Privacy

Forget About Quantum Computers Cracking Your Encrypted Data, Many Believe End-to-End Encryption Will Lose Out as a Matter of Policy

Ian Sannes, MJLST Staffer

As reported in Nature, Google recently announced they finally achieved quantum supremacy, which is the point when computers that work based on the spin of qubits, rather than how all conventional computers work, are finally able to solve problems faster than conventional computers. However, using quantum computers is not a threat to encryption any time soon according to John Preskill, who coined the term “quantum supremacy,” rather such theorized uses remain many years out. Furthermore, the question remains whether quantum computers are even a threat to encryption at all. IBM recently showcased one way to encrypt data that is immune to the theoretical cracking ability of future quantum computers. It seems that while one method of encryption is theoretically prone to attack by quantum computers, the industry will simply adopt methods that are not prone to such attacks when it needs to.

Does this mean that end-to-end encryption methods will always protect me?

Not necessarily. Stewart Baker opines there are many threats to encryption such as homeland security policy, foreign privacy laws, and content moderation, which he believes will win out over the right to have encrypted private data.

The highly-publicized efforts of the FBI in 2016 to try to force Apple to unlock encryption on an iPhone for national security reasons ended in the FBI dropping the case when they hired a third party who was able to crack the encryption. This may seem like a win for Silicon Valley’s historically pro-encryption stance but foreign laws, such as the UK’s Investigatory Powers Act, are opening the door for government power in obtaining user’s digital data.

In October of 2019 Attorney General Bill Barr requested that Facebook halt its plans to implement end-to-end encryption on its messaging services because it would prevent investigating serious crimes. Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, admitted it would be more difficult to identify and remove harmful content if such an encryption was implemented, but has yet to implement the solution.

Some believe legislators may simply force software developers to create back doors to users’ data. Kalev Leetaru believes content moderation policy concerns will allow governments to bypass encryption completely by forcing device manufacturers or software companies to install client-side content-monitoring software that is capable of flagging suspicious content and sending decrypted versions to law enforcement automatically.

The trend seems to be headed in the direction of some governmental bypass of conventional encryption. However, just like IBM’s quantum-proof encryption was created to solve a weakness in encryption, consumers will likely find another way to encrypt their data if they feel there is a need.


Pacemakers, ICDs, and ICMs – Oh My! Implantable Heart Detection Devices

Janae Aune, MJLST Staffer

Heart attacks and heart disease kill hundreds of thousands of people in the United States every year. Heart disease affects every person differently based on their genetic and ethnic background, lifestyle, and family history. While some people are aware of their risk of heart problems, over 45 percent of sudden heart cardiac deaths occur outside of the hospital. With a condition as spontaneous as heart attacks, accurate information tracking and reporting is vital to effective treatment and prevention. As in any market, the market for heart monitoring devices is diverse, with new equipment arriving every year. The newest device in a long line of technology is the LINQ monitoring device. LINQ builds on and works with already established devices that have been used by the medical community.

Pacemakers were first used effectively in 1969 when lithium batteries were invented. These devices are surgically implanted under the skin of a patient’s chest and are meant to help control the heartbeat. These devices can be implanted for temporary or permanent use and are usually targeted at patients who experience bradycardia, a slow heart rate. These devices require consistent check-ins by a doctor, usually every three to six months. Pacemakers must also be replaced every 5 to 15 years depending on how long the battery life lasts. These devices revolutionized heart monitoring but involve significant risks with the surgery and potential device malfunctioning.

Implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICD) are also surgically implanted devices but differ from pacemakers in that they deliver one shock when needed rather than continuous electrode shocks. ICDs are similar to the heart paddles doctors use when trying to stimulate a heart in the hospital – think yelling “charge” and the paddles they use. These devices are used mostly in patients with tachycardia, a heartbeat that is too fast. Implantation of an ICD requires feeding wires through the blood vessels of the heart. A subcutaneous ICD (S-ICD) has been newly developed and gives patients who have structural defects in their heart blood vessels another option of ICDs. Similar to pacemakers, an ICD monitors activity constantly, but will be read only at follow-up appointments with the doctor. ICDs last an average of seven years before the battery will need to be replaced.

