Chuck Cosson

Position / Title:

Non-Residential Fellow

Focus Areas:

Areas of Expertise:

Chuck Cosson is Senior Corporate Counsel, Privacy, at T-Mobile USA, based in Bellevue, WA. At T-Mobile, Chuck oversees privacy compliance programs and provides privacy guidance on mobile Internet, location services and other business issues. Chuck spent 7 years at Microsoft leading the company’s public policy work on human rights, free expression, and child online safety. He has also worked in Washington, D.C. on telecommunications policy and regulation. His engagement with Stanford will focus on the role of metaphor as a guide for contemporary privacy law - a conception of the Internet not as a “place you go” but as a “tool you use.”

Blog Posts

“Tool Without a Handle” – Tools For Art and Politics, Part 1

By Chuck Cosson on August 15, 2016 at 6:23 pm

This blog has, to date, primarily focused on the qualities of networked information technologies and regulatory responses to them – in particular qualities that raise issues of privacy and free expression. This installment of “Tool Without a Handle” looks at the qualities that render these tools influential on artistic and political discourse. In this first part, I will look at one particular quality: searchable text.

The searchability of digital content may contribute to confirmation bias and the “filter bubble” phenomena. A pre-conceived preference as to what news or information is desired can be easily bolstered with references found via targeted searches. At the same time, a distinct value of search technology is that it has enabled a vast number of entertainment and creative works to find audiences. A library of programming the size of Netflix or YouTube is simply not navigable with the rotary dials that graced the television set of my childhood.

“Tool Without a Handle: “Tools for Terror, Tools for Peace,” part II

By Chuck Cosson on May 14, 2016 at 3:06 pm

This blog continues the analysis of how to respond to terrorist activity (including recruitment and planning of attacks) using network information technology, in particular social media. As noted earlier, I think promising avenues to investigate include three areas:
1) Countering misinformation
2) Active recruitment to alternative missions
3) Areas beyond communication - e.g., algorithmic adjustments by social media platforms

While information technologies, and the business platforms that deploy them have a central role, the core of the best responses to violent extremism may turn out not to be tools, but people.

Tool Without a Handle: Tools for Terror, Tools for Peace

By Chuck Cosson on March 6, 2016 at 2:51 pm

Much consideration has been given to the role of tools in recruitment to extremist violence, the desirability of restricting the use of tools for those purposes, the collateral effects of such restrictions, and the opportunity to use tools for alternative narratives.

This blog concludes that in some cases, restrictions on such uses can be desirable. At the same time though, with few exceptions, the choice of such restrictions should be left to the private sector, and carried out in a way that advances liberal principles. Moreover, there is unlikely to be a solely technological solution to the problem of radicalization or its products, including planning of terrorist attacks. Ultimately, it may be people rather than tools, that are the most effective resource for curtailing extremist violence.

Tool Without a Handle: Quantum Paradox #3

By Chuck Cosson on October 17, 2015 at 6:32 pm

To moderate (edit or block objectionable or illegal content) in the online context implicates the quantum paradox of privacy. To effectively moderate a user, you must know who the user is, and give the user a fixed identity. It can of course be a pseudonymous identity, but even in such cases some degree of privacy, some degree of invisibility, is lost. Accepting that this is necessary if there is to be some effective form of content moderation can move past unworkable solutions

“Tool Without a Handle”: 21st Century Data Privacy – A Quantum Puzzle – Part 2

By Chuck Cosson on June 27, 2015 at 4:20 pm

In this part 2, I describe a quantum principle – the familiar “uncertainty principle” – and how it applies to privacy law and policy considerations. In particular, I observe that the process of managing data respectfully creates something of a quantum paradox. The paradox is a form of an “uncertainty” principle, whereby to better afford privacy for certain data, one in fact needs to know additional information about the data subject

Meet Stanford CIS

Discussion Seminar: Timothy Garton Ash / Free Speech: Ten Principles for a Connected World

The European General Data Protection Regulation

Law, Borders, and Speech

Government Hacking: Rule 41

Chuck Cosson

Chuck Cosson

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