Privacy

Overview

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

This pillar topic, led by John Palfrey and featuring Herbert Burkert, 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, Phil Malone, 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, “The Dissent: Why One FTC Commissioner Thinks Do Not Track Is Off Track, Rosch: Concepts to Guard Online Privacy Have not Been Properly Vetted,” March 28, 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

Location Privacy

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

• 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

Google Street View

• 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