Privacy

danah boyd on how parents help kids lie to get on Facebook

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danah boyd, Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research, and Assistant Professor in Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University, discusses her recent article in First Monday with Ester Hargitai, Jason Schultz, and John Palfrey. It’s entitled, “Why parents help their children lie to Facebook about age: Unintended consequences of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.” boyd discusses COPPA as it applies to Facebook, namely that children under 13 are not allowed to use the site. She then talks about her research, which looks at whether this restriction is helping parents protect their children’s privacy, and whether it is meeting COPPA’s ultimate goals. boyd discusses her findings, which indicate parents are allowing their children to lie about their age to obtain a Facebook account. According to boyd, parents want guidelines when it comes to data protection, but they do not necessarily want strict requirements. boyd feels that COPPA is not achieving its goal of privacy protection and should be evaluated with more transparency so parents and the public in general know how to protect their privacy.

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Laura Heymann on reputation

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Laura Heymann, Professor of Law at William & Mary Law School, discusses her recent article in the Boston College Law Review entitled, The Law of Reputation and the Interest of the Audience. Heymann proposes viewing the concept of reputation as something formed by a community rather than something owned by an individual. Reputation, according to Heymann, is valuable because of the way a community uses it. She then discusses how thinking of reputation differently leads to thinking about different remedies for reputation-based harms. Heymann thinks current remedies for damage to one’s reputation do not focus enough on the affect it has on the community and proposes remedies for emotional injuries be separate from remedies for damages to the reputation. She then discusses how the Internet affects reputation, including how it enlarges communities, and how it intersects with privacy.

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Simon Chesterman on electronic intelligence surveillance

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Simon Chesterman, Vice Dean and Professor of Law at the National University of Singapore, and Global Professor and Director of the NYU School of Law Singapore Programme, discusses his new book, One Nation Under Surveillance: A New Social Contract to Defend Freedom Without Sacrificing Liberty. The discussion begins with a brief overview of the NSA and how it garnered the attention of Americans after 9/11. Chesterman discusses the agency’s powers and the problems the NSA encounters, including how to sort through large amounts of data. The discussion then turns to how these powers can become exceptions to constitutional protections, and how such exceptional circumstances can be accommodated. Finally, Chesterman suggests that there has been a cultural shift in western society, where expectations of privacy have dimished with technological and cultural trends, so that information collection by the government is generally accepted. However, he says, society is concerned with how that information is used. According to Chesterman, there should be limits and accountability mechanisms in place for government agencies like the NSA.

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Adam Thierer on children’s privacy online

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Adam Thierer, Senior Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University in the Technology Policy Program, discusses his new paper, Kids, Privacy, Free Speech & the Internet: Finding the Right Balance. For kids, using the Internet has become second nature, but sites that track a child’s online activity can raise privacy concerns. A number of well-intentioned lawmakers are introducing regulatory measures that aim to expand the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). Thierer discusses the unintended consequences that could result from regulations, like mandatory age verification and an Internet “eraser button.” He proposes an alternative to regulation, which includes education and empowerment, placing importance on personal and parental responsibility.

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Daniel Solove on the tradeoff between privacy and security

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Daniel Solove, professor at the George Washington University Law School, discusses his new book Nothing to Hide: The False Tradeoff Between Privacy and Security. He suggests that developments in technology do not create a mutually exclusive relationship between privacy and national security. Solove acknowledges the interest government has in maintaining security within our technological world; however, Solove also emphasizes the value of personal privacy rights and suggests that certain procedures, such as judicial oversight on governmental actions, can be implemented to preserve privacy. This oversight may make national security enforcement slightly less effective, but according to Solove, this is a worthwhile tradeoff to ensure privacy protections.

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Konstantinos Stylianou on technological determinism and privacy

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Konstantinos Stylianou, a former Fulbright Scholar now working on a PhD in law at Penn Law School, and author of the provocative new essay, “Hasta La Vista Privacy, or How Technology Terminated Privacy,” discusses technological determinism and privacy. Stylianou’s thesis is that the evolution of technology is eliminating privacy; therefore, lawmakers should switch emphasis from regulating the collection of information, which he claims is inevitable, to regulating the use of that information. Stylianou discusses why digital networks specifically make it difficult to keep information private, differences between hard and soft technological determinism, and when he thinks people will realize about their private information what the recording industry has finally realized about digital music.

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Julian Sanchez on electronic surveillance

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Julian Sanchez, a research fellow at the Cato Institue who focuses on issues related to technology, privacy, and civil liberties, discusses electronic communications. Sanchez talks about changes in surveillance of electronic communications since 9/11, highlighting the large number of cases in which the FBI has gathered phone, internet, and banking information without judicial oversight. He then discusses the legal framework around electronic communications, which he says was built for a very different set of assumptions than we have today. Sanchez also gives a few recommendations for how to disentangle the convoluted legal standards related to electronic communications.

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Jane Yakowitz on tragedy of the data commons

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Jane Yakowitz, a visiting assistant professor at Brooklyn Law School, discusses her new paper about data anonymization and privacy regulation, Tragedy of the Data Commons. Citing privacy concerns, legal scholars and privacy advocates have recently called for tighter restrictions on the collection and dissemination of public research data. Yakowitz first explains why these concerns are overblown, arguing that scholars have misinterpreted the risks of anonymized data sets. She then discusses the social value of the data commons, noting the many useful studies that likely wouldn’t have been possible without a data commons. She finally suggests why the data commons is undervalued, citing disparate reactions to similar statistical releases by OkCupid and Facebook, and offers a few policy recommendations for the data commons.

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Jim Harper on identification systems

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Jim Harper, director of information policy studies at the Cato Institute, discusses identification systems. He talks about REAL ID, a national uniform ID law passed in 2005 that states have contested, and NSTIC, a more recent government proposal to create an online identification “ecosystem.” Harper discusses some of the hidden costs of establishing national identification systems and why doing so is not a proper role of government. He also comments on the reasoning behind national ID proposals and talks about practical, beneficial limits to transparency.

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James Grimmelmann on harassment, anonymity, and the Google Books settlement

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James Grimmelmann, Associate Professor of Law at the New York Law School and faculty member of the Institute for Information Law and Policy, discusses online harassment and anonymity. The discussion also turns to a new proposal to combat online harassment and the Google Books settlement.

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