The Reveal LINQ system is a newly developed heart monitoring device that records and transmits continuous information to a patient’s doctor at all times. The system requires surgical implantation of a small device known as the insertable cardiac monitor (ICM). The ICM works with another component called the patient monitor, which is a bedside monitor that transmits the continuous information collected by the ICM to a doctor instantly. A patient assistant control is also available which allows the patient to manually mark and record particular heart activities and transmit those in more detail. The LINQ system allows a doctor to track a patient’s heart activity remotely rather than requiring the patient to come in for the history to be examined. Continuous tracking and transmitting allow a patient’s doctor to more accurately examine heart activity and therefore create a more effective treatment approach.

With the development of wearable technology meant to track health information and transmit it to the wearer, the development of devices such as the LINQ system provide new opportunities for technologies to work together to promote better health practices. The Apple Watch series 4 included electrocardiogram monitoring that records heart activity and checks the reading for atrial fibrillation (AFB). This is the same heart activity pacemakers, ICDs, and the LINQ system are meant to monitor. The future capability of heart attack and disease detection and treatment could be massively impacted by the ability to monitor heart behavior in multiple different ways. Between the ability to shock your heart, continuously monitor and transmit information about it, and report to you when your heart rate may be experiencing abnormalities from a watch it seems as if a future of decreased heart problems could be a reality.

With all of these newly developed methods of continuous tracking, it begs the question of how all of that information is protected? Health and heart behavior, which is internal and out of your control, is as personal as information gets. Electronic monitoring and transmission of this data opens it up to cybersecurity targeting. Cybersecurity and data privacy issues with these devices have started to be addressed more fully, however the concerns differ depends on which implantable device a patient has. Vulnerabilities have been identified with ICD devices which would allow an unauthorized individual to access and potentially manipulate the device. Scholars have argued that efforts to decrease vulnerabilities should be focused on protecting the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information transmitted by implantable devices. The FDA has indicated that the use of a home monitor system could decrease the potential vulnerabilities. As the benefits from heart monitors and heart data continue to grow, we need to be sure that our privacy protections grow with it.


Wearable, Shareable, Terrible? Wearable Technology and Data Protection

Alex Wolf, MJLST Staffer

You might consider the first wearable technology of the modern-day to be the Sony Walkman, which celebrates its 40th anniversary this year. After the invention of Bluetooth 1.0 in 2002, commercial competitors began to realize the vast promise that this emergent technology afforded. Fifteen years later, over 265 million wearable tech devices are sold annually. It looks to be a safe bet that this trend will continue.

A popular subset of wearable technology is the fitness tracker. The user attaches the device to themselves, usually on their wrist, and it records their movements. Lower-end trackers record basics like steps taken, distance walked or run, and calories burned, while the more sophisticated ones can track heart rate and sleep statistics (sometimes also featuring fun extras like Alexa support and entertainment app playback). And although this data could not replace the care and advice of a healthcare professional, there have been positive health results. Some people have learned of serious health problems only once they started wearing a fitness tracker. Other studies have found a correlation between wearing a FitBit and increased physical activity.

Wearable tech is not all good news, however; legal commentators and policymakers are worried about privacy compromises that result from personal data leaving the owner’s control. The Health Insurance Portability and Protection Act (HIPAA) was passed by Congress with the aim of providing legal protections for individuals’ health records and data if they are disclosed to third parties. But, generally speaking, wearable tech companies are not bound by HIPAA’s reach. The companies claim that no one else sees the data recorded on your device (with a few exceptions, like the user’s express written consent). But is this true?

A look at the modern American workplace can provide an answer. Employers are attempting to find new ways to manage health insurance costs as survey data shows that employees are frequently concerned with the healthcare plan that comes with their job. Some have responded by purchasing FitBits and other like devices for their employees’ use. Jawbone, a fitness device company on its way out, formed an “Up for Groups” plan specifically marketed towards employers who were seeking cheaper insurance rates for their employee coverage plans. The plan allows executives to access aggregate health data from wearable devices to help make cost-benefit determinations for which plan is the best choice.

