New Technologies
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Written by a Human (For Now)
Just a quick follow-up to my last post, discussing the possible consequences for constitutional law of the increasing role of algorithms in the (re-)creation of information. While that post, and Josh Blackman’s essay on which it was based,focused on search engines, a post on The Guardian’s website this weekend discusses the “writing” of actual news Continue reading
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Charter, Meet Google
Josh Blackman has just published a fascinating new essay, “What Happens if Data Is Speech?” in the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law Online, asking some important questions about how courts should treat ― and how we should think about ― attempts to regulate the (re)creation and arrangement of information by “algorithms parsing data” (25). Continue reading
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Its Own Place
“The mind is its own place,” says Milton’s Satan. And since computers have, for all practical purposes, replaced our brains, so are those, right? The Supreme Court of Canada, at any rate, agrees. In a case decided last week, R. v. Vu, 2013 SCC 60, it held that police cannot search a computer on the basis Continue reading
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Not Private Parties
The development and use of massive voter databases and sophisticated “micro-targeting” techniques by political parties are raising concerns about the privacy rights of the people targeted by these efforts. When I wrote about the use of these techniques by the Obama campaign in the last presidential election in the United States, I suggested that “the Continue reading
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Scripta Volant Quoque
The Romans said ― or, more likely, wrote ― that while words fly away, writing remains. Russians say that what is written with the quill cannot be hacked away with an axe. The idea of the permanence of the written word is very widespread. It is part of the law, too, whether in the rules Continue reading
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The Future is Even Creepier
There is an interesting story in today’s New York Times that brings together a couple of my recent topics, the tracking of internet users by the websites they visit and the use of the data thus generated in advertising, about which I wrote here, and the use of target-specific outreach and advertising by President Obama’s Continue reading
Double Aspect 