society blog, I have written a post about my latest thoughts on United States v. Jones, the GPS surveillance case being heard by the U.S. Supreme Court.

My earlier post about the case is here.

  November 7, 2011 at 2:24 pm   Posted in: Criminal Procedure, Privacy, Privacy (Law Enforcement), Privacy (National Security), Supreme Court   Print This Post   No Comments

GPS Surveillance and the Fourth Amendment: Thoughts on United States v. Jones

posted by Daniel Solove

In United States v. Jones, FBI agents installed a GPS tracking device on Jones’ car and monitored where he drove for a month without a warrant.  Jones challenged the warrantless GPS surveillance as a violation of the Fourth Amendment.  The D.C. Circuit agreed with Jones.

On its face, the D.C. Circuit opinion appears to clash with the Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Knotts, 460 U.S. 276 (1983), where the police installed a much simpler tracking device (referred to as a “beeper”) to a person’s car.  The Court concluded that the Fourth Amendment did not apply to the beeper because a “person traveling in an automobile on public thoroughfares has no reasonable expectation of privacy in his movements.”

The D.C. Circuit distinguished Knotts because there, the Supreme Court noted that the surveillance was limited and explicitly noted that more pervasive surveillance might be treated differently.   As the Court in Knotts stated that “if such dragnet-type law enforcement practices as respondent envisions should eventually occur, there will be time enough then to determine whether different constitutional principles may be applicable.”

The Supreme Court will determine if it agrees with this theory.   The Court has long held that there is no expectation of privacy in public.  This view has been frequently criticized as failing to recognize that people enjoy much practical obscurity in public and pervasive monitoring will dramatically undermine this obscurity.  Will the Court revisit its view about the lack of privacy in public given the changing capabilities of technology?

If the Court were to conclude that the Fourth Amendment required a warrant for GPS surveillance, it would have to define a coherent line between when a person in public has an expectation of privacy and when a person lacks such an expectation.  Such a line would be challenging to draw.

If extreme enough, quantitative differences can become qualitative differences.  But how does one articulate this into a workable approach in the law that isn’t too vague and mushy?

I was speaking with Peter Swire recently, who said that in order to convince the Court to draw such a line, it would be helpful for scholars to propose a workable test or approach for the Court to use.  I think he’s right.  So here’s my stab at it.

The Fourth Amendment applies to a surveillance technology used in public if the surveillance technology: (1)  extends significantly beyond human capabilities; and (2) is used in a manner beyond its ordinary use by the general public.

Let’s see how this might work with a few examples:

Read the rest of this post »

  September 24, 2011 at 2:43 pm   Posted in: Criminal Procedure, Privacy, Privacy (Electronic Surveillance), Privacy (Law Enforcement), Privacy (National Security), Supreme Court, Technology   Print This Post   18 Comments

Racial Profiling & Surveillance

posted by Frank Pasquale

You may have heard about “multiple passengers holed up in the bathroom” of a plane flying on Sunday, which “led to F-16s shadowing . . . it [as it] neared Detroit.” Turns out that the false alarm was sparked by a “half-Arab and half-Jewish” woman who sat between two South Asian passengers:

[O]n this flight she was sitting by chance in a row with two Indian-looking passengers, neither of whom knew the other or knew her. But collectively they aroused the suspicion of other passengers or crew, and when the plane landed, heavily armed troops stormed aboard, handcuffed the three of them, and took them off for extensive questioning. After which they were eventually released with “no charges filed.” Which is fair enough, considering that like everyone else on the plane they were simply trying to travel from Denver to Detroit and had done absolutely nothing wrong except to have “suspicious” looks.

Here is her first-hand account:

Someone shouted for us to place our hands on the seats in front of us, heads down. The cops ran down the aisle, stopped at my row and yelled at the three of us to get up. “Can I bring my phone?” I asked, of course. What a cliffhanger for my Twitter followers! No, one of the cops said, grabbing my arm a little harder than I would have liked. He slapped metal cuffs on my wrists and pushed me off the plane. The three of us, two Indian men living in the Detroit metro area, and me, a half-Arab, half-Jewish housewife living in suburban Ohio, were being detained.