Hearing the commentators’ and state elected representatives’ complaints, members of Congress have responded; Senators Amy Klobuchar and Lisa Murkowski introduced the “Protecting Personal Health Data Act” in June 2019. It would create a National Task Force on Health Data Protection, which would work to advise the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) on creating practical minimum standards for biometric and health data. The bill is a recognition that HIPAA has serious shortcomings for digital health data privacy. As a 2018 HHS Committee Report noted, “A class of health records that can be subject to HIPAA or not subject to HIPAA is personal health records (PHRs) . . . PHRs not subject to HIPAA . . . [have] no other privacy rules.”  Dena Mendolsohn, a lawyer for Consumer Reports, remarked favorably that the bill is needed because the current framework is “out of date and incomplete.”

The Supreme Court has recognized privacy rights in cell-site location data, and a federal court recognized standing to sue for a group of plaintiffs whose personally identifiable information (PII) was hacked and uploaded onto the Dark Web. Many in the legal community are pushing for the High Court to offer clearer guidance to both tech consumers and corporations on the state of protection of health and other personal data, including private rights of action. Once there is a resolution on these procedural hurdles, we may see firmer judicial directives on an issue that compromises the protected interests of more and more people.

 


Practical Results of Enforcing the GDPR

Sooji Lee, MJLST Staffer

After the enforcement of the European Union’s(“EU”) General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”), Facebook was sued by one of its shareholders, Fern Helms, because its share price fell more than “20 percent” in July 27, 2018. This fall in stock price occurred because the investors were afraid of the GDPR’s potential negative impact on the company. This case surprised many people around the world and showed us how GDPR is sensational regulation that could result in lawsuits involving tremendous amounts of money. This post will articulate what has occurred after enforcement of this gigantic world-wide impacting regulation.

Under GDPR, regulated entities (data controllers and data processors) must obtain prior “consent” from their users when they request customers’ personal data. Each member country must establish Data Protection Authority (“DPA”) to comply with the GDPR. This regulation has a broad applicable range, from EU corporations to non-EU corporations that deal with EU citizens’ personal data. Therefore, after the announcement of this regulation, many United States based global technology corporations which conduct some of their business in European countries, such as Google and Facebook, commenced processes to comply with the GDPR. For example, Facebook launched its own website which explains its effort to comply with GDPR.

Surprisingly, however, despite the large-scale preparation, Google and Facebook were sued for breach of the GDPR. According to a report authored by IAPP, thousands of claims were filed within one month the GDPR’s enforcement date, May 25, 2018. This fact implies that it is difficult to abide by GDPR for current internet-based service companies. Additionally, some companies that are not big enough to prepare to comply with the GDPR, such as the Chicago Tribune and the LA Times, temporarily blocked EU users from its website and some decided to terminate its service in the EU.

One interesting fact is that no one has been fined under GDPR yet. A spokesperson for the United Kingdom’s Information Commissioner’s Office commented “we are dealing with the first GDPR cases but it’s too early to speculate about fines or processing bans at this stage.” Experts expect that calculating fines and processing bans could take another six months. These experts foresee that once a decision is rendered, it could set a standard for future cases which may be difficult to change.

The GDPR, a new world-wide impacting regulation, just started its journey toward proper consumer data protection. It seems many of the issues involved with the GDPR are yet to be settled. For now, no expert can make an accurate prediction. Some side-effects seem inevitable. So, it is time to assess the results of the regulation, and keep trying to make careful amendments, such as expanding or restricting the scope of its applicable entities, to adjust for arising problems.


Google Fined for GDPR Non-Compliance, Consumers May Not Like the Price

Julia Lisi, MJLST Staffer

On January 14th, 2019, France’s Data Protection Authority (“DPA”) fined Google 50 million euros in one of the first enforcement actions taken under the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”). The GDPR, which took effect in May of 2018, sent many U.S. companies scrambling in attempts to update their privacy policies. You, as a consumer, probably had to re-accept updated privacy policies from your social media accounts, phones, and many other data-based products. Google’s fine makes it the first U.S. tech giant to face GDPR enforcement. While a 50 million euro (roughly 57 million dollars) fine may sound hefty, it is actually relatively small compared to maximum fine allowed under the GDPR, which, for Google, would be roughly five billion dollars.

