Posts about Surveillance by Professor Daniel J. Solove for his blog at TeachPrivacy, a privacy awareness and security training company.
In response to government surveillance or massive data gathering, many people say that there’s nothing to worry about. “I’ve got nothing to hide,” they declare. “The only people who should worry are those who are doing something immoral or illegal.” The nothing-to-hide argument is ubiquitous. This is why I wrote an essay about it 10 […]
A while ago, I wrote about a case involving a member of the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team staff who improperly accessed a database of the Houston Astros. There is now an epilogue to report in the case. The individual who engaged in the illegal access — a scouting director named Chris Correa — […]
Yesterday, Microsoft won a huge case against government surveillance, a case with very important implications: In the Matter of a Warrant to Search a Certain E‐Mail Account Controlled and Maintained by Microsoft Corporation.
A dramatic legal battle is taking place that will have dramatic implications for the future of technology, privacy, security, and the extent of government power. The FBI obtained an order from a magistrate judge to force Apple to develop software to help the FBI break into an encrypted iPhone.
The passing of Justice Antonin Scalia has brought a wave of speculation about current and future U.S. Supreme Court cases. One area where there might be a significant impact will be the 4th Amendment, which provides the primary constitutional protection against government surveillance and information gathering. A new justice could usher in a dramatic expansion […]
Last year, the death of the US-EU Safe Harbor Arrangement sent waves of shock and despair to the approximately 4500 companies that used this mechanism to transfer personal data from the US to the EU. But a new day has dawned.
I’ve long been saying that privacy need not be sacrificed for security, and it makes me delighted to see that public attitudes are aligning with this view. A Pew survey revealed that a “majority of Americans (54%) disapprove of the U.S. government’s collection of telephone and internet data as part of anti-terrorism efforts.” The anti-NSA […]
By Daniel J. Solove Proponents for allowing government officials to have backdoors to encrypted communications need to read Franz Kafka. Nearly a century ago, Kafka deftly captured the irony at the heart of their argument in his short story, “The Burrow.” After the Paris attacks, national security proponents in the US and abroad have been […]
“The US is developing a law of cybersecurity that is incoherent and unduly complex,” says Ed McNicholas, one of the foremost experts on cybersecurity law. McNicholas is a partner at Sidley Austin LLP and co-editor of the newly-published treatise, Cybersecurity: A Practical Guide to the Law of Cyber Risk (with co-editor Vivek K. Mohan). The […]
By Daniel J. Solove Next year, there will be a milestone birthday for the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) – the primary federal law that regulates how the government and private parties can monitor people’s Internet use, wiretap their communications, peruse their email, gain access to their files, and much more. This is no ordinary […]