All Article Summaries

A duty of loyalty focusing on the relationships between data collectors and data subjects would reinvigorate American privacy law. The law should include a general duty not to act against users’ interests.

Privacy is not dead. Privacy rules are increasingly critical to protecting individual autonomy and political freedom, and to consumer protection.

Existing data protection rules are mostly procedural, focused on notice and consent. A “relational” privacy model would prohibit some data practices without considering consent.

The United States Congress must decide whether to enact a national privacy law like Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). But GDPR-style rules fail to protect against many harms of data overuse.

As new surveillance technologies and smartphones become ubiquitous, courts in the United States and Europe struggle to apply traditional principles to protect civil liberties.

Because the United States lacks a general data protection statute, some observers believe the United States lacks adequate privacy law. However, federal and state privacy laws do provide detailed privacy regulation in the US.

The digital economy requires trust whenever personal information is shared with Internet Service Providers (ISPs), doctors, banks, search engines, and others. Current privacy regulations focus on consent or financial harm, and do not promote trust.

Values like privacy and free speech must keep pace with the digital age. Surveillance of thinking, reading, and communications threatens free speech. Rules to protect intellectual privacy would support free speech.

Some commentators claim that privacy is a thing of the past. However, privacy is more important than ever, because of new information technologies and surveillance. Privacy is best defined as a system of rules for enabling people to manage personal information.

Courts dismiss cases in which someone complains of surveillance, stating that observation alone is not harmful. Surveillance discourages individuals from sharing ideas and exposes them to risks like profiling. “Intellectual privacy” is crucial to foster civil liberties.