The French fine clarifies a small portion of the uncertainty surrounding GDPR enforcement. In particular, the French DPA rejected Google’s methods for getting consumers to consent to its  Privacy Policy and Terms of Service. The French DPA took issue with the (1) numerous steps users faced before they could opt out of Google’s data collection, (2) the pre-checked box indicating users’ consent, and (3) the inability of users to consent to individual data processes, instead requiring whole cloth acceptance of both Google’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.

The three practices rejected by the French DPA are commonplace in the lives of many consumers. Imagine turning on your new phone for the first time and scrolling through seemingly endless provisions detailing exactly how your daily phone use is tracked and processed by both the phone manufacturer and your cell provider. Imagine if you had to then scroll through the same thing for each major app on your phone. You would have much more control over your digital footprint, but would you spend hours reading each provision of the numerous privacy policies?

Google’s fine could mark the beginning of sweeping changes to the data privacy landscape. What once took a matter of seconds—e.g., checking one box consenting to Terms of Service—could now take hours. If Google’s fine sets a precedent, consumers could face another wave of re-consenting to data use policies, as other companies fall in line with the GDPR’s standards. While data privacy advocates may applaud the fine as the dawn of a new day, it is unclear how the average consumer will react when faced with an in-depth consent process.


Access Denied: Fifth Amendment Invoked to Prevent Law Enforcement From Accessing Phone

Hunter Moss, MJLST Staffer 

Mobile phones are an inescapable part of modern life. Research shows that 95% of Americans carry some sort of cell phone, while 77% own smartphones. These devices contain all sorts of personal information, including: call logs, emails, pictures, text messages, and access to social networks. It is unsurprising that the rise of mobile phone use has coincided with an increased interest from law enforcement. Gaining access to a phone could provide a monumental breakthrough in a criminal investigation.

Just as law enforcement is eager to rummage through a suspect’s phone, many individuals hope to keep personal data secret from prying eyes. Smartphone developers use a process called encryption to ensure their consumers’ data is kept private. In short, encryption is a process of encoding data and making it inaccessible without an encryption key. Manufacturers have come under increasing pressure to release encryption keys to law enforcement conducting criminal investigations. Most notable was the confrontation between the F.B.I. and Apple in the wake of the San Bernardino shooting. A magistrate judge ordered Apply to decrypt the shooter’s phone. The tech giant refused, stating that granting the government such a power would undermine the security, and the privacy, of all cellphone users.

The legal theory of a right to privacy has served as the foundation of defenses against government requests for cellphone data. These defenses have been couched in the Fourth Amendment, which is the Constitutional protection guaranteeing security against unreasonable searches. In a ruling that will have profound implications for the future of law enforcement, the Fourth Amendment protection was first extended to mobile phone data when the Supreme Court decided Carpenter v. United States in early 2018. The holding in Carpenter necessitates that warrants are granted during any government investigation seeking to obtain mobile phone records from service providers.

A case from Florida was the most recent iteration of a novel legal theory to shield smartphone users from government encroachment. While the Carpenter decision relied on the Fourth Amendment’s right to privacy, last week’s ruling by the Florida Court of Appeals invokes the Fifth Amendment to bar law enforcement agents from compelling suspects to enter their passcodes and unlocking their phones. This evolution of the Fifth Amendment was grounds for the court to quash a juvenile court’s order for the defendant to reveal his password, which would relinquish the privacy of his phone.

The Fifth Amendment is the constitutional protection from self-incrimination. A suspect in a criminal case cannot be compelled to communicate inculpatory evidence. Because a phone’s passcode is something that we, as the owners, “know,” being forced to divulge the information would be akin to being forced to testify against oneself. While mobile phone users might feel relieved that the development of Fifth Amendment is expanding privacy protections, smartphone owners shouldn’t be too quick to celebrate. While the Fifth Amendment might protect what you “know,” it does not protect what you “are.” Several courts have recognized that the police may unlock a phone using a suspect’s fingerprint or facial recognition software. Given that fingerprinting and mug shots are already routine procedures during an arrest, courts have been reluctant to view unlocking a phone in either manner as an additional burden on suspects.

