Ryan Calo

Ryan Calo is an assistant professor at the University of Washington School of Law and a former research director at CIS. A nationally recognized expert in law and emerging technology, Ryan's work has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, NPR, Wired Magazine, and other news outlets. Ryan serves on several advisory committees, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, and the Future of Privacy Forum. He co-chairs the American Bar Association Committee on Robotics and Artificial Intelligence and serves on the program committee of National Robotics Week.

You can read Ryan's work on SSRN and follow him on Twitter.

Does NAI’s Opt Out Tool Stop Consumer Tracking?

By Ryan Calo on April 27, 2009 at 4:52 pm

I heard a rumor that I hope isn’t true. Specifically, I heard that opting out of behavioral profiling may not stop advertising companies from tracking you as you travel across the Web. Rather, according to the rumor, in many cases you merely opt out of seeing the tailored ads your web history might otherwise trigger.

The ability to opt out of behavioral profiling essentially underpins the argument for self-regulation by the industry. The idea is that (1) people like tailored ads and (2) those that worry about the practice, for instance, from a privacy perspective, can opt out of it. Setting aside the apparent frailty of cookie-based opt out (when you delete your cookies, you delete your opt out as well) and the availability of other means to track users (like flash cookies), this seems pretty straightforward and convincing.

But what does “opting out” mean, exactly? A close look at the Network Advertising Initiative website, which offers an opt out tool on behalf of most major online advertisers, turns up no guarantee that opting out will stop a company from logging where a user has traveled.

The True Danger Of The Internet: What Occurs To Us

By Ryan Calo on March 30, 2009 at 2:32 pm

The most interesting aspect of cyberspace is not what happens for a time to its visitors. It’s not the absence of regulation nor the presence of perfect regulation; it’s not the staggering variety of content nor the sudden arbitrariness of geography; it’s not the constant threat of surveillance nor the occasional absence of accountability. The most interesting aspect of cyberspace flows from its status as an engine of realization: cyberspace widens the range of what we think of as possible. The Web is home to phenomena that never quite happened before—not because the technology was untenable, but because no one thought to do it. The importance of cyberspace is not what occurs to you when you visit; it’s what occurs to you.

If you’ve visited Google’s physical campus in Mountain View, you likely noticed that the sign in procedure amounts to a click-wrap. Google requires that you accept a non-disclosure agreement, presented on monitors by the front door, before it will print you a visitor pass. It occurred to the Internet giant that it could treat its campus like an Internet service by requiring visitors to click-through a terms of use at the entry portal. This generates a record that you either agreed to play by the rules, or you were trespassing.

This is hardly an isolated example.

Yes, A Copyright Law Joke

By Ryan Calo on March 25, 2009 at 4:23 pm

You don't see a lot of law comics, much less comics about copyright law. Does this clever cartoon from across the Web describe an instance of fair use? You be the judge.

Have Fun Watching The Country

By Ryan Calo on March 13, 2009 at 9:12 pm

826 National is an incredible non-profit dedicated to improving writing and other skills among children ages to six to eighteen. A few days after the election of Barack Obama, 826 centers in seven cities asked children to offer advice to the new president. The result was the deservedly celebrated book Thanks And Have Fun Running The Country.

As you might imagine, this book is a major tour de cute. One 9-year-old in Los Angles opines that if he were president, he “would help all nations, even Hawaii.” A Seattle 7-year-old suggests that President Obama “turn on the heater, so it won’t be cold.” In short: awwwww.

You can imagine my surprise, then, when I came across the following suggestion from a Boston 12-year-old: “Dear, Barack Obama, … You should also build cameras all around our city to find out who is breaking the law, and also in movie theatres so we can tell who is making illegal copies.”

Wait, what??? Did the DOJ and RIAA have a child together? The rest of this writer’s suggestions are eminently reasonable—more power efficient cars, less smoking, and the like. Still, it’s not often that you see a 12-year-old proponent of ubiquitous surveillance!

Privacy And Free Speech (ACLU No. Cal. Primer)

By Ryan Calo on March 10, 2009 at 4:21 pm

The ACLU of Northern California has published a primer (PDF) on the advantages to businesses of good privacy and free speech practices. The primer assembles many real-world instances of harms and benefits to companies due to their choices around user privacy and value speech. Congratulations to Nicky, Chris, and no doubt others in putting this together.