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.

Robot Film Festival July 16-17, NYC

By Ryan Calo • May 21, 2011 at 5:09 pm

If you're in New York City this summer, you might want to check out the inaugural Robot Film Festival. The festival runs July 16 and 17. Entries welcome until June 5. I understand there will even be a red carpet.

Via Automaton. Read more » about Robot Film Festival July 16-17, NYC

Privacy's Broken Windows

By Ryan Calo • May 14, 2011 at 5:54 pm

Wake Forest Law Review asked me to respond to an interesting privacy article by Patricia Sánchez Abril for their new online supplement, The Forum. I was happy to do it. You can find my response Read more » about Privacy's Broken Windows

Nevada Bill Would Pave The Road To Autonomous Cars

By Ryan Calo • April 27, 2011 at 2:52 pm

Is it lawful for a car to drive itself? In the absence of any law to the contrary, it should well be. A new bill is working its way through the Nevada state legislature that would remove any doubt in that state. A.B. 511 directs the Nevada Department of Transportation to authorize autonomous vehicle testing in certain geographic areas of Nevada. Should vehicles meet Nevada DOT standards, they would be permitted to "operate on a highway." The bill defines not only autonomous vehicle, but artificial intelligence as well. AI is "the use of computers and related equipment to enable a machine to duplicate or mimic the behavior of human beings." An autonomous vehicle uses "artificial intelligence, sensors, and [GPS] coordinates to drive itself." To be clear: autonomous vehicles are not yet the law of the land in Nevada. This bill must pass through two committees and receive a hearing before it can be voted on and become law. Some preliminary thoughts on the bill in its present form follow. Read more » about Nevada Bill Would Pave The Road To Autonomous Cars

Against Notice Skepticsm In Privacy (And Elsewhere)

By Ryan Calo • March 19, 2011 at 11:04 am

Requiring notice is an extraordinarily popular way to regulate. In online privacy, for instance, giving notice about their practices is among the only affirmative obligations websites face. The strategy is also one of the most heavily criticized. Not only does no one read privacy policies, skeptics rightly point out, but many believe that their mere existence guarantees certain base level protections that may or may not exist.

Should we give up on notice? My recent draft paper argues: maybe not. We should explore two possibilities, at any rate, before we do. The first is that regulators may sometimes select the wrong form of notice for the job. Today most website “terms” say that the company “may disclose data pursuant to lawful requests.” That does very little to further user understanding or action. But maybe it could work to: Read more » about Against Notice Skepticsm In Privacy (And Elsewhere)

Facebook's New Privacy Tools As User Notice

By Ryan Calo • February 25, 2011 at 12:06 pm

Facebook previewed a new notice strategy today. Part of the proposed change is a simpler privacy policy. Meh. I, like many, am a privacy policy skeptic. I'm skeptical of layered notice, too. I'm even skeptical of privacy policy icons, tables, and nutrition-style labels. They all run into the same problem: written text cannot simultaneously be readable and exhaustive, thorough and yet concise.

As an alternative, I argue for a concept I've been calling "visceral" privacy notice. Rather than tell people at length what your privacy practices may be, you show them what they really are. Facebook took a step in this direction today, joining Google and Yahoo! in what I hope to be an emerging best practice.
{C} Read more » about Facebook's New Privacy Tools As User Notice

Ryan Calo

Driverless Car Summit

Vehicle Automation: TRB @ Stanford

52nd Annual Workshop on Transportation Law

Big Data and Privacy: Making Ends Meet

Ryan Calo

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