Technology has seen some incredible advancements over the last few years, particularly in the field of mobile devices. Some have even theorized that our phones are becoming extensions of our minds. The legal framework providing constitutional protections supporting the right to privacy and the right against self-incrimination have trailed the pace of these developments. The new string of cases extending the Fifth Amendment to cellphone searches is an important step in the right direction. As phones have become a ubiquitous part of modern life, containing many of our most private and intimate information, it is clear that the law must continue to evolve to ensure that they are safeguarded from unwanted and unlimited government intrusion.


Carpenter Might Unite a Divided Court

Ellen Levis, MJLST Staffer

 

In late 2010, there was a robbery at a Radio Shack in Detroit. A few days later: a stick up at a T-Mobile store. A few more months, a few more robberies – until law enforcement noticed a pattern and eventually, in April 2011, the FBI arrested four men under suspicion of violating the Hobbs Act (that is, committing robberies that affect interstate commerce.)

One of the men confessed to the crimes and gave the FBI his cell phone number and the numbers of the other participants. The FBI used this information to obtain “transactional records” for each of the phone numbers, which magistrate judges granted under the Stored Communications Act. Based on this “cell-site evidence,” the government charged Timothy Carpenter with a slew of offenses. At trial, Carpenter moved to suppress the government’s cell-site evidence, which included 127 days of GPS tracking and placed his phone at 12,898 locations. The district court denied the motion to suppress; Carpenter was convicted and sentenced to 116 years in prison. The Sixth Circuit affirmed the district court’s decision when Carpenter appealed.

In November 2017, the Supreme Court heard what might be the most important privacy case of this generation. Carpenter v. United States asks the Supreme Court to consider whether the government, without a warrant, can track a person’s movement via geo-locational data beamed out by cell phone.   

Whatever they ultimately decide, the Justices seemed to present a uniquely united front in their questioning at oral arguments, with both Sonia Sotomayor and Neil Gorsuch hinting that warrantless cell-site evidence searches are incompatible with the protections promised by the Fourth Amendment.  

In United States v Jones, 132 S.Ct. 945 (2012), Sotomayor wrote a prescient concurring analysis of the challenge facing the Court as it attempts to translate the Fourth Amendment into the digital age. Sotomayor expressed doubt that “people would accept without complaint the warrantless disclosure to the Government of a list of every Web site they had visited in the last week, or month, or year.” And further, she “would not assume that all information voluntarily disclosed to some member of the public for a limited purpose is, for that reason alone, disentitled to Fourth Amendment protection.”

In the Carpenter oral argument, Sotomayor elaborated on the claims she made in United States v Jones 132 S.Ct. 945 (2012). Similarly, throughout the Carpenter argument, Sotomayor gave concrete examples of how extensively Americans use their cellphones and how invasive cell phone tracking could become. “I know that most young people have the phones in the bed with them. . . I know people who take phones into public restrooms. They take them with them everywhere. It’s an appendage now for some people . . .Why is it okay to use the signals that phone is using from that person’s bedroom, made accessible to law enforcement without probable cause?”

Gorsuch, on the other hand, drilled down on a property-rights theory of the Fourth Amendment, questioning whether a person had a property interest in the data they created. He stated,  “it seems like [the] whole argument boils down to — if we get it from a third party we’re okay, regardless of property interest, regardless of anything else.” And he continued, “John Adams said one of the reasons for the war was the use by the government of third parties to obtain information forced them to help as their snitches and snoops. Why isn’t this argument exactly what the framers were concerned about?”


