Computers, Privacy, and Law

[Sharon Gould]

This lecture may be of interest to many of you:

While Edward Snowden was hunkered down in Hong Kong immediately after exposing the NSA's mass surveillance programs, he wouldn't talk to any visitors until they placed their cell phones in the refrigerator, hoping to stymie the government's ability to eavesdrop. But did it really matter? Can so much information be gleaned merely from a cell phone's location and call data that access to the content of conversations is almost redundant? Even for law-abiding citizens not actively fleeing counter-espionage accusations, this may be one of the defining civil rights issues of our era: What are the problems of privacy in an age of ubiquitous information? Does current Fourth Amendment jurisprudence meaningfully grapple with any of these questions, or have technological advancements (such as the lowly cell phone) rendered it functionally obsolete? And--in the face of a society devoted to the acquisition of knowledge--is there a case to be made for valuing willful ignorance in the age of Big Data?

Consider the issues at a Prelaw Program lecture entitled " Privacy in the Information Age: Do Fourth Amendment Rights to Privacy Still Mean Anything?" on Wednesday, April 2, 2014 at 3:00 p.m. (Meeter Center Lecture Hall) featuring: Stephen van Stempvoort (Law Clerk for Judge Richard A. Griffin of the 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals).


Sharon


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