The cops brought us to a parked squad car next to the plane, had us spread our legs and arms. Mine asked me if I was wearing any explosives. “No,” I said, holding my tongue to not let out a snarky response. I wasn’t sure what I could and could not say, and all that came out was “What’s going on?”. . . .

What is the likelihood that two Indian men who didn’t know each other and a dark-skinned woman of Arab/Jewish heritage would be on the same flight from Denver to Detroit? Was that suspicion enough? Even considering that we didn’t say a word to each other until it became clear there were cops following our plane? Perhaps it was two Indian man going to the bathroom in succession?

Combine this with Vance Gilbert’s “flying while black” story, and any number of others, and you do have to wonder about how easily the racialized paranoia of a few can be given the full backing of the government (if only for a few hours of fright for the victim while he or she is cleared). Having recently looked into some aspects of the surveillance state, I have to wonder: do these incidents generate secret “Suspcious Activity Reports” for the publicly vindicated victims? Are they a mark against them in some undisclosed TSA or fusion center databases? The FBI justified its Detroit action by stating “The public would rather us err on the side of caution than not.” Is there any way for targeted minorities to assure that the public’s irrational discrimination is not empowered and advanced by law enforcers who are willing to “see something” when anyone “says something?”

  September 13, 2011 at 10:41 pm   Posted in: Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure, Culture, Current Events, Privacy (Law Enforcement), Privacy (National Security)   Print This Post   10 Comments

Two Crises, One Response

posted by Frank Pasquale

The US faced two great crises during the first decade of the 21st century: the attacks of September, 2001, and the meltdown of its financial system in September, 2008. In the case of 9/11, the country reluctantly concluded that it had made a category mistake about the threat posed by terrorism. The US had relied on cooperation among the Federal Aviation Administration, local law enforcement, and airlines to prevent hijacking. Assuming that, at most, a hijacked or bombed airplane would kill the passengers aboard the plane, government officials believed that national, local, and private authorities had adequate incentives to invest in an optimal level of deterrence. Until the attack occurred, no high official had deeply considered and acted on the possibility that an airplane itself could be weaponized, leading to the deaths of thousands of civilians.

After the attack, a new Department of Homeland Security took the lead in protecting the American people from internal threats, while existing intelligence agencies refocused their operations to better monitor internal threats to domestic order. The government massively upgraded its surveillance capabilities in the search for terrorists. DHS collaborated with local law enforcement officials and private critical infrastructure providers. Federal agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, gather information in conjunction with state and local law enforcement officials in what Congress has deemed the “Information Sharing Environment” (ISE), held together by information “fusion centers” and other hubs. My co-blogger Danielle Citron and I wrote about some of the consequences in an article that recently appeared in the Hastings Law Journal:

In a speech at the Washington National Cathedral three days after 9/11, then-President George W. Bush proclaimed that America’s “responsibility to history is already clear[:] . . . [to] rid the world of evil.” For the next seven years, the Bush administration tried many innovations to keep that promise, ranging from preemptive war in Iraq to . . . changes in law enforcement and domestic intelligence . . . Fusion centers are a lasting legacy of the Administration’s aspiration to “eradicate evil,” a great leap forward in both technical capacity and institutional coordination. Their goal is to eliminate both the cancer of terror and lesser diseases of the body politic.

Read the rest of this post »

  September 12, 2011 at 2:59 pm   Posted in: Current Events, Cyberlaw, Philosophy of Social Science, Politics, Privacy, Privacy (Law Enforcement), Privacy (National Security), Sociology of Law   Print This Post   9 Comments

Revolt of the Elites

posted by Frank Pasquale

Bernard Harcourt has analyzed new forms of radicalism adopted by the most and least privileged. Umair Haque at the Harvard Business Review has also identified dispositions shared by street looters and certain elites. As the chief political commentator at London’s Daily Telegraph has observed, “The moral decay of our society is as bad at the top as the bottom.” Yet there are very different consequences for each group’s transgressions.

