Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
May 2012 TECHNOLOGY AND LIBERTY DIRECTOR (Full-time) The ACLU of Washington (ACLU-WA) seeks a self-motivated public policy advocate to lead its work to protect civil liberties in the face of society’s increasingly advanced technologies. The ACLU-WA’s staff of 30 employees and numerous volunteers work in a fast-paced, friendly and professional office in downtown Seattle.
This morning I spoke at a U.S. Chamber of Commerce event on “Responsible Data Uses: Benefits to Consumers, Businesses and the Economy.” In preparing for the event, I dusted off some old working notes for speeches I had delivered at other events about privacy policy and “big data” and expanded them a bit to account [...]
Andrew Orlowski of The Register (U.K.) recently posted a very interesting essay making the case for treating online copyright and privacy as essentially the same problem in need of the same solution: increased property rights. In his essay (“‘Don’t break the internet’: How an idiot’s slogan stole your privacy“), he argues that, “The absence of [...]
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has just released its final privacy framework proposal, “Protecting Consumer Privacy in an Era of Rapid Change.” The agency released a draft report with the same title back in late 2010 and then asked for comments. [Here were my comments to the agency.] The FTC’s final report comes just a [...]
The Federal Trade Commission issued a report today calling on companies “to adopt best privacy practices.” In related news, most people support airline safety… The report also “recommends that Congress consider enacting general privacy legislation, data security and breach notification legislation, and data broker legislation.” This is regulatory cheerleading of the same kind our government’s [...]
I was astounded to see the misstatements and misapplication of math in a recent Atlantic blog post called “How Much Is Your Data Worth? Mmm, Somewhere Between Half a Cent and $1,200.” For his back-of-envelope calculations about the value of personal data, Alexis Madrigal writes, “User profiles — slices of our digital selves — are [...]
The Mercatus Center at George Mason University has just released my new white paper, “The Perils of Classifying Social Media Platforms as Public Utilities.” [PDF] I first presented a draft of this paper last November at a Michigan State University conference on “The Governance of Social Media.” [Video of my panel here.] In this paper, [...]
After the NSA’s aggressive pursuit of a greater role in civilian cybersecurity, and last week’s statement by Sen. John McCain criticizing the Lieberman-Collins bill for not including a role for the agency, some feared that the new G.O.P. cybersecurity bill would allow the military agency to gather information about U.S. citizens on U.S. soil. So, [...]
I’m pleased to report that the Mercatus Center at George Mason University has just released my huge new white paper, “Technopanics, Threat Inflation, and the Danger of an Information Technology Precautionary Principle.” I’ve been working on this paper for a long time and look forward to finding it a home in a law journal some [...]
Over at Forbes I have posted some thoughts on the new privacy framework (Consumer Data Privacy in a Networked World) that the Obama Administration released today. In my essay, “The Problem with Obama’s “Let’s Be More Like Europe” Privacy Plan,” I hammer home the same point I’ve made here before many times: Regulation is not [...]
May 28, 2012
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
