October 14, 2020
On August 6, 2020, the Trump Administration issued Executive Order 13943, banning the use of WeChat, a Chinese social media app, in the United States starting on September 20, 2020. Under the order, consumers in the United States will not be able to download or update WeChat, or engage in transactions such as sending or…
May 14, 2020
The fight for civil rights in the United States has historically focused on equal access to physical spaces: schools, workplaces, lunch counters, hotels, voting booths. This emphasis is understandable, because these were the places where people learned, worked, socialized, and voted. Civil rights activists made clear that people who are excluded from, or exploited in,…
April 16, 2019
United States v. Wanjiku is one of many recent Fourth Amendment cases that have come before circuit courts regarding border searches of cell phones. This batch of litigation sprung in part from the Supreme Court decision in Riley v. California, which held that officers generally need a warrant to conduct incidental searches of cell phones…
March 19, 2019
Six years after lawmakers first considered the issue of nonconsensual pornography, New York has criminalized the practice. We wholeheartedly support the effort in our role as legal scholars and as advocates for the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative (CCRI). One of us (Franks) drafted the first model statute criminalizing “revenge porn” and worked on New York’s…
November 2, 2018
As the midterm elections approach, money is flowing into the coffers of candidates, parties, and outside groups at unprecedented rates. Meanwhile the Federal Election Commission (FEC) has, by many accounts, softened its enforcement of campaign finance laws. Clever political operatives and their lawyers stand ready to exploit the regulatory vacuum. This post focuses on one…
October 29, 2018
Pop quiz: which part of the federal government is tasked with preventing cyber interference in our elections? Congress has refused to say. We have reached a point of a significant gap between an important federal need and existing federal power. And in the absence of that federal power, federal agencies have stepped into the gap…
October 16, 2018
On September 28th, California Governor Jerry Brown signed a new law that forbids the surreptitious use of bots to, among other things, influence Californians’ votes in an election. The law is a disclosure rule: the bot may speak, but it must clearly identify itself as nonhuman. Critics have suggested that California’s new law is vague…
June 25, 2018
In Carpenter v. United States, Chief Justice John Roberts began the process of future-proofing the Fourth Amendment. In a majority opinion marked by technological sophistication and powerful arguments about arbitrary government surveillance, but overshadowed by four separate dissenting opinions, Carpenter both reframes the Fourth Amendment and reveals its fractured soul. To understand Carpenter is to…
April 4, 2018
The recent revelations of Facebook’s sharing of user data with Cambridge Analytica is just the latest in a long line of privacy missteps by the monolithic social media platform. The public outcry seems louder today than ever before, but the crucial question is: will the company be more responsive than it was after previous privacy…
March 21, 2018
The recent uproar involving Cambridge Analytica’s unauthorized access to, and dubious use of, personal data belonging to 50 million Facebook users in attempts to support the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump raised a series of important questions. The access to that personal information was enabled by an app developed by University of Cambridge neuroscience lecturer…
February 28, 2018
Yesterday, the Supreme Court heard arguments in the Microsoft Ireland case – the high-profile dispute between Microsoft and the United States regarding the reach of the warrant authority under the Stored Communications Act. The more than 30-some amicus briefs filed in the case highlight the case’s significance. With good reason. The outcome matters to our…
February 22, 2018
Recent developments in the ongoing investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 elections have raised interesting questions about the obligations of the current President — or any President — in a situation where a foreign government or its agents have interfered with the American political process or used the Internet in other ways to harm…
December 22, 2017
On Thursday, December 15, 2017, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted to repeal the Open Internet Order, often referred to as “net neutrality.” This should be no less than a bombshell, as the Internet was originally conceived as a free and open platform, not governed by economic interests, where service providers are neutral as to…
November 10, 2017
Last week, representatives of several social media companies appeared before Congress to testify about mounting evidence that Russian government sponsored groups sought to influence U.S. elections and American political sentiment by propagating false or misleading news stories, artificially driving online popularity of those stories, and actually fomenting violent demonstrations and clashes. These hearings were only…
November 3, 2017
In Part 1 of this post, I focused on how the Honest Ads Act bill would be a valuable step forward in normalizing the status of political ads online. Under this bill, online political ads would be treated more consistently with the influence they now have on the political process—like television or radio, rather than…
October 31, 2017
The 2016 U.S. Presidential Election was a watershed moment for how we understand the Internet and democracy. In the 1990s and 2000s, the Net enjoyed wide acclaim as a democratizing technology. In 1997, the Supreme Court hailed it as a platform on which “[t]hrough the use of chat rooms, any person with a phone line…
