Government, Technology, and Policy

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New York City Council Hearing on Algorithmic Transparency Bill

October 19, 2017 2:01 pm Eli Siems 0
On Monday, October 16, the New York City Council’s Committee on Technology held a hearing on the proposed bill INT 1696-2017, which “would require agencies that use algorithms or other automated processing methods that target services, impose penalties, or police persons to publish the source code used for such processing.…
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PRG – Overview of Legal Implications of NSA Spying

September 18, 2013 1:45 pm Nathan Newman 1
Post-911 laws and FISA court developments. PRG Discussion on 9/18/13 FISA Act governs gathering of data about foreign actors, set up in wake of Watergate.  Created framework for data collection and court review by FISA courts.   With the Patriot Act, push to expand powers and reach of a number of laws.  …
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Do Fair Information Practices (FIPs) really create better outcomes?

September 22, 2012 5:38 pm Sasha_Romanosky 0
http://www.markleweeklydigest.org/2012/09/eu-and-us-eye-privacy-in-parallel.html The article linked above adds to the comparative discussion between EU and US privacy regimes. In every conversation I can recall, Americans consider both the European and Canadian models of FIPs and Privacy by Design to be much superior to the sectoral approach here in the US.…
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Scary Description of New Hungarian Secret Police

April 20, 2012 12:24 pm Andrew Selbst 0
In Paul Krugman’s blog at the NYT, his colleague Kim Lane Scheppele has been periodically writing about the recent radical changes in Hungarian government. Today she wrote about the TEK, the new Hungarian Secret Police. The description of their police is everything you would expect from a new secret police, and worth reading in it’s entirety, but here’s a (somewhat long) excerpt: TEK can engage in secret surveillance without having to give reasons or having to get permission from anyone outside the cabinet.…
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Google consent decree

February 7, 2012 11:41 pm irubinstein 0
This is what the Google-FTC consent decree says about changing it sharing practices: II. IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that respondent, prior to any new or additional sharing by respondent of the Google user’s identified information with any third party, that: 1) is a change from stated sharing practices in effect at the time respondent collected such information, and 2) results from any change, addition, or enhancement to a product or service by respondent, in or affecting commerce, shall: A.…
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Natural Language Versus the Fourth Amendment on Search

November 10, 2011 5:18 pm Andrew Selbst 0
(x-posted from Coffee House Talks) In doing the initial framing for an article on how to apply Helen Nissenbaum’s theory of Contextual Integrity to the 4th Amendment, it has become apparent that there are differences between how natural language would classify whether something is a search, a reasonable search, or an excused or unexcused reasonable search, and how the law would classify the same action.…
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Homeland Security moves forward with ‘pre-crime’ detection

October 8, 2011 7:17 pm JScott 0
Documents obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center through a Freedom of Information Act request show that the Department of Homeland Security is moving forward with a program called Future Attribute Screening Technologies (FAST).  The basic idea is to use various technologies to non-intrusively measure things like heart rate, eye movement, and voice pitch, among other things, to detect individuals who have “mal-intent.”…
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Washington Post on Domestic Spying

December 26, 2010 12:16 am HNissenbaum 0
A in-depth report Monday in the Washington Post describes the expanding apparatus of US domestic intelligence since the September 11th Terrorist Attacks, including fusion centers, the new Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative and the FBI’s Guardian Database. The article is well worth reading, but it is missing a bit of legal context that is important to an understanding the government policy that is driving the change.…