PRIVACY + SECURITY BLOG

News, Developments, and Insights

high-tech technology background with eyes on computer display

The Future of Academic Presses

Daniel Solove     @daniel-solove.bsky.social
Founder of TeachPrivacy
September 18, 2008

Books

Academic presses are facing a difficult future. Book publishing in general is an industry that is struggling, and academic presses have it especially hard since many titles they publish will not have mass popular appeal. Unfortunately, many academic presses are no longer subsidized by their universities, including very wealthy schools like Harvard and Yale, which are greedily hoarding the money in their big endowments. As a result, academic presses must find ways to be profitable, which can be difficult with books that aren’t written by Malcolm Gladwell or Stephen Colbert.

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Facebook, Myspace, and College Admissions

Daniel Solove     @daniel-solove.bsky.social
Founder of TeachPrivacy
September 18, 2008

College Admissions and Social Media Profiles

Last year, I noted that employers and others were increasingly looking at applicants’ social network website profile pages in their hiring decisions. Apparently, now college admissions officers are also using social network sites like Facebook and MySpace to make decisions on applicants. According to the Wall St. Journal:

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Politics in the Age of MySpace and Facebook

Daniel Solove     @daniel-solove.bsky.social
Founder of TeachPrivacy
September 3, 2008

Facebook MySpace

Recently, I was interviewed for an article in the Globe and Mail about the young teenage father-to-be involved in the media circus surrounding vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s pregnant teenage daughter. I believe that the media should restrain itself from prying further into Palin’s daughter’s private life, as well as that of the father-to-be. He was referred to only as “Levi” by the media until recently, when a few media entities and bloggers started identifying him by his full name. I don’t believe he should be identified by his last name unless he consents to it. His identity is of little relevance to the issues in the campaign.

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Franz Kafka’s Last Wishes and the Kafka Myths

Daniel Solove     @daniel-solove.bsky.social
Founder of TeachPrivacy
September 2, 2008

Franz Kafka

Professor Lior Strahilevitz (U. Chicago Law School) has an interesting post about Franz Kafka’s papers. The famous story about Kafka’s papers is that Kafka asked his friend, Max Brod, to burn them after his death. Although Kafka had published a few works during his lifetime, a great many stories, parables, letters, and diary entries were unpublished, as were Kafka’s two great book masterpieces, The Trial and The Castle. Brod refused to burn them. Instead, he published them, and Kafka would go on to achieve enormous posthumous fame as one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century.

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Fallacies About Privacy

Daniel Solove     @daniel-solove.bsky.social
Founder of TeachPrivacy
August 25, 2008

Privacy

In today’s Wall Street Journal, Gordon Crovitz has an op-ed arguing that we’ve gotten over privacy:

We seem to be following the advice of Scott McNealy, chairman of Sun Microsystems, who in 1999 said, “You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it.” And the observation by Oracle CEO Larry Ellison: “The privacy you’re concerned about is largely an illusion. All you have to give up is your illusions, not any of your privacy.”

These comments could be dismissed as technology executives trying to minimize complaints about technology. But whatever we say about how much we value privacy, a close look at our actual behavior suggests we have gotten over it. A recent study by AOL of privacy in Britain found that 84% of people said they would not disclose details about their income online, but in fact 89% of them willingly did.

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Should People’s Political Donations Be Public?

Daniel Solove     @daniel-solove.bsky.social
Founder of TeachPrivacy
August 4, 2008

Privacy of Political Donations

Pursuant to the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA), people’s campaign contributions must be accessible to the public. I’ve long found this to be problematic when applied to the campaign contributions of individuals. Certainly, information must be reported to the government to ensure that campaign contribution limits aren’t exceeded. But I don’t know why it is the public’s business to know what candidates I’ve given money to and how much. Go to Moneyline CQ or Fundrace2008 or OpenSecrets.org and you can search for the campaign contributions of anyone. You can learn a person’s address, occupation, and the amounts he/she contributed and to whom.

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The Problems of More Accessible Criminal Conviction Information

Daniel Solove     @daniel-solove.bsky.social
Founder of TeachPrivacy
August 2, 2008

Criminal Searches

A recent New York Times article by Brad Stone discusses a website called CriminalSearches.com, which allows you to punch in a name of a person and do a search for any criminal records about him or her. From the article:

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The Importance of Choosing Literary References Wisely

Daniel Solove     @daniel-solove.bsky.social
Founder of TeachPrivacy
July 11, 2008

Merchant of Venice Shakespeare

Over at WSJ blog, Dan Slater writes about a Fair Housing Act case involving a condo association that prohibited all objects in hallways. A Jewish resident challenged the rule under the Fair Housing Act because his mezuzah was removed, claiming the rule discriminated against his religion. The 7th Circuit held for the condo association [link no longer available], concluding that the rule was “neutral with respect to religion” since it applied to all objects.

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