The more disruptive the disenfranchised become, the more they provoke harsh responses from authorities, thus worsening their already marginal position. By contrast, finance and government elites have positioned themselves to gain from whatever risks they shift onto society at large, via bailouts, emergency powers, and the revolving door. As Ross Douthat observed, “The economic crisis is producing consolidation rather than revolution, the entrenchment of authority rather than its diffusion, and the concentration of power in the hands of the same elite that presided over the disasters in the first place.”
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  September 4, 2011 at 10:04 am   Posted in: Financial Institutions, First Amendment, Law and Inequality, Politics, Privacy, Privacy (Law Enforcement), Privacy (National Security)   Print This Post   46 Comments

The War Against Disclosure

posted by Frank Pasquale

Three remarkable recent lobbying campaigns go beyond the normal bounds of partisan sniping over “markets vs. regulation.” They threaten our capacity to understand how society is ordered: whom it serves, for what purposes, and at what costs. Consider these attacks on basic disclosure norms in politics and business:

1) Campaign Finance Disclosures: Regardless of ideology, almost everyone used to agree that campaign funding sources and amounts should be disclosed. 92% of Americans had that position in 2010. Justice Scalia has eloquently insisted that such disclosure laws violate no one’s rights. But thought leaders in the Republican party are now vigorously resisting disclosure, as Norm Ornstein observes:

The 2010 mid-term elections showed clearly how legal loopholes involving non-profit groups called 501(c)4s, and the failure to adopt clear regulations surrounding campaigns, can result in hundreds of millions of dollars of spending to influence campaigns that masked the identity of huge donors. In response to these realities, the Federal Communications Commission is considering requiring robust disclosure by TV stations of the major donors of political ads; the Securities and Exchange Commission is considering requiring public corporations to disclose to stockholders their spending on politics, and the White House has drafted an executive order to require companies applying for federal contracts to disclose their spending on political campaigns. . . .

Last month, Mitch McConnell [said] he views disclosure as “a cynical effort to muzzle critics of this administration and its allies in Congress.” . . . The Wall Street Journal’s full-throated support for transparency has disappeared as well; it blasted the FCC recently for considering requiring TV stations to put donors of campaign spots on the Internet . . .

John Yoo has also joined the debate, arguing that presidential power stops just short of the prerogative to require federal contractors to disclose their political donations.

2) Conflict Mineral and Extractive Industry Disclosures: One of the surprising victories for decency in the Dodd-Frank Act last year was a provision requiring certain disclosures from mining and resource extraction companies, and companies using “conflict minerals” from in or around the Congo. If you’re a consumer with preferences for certain industrial processes (say, those that don’t create incentives for rape, murder, and starvation), you want to be able to see which companies are fueling conflict and corruption and which are not. But intense corporate pressure is now delaying the rulemaking process needed to implement the disclosure provisions. According to Gerry Fay, “it is estimated that going ‘conflict free’ would cost companies just one penny per product.” But apparently that is too high a price to end corporate complicity in one of Africa’s bloodiest wars.
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  May 15, 2011 at 3:32 pm   Posted in: Constitutional Law, Corporate Law, Corruption, Government Secrecy, Law and Inequality, Politics, Privacy, Privacy (National Security), Technology   Print This Post   15 Comments

Chapter 1 of Nothing to Hide

posted by Daniel Solove

I’ve posted Chapter 1 of my new book, NOTHING TO HIDE: THE FALSE TRADEOFF BETWEEN PRIVACY AND SECURITY (Yale University Press, May 2011) on SSRN.  The book is about some of the common arguments made in the debate between privacy and security.  Chapter 1 is here.

