BOLD Series: CyberPrivacy, Fall 2003

rtabasky — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 19:52:43 -0500

with Professor John Nockleby, Loyola Law School

This series took place in late fall, 2003. You may view the series.

Contemporary technology has created numerous means of collecting and storing data about individuals. Information as mundane as what brand of potato chips or ointment a person buys, to the types of food, entertainment, magazines, books, or trips a person likes can easily be digitally stored and linked to the individual's name, income and address. Credit and loan history, employment history, medical information disclosed to insurance companies, and academic records are all stored on computer databases, and can be accessed to varying degrees by marketers seeking to profit through targeted advertising, or investigators seeking to learn all they can about a person.

The rise of the Internet, too, has led to numerous concerns about the prospects of web or email snooping by employers, web hosts, or the government. It is possible, for example, for an Internet Service Provider to track the sites a person surfs on the web. It is possible for an employer to track an individual’s emails --inbound as well as outbound--and to keep a log of every website the employee visits. The FBI’s “Carnivore” program can track all mouseclicks an individual makes on the Web. Web businesses drop “cookies” onto an individuals computer, and can thereafter track the individual’s behavior on that site to create an online “profile” of the individual’s interests, shopping and reading habits. Do these developments raise concerns about informational privacy? If so, what can, or should, be done about them?

What, if any, information should be shielded from snoopy marketers, government agencies or database-keepers? Do individuals have a right of informational privacy that should be protected? If so, how? What sorts of information do we think should be shielded from others’ view, and why? Should the government be asked to create privacy rules that protect privacy interests? Or, should consumers be left to negotiate their own privacy protections? These are the sorts of questions the course will address.

The course will look at many contemporary instances in which new online technologies have increased the risk that intimate or private information about individuals can be collected, stored, sorted, manipulated, and disclosed. In addition, the course will examine the utility (or not) of current schemes to regulate these invasions in the name of privacy.

Specific topics covered in the Series will include:

Module I – Introduction to Online Data Collection: Does it Matter?
Module II – Online Data Collection by Private Organizations
Module III – Monitoring Online activities of Employees
Module IV – Governmental Collection of Data – Part I
Module V – Governmental Collection of Data – Part II
Module VI- Comparative approaches to Privacy—The European Union
Module VII –Self-Help Mechanisms, Cryptography, and the Open Code Movement

Berkman Center’s New Online Offering, “CyberPrivacy,” Opens Door for Worldwide Debate

rfink — Thu, 23 Oct 2003 15:54:02 -0400

Cambridge, MA - Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society launches the online series “CyberPrivacy” today at noon, as part of the ongoing Berkman Online Lecture and Discussion (BOLD) Series project. CyberPrivacy is led by Professor John T. Nockleby of Loyola Law School and is free and open to the public.

Nockleby, a leading scholar in the field of Internet privacy, has developed, along with several research assistants, the material for this series to include the latest court decisions, legislation and scholarship in privacy law. Participants in the series are given a series of readings in seven installments, or modules. For the first time in BOLD history, the full series will be hosted on the Berkman Center’s H2O open source software system, offering special online discussions, using the “Rotisserie” software, as well as traditional threaded discussion.

"The Berkman Center is committed to making as much cutting-edge scholarship in the field of Internet law available to the public at large as we possibly can," says Berkman Center Executive Director John Palfrey. "The BOLD Series had linked people from hundreds of countries around the world together and created communities built around ideas. We’re particularly excited to host this latest series, CyberPrivacy, entirely within our new open source H2O environment. And we are delighted that Professor Nockleby will once again be leading this series."

The Berkman Center for Internet & Society is a research program founded to explore cyberspace, share in its study, and help pioneer its development. Its home page is found at http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/.

For more information about the series and a link to registration, please visit the following website: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/home/cyberprivacy. Registration is free to anyone who would like to participate and will remain open throughout the series.

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PRESS CONTACT: Wendy Koslow, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, 617/495-7547.

Berkman Online Lecture and Discussion (BOLD) Series Newsfeed

BOLD Series: CyberPrivacy, Fall 2003

Berkman Center’s New Online Offering, “CyberPrivacy,” Opens Door for Worldwide Debate