Notes from FPF
On December 12, 2017, FPF announced the winners of our 8th Annual Privacy Papers for Policymakers (PPPM) Award. This Award recognizes leading privacy scholarship that is relevant to policymakers in the United States Congress, at U.S. federal agencies, and for data protection authorities abroad.
In this special issue of the Scholarship Reporter, you will find this year’s six winning papers. From the many nominated privacy-related papers published in the last year, these six were selected by Finalist Judges, after having been first evaluated highly by a diverse team of academics, advocates, and industry privacy professionals from FPF’s Advisory Board. Finalist Judges and Reviewers agreed that these papers demonstrate a thoughtful analysis of emerging issues and propose new means of analysis that can lead to real-world policy impact, making them the “must-read” privacy scholarship today.
This year’s winning papers grapple with a range of issues critical to regulators. The papers analyze broad conceptions of how regulators, markets, and society at large consider different conceptions of privacy, prompting the reader to think critically about assumed paradigms.
Striking the balance between foundational analysis and narrower proposals, “Artificial Intelligence Policy: A Roadmap and Primer,” outlines the role of artificial intelligence in law and policy, and how relevant governance strategies should develop. “Designing Against Discrimination in Online Markets” taxonomizes design and policy strategies for diminishing discriminatory mechanisms in online platforms and “Health Information Equality” proposes mechanisms to prevent the disproportionate effects of secondary health data usage on vulnerable populations.
“The Public Information Fallacy” argues that the definition of “public information” is unsettled and hazy, meriting a more rigorous analysis of the definition in legal determinations and policy discourse. In “The Undue Influence of Surveillance Technology Companies on Policing,” the author argues that the role of surveillance technology companies must be curtailed to facilitate meaningful transparency about how that technology is used by police departments. “Transatlantic Data Privacy Law”, calls for a coalesced understanding of how privacy is conceptualized between the rights-based model in Europe and the marketplace-based model in the United States.
As always, we would love to hear your feedback on this issue. You can email us at fpf@fpf.org.
Artificial Intelligence Policy: A Primer and Roadmap
R. Calo
This paper provides a roadmap (not the road) to the major policy questions presented by AI today. The goal of the essay is to give sufficient detail to describe the challenge of AI without providing the policy outcome. It discusses the contemporary policy environment around AI and the key challenges it presents including: justice and […]
Designing Against Discrimination in Online Markets
K. EC Levy, S. Barocas
This article provides a conceptual framework for understanding how platforms’ design and policy choices introduce opportunities for users’ biases to affect how they treat one another. Through empirical review of design-oriented interventions used by a range of platforms, and the synthesis of this review into a taxonomy of thematic categories, the authors hope to prompt […]
Health Information Equity
C. Konnoth
This paper posits that the ability to collect and aggregate data about patients — including physical conditions, genetic information, treatments, responses, and outcomes — is changing medical research today. The author states that the collection of such information raises serious ethical concerns because it imposes special burdens on specific patients whose records form the data […]
The Public Information Fallacy
W. Hartzog
The goal of this article is to highlight the many possible meanings of “public” and make the case to clarify the concept in privacy law. The main thesis is that because there are so many different possible interpretations of “public information,” the concept cannot be used to justify data practices and surveillance without first articulating […]
The Undue Influence of Surveillance Technology Companies on Policing
E. E. Joh
This essay identifies three recent examples in which surveillance technology companies have exercised undue influence over policing: stingray cellphone surveillance, body cameras, and big data programs. By “undue influence,” the author is referring to the commercial self-interest of surveillance technology vendors that overrides principles of accountability and transparency normally governing the police. The article goes […]
Transatlantic Data Privacy Law
P. M. Schwartz, K.N. Peifer
In this paper, the authors state that because of data restrictions of two major EU mandates, bridging the transatlantic data divide is a matter of the greatest significance. On the horizon is a possible international policy solution around “interoperable,” or shared legal concepts. President Barack Obama and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) promoted this approach. […]