Woodrow Hartzog is an Assistant Professor at the Cumberland School of Law at Samford University. His research focuses on privacy, human-computer interaction, online communication, and electronic agreements. He holds a Ph.D. in mass communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, an LL.M. in intellectual property from the George Washington University Law School, and a J.D. from Samford University. He previously worked as an attorney in private practice and as a trademark attorney for the United States Patent and Trademark Office. He also served as a clerk for the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
Chain-Link Confidentiality
By Woodrow Hartzog • April 26, 2012 at 10:04 am
I have just uploaded a new essay about online privacy to SSRN that will appear in Volume 46 of the Georgia Law Review. The essay, titled "Chain-Link Confidentiality," asserts that personal information that is shared online can be better protected if we require our confidants to make sure that their confidants are watching out for us. This strategy could help us retain control over our personal information as it moves downstream. Your comments are warmly welcome. Read more » about Chain-Link Confidentiality
Three Cheers for Obscurity, an Unspoken Beneficiary of United States v. Jones
By Woodrow Hartzog • February 2, 2012 at 9:59 am
Last week, the Supreme Court issued its opinion in United States v. Jones, in which the Justices held that the government's installation of a GPS device on a target's vehicle, and its use of that device to monitor the vehicle's movements, constituted a Fourth Amendment search. The decision was surprisingly unanimous on this point, though concurring opinions by Justices Sotomayor and Alito potentially amplify the significance of the opinion by proposing alternate approaches to the larger problem of ubiquitous surveillance technologies and privacy in public. Given the majority opinion's narrow focus on the attachment of the device to the car, the larger issue of privacy in public remains unsettled.
Others have done an exemplary job of commenting on the decision. The dominant themes arising from the decision and analysis of the decision seem to be the (re?)injection of the concept of trespass into Fourth Amendment doctrine, signs of potential withering of the third party doctrine, and recognition that Fourth Amendment and privacy doctrine will soon enough be useless if they do not adequately protect against ever-evolving surveillance methods and technologies.
I'd like to focus on an aspect of the decision that has not shown up much in the analysis of the case, likely because it was never explicitly mentioned in the text. Although the word obscurity does not appear anywhere in United States v. Jones, I think the decision, particularly Justice Sotomayor's concurring opinion, supports the idea that the obscurity of our personal information is worth protecting. Read more » about Three Cheers for Obscurity, an Unspoken Beneficiary of United States v. Jones
Resisting Terms of Use, Or: The Revolution Will Not Be Boilerplate
By Woodrow Hartzog • September 30, 2011 at 2:00 pm
Technology users are becoming frustrated over privacy-invasive terms of use agreements. In the past, this frustration was difficult to channel effectively enough to regularly change the terms. However, that futility is slowly abating. Users are increasingly attempting to negotiate the terms of their agreement through technology or a protracted exchange of public criticism and response. I would like to explain why a few recent developments leave me optimistic that a combination of resistance and innovation can offset some of the inequities in the standard-form contracts formed between users and websites. Read more » about Resisting Terms of Use, Or: The Revolution Will Not Be Boilerplate
CIS on Surprisingly Free
By Woodrow Hartzog • August 17, 2011 at 8:31 am
Ryan Calo and I both recently recorded podcasts for the show Surprisingly Free, which is an excellent weekly podcast for anyone interested in law and technology. Ryan discusses the imminent rise of personal robots and I discuss the ubiquity of website terms of use.
For those who don't know it, Surprisingly Free has hosted many excellent guests, so I recommend exploring the website. If you're interested in law and technology podcasts, I also highly recommend CIS's own Hearsay Culture. Read more » about CIS on Surprisingly Free
The Promise of Privacy Controls
By Woodrow Hartzog • May 1, 2011 at 7:26 pm
Privacy settings and other technological controls used to protect privacy have been justifiably criticized a bit lately. Danielle Citron recently blogged at Concurring Opinions about an important new study conducted by Columbia’s Michelle Madejski, Maritza Johnson and Steve Bellovin that found that Facebook’s default privacy settings fail to capture real-world expectations. The United Kingdom Government has recently indicated that browser settings alone cannot be used by Web users to give consent to being tracked online under a new EU law. The Government's rationale for this decision was that these browser settings were not flexible enough to reflect a user's true privacy preferences. The general consensus seems to be that most privacy settings simply aren't that good at protecting the actual information we consider private in a given context. I think some skepticism regarding privacy controls is warranted, particularly in light of the current technology. However, I'd like to show some support for privacy controls, or, rather, the promise of privacy controls. My hope is that that courts and lawmakers do not completely sour on recognizing privacy controls as a legitimate way to protect an Internet user's privacy.
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Chain-Link Confidentiality
Disclosing personal information online often feels like losing control over one’s data forever; but this loss is not inevitable. This essay proposes a “chain-link confidentiality” approach to protecting online privacy. One of the most difficult challenges to guarding privacy in the digital age is the protection of information once it is exposed to other people. A chain-link confidentiality regime would contractually link the disclosure of personal information to obligations to protect that information as the information moves downstream. Read more » about Chain-Link Confidentiality
The Case for Online Obscurity
On the Internet, obscure information has a minimal risk of being discovered or understood by unintended recipients. Empirical research demonstrates that Internet users rely on obscurity perhaps more than anything else to protect their privacy. Yet, online obscurity has been largely ignored by courts and lawmakers. In this article, we argue that obscurity is a critical component of online privacy, but it has not been embraced by courts and lawmakers because it has never been adequately defined or conceptualized. Read more » about The Case for Online Obscurity
Woodrow Hartzog: Chain-Link Confidentiality Approach to Online Privacy
Employers Want Facebook Passwords
CIS Affiliate Scholar Woodrow Hartzog interviewed in this CBS-42 story about employers wanting Facebook passwords of their employees: "There are certain things employers can ask, and there are certain things that they are not allowed to ask. And a lot of that information is potentially included in a social media profile." Read more » about Employers Want Facebook Passwords
Sharing Passwords Is Romantic, But Not Without Risk
NPR's Neal Conan speaks with Woodrow Hartzog, Junior Affiliate Scholar CIS and assistant professor of privacy law and online agreements at Samford University, about the social and legal risks associated with password sharing. Read more » about Sharing Passwords Is Romantic, But Not Without Risk