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Teaching Information Privacy @ SU Law

By Brian Rowe | July 23, 2010

I just accepted a position at Seattle University Law teaching Information Privacy in the spring.  This is a great opportunity to look at cutting edge privacy & technology issues from a policy and legal perspective with a group of motivated law students. SU is granting me opportunity to take the course in an interesting direction, it will be the first course at SU with an optional blogging component for students.   I administered a student run blog at University of Washington’s iSchool in Winter quarter for IMT550: Law, Ethics Policy & Information Management that was very successful, and am curious to see how law students react to blogging compared to Masters students with an IT background. Was the positive involvement generational or related to tech literacy? Are law students more likely to publish publicly or privately? There are trade offs both ways, I enjoy the honesty that can come from private forums while also appreciate the professionalism many student put into public works.

The Information Privacy class I am teaching is a mix of old and new educational techniques.  The class has a traditional legal focus covering the classics including Brandeis and Warren & Prosser and a fairly decent portion of case law, but will also adds in some components that I see as essential for being a lawyer in a digital age such as a focus on FTC cases, how the press reacts to privacy issues and international privacy law. When reconciling clients lawyers need to be aware of more then just risk of a law suit public image and ethics matter when you are charged with peoples personal information. The class will also be following recent events through privacy blogs, and focus on practical skills including giving a short 5 minute oral presentation and evaluating start up companies for potential privacy pitfalls.

I am posting the current draft syllabus here for comments and ideas.

Draft Syllabus v2:

This course examines legal and ethical issues related to information privacy, an individuals right to control his or her personal information held by others. Topics include:

  • privacy policies (including ToS & EULA) contract law
  • privacy rights as tort
  • privacy rights as human rights
  • privacy as copyright
  • administrative Law w/ regards to privacy
  • governmental surveillance and private tracking
  • data portability v. privacy
  • Information as an assets
  • Users rights w/ regard to information

Course Objectives
Upon completion of the course, students will be able to discuss orally and in writing:

  • The major decisions, statutes, and international frameworks of information privacy law
  • The “reasonable expectation of privacy” test and its various applications
  • How to assess the privacy implications of new business practices and new government practices
  • Technologies role in privacy protection
  • The tension between privacy & transparency
  • The tension between privacy & free speech
  • The tension between privacy rights & information as an asset
  • The role information professionals play in shaping modern privacy law & practices

Course Philosophy
This is not a lecture class, this is a discussion class with projects and presentations. All readings must be done before class. We will spend about half of each day working through concepts in the readings together in a Socratic dialogue, the other half of class will be spent on group activities, guest speakers or student presentations. I expect you and I to learn as much if not more from your fellow students as from the instructor. The questions in class will often have no right answers.

Course Schedule, Topics and Readings:
No text is required for this course. All readings are available online through this site or through the web. Beyond the required reading you would be well advised to keep up on current events related to the topics of this class. Some recent links & news stories will be distributed each week via email & the blog, and will be discussed up at the beginning of each class.

Week 1: Intro and Overview of Topics
Class 1: Course Overview, Blogging Assignments, Introductions & Preview of Issues. Be prepared to discuss what is privacy broadly and the difference between privacy & secrets.

Readings:

Week 2 Sources of Privacy Law – Overview & Comparison

Week 3 Torts / NDA (cases to be added)

  • Prosser
  • Intrusion,
  • Private Facts
  • False Light
  • Appropriation / Publicity
  • Confidentiality (including NDA)

Week 4 1st Amendment tensions

  • Cox Broadcasting Corp. v. Cohn, 420 U.S. 469 (1975)
  • Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial District
  • NAACP v.Alabama et seq.
  • Case Law search in WA state currently before the Judaical Information Services Committee

Week 5: 4th Amendment

  • Olmstead – wiretapping
  • Katz v. US – Reasonable Expectation of Privacy
  • US v. Karo 1984
  • California v. Ciraolo 1986
  • Kyllo v. US 2001 (Thermal imaging)


Week 6 Online Personal Information, Is Privacy Dead?

