Data: Privacy, Property and Security

Catalog description

The collection, use and marketing of personal data are ubiquitous in the digital age. This seminar will explore the diverse legal regimes regulating personal data--including privacy, property and security--and the imperfect nature of their protections. Legal rules are rapidly evolving to address, if not resolve, the inevitable conflicts between privacy, property and security in relation to personal data. Laws have been enacted and new ones are under consideration at the national, state and even municipal levels, as well as around the world. Norms are emerging to guide these conflicts in the operation of business. Technology is evolving that can facilitate the protection, or accelerate the exploitation, of personal data. At the heart of all these developments is the question, who owns and controls personal data in the digital age. The same piece of data may in different hands raise different expectations. As an example, A may have a privacy expectation that her purchase from an online marketplace is no one's business but her own. B, the app that served as intermediary between the buyer and seller, may have a property or contract expectation that it owns the metadata and other information about A's buying habits. C, a government agency, may have a security interest in collecting or unearthing the details of A's purchase of particular items. This same triad of interests is implicated across a wide variety of highly sensitive personal data, such as location information, facial recognition and medical results. This seminar will explore these data rules, norms, technologies and conflicts through three sessions of lecture and interactive exercises addressed to privacy, property and security, respectively; four sessions devoted to presentations from leading representatives of consumer, corporate and government interests, with questioning by students in the class; and two…