Stanford CIS

Good Fences Make Better Data Brokers

on

Woodrow Hartzog, Chain Link Confidentiality, 46 Georgia L. Rev. 657 (2012) available at SSRN.

Since at least the early 2000s, privacy scholars have illuminated a fatal flaw at the core of many “notice and consent” privacy protections: firms that obtain data for one use may share or sell it to data brokers, who then sell it on to others, ad infinitum. If one can’t easily prevent or monitor the sale of data, what sense does it make to carefully bargain for limits on its use by the original collector? The Federal Trade Commission and state authorities are now struggling with how to address the runaway data dilemma in the new digital landscape. As they do so, they should carefully consider the insights of Professor Woody Hartzog. His article, Chain Link Confidentiality, offers a sine qua non for the modernization of fair data practices: certain obligations should follow personal information downstream.

Read the full review at: http://cyber.jotwell.com/good-fences-make-better-data-brokers/.

Published in: Press , Privacy