Author Archives: Michael Froomkin

Trumpalooza III

Posted on June 6, 2016 by Michael Froomkin

Previously: DSC Plays Its Trump Card, Clinton Fires 1st General Election Salvo, Clinton Attack: Salvo 2.

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How Snowden Might Hurt Privacy

Posted on June 1, 2016 by Michael Froomkin

In addition to the good things Edward Snowden did by alerting us to the reality of NSA surveillance, there is one way in which I think his revelations may hurt privacy. This is not to say that on balance his revelations were unjustified, just that there’s a complexity about the long-run consequence of his disclosure that we should keep an eye on.

Before Snowden, the fact of NSA’s collection was a very highly protected secret. Consequently, there was only limited data sharing with law enforcement, and then only on condition that the fact of the NSA’s role never show up in court. Now that the cover is blown, so to speak, we should expect not only covert inter-agency data sharing to increase, but also a prohibition on letting it into court. Maybe not open court, but perhaps in a closed hearing, or secret brief. Likely beneficiaries are the DEA, the FBI, and maybe even some local cops in big target cities like New York or DC?

So, perversely, I expect Snowden’s revelations to have a limited negative consequence for privacy to balance against however we measure the positives.

Note: I could have sworn I posted something about this previously, but EPIC‘s Marc Rotenberg said he hadn’t seen it, and I couldn’t find it, so this one’s for you Marc.

Posted in Civil Liberties, Law: Criminal Law | Comments Off on How Snowden Might Hurt Privacy

Speaking at 3 to National Academy Panel

Posted on June 1, 2016 by Michael Froomkin

I’m on the (token?) Privacy session for a day-long event organized by a panel of the National Academies of Science on “Improving Federal Statistics for Policy and Social Science Research Using Multiple Data Sources and State-of-the-Art Estimation Methods.” In other words, how to get the government in on the big data bandwagon.

My panel is moderated by EPIC’s Marc Rotenberg, and also features IBM’s Jeff Jonas. I’ve attached my slides for the talk on privacy issues with sensor data collection.

The event open to the public, and runs all day at the Keck Center, 500 Fifth St.NW, Room 100, Washington DC. Come along if you are in the neighborhood.

Posted in Surveillance, Talks & Conferences | Comments Off on Speaking at 3 to National Academy Panel

Checking Email Like Playing the Slots

Posted on May 27, 2016 by Michael Froomkin

Seems checking mail provides the same “intermittent variable rewards” that addicts folks to slot machines. That insight, and several others, comes from How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds — from a Magician and Google’s Design Ethicist. I didn’t agree with every word, but there’s a lot there to chew on, and I suspect the thing about email-checking is spot on. (And to the extent it’s not, FOMO does the rest.)

Is reading blogs like checking email? Probably, especially if done via RSS feed – intermittent variable rewards indeed.

Posted in Internet | Comments Off on Checking Email Like Playing the Slots

Of Kurdish House Gardens and Modernity

Posted on May 26, 2016 by Michael Froomkin

An article on the 6000-year history of Kurdish gardens cites my Habermas article for its alleged account of Habermas’s modernization theory.

Modernization Theory and House Garden Transformation; Erbil City as Case Study, is jointly authored by scholars from an Iranian engineering department and from the Housing, Building, and Planning department in Penang Malaysia University. The article appears in Aro which is an open-access “journal of original scientific research, global news, and commentary” based at Koya University. Koya University’s very smart-looking web site describes the city of Koya as a “1.0 hr drive to the East of the Kurdistan Region capital Erbil (Arbil, Hewlér) in Kurdistan Region of F.R. Iraq.”

The article begins by defining a garden:

Gardens can be considered as the mirror of house’s architectural identity. It’s a plane outdoor space that arranges a part for the display, cultivation, and enjoyment of plants and other forms of nature as defined by Turner (2005) A garden is “a piece of ground fenced off from cattle, and appropriated to the use and pleasure of man: it is, or ought to be, cultivated”.

However, the article quickly takes a turn towards describing Modernization Theory before heading back to a more extended tour of house garden design in Erbil over the last 6000 years. We then get some quantitative info about how gardens have changed, especially since 1930. One notable finding:

The new functional requirements of modern life style (Social factors) and owning more than one vehicle by family members (Economical factors) affected the garden size (to be small or disappeared totally). Moreover, it reduced the ratio of garden area (open spaces) to house build area. These transformations have a direct impact on global warming and energy conservation.

This does seem significant, although I’m not sure we really need Habermas to understand it.

This isn’t the strangest citation to my work ever, but it’s up there.

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My New Paper May Make Some of My Friends Angry

Posted on May 25, 2016 by Michael Froomkin

Building Privacy into the Infrastructure: Towards a New Identity Management Architecture comes to what I fear some of my friends in the privacy community will find to be an unacceptable conclusion.

I’ll be presenting it at the Privacy Law Scholars Conference in Washington next week. Hopefully, since many attendees are in fact friends, they won’t bring brickbats.

Posted in Cryptography, Econ & Money, Law: Internet Law, Law: Privacy, Surveillance, Talks & Conferences | Comments Off on My New Paper May Make Some of My Friends Angry