Albert Gidari is the Consulting Director of Privacy at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. He was a partner for over 20 years at Perkins Coie LLP, achieving a top-ranking in privacy law by Chambers, before retiring to consult with CIS on its privacy program. He negotiated the first-ever "privacy by design" consent decree with the Federal Trade Commission on behalf of Google, which required the establishment of a comprehensive privacy program including third party compliance audits. Mr. Gidari is a recognized expert on electronic surveillance law; and, long an advocate for greater transparency in government demands for user data, he brought the first public lawsuit before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, seeking the right of providers to disclose the volume of national security demands received. Mr. Gidari earned an LLM from University of Washington School of Law, his law degree from George Mason University School of Law, and his undergraduate degree from Tulane University.
Hi Res Photo of Albert Gidari
Law, Borders, and Speech: Law Enforcement Access to User Data
By Albert Gidari on January 8, 2018 at 4:53 pm
The Law, Borders, and Speech conference at Stanford’s Center for Internet and Society asked the important question: Which countries’ laws and values will govern Internet users’ online behavior, including their free expression rights? The conference used the landmark article written in 1996 by David G. Post and David R. Johnson to examine whether twenty years on their conclusions still held true. Post and Johnson had concluded that “[t]he rise of the global computer network is destroying the link between geographical location and: (1) the power of local governments to assert control over online behavior; (2) the effects of online behavior on individuals or things; (3) the legitimacy of the efforts of a local sovereign to enforce rules applicable to global phenomena; and (4) the ability of physical location to give notice of which sets of rules apply.” They proposed that national law must be reconciled with self-regulatory processes emerging from the network itself.
The Practical Impact of Carpenter v. United States
By Albert Gidari on November 30, 2017 at 4:36 pm
An enormous amount of attention has been paid to the oral argument before the Supreme Court in Carpenter v. United States. The transcript provides tantalizing tea leaves as to whether the Court will find a protectable right to privacy in a cell phone subscriber’s location and many pundits seem to think the day went to Carpenter while I haven’t heard anyone touting a government homerun.
Public Access to Smart Data
By Albert Gidari on September 25, 2017 at 10:14 am
Last month, the Supreme Court of California may have decided the future of the public's access to "smart city" data without knowing it. In ACLU v Los Angeles Police Department, the court accepted that raw data collected by Los Angeles police and sheriff departments, using automated licence plate readers (ALPRs), constituted a public record subject to disclosure under California's Public Records Act (CPRA) absent an exemption. The court held that the catch-all disclosure exemption in the CPRA applied, which requires balancing the public interest in preventing disclosure where certain harms can be identified against the public interest served by disclosure such as furthering the public's understanding of the privacy risks of the ALPR program.
Why is the Internet Like a Cell Phone? Carpenter v. U.S
By Albert Gidari on August 15, 2017 at 10:37 am
If your cell phone is on, your location is known, tracked and recorded, whether you are in your home or in public. As you move around, your location history is created and stored by the carrier, numerous applications on the device, and potentially even the manufacturer of the device or operating system provider. Your consent to capture this information, whether rough location or very granular, may be tacit, inherent in the application’s usage, or freely given when you activate, install or operate the device.
The Cross-Border Data Fix: It’s Not So Simple
By Albert Gidari on June 16, 2017 at 12:03 pm
The House Judiciary Committee held a hearing yesterday on cross-border data requests, featuring testimony from the Department of Justice, the U.K. government, Google, the Center for Democracy and Technology, state law enforcement, and Professor Andrew Woods. Everyone recognizes the problem: law enforcement outside the U.S. can’t get data for their legitimate investigations from U.S.
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Connected Cars Will Run on Your Personal Data
"“This is the kind of technological advancement that’s intended to bring public safety and individual safety to the forefront,” Albert Gidari, the director of privacy at Stanford University’s Center For Internet and Society, told me over the phone."
From Disruption to Dystopia: Silicon Valley Envisions the City of the Future
"“The whole point of a smart city is that everything that can be collected will be collected,” Al Gidari, the director of privacy at Stanford University’s Center for Internet and Society in California, told the CBC. If smart cities really wanted to give people more control over their privacy, they wouldn’t collect any of it unless people opted in."
Bitcoin extortion plot targeted Churchill Downs, but prosecutors and company kept it quiet
"Albert Gidari, director of privacy at Stanford University’s Center for Internet and Society, said a company that has suffered a breach has a duty to notify affected customers even though no further compromise occurred, because “with a criminal like this, there is no way to be certain of that.”"
The NSA’s voice-recognition system raises hard questions for Echo and Google Home
"Albert Gidari, director of privacy at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, says that kind of standoff is an inherent problem when platforms are storing biometric-friendly data. After years of sealed litigation, it’s still unclear how much help the government has a right to compel. “To the extent platforms store biometrics, they are vulnerable to government demands for access and disclosure,” says Gidari.
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""The whole point of a smart city is that everything that can be collected will be collected," says Al Gidari, the director of privacy at Stanford University's Center for Internet and Society in California. He argues that if smart cities wanted to give people more control over their privacy, by default they wouldn't collect any data. Instead, current proposals tend to put limits on the use of data only "after it's already been collected and the damage is done," Gidari says."
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Stanford CIS Privacy Counsel Lunch Series: Troy Sauro (Past Event)
RSVP is required for this free event.
Join Troy Sauro, Senior Privacy Counsel, Google Inc., for a discussion about his journey from being a litigation attorney in a big law firm to becoming a Google privacy counsel. Sponsored by the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School. CIS Director of Privacy Albert Gidari will moderate the discussion.
Stanford CIS Privacy Counsel Lunch Series: Janis Kestenbaum and Rebecca Engrav (Past Event)
RSVP is required for this free event.
Katherine Tassi: Stanford CIS Privacy Counsel Lunch Series (Past Event)
Meet the Center for Internet and Society (Past Event)
The Center for Internet and Society (CIS) is a public interest technology law and policy program at Stanford Law School and a part of Law, Science and Technology Program at Stanford Law School. CIS brings together scholars, academics, legislators, students, programmers, security researchers, and scientists to study the interaction of new technologies and the law and to examine how the synergy between the two can either promote or harm public goods like free speech, innovation, privacy, public commons, diversity, and scientific inquiry.