Category Archives: 96:6

Technologies that mediate social interaction can put our privacy and our safety at risk. Harassment, intimate partner violence and surveillance, data insecurity, and revenge porn are just a few of the harms that bedevil technosocial spaces and their users, particularly users from marginalized communities. This Article seeks to identify the building blocks of safe socialContinue reading “Safe Social Spaces”

Consent has enjoyed a prominent position in the American privacy system since at least 1970, though historically, consent emerged from traditional notions of tort and contract. Largely because consent has an almost deferential power as a proxy for consumer choice, organizations increasingly use consent as a de facto standard for demonstrating privacy commitments. The DepartmentContinue reading “The Consent Myth: Improving Choice for Patients of The Future”

Consent permeates both our law and our lives—particularly in the digital context. Consent is the foundation of the relationships we have with search engines, social networks, commercial web sites, and any one of the dozens of other digitally mediated businesses we interact with regularly. We are frequently asked to consent to terms of service, privacyContinue reading “The Pathologies of Digital Consent”

Despite numerous groups’ efforts to score, grade, label, and rate the privacy of websites, apps, and network-connected devices, these attempts at privacy indicators have, thus far, not been widely adopted. Privacy policies, however, remain long, complex, and impractical for consumers. Communicating in some short-hand form, synthesized privacy content is now crucial to empower internet usersContinue reading “Trustworthy Privacy Indicators: Grades, Labels, Certifications, And Dashboards”

Currently, we frame individuals online as in a series of exchanges with specific firms, and privacy, accordingly, is governed to ensure trust within those relationships. However, the focus on the relationship between consumers and specific firms does not capture how the online environment behaves. The aggregation and secondary use of consumer data is performed byContinue reading “Privacy Governance for Institutional Trust (Or Are Privacy Violations Akin to Insider Trading?)”

Privacy is a mysterious concept. The more apparent its significance in the real world becomes, the more obscure the core and the limitations of the concept become. In the digital age, it is urgent that the legal framework to protect privacy should be enhanced more than ever before. At the same time, the right-based modelContinue reading “Privacy’s Past: The Ancient Concept and Its Implications for The Current Law of Privacy”

This Article contends that the Privacy Act of 1974, a law intended to engender trust in government records, can be implemented in a way that inverts its intent. Specifically, pursuant to the Privacy Act’s reporting requirements, in September 2017, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) notified the public that record systems would be modifiedContinue reading “The Ironic Privacy Act”

Direct-to-consumer genetic testing (DTC-GT) companies have proliferated and expanded in recent years. Using biospecimens directly submitted by consumers, these companies sequence and analyze the individual’s genetic information to provide a wide range of services including information on health and ancestry without the guidance of a healthcare provider. Given the sensitive nature of genetic information, however,Continue reading “The Privacy Risks of Direct-To-Consumer Genetic Testing: A Case Study Of 23andMe And Ancestry”

Every generation has preferred modes of self-disclosure. Not long ago, lovers revealed their thoughts, desires, and secrets over the phone and in letters. Today, they exchange personal histories and nude photos via text and online chats. Yet no matter the era’s chosen mode of communication, the success of intimate relationships depends upon sexual privacy. IntimacyContinue reading “Why Sexual Privacy Matters for Trust”