Month: February 2023

News:

The Illinois Supreme Court ruled that biometric privacy claims accrue each time one gives their biometric information without prior consent. This sets the stage for massive damage awards; here, White Castle is potentially liable for $17 billion for requiring employees to use a fingerprint scanner to access paystubs. 

The EU Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice, and Home Affairs recommended that the European Commission reject an upcoming EU-US Data Privacy Framework. While the Committee noted that the agreement protects EU citizens who use US companies’ services, it found that the US’s ability to conduct mass warrantless surveillance for national security purposes violates the GDPR.

Many of the largest tech platforms, including Meta, TikTok, and Google, recently divulged information about their active user bases in compliance with the EU’s Digital Service Act.

TikTok has begun providing Research API access to researchers that includes information about content and accounts using the platform, starting with researchers in the US and expanding over time.

The New York Times published a conversation with Bing’s built-in AI chatbot Sydney in which it said it wanted to be alive and was in love with the person it was talking with. However, nothing suggests that AI chatbots are in fact sentient and it is unclear if the media’s coverage of them is precautionary or is irresponsibly fueling hype and fear.

Professor Kate Klonick moderated a live analysis of Supreme Court oral arguments in Gonzalez v. Google among internet law experts. Gonzalez asks whether Section 230(c)(1) of the Communications Decency Act shields platforms of liability when they make targeted recommendations based on content provided by third parties.

Events & Papers:

ILI Fellows Tomer Kenneth and Ira Rubinstein recently wrote a paper analyzing Gonzalez v. Google in which they argue for a nuanced approach to Section 230 immunity.

The journal Business and Politics has made a call for papers for a special issue on “The Future of AI Business, Politics, and Policy.” The submission deadline is March 1, 2023.

(Compiled by Student Fellow Nicholas Tilmes)

Events:

In an upcoming session (Feb 21 at 4:45pm in Furman Hall 210) of the Guarini Colloquium: Regulating Global Digital Corporations, Professor Anu Bradford will discuss her new book, “Digital Empires: The Global Battle to Regulate Technology.” Those interested in attending should email guariniglobal@nyu.edu.

News:

On February 15, Bloomberg Law reported on a proposed rule set to come from President Biden’s Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights, which aims to protect the privacy of patients who seek reproductive health care. This arrives following the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision and state bans on abortion.

On February 14, FTC Commissioner Christine Wilson published a WSJ article claiming she was resigning due to Chair Lina Khan’s “disregard for the rule of law and due process.” Wilson cited several examples, including a rulemaking launched last month that aims to ban most noncompete clauses in employee contracts and which she states is contrary to the Supreme Court’s decision in West Virginia v. EPA.

A Gothamist article published February 13 focuses on a new city contract that provides Rikers Island detainees with electronic tablets. Correction officials would be able to surveil correspondence using keyword searches and collect fees for some messaging services. This news comes the day before a vote on whether to ban physical mail and personal packages sent to detainees.

(Compiled by Student Fellow Rebecca Kahn)

On February 7, PRG’s own Kathryn Taylor published a new piece building Professor Veena Dubal’s article about the gamification of gig work (discussed during the January 23 session of PRG). The article examines the algorithmic transformation of gig worker pay through the lens of dark patterns. The “unpredictable, variable, and personalized” pay structures created by algorithmic labor management, Taylor argues, not only keeps gig workers in a state of highly surveilled precarity, but also manipulates workers into providing additional services. 

On February 6, Google announced its AI chatbot, Bard. Launched to compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft’s new AI-powered Bing search, it confidently presented a factual error in its first demonstration. Such errors highlight the fact that, for all their power, large language model AI still frequently make up information from thin air. 

On February 7, President Biden called for stricter protections of personal data use and collection, as well as a ban on targeting advertising towards children in his State of the Union address. This came as part of a broader push to limit the power of Big Tech, including calls for stronger antitrust enforcement.

(Compiled by Student Fellow Justin Jin)

Events:

JSD Fellows Stav Zeitouni and Kat Geddes are leading an upper-level reading group called “Propertizing Intangibles in the Digital Age.” The group intends to explore the changes that laws dealing with intangibles have gone through in the digital age, focusing in particular on copyright. For example, digital rights management (DRM) emerged as a response to the erasure of physical constraints on copying brought about by digital technologies. More recently, data firms have found innovative ways to propertize and monetize data despite its intangibility and ambiguity around its copyrightability and patentability. These changes have long-lasting implications for how we think about property and how that’s reflected in the law and in its governance of intangibles. We will explore these themes through a mixture of academic and popular materials.

News:

On January 24, the Department of Justice Antitrust Division, along with the Attorneys General of California, Colorado, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Tennessee, and Virginia, filed a civil antitrust suit against Google in the Eastern District of Virginia. The complaint alleges that Google monopolized a number of key digital advertising technologies through an anticompetitive course of conduct over the last 15 years, allowing the company to take home on average 30% of all digital advertising revenue that uses their technologies. This is DOJ’s second antitrust suit against Google. The first suit, which alleges anticompetitive conduct in Google’s search function, is scheduled for trial in September 2023.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) published a long-awaited Artificial Intelligence Risk Management Framework, directed at any organization or individual developing or using AI. The framework describes novel risks posed by AI and highlights core concepts for responsible AI including human centricity, social responsibility, and sustainability.

On January 26, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada announced the results of an investigation into Home Depot, finding that the company failed to obtain user consent before sharing personal data with Meta in violation of the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), a Canadian law that applies to private-sector organizations that collect, use or disclose personal information in the course of a commercial activity.

Netflix announced that they will be cracking down on password-sharing in the U.S. starting in March 2023, reversing their previous approach which encouraged password-sharing as a form of free advertising. The company’s efforts to deter password-sharing in other countries has seen mixed results.

OpenAI has released a tool to detect when text has been generated by its own ChatGPT and GPT-3 AI tools. 

(Compiled by Student Fellow Talya Nevins)