Possible Speaker from Health Vault

Week 7: EU Privacy

Week 8: Current 4th Amendment special cases
Guest speaker – ACLU

  • US v. Aukai – travel
  • Chandler v. Miller – Drug testing & NTEU – v. Raab
  • TBA

Week 9: Policy Solutions  & Statutes

  • 1973: The Code of Fair Information Practice
  • 1980: OECD Guidelines on the Protection of Privacy and Transborder Flows of Personal Data
  • p3p – a platform for privacy preferences
  • Privacy Act and FOIA (still looking for reading and case)
  • Video Privacy Act
  • Identity Theft and Assumption Deterrence Act of 1998

Week 10: Privacy Policies Best & Worst Practices

Week 11: Social Networks & FTC

  • EPIC Facebook Complaint
  • Evolution of Facebook from a private network to a public broadcast platform – Kai
  • Foursquare Hack, Facebook private photo hack

Week 12: Protecting Children

  • History of the ACT
  • ACLU v. Mukasey 2009

Week 13: Google Book Settlement

  • Laws for Libraries
  • The settlement
  • Current complaints filed
  • Goggle’s policies

Week 14:
The final week is reserved for a more in depth look at any topics students want to explore along with student presentations not held in other classes.

RSS to Scan
Keep up on current events is essential to this class. Each class will begin with a review of recent news related to privacy. Here are a few sources to follow:

The Electronic Privacy Information Center’s Blog –  EPIC.org
The Privacy Law Blog @ privacylaw.proskauer.com Large group law firm blog
Tech Dirt – Free Culture User Rights Slant – techdirt.com
New York Times Bits Blog- Main stream pop media perspective – bits.blogs.nytimes.com
DeepLinks – EFF – Digital Civil Rights eff.org/deeplinks

Assignments & Grading
Short Blogging Assignment:
Each student will write one short 150 to 300 word blog post on a current news items related to the class. The post must contain at least 3 links to relevant sources and one related image or other form of multi media. The post should also include at least one thought from the student about the news item. The next class after you post the short blog post be prepared to be questioned over this news item specifically.
This assignment may be completed in non public format on the class email list.  Instead of posting the blog post to the class blog you post it to the class email list.

Long Blogging Assignment:
Each student will write one long 800 to 1500 word blog post on a topic covered in class. This serious reflection on a topic covered. The student needs to take a point of view and write in favor of against a rhetorical point made in class. The student is free to agree or disagree with points made in class and must reference the class readings. The logic and source cites used to defend the POV are of critical importance in this post.

The student must also find at least one other online source that disagrees with their POV on the same topic and respond to that source within the post. This assignment needs to show careful reflection on the topic and must engage viewpoints that agree and disagree with the authors perspective. This assignment may be completed in non public format.  Instead of posting the blog post to the class blog you post it to the class email list.

Group Project:
Purpose: Integrate the topics and challenges of the class into a real world case study. Each group of 3 students will choose a real business to study their information privacy policies and challenges and make concrete suggestion for how to improve policies and avoid liability long term.

Each group must prepare a 10 to 20 page case study of the companies policies relating to topics covered in this class. This should include but is not limited to:

  • Review of the companies TOS or EULA
  • Review of privacy Policies
  • Past handling of privacy concerns
  • Assessment of private information that the company or service might be collecting and how that information should be handled as both an asset and a liability
  • List of potential legal issues related to privacy
  • Suggestion for improving the companies privacy policies and practices

This final group report should be of professional quality as if being presented to a chief Legal Officer & a Chief Information Office or other top level executives at the company you have been assigned to evaluate.

Groups must choose a company to evaluated by week three, an outline is due on week 7 and the final draft is due Thursday of week 13 by 5pm.

Class Presentations:
Each student must choose 1 topic covered in the class and prepare a 5 minute talk that explores that aspect of the class in more depth. Students may choose any topic covered including weekly news, short blog post, or long blog posts.  The time limit on this talk is short, but do not think that this means the talk is easy. The talk should be concise, focused, informative and well practiced. The talk should include 2 to 20 visual aids or slides. Examples of short informative talks will be provided along with some basic speaking techniques. I take public speaking very seriously, anytime you have the undivided attention of a group of people you should prepare.
Each talk will also be followed by a Q&A section from the professor and class.

Class Participation
Each student is expected to participate in class discussion at least eight time through comments and questions in class or comments on the discussion board or on the blog. At least two of those times must be in class and two of them must be online (via the private email list or the public blog), the other four times are up to you and can be in either forum.

Grading:
Class Participation: 15%
5 min Presentation 15%
Short Form Blog Post: 5%
Long Form Blog Post: 25%
Group Project: 40%

Evaluation of Student Work
You may expect to receive comments on and evaluations of assignments and submitted work in a timely fashion. All work from the course will be returned, with comments, within two weeks of being submitted.