New Data Protection Regulation in European Union Could Have Global Ramifications

Kevin Cunningham, MJLST Staffer

 

For as long as the commercial web has existed, companies have monetized personal information by mining data. On May 25, however, individuals in the 28 member countries of the European Union will have the ability to opt into the data collection used by so many data companies. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), agreed upon by the European Parliament and Council in April 2016, will replace Data Protection Directive 95/46/ec as the primary law regulating how companies protect personal data of individuals in the European Union. The requirements of the new GDPR aim to create more consistent protection of consumer and personal data across the European Union.

 

Publishers, banks, universities, data and technology companies, ad-tech companies, devices, and applications operating in the European Union will have to comply with the privacy and data protection requirements of the GDPR or be subject to heavy fines (up to four (4) percent of annual global revenue) and penalties. Some of the requirements include: requiring consent of subjects for data processing; anonymizing collected data to protect privacy; providing data breach notifications within 72 hours of the occurrence; safely handling the transfer of data across borders; requiring certain companies to appoint a data protection officer to oversee compliance of the Regulation. Likewise, the European Commission posted on its website that a social network platform will have to adhere to user requests to delete photos and inform search engines and other websites that used the photos that the images should be removed. This baseline set of standards for companies handling data in the EU will better protect the processing and movement of personal data.

 

Companies will have to be clear and concise about the collection and use of personally identifiable information such as name, home address, data location, or IP address. Consumers will have the right to access data that companies store about the individuals, as well as the right to correct false or inaccurate information. Moreover, the GDPR imposes stricter conditions applying to the collection of ‘sensitive data’ such as race, political affiliation, sexual orientation, and religion. The GDPR will still allow businesses to process personally identifiable information without consumer consent for legitimate business interests which include direct marketing through mail, email, or online ads. Still, companies will have to account

 

The change to European law could have global ramifications. Any company that markets goods or service to EU residents will be subject to the GDPR. Many of the giant tech companies that collect data, such as Google and Facebook, look to keep uniform systems and have either revamped or announced a change to privacy settings to be more user-friendly.


Car Wreck: Data Breach at Uber Underscores Legal Dangers of Cybersecurity Failures

Matthew McCord, MJSLT Staffer

 

This past week, Uber’s annus horribilis and the everincreasing reminders of corporate cybersecurity’s persistent relevance reached singularity. Uber, once praised as a transformative savior of the economy by technology-minded businesses and government officials for its effective service delivery model and capitalization on an exponentially-expanding internet, has found itself impaled on the sword that spurred its meteoric rise. Uber recently disclosed that hackers were able to access the personal information of 57 million riders and drivers last year. It then paid hackers $100,000 to destroy the compromised data, and failed to inform its users or sector regulators of the breach at the time. These hackers apparently compromised a trove of personally identifiable information, including names, telephone numbers, email addresses, and driver’s licenses of users and drivers through a flaw in their company’s GitHub security.

Uber, a Delaware corporation, is required to present notice of a data breach in the “most expedient time possible and without unreasonable delay” to affected customers per Delaware statutes. Most other states have adopted similar legislation which affects companies doing business in those states, which could allow those regulators and customers to bring actions against the company. By allegedly failing to provide timely notification, Uber opened itself to the parade of announced investigations from regulators into the breach: the United Kingdom’s Information Commissioner, for instance, has threatened fines following an inquiry, and U.S. state regulators are similarly considering investigations and regulatory action.

Though regulatory action is not a certainty, the possibility of legal action and the dangers of lost reputation are all too real. Anthem, a health insurer subject to far stricter federal regulation under HIPAA and its various amendments, lost $115 million to settlement of a class action suit over its infamous data breach. Short-term impacts on reputation rattle companies (especially those who respond less vigorously), with Target having seen its sales fall by almost 50% in 2013 Q4 after its data breach. The cost of correcting poor data security on a technical level also weighs on companies.

