The Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School is a leader in the study of the law and policy around the Internet and other emerging technologies.
Recently, Orin Kerr and I had a brief conversation on Twitter regarding the Fourth Amendment and the content/non-content distinction. Specifically, Orin asked those of us who subscribe to the mosaic theory of intelligence if some large amount of metadata can become content, can some small amount of content become metadata by the same logic? Read more about Content Is Content, No Matter How Small
The path from Laquan McDonald’s summary execution by Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke to the reluctant release — over a year later — by the Chicago Police Department of video of the killing shines yet another spotlight on the disproportionate use of force by police against young black men and women and the failure of authorities to identify and punish this behavior. Read more about Racial surveillance has a long history
Over at the Weekly Standard, Steven Hayward has a new piece arguing that political science is on its last legs. His main evidence is that Stanford University’s political science department has seen a big decline in undergraduate enrollment. This leads him to argue that students are fleeing political science because it is too concerned with arid mathematical exercises, and doesn’t concern itself nearly enough with questions of justice. Read more about The Weekly Standard makes a fact-free argument about political science. Here are some facts.
Over at the Weekly Standard, Steven Hayward has a new piece arguing that political science is on its last legs. His main evidence is that Stanford University’s political science department has seen a big decline in undergraduate enrollment. This leads him to argue that students are fleeing political science because it is too concerned with arid mathematical exercises, and doesn’t concern itself nearly enough with questions of justice. Read more about The Weekly Standard makes a fact-free argument about political science. Here are some facts.
What ifyour research could help solve a looming national problem, but government officials thought publishing it would be tantamount to treason? A Stanford professor and his graduate students found themselves in that situation 37 years ago, when their visionary work on computer privacy issues ran afoul of the National Security Agency. At the time, knowledge of how to encrypt and decrypt information was the domain of government; the NSA feared that making the secrets of cryptography public would severely hamper intelligence operations. Read more about Keeping Secrets
Two months ago, the European Court of Justice issued a ruling that effectively invalidated the Safe Harbor arrangement, an agreement that big U.S. multinationals and e-commerce firms use to move personal information across the Atlantic. The court’s ruling was largely motivated by the threat that U.S. surveillance undermined the privacy rights of European citizens. Read more about Here’s how Washington weaponized America’s IT companies and why it backfired
On Friday, Congress will vote on a mutated version of security threat sharing legislation that had previously passed through the House and Senate. These earlier versions would have permitted private companies to share with the federal government categories of data related to computer security threat signatures. Companies that did so would also receive legal immunity from liability under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) and other privacy laws. Read more about OmniCISA Pits DHS Against the FCC and FTC on User Privacy
Last October, the European Court of Justice struck down the Safe Harbor agreement, a 15-year-old transatlantic arrangement that permitted U.S. companies to transfer data, such as people’s Google-search histories, outside the EU. Read more about The Transatlantic Data War
This post is the latest installment of our “Monday Reflections” feature, in which a different Just Security editor examines the big stories from the previous week or looks ahead to key developments on the horizon. Read more about Don’t Forget the Other Legal Issues in the 9/11 Trial