  May 9, 2011 at 10:38 am   Posted in: Articles and Books, Privacy, Privacy (Electronic Surveillance), Privacy (Law Enforcement), Privacy (National Security)   Print This Post   One Comment

Nothing to Hide: The False Tradeoff Between Privacy and Security

posted by Daniel Solove

I’m pleased to announce the publication of my new book, NOTHING TO HIDE: THE FALSE TRADEOFF BETWEEN PRIVACY AND SECURITY (Yale University Press, May 2011).  Here’s the book jacket description:

“If you’ve got nothing to hide,” many people say, “you shouldn’t worry about government surveillance.” Others argue that we must sacrifice privacy for security. But as Daniel J. Solove argues in this important book, these arguments and many others are flawed. They are based on mistaken views about what it means to protect privacy and the costs and benefits of doing so. The debate between privacy and security has been framed incorrectly as a zero-sum game in which we are forced to choose between one value and the other. Why can’t we have both?

In this concise and accessible book, Solove exposes the fallacies of many pro-security arguments that have skewed law and policy to favor security at the expense of privacy. Protecting privacy isn’t fatal to security measures; it merely involves adequate oversight and regulation. Solove traces the history of the privacy-security debate from the Revolution to the present day. He explains how the law protects privacy and examines concerns with new technologies. He then points out the failings of our current system and offers specific remedies. Nothing to Hide makes a powerful and compelling case for reaching a better balance between privacy and security and reveals why doing so is essential to protect our freedom and democracy.

This book grows out of an essay I wrote a few years ago about the Nothing-to-Hide Argument.   The essay’s popularity surprised me and made me realize that there is a hunger out there for discussions about the arguments made in the debate between privacy and security.

The primary focus of NOTHING TO HIDE is on critiquing common pro-security arguments.  I’ve given them nifty names such as the “Luddite Argument,”the “War-Powers Argument,” the “All-or-Nothing Argument,” the “Suspicionless-Searches Argument,” the “Deference Argument,” and the “Pendulum Argument,” among others.  I also discuss concrete issues of law and technology, such as the Fourth Amendment Third Party Doctrine, the First Amendment, electronic surveillance statutes, the USA-Patriot Act, the NSA surveillance program, and government data mining.

  May 3, 2011 at 12:50 pm   Posted in: Articles and Books, Book Reviews, Criminal Procedure, Government Secrecy, Privacy, Privacy (Electronic Surveillance), Privacy (Law Enforcement), Privacy (National Security), Technology   Print This Post   One Comment

IP vs. Auto Safety

posted by Frank Pasquale

Two items of note on this topic recently. First, the NYT reports on NHTSA’s lazy approach to IP overreach by automakers:

For years, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has declined to post on its Web site reports from automakers about problems with their cars and about specialized warranty extensions that could save consumers large sums on repairs. . . . The technical service bulletins . . . provide information on unusual problems with vehicles . . . . Special service campaigns are a form of technical service bulletin that often tell dealers of warranty extensions for particular repairs. “Many manufacturers have asserted that technical service bulletin information is copyrighted and will not waive those copyrights,” [said] an agency spokeswoman . . . . “N.H.T.S.A. has a legal obligation to abide by copyright law.”

NHTSA could easily excerpt the gist of bulletins as fair use. Or it could communicate facts in them without using any of the actual language or diagrams they contain. Anyone who has taken a week of copyright knows about the idea/expression or fact/expression dichotomy. But copyfraud obfuscates this obvious workaround.

Second, ongoing legal battles over Toyota’s sudden acceleration incidents may lead to “security measures typically reserved for classified government secrets:”

The fight centers on access to Toyota’s source code, the software that controls sophisticated engine management and other electronics in its vehicles. Plaintiffs’ attorneys believe the code might contain evidence that could bolster their cases. The Japanese auto maker has been fighting to restrict access to the software, saying it needs to protect what it calls the “crown jewel” of its global enterprise.

Toyota said the attorneys should only be allowed to view parts of the code in a highly secure room, the likes of which is used by members of Congress or in trials against terrorists and spies for viewing classified information.

As I note in the piece, this kind of “qualified transparency” will become more and more common in tech disputes. Debates about “channeling” innovation protection (to patent or trade secret law) will increasingly need to take into account how patent law’s disclosure function could help more people understand potentially dangerous products.

