Basics of Privacy Law
- Class Summary
What do you personally think privacy is? Why do you value your privacy? What information do you want to keep private and what wouldn't you mind sharing and to whom? These are the themes for our discussion board this week. What kinds of information you do and do not mind making available, under which circumstances and why? What values and rights are immutably tied to our notions of privacy? Also, what do your beliefs about privacy mean for the technologies you employ and how you use them? For example, if you don't say anything on the phone you wouldn't mind being published in the newspaper or you just don't care what people know about you, do you mind speaking on cordless or cell phones? If you know you are not a terrorist, do you mind if the NSA listens in on any random call of yours, or if they have a back door to explore your computer if you fit a certain (secret) profile of what a potential terrorist is? - Consider this. In 1991 Bill Gates posted a challenge to the members of a usenet group he hosted. The challenge was this: find out as much information as they could about an individual he identified by name only. Using primarily publicly available information, the group produced 181 unique pieces of information about the individual. Perhaps the most disturbing fact about this story is that the individual Bill Gates named was a CIA employee.
- Audio-Video Week 2 Introduction (MP3) Privacy's Worth (MP3) Who Really Needs Privacy Anyway? (MP3) Suw Charman, of the UK's Open Rights Group, and TJ McIntyre, of Digital Rights Ireland DRI, in on "Government and Privacy in the Digital Age" Question and answer session from the above lecture
Recommended Materials
Conceptualizing Privacy by Danuiel J. Solove
Privacy in Cyberspace: Constructing a Model of Privacy for the Electronic Communications Environment by Katrin Schatz Byford
Inside the 1st Amendment: ; A question of priorities: bin Laden's privacy or your right to know?" by Paul K. McMasters
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