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.
Consulting Director of Privacy at the Stanford Law Center for Internet and Society, Albert Gidari, comments on the landmark U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on location tracking in Carpenter v. United States: Read more about Supreme Court Defends Privacy in Cell Phone Location Data Collection
Former Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson testified Wednesday before the House Intelligence Committee as part of the House investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Read more about Political Parties as Critical Infrastructure?
Fake news captures attention and is corrosive. Like many similar social problems online, it is a symptom of surveillance capitalism. Surveillance capitalism explains the economic incentives that drive media production and distribution on internet platforms like Facebook. The business model used by internet platforms relies on collecting data and using that data to create profiles of users to predict their interests and behavior. Read more about We need our platforms to put people and democratic society ahead of cheap profits
Prime Minister Theresa May’s political fortunes may be waning in Britain, but her push to make internet companies police their users’ speech is alive and well. In the aftermath of the recent London attacks, Ms. May called platforms like Google and Facebook breeding grounds for terrorism. Read more about Making Google the Censor
After last week’s shocking results, Britain’s Conservative Party had to make a deal with Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) to return to government. It appears likely that the DUP will not go into a coalition with the Conservatives, but will simply support the “minority government” from the outside on key votes, while not being part of the coalition. Read more about A tiny party of hardliners holds the balance of power in Britain. Here’s what you need to know
The last two days have seen two major developments regarding Russian hacking. First, Russian President Vladimir Putin tacitly admitted that Russian hackers might have influenced the U.S. election, but claimed that any hackers were just patriots, acting independently of the Russian government. Then The Intercept published a leaked NSA report stating that Russian military intelligence had tried to penetrate U.S. voting systems. Read more about Don’t believe what Putin is saying about ‘patriotic’ Russian hackers
Social scientists find it hard to study many important questions because they don’t have good data: Tax evasion is one of those questions. For obvious reasons, tax cheats don’t have any desire to announce themselves in public. Nor is it easy to study tax evasion based on the people who get caught; they may not be representative. This means that the recent spate of leaks has been a gold mine for scholars interested in the causes and consequences of tax evasion. Read more about We now know who cheats on their taxes. (Hint: it’s not the poor or middle class.)
I posted earlier about a new bipartisan bill to advance accountability in Syria: the Syrian War Crimes Accountability Act of 2017 (current status is here). Two additional pieces of legislation are now floating around Capitol Hill that are concerned with promoting international justice for Syria. Read more about New Atrocities Prevention & Response Legislation Introduced