  April 3, 2011 at 1:38 pm   Posted in: Administrative Law, Consumer Protection Law, Intellectual Property, Privacy (National Security), Technology   Print This Post   2 Comments

New Privacy Law Reference Book: Privacy Law Fundamentals

posted by Daniel Solove

Professor Paul Schwartz (Berkeley School of Law) and I recently published a new book, PRIVACY LAW FUNDAMENTALS.  This book is a distilled guide to the essential elements of U.S. data privacy law. In an easily-digestible format, the book covers core concepts, key laws, and leading cases.

The book explains the major provisions of all of the major privacy statutes, regulations, cases, including state privacy laws and FTC enforcement actions. It provides numerous charts and tables summarizing the privacy statutes (i.e. statutes with private rights of action, preemption, and liquidated damages, among other things). Topics covered include: the media, domestic law enforcement, national security, government records, health and genetic data, financial information, consumer data and business records, government access to private sector records, data security law, school privacy, employment privacy, and international privacy law.

This book provides an concise yet comprehensive overview of the field of privacy law for those who do not want to labor through lengthy treatises.  Paul and I worked hard to keep it under 200 pages — our goal was to include a lot of information yet do so as succinctly as possible.   PRIVACY LAW FUNDAMENTALS is written for those who want a handy reference, a bird’s eye view of the field, or a primer for courses in privacy law.

We wrote this book to be a useful reference for practitioners — ideally, a book they’d keep at the corner of their desks or in their briefcases.

We also think it can serve as a useful study aid for students taking privacy law courses.

You can check it out here, where you can download the table of contents.

  March 21, 2011 at 12:44 am   Posted in: Articles and Books, Book Reviews, Privacy, Privacy (Consumer Privacy), Privacy (Electronic Surveillance), Privacy (Gossip & Shaming), Privacy (ID Theft), Privacy (Law Enforcement), Privacy (Medical), Privacy (National Security)   Print This Post   No Comments

NASA v. Nelson

posted by Daniel Solove

The U.S. Supreme Court has decided NASA v. Nelson, reversing the 9th Circuit 8-0.  My thoughts about the case are here and here, and as I predicted, the Court rejected the 9th Circuit holding that the government employment background check questionnaires violated the constitutional right to information privacy.  Fortunately, the Court kept its opinion narrow and didn’t use it as an opportunity to wipe out the constitutional right to information privacy, a right that the Court mentioned just a few times but that has taken on more of a life in the circuit courts.  According to the Court:

We assume, without deciding, that the Constitution protects a privacy right of the sort mentioned in Whalen and Nixon. We hold, however, that the challenged portions of the Government’s background check do not violate this right in the present case. The Government’s interests as employer and proprietor in managing its internal operations, combined with the protections against public dissemination provided by the Privacy Act of 1974, 5 U. S. C. §552a, satisfy any “interest in avoiding disclosure” that may “arguably ha[ve] its roots in the Constitution.” Whalen, supra, at 599, 605.

Concurring in the judgment, Justice Scalia (joined by Justice Thomas) would have happily axed the right:

I would simply hold that there is no constitutional right to “informational privacy.” . . . . The Court’s sole justification for its decision to “assume, without deciding” is that the Court made the same mistake before—in two 33-year-old cases, Whalen v. Roe, 429 U. S. 589 (1977), and Nixon v. Administrator of General Services, 433 U. S. 425 (1977). . . . It is unfathomable why these cases’ passing, barely explained reference to a right separate from the Fourth Amendment—an unenumerated right that they held to be not applicable—should be afforded stare decisis weight.

I have little else to say about the case that I haven’t already said in my previous posts other than to reiterate my relief the Court kept its decision narrow.  I believed from the beginning that this case was doomed because the constitutional right to information privacy focuses on preventing unwarranted disclosures not on restricting the collection of information via questionnaires.

  January 20, 2011 at 1:30 am   Posted in: Constitutional Law, Employment Law, Privacy, Privacy (National Security)   Print This Post   One Comment

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