Academic Integrity
For writing assignments, when ideas or materials of others are used, they must be cited using Blue Book for formal writing and best practices of web citation for online work. The format though is not as important as that the source material can be located and the citation verified. What is important is that the material be cited. Parallel citations to open access sources should be included when ever possible.

Copyright
All of the expressions of ideas in this class that are fixed in any tangible medium such as digital and physical documents are covered by copyright law by default. These expressions include the work product of both: (1) your student colleagues; and, (2) your instructors (e.g., the syllabus, assignments, reading lists, and lectures).
All work product of your professor, Brian Rowe, are made available under the Creative Commons BY License
* to Share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work
* to Remix — to adapt the work

Under the following condition: You must attribute the work as from “Class# Information Privacy by Brian Rowe, 2010; First published by Seattle University Law”

To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Creative Commons License preserve your”fair use”, under Section 107 of the copyright act. Learn about those rights and use them!

All work products of your student colleagues are under All Rights Reserved and you must approach them to reuse their work beyond what fair use allows.

Note that the class blog is default licensed under a CC BY license, if you want your work on the blog under a different license you must state that at the end of your blog post! (This is an example of opt-out licensing which we will discuss the ethics of in class) If you have any questions regarding copyright, fair use or Creative Commons, please feel free to ask the instructor for guidance.

Privacy
To support an academic environment of rigorous discussion and open expression of personal thoughts and feelings, we, as members of the academic community, must be committed to the inviolate right of privacy of our student and instructor colleagues. As a result, we must forego sharing personally identifiable information about any member of our community including information about the ideas they express, their families, life styles and their political and social affiliations. If you have any questions regarding whether a disclosure you wish to make regarding anyone in this course or in the law school community violates that person’s privacy interests, please feel free to ask the instructor for guidance.
Knowing violations of these principles of academic conduct, or privacy may result in University disciplinary action under the Student Code of Conduct.

Credit:
This syllabus was influenced by many other professors’ syllabus.  Two people that have greatly influenced this syllabus are Prof. Marc Rotenberg of Georgetown University Law Center and Executive Director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), and Adam Moore author of “Justifying Informational Privacy Rights.”San Diego Law Review 45 (spring 2008) and mentor from University of Washington’s iSchool.

If you made it this far in post I must thank you, I know I am breaking all the rules of blogging by posting a 7 page syllabus as part of the post.  Please feel free to comment here or via private email at: Brian <at> BrianRowe.org

Topics: SU Law | View Comments

WLA: Legal Issues for Indy Games w/ Michael Schneider

By Brian Rowe | July 22, 2010

The presentation was very practical in nature, Mike is a former Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & rosati attorney and current iPhone game designer spoke today at 4Culture.

Practical Advice from Mike:

The main case on Open Source code is

Q: can you check the validity of OS code?

A: No

My answer: kind of there are projects like Fossology that will help you determine the history of code in projects.

Mike wrote a book The Business of iPhone app Development he is also on Twitter: @hivebrain

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Teaching Chess

By Brian Rowe | July 14, 2010

I am very excited to be bacteaching  chess.  I have missed chess a lot over the last few years while I was focusing on law school and a public interest fellowship in Washington DC, but now I am back in  Seattle playing actively and teaching.  The skills I learned playing and teaching chess were essential to my success in law school.  Chess teaches students how to plan, set goals, follow through and focus.

Teaching:

I offer Personal chess lessons for children or adults. Learn everything from the basics of the game to advanced competitive techniques for tournament play. Study plans focus on gaining a strong foundation of tactics, endgames, and learning how to master a skill.

I have high expectations for my students and parents. Learning chess for children should be a cooperative experience. Parents do not need to be avid chess players, but do need to be committed to helping their children learn on a daily basis. I teach not only the skills to learn chess, but also the skills to master any subject as part of chess, whether it be law, math or music, the same basic principles and work habits will benefit any life-long learner.

The first time you meet with me, I will do a half-hour introductory evaluation of your chess skills free of charge. Weekly 1:1 lessons are recommended for most students ranging between 1/2 hour to 1 hour per session. Students must be prepared to study daily including keeping a journal of work completed and questions for future lessons.

I am willing to travel to any location within 10 miles of Seattle or meet at a public place within the city.

Diverse people of all learning styles are welcome. Lessons are customized for each students learning style!