This latest breach underscores key problems facing businesses in the continuing era of exponential digital innovation. The first, most practical problem that companies must address is the seriousness with which companies approach information security governance. An increasing number of data sources and applications, and increasing complexity of systems and vectors, similarly increases the potential avenues to exposure for attack. One decade ago, most companies used at least somewhat isolated, internal systems to handle a comparatively small amount of data and operations. Now, risk assessments must reflect the sheer quantity of both internal and external devices touching networks, the innumerable ways services interact with one another (and thus expose each service and its data to possible breaches), and the increasing competence of organized actors in breaching digital defenses. Information security and information governance are no longer niches, relegated to one silo of a company, but necessarily permeate most every business area of an enterprise. Skimping on investment in adequate infrastructure far widens the regulatory and civil liability of even the most traditional companies for data breaches, as Uber very likely will find.

Paying off data hostage-takers and thieves is a particularly concerning practice, especially from a large corporation. This simply creates a perverse incentive for malignant actors to continue trying to siphon off and extort data from businesses and individuals alike. These actors have grown from operations of small, disorganized groups and individuals to organized criminal groups and rogue states allegedly seeking to circumvent sanctions to fund their regimes. Acquiescing to the demands of these actors invites the conga line of serious breaches to continue and intensify into the future.

Invoking a new, federal legislative scheme is a much-discussed and little-acted upon solution for disparate and uncoordinated regulation of business data practices. Though 18 U.S.C. § 1030 provides for criminal penalties for the bad actors, there is little federal regulation or legislation on the subject of liability or minimum standards for breached PII-handling companies generally. The federal government has left the bulk of this work to each state as it leaves much of business regulation. However, internet services are recognized as critical infrastructure by the Department of Homeland Security under Presidential Policy Directive 21. Data breaches and other cyber attacks result in data and intellectual property theft costing the global economy hundreds of billions of dollars annually, with widespread disruption potentially disrupting government and critical private sector operations, like the provision of utilities, food, and essential services, turning cybersecurity into a definite critical national risk requiring a coordinated response. Careful crafting of legislation authorizing federal coordination of cybersecurity best practices and adequately punitive federal action for negligence of information governance systems, would incentivize the private and public sectors to take better care of sensitive information, reducing the substantial potential for serious attacks to compromise the nation’s infrastructure and the economic well-being of its citizens and industries.


Should You Worry That ISPs Can Sell Your Browsing Data?

Joshua Wold, Article Editor

Congress recently voted to overturn the FCC’s October 2016 rules Protecting the Privacy of Customers of Broadband and Other Telecommunications Services through the Congressional Review Act. As a result, those rules will likely never go into effect. Had the rules been implemented, they would have required Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to get customer permission before making certain uses of customer data.

Some commentators, looking the scope of the rules relative to the internet ecosystem as a whole, and the fact that the rules hadn’t yet taken effect, thought that this probably wouldn’t have a huge impact on privacy. Orin Kerr suggested that the overruling of the privacy regulations was unlikely to change what ISPs would do with data, because other laws constrain them. Others, however, were less sanguine. The Verge quoted Jeff Chester of the Center for Digital Democracy as saying “For the foreseeable future, we’re going to be living in a commercial surveillance state.”

While the specific context of these privacy regulations is new (the FCC couldn’t regulate ISPs until 2015, when it defined them as telecommunications providers instead of information services), debates over privacy are not. In 2013, MJLST published Adam Thierer’s Technopanics, Threat Inflation, and the Danger of an Information Technology Precautionary Principle. In it, the author argues that privacy threats (as well as many other threats from technological advancement) are generally exaggerated. Thierer then lays out a four-part analytic framework for weighing regulation, calling on regulators and politicians to identify clear harms, engage in cost-benefit analysis, consider more permissive regulation, and then evaluate and measure the outcomes of their choices.

Given Minnesota’s response to Congress’s action, the debate over privacy and regulation of ISPs is unlikely to end soon. Other states may consider similar restrictions, or future political changes could lead to a swing back toward regulation. Or, the current movement toward less privacy regulation could continue. In any event, Thierer’s piece, and particularly his framework, may be useful to those wishing the evaluate regulatory policy as ISP regulation progresses.

For a different perspective on ISP regulation, see Paul Gaus’s student note, upcoming in Volume 19, Issue 1. That article will focus on presenting several arguments in favor of regulating ISPs’ privacy practices, and will be a thoughtful contribution to the discussion about privacy in today’s internet.