Information technology lets people learn about one another on a scale previously unimaginable. Information in the wrong hands can be harmful. Scholars on this site consider problems of privacy, fraud, identity, and security posed by the digital age.
"You cannot determine with certainty that the information will never wind up in the hands of people who are going to use it." — Ryan Calo, Professor of Law, University of Washington
"This has emerged as a powerful test of the FTC's credibility as a privacy data protection authority. If it seems to conclude this in a way that is weak, it will suffer tremendously." — William Kovacic, Professor of Law, George Washington University
"The bad guys have had more time to spend on this, and more time to develop new tricks." — Ed Felten, Professor of Computer Science, Princeton University
"The payoff for Facebook is to have a bigger and broader sense of everybody’s preferences, both individually and collectively. That helps it not only target ads but target and develop services, too." — Siva Vaidhyanathan, Professor of Media Studies, University of Virginia
"I’m always nervous about any service provider that wants my password. That’s fundamentally insecure." — Lorrie Cranor, Professor of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University
"In the US, the legal options are small but potent if (big if) one has the funds to hire an attorney and one can find the creator. Defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress are potential claims." — Danielle Citron, Professor of Law, University of Maryland
"Since the company has one of the largest name-face databases in the world and the power to infer significant things about people whom it identifies, it’s especially important that it craft and execute appropriate policies for face recognition. All users should be able to access the same easy-to-use setting for preventing Facebook from recognizing them in photos and videos, and for deleting their templates." — Evan Selinger, Professor of Philosophy, Rochester Institute of Technology
This article reports the plea bargain for Christopher Cleary, a man arrested for a history of terrorizing women he met over the internet. The plea deal with fits a pattern of lenient punishments common for cyberstalking and online harassment cases. Cyber law expert Danielle Citron, University of Maryland, is quoted.
For most people, that effort — to change how they search, how they buy stuff, how they connect with others and absorb news — is just too great. "There’s a sense that the fight to protect your data is unwinnable. You’d have to learn about other tools, it’s costly in time, and it might not even help, because your data is already out there." — Alessandro Acquisti, Professor of Information Technology, Carnegie Mellon University
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TAP Academics
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TAP Blog
Articles by Professor Anita Allen of the University of Pennsylvania School of Law and Professor Paul Schwartz of the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law have been honored with the FPF’s Privacy Papers for Policymakers Award.
March 10, 2023
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CITP Distinguished Lecture Series: Lorrie Cranor – Designing Usable and Useful Privacy Choice Interfaces
March 30, 2023, Princeton, NJ
Digital Doppelgangers: A Workshop on Our Digital Others
May 4, 2023,
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May 18, 2023, Phoenix, AZ
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Fact Sheets
There are a number of privacy issues related to how online companies collect, store, use and share personally identifiable information; and how consumers are informed about what is done with their information online.
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Featured Article
Policymakers show increasing interest in regulating robots. However, a "robot" can be hard to define. The increasing pace of innovation makes it hard to apply the plain language of laws to new cases.
February 12, 2019
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