Article of Note: The Boundaries of Privacy Harm
July 18, 2010 by Dissent
Filed under Breaches, Featured Headlines, Other
Ryan Calo has an article on SSRN that may provide food for thought for many readers.
Calo, M. Ryan, The Boundaries of Privacy Harm (July 16, 2010). Available at SSRN: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1641487
Just as a burn is an injury caused by heat, so is privacy harm a unique injury with specific boundaries and characteristics. This Essay describes privacy harm as falling into two related categories. The subjective category of privacy harm is the unwanted perception of observation. This category describes unwelcome mental states—anxiety, embarrassment, fear—that stem from the belief that one is being watched or monitored. Examples include everything from a landlord listening in on his tenants to generalized government surveillance.
The objective category of privacy harm is the unanticipated or coerced use of information concerning a person against that person. These are negative, external actions justified by reference to personal information. Examples include identity theft, the leaking of classified information that reveals an undercover agent, and the use of a drunk-driving suspect’s blood as evidence against him.
The subjective and objective categories of privacy harm are distinct but related. Just as assault is the apprehension of battery, so is the unwanted perception of observation largely an apprehension of information-driven injury. The categories represent, respectively, the anticipation and consequence of a loss of control over personal information.
The approach offers several advantages. It uncouples privacy harm from privacy violations, demonstrating that no person need commit a privacy violation for privacy harm to occur (and vice versa). It creates a “limiting principle” capable of revealing when another value—autonomy or equality, for instance—is more directly at stake. It also creates a “rule of recognition” that permits the identification of a privacy harm when no other harm is apparent. Finally, the approach permits the sizing and redress of privacy harm in novel ways.
The full article is available as a free download from SSRN.
[link to SSRN corrected/fixed]
No DUI Blood Tests Without a Warrant in Arizona
June 20, 2010 by Dissent
Filed under Court, Legislation, Surveillance
Dave Sheffield writes:
About a week ago, the Supreme Court of Arizona issued its decision in the case of Carrillo v. Houser, No. CV-09-0285-PR (Ariz. 2010), which presented a dispute about Arizona’s implied consent law. The State contended that the consent that the law implied extended to a warrantless chemical alcohol test unless the person to be tested explicitly refused. Jose Carrillo took the flip side position, arguing that the law required the police to obtain a warrant to test unless the defendant explicitly agreed to the test.
Read more about the case and the state Supreme Court’s opinion on DUIAttorney.com
NY: Widow Says Cops Leaked Suicide Note
Barbara Leonard reports:
A widow claims that state police released her husband’s suicide note the media, along with private letters he left for the family. The widow and her children sued New York State Police Officer Steven Nutting and several Officer Does on constitutional claims in Federal Court.
On the night in May 2008 when Garry Veeder committed suicide, his wife, Donna, says she found a notebook containing his final messages.
She claims that Nutting, investigating for the state police, took the private documents as evidence without letting her read the note addressed to her.
“Defendant Nutter stated, ‘I can do anything I want, lady, this is a crime scene until I say otherwise,’” according to the complaint.
By the next day, Donna Veeder says, her doctor had diagnosed her with “dangerously elevated blood pressure,” and she learned that her late husband’s notes had been published on the Internet and other media sources.
Read more on Courthouse News. A copy of the complaint can be found here. Keep in mind that these are just allegations and that the defendant has not yet told his side of the story.
House votes to expand national DNA arrest database
May 19, 2010 by Dissent
Filed under Legislation, Surveillance, U.S.
Declan McCullagh reports:
Millions of Americans arrested for but not convicted of crimes will likely have their DNA forcibly extracted and added to a national database, according to a bill approved by the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday.
By a 357 to 32 vote, the House approved legislation that will pay state governments to require DNA samples, which could mean drawing blood with a needle, from adults “arrested for” certain serious crimes. Not one Democrat voted against the database measure, which would hand out about $75 million to states that agree to make such testing mandatory.
Read more on cnet.
New Missouri bill designed to crack down on drunken drivers
April 11, 2010 by Dissent
Filed under Legislation, Surveillance, U.S.
Police in Missouri will have the authority to extract blood samples from suspected drunken drivers without a warrant, if a new bill in Missouri becomes law.
[...]
Missouri representative Rachel Bringer supports tightening restrictions on past offenders.
Bringer said “If someone fails to take a breathalyzer test their drivers license is revoked for one year by the department of revenue. But in some parts of the state for various reasons that isn’t happening, so there has been some different ideas about how to how to address that. One of the ideas was a warrant-less blood draw.”
Bringer admits the proposal needs work from where it stands right now and that the warrant-less blood test likely wouldn’t make it through.
Read more on WGEM.
So let’s see…. we engage in a warrantless intrusive procedure that poses a risk to the individual rather than just smack around the folks who aren’t enforcing the mandatory revocation? Jeez….