Privacy

Overview

Wednesday, 4:00-5:30pm
Format: Lecture, featuring guest respondents
Leads: Phil Malone, with Herbert Burkert and John Palfrey
Participants: Urs Gasser, Charlie Nesson, and others

This pillar topic, led by Phil Malone and featuring Herbert Burkert and John Palfrey, will cover a mixture of privacy history, theory, black letter law, regulatory developments and current controversies. Herbert Burkert will offer a multinational perspective of privacy law and policy, outlining the emergence of data protection law in Europe. Against this backdrop, recent global privacy developments, comparative EU vs. US approaches and current online controversies – including behavioral targeting, persistent cookies and Do Not Track legislation; the right to be forgotten/ le droit à l’oubli; location privacy; facial recognition; contextual privacy; Google’s Street View service, and Google’s Buzz rollout – will be explored to gain a deeper understanding of the current the state of privacy law and norms and possible ways forward. Participants Urs Gasser, and Charlie Nesson will add their perspectives on these issues throughout this session.

Required Readings

Overview

• Hyperpublic Symposium 2011: Urs Gasser’s Opening Remarks, June 10, 2011.

• "Legal Confusion on Internet Privacy: The Clash of Data Civilisations," The Economist, June 17, 2010.

• Peter Fleischer, “10 Paths and They’re All Hard,” September 5, 2010.

• Thierer, “Birth of the Privacy Tax,” April 2, 2011.

Behavioral Targeting/Do Not Track

• “Researchers Expose Cunning Online Tracking Service That Can’t Be Dodged,” Wired epicenter blog, July 29, 2011.

• Julia Angwin, “The Web’s New Gold Mine: Your Secrets,” Wall Street Journal Onlike (part of the “What They Know” series), July 30, 2010.

• FTC Commissioner, Thomas Rosch, “Information and Privacy: in search of a data-driven policy,” August 22, 2011.

• Kim Hyung-eun, "Facebook agrees to increase privacy protection" Korea JoongAng Daily, January 21, 2011.

• Eric Mack, "Facebook's 'Like' button illegal in German state," CNET News, August 19, 2011.

Facial Recognition

• David Thompson, "The Future of Privacy: Facial Recognition, Public Facts, and 300 Million Little Brothers," Volokh Conspiracy blog, June 11, 2010.

• Dominic Basulto, “Does Facial Recognition Technology Mean the End of Privacy,” big think blog, August 5, 2011.

• Helen Pidd, “Facebook facial recognition software violates privacy laws, says Germany,” guardian.co.uk, August 3, 2011.

Right to Be Forgotten

• Suzanne Daley, “On Its Own, Europe Backs Web Privacy Fights,” New York Times, August 8, 2011.

• Peter Fleischer, “Foggy Thinking About the Right to Oblivion,” Peter Fleischer: Privacy? Blog, March 9, 2011.

• Adam Thierer, “Erasing Our Past on the Internet,” Forbes, April 17, 2011.

• Natasha Singer, "Just Give Me the Right to Be Forgotten," New York Times, August 20, 2011.

Location Privacy

• Jacqui Cheng, “Franken’s Location-Privacy Bill Would Close Mobile-Tracking ‘Loopholes’,” Wired epicenter blog, June 17, 2011.

• "Apple Sued by South Korean iPhone Users Over Location Data", Business Week, August 17, 2011.

• European Commission, "Opinion 13/2011 on Geolocation services on smart mobile devices," May 16, 2011.

Google Street View

• Prasad Krishna, "A Street View of Private and the Public," Centre for Internet & Society India blog, June 4, 2011.

• Matt McGee, “Google Street View Debuts In Germany, Blurry Houses Included,” Search Engine Land blog, November 1, 2010.

• Matt McGee, “Google Has Stopped Street View Photography In Germany,” Search Engine Land blog, April 10, 2011.

Google Buzz

• Miguel Helft, "Critics Say Google Invades Privacy With New Service," New York Times, February 12, 2010.

• Sarah Kessler, "Google Settles With FTC Over Buzz Privacy Issues," Mashable, March 30, 2011.

Recommended Readings

Privacy and Technological Points of Control

• John Borland, “Supreme Court rules against file swapping”, CNET, June 2005
• Dan Goodin “Microsoft unveils 'do not track' option for IE9”, theregister.co.uk, December 7 2010

Privacy and Reputation

• Craig Newmark, "Trust and reputation systems: redistributing power and influence", craigconnects blog, April 6, 2010
• Evlyn Rusli, "Unvarnished Becomes Honestly.com, Raises $1.2 Million And Opens The Floodgates", TechCrunch, October 19, 2010
• Wikipedia Entry on the Seigenthaler Incident

Related Case Examples

• Google Buzz
• Facebook Beacon