Rates:

1st 1/2 hour introductory half hour is free.
$35 per half hour single lessons
* 30 minute weekly chess lessons – $130.00/month
* 45 minute weekly chess lessons – $175.00/month
* 60 minute weekly chess lessons – $220.00/month

Perspective students may also want to check out the new student page to get an idea of how I teach.

Where I play:
I can be found playing at SOHO Coffee Company, Cherry Street Cafes or the Downtown Seattle Public Library. I am always up for a friendly game feel free to approach me if you see me at a coffee shop.

Bio:
I started playing chess in the early 1990′s and have been addicted ever since. I started by playing coffee house chess and moved on to tournament chess a short time later. In the late 1990′s I started teaching chess in the Portland Oregon / Vancouver Washington area at local elementary and middle schools along with private lessons. Most recently I taught two 8 week chess classes at the Perkins School in North Seattle. I have worked with students ages 4 on up. I also took private lessons from Senior Master Charles Schulien in the late 1990′s.

I hold a law degree from Seattle University class of 09 and degrees in Informatics and Political Science from University of Washington. I have extensive experience in teaching at all levels ranging from tutoring math and reading to elementary school student through the America Reads program to teaching Masters level classes at University of Washington’s Information School and continuing legal education seminars on copyright and patent law.

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Amanda Palmer TED talk Beta

By Brian Rowe | July 13, 2010

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Away Till July 12th

By Brian Rowe | June 27, 2010

I will be offline, on vacation, the next two weeks.

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Updated Social Media Resources

By Brian Rowe | June 17, 2010

I had a great meeting yesterday with Disability Rights Washington over social media strategy which has prompted me to update my list of recommend resources for NPO’s thinking about getting into Social Media. Here is the new list:

Best Blogs:
BoingBoing – Great short form blog, Cory Doctorow is my favorite writer on the blog he cover everything from Do It Yourself Culture to user rights technology issues.
Freedom to Tinker: Group blog hosted by hosted by Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy. Very strong policy posts with a diverse set of views.
EFF Deep Links – EFF’s blog is a decent example of a nonprofit blog for an npo that also does litigation.
Blogging Best Practices Post w/ a video from Cory Doctorow
Posner and Becker’s Blog – Law and Economics, this a long form blog that covers current issues in a back and forth debate between Posner a very out spoken judge & Becker an Econ professor at Chicago U.  The post are a little long for my taste but a lot of people really like them, I would not publish post longer then this.

Online video:
RSS in Plain English by Common Craft.  Common Craft is a great local start up that does amazing short informational videos.
5 mins with Harold Feld - FCC/ Copyright public interest lawyer at Public Knowledge that is great at translating Law into plain English.
New in IP – a weekly video cast I do on Copyright & Patent issue, very low production cost focusing on recent news and commentary.

Flickr photo pools for NPO:
Sierra Club’s Daily Ray of Hope – Amazing User Generated photo pool.
Tech Soup’s Article on How NPO’s can get the most out of Flickr

Free copyright licensing designed to enable sharing:
Creative Commons
Blog posts From Beth Kanter on How NPO’s can utilize CC

Topics: Uncategorized | View Comments

Slides for the ATJ Technology Panel

By Brian Rowe | June 5, 2010

2010 atj conference

View more presentations from Brian Rowe.

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UW iSchool Gaga Video

By Brian Rowe | June 2, 2010

Hehe, great video. Several people I know from the UW’s iSchool are in it including my information systems professor Bob Boiko:

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Google Book Settlement Panel PDX September w/ Reed Aside

By Brian Rowe | May 25, 2010

I just can’t pass up a road trip to Portland. I will be joining Rachel Bridgewater, an Academic Librarian from Reed College, on a panel about the Google Book Settlement at the 2010 Northwest Interlibrary Loan and Resource Sharing Conference to be held September 16-17 at the PCC Sylvania campus in Portland Oregon.

PS I heart Reed, between my AA and my BS/BA, while I was working for Wizards, I audited a few classes at Reed including intro to psychology and a history of Buddhism class (maybe i ghosted one of those…).  At the time Reed had a great policy where members of the community could join 2 classes a year for $100 each as long as the instructor was cool with it.  The class sizes were very small and they always had great conversation both during and after the classes, the students were very friendly and outgoing.  I learned more useful information from the psychology class then in many of my law school classes!

Update: Reed Still has the policy in place:

people may audit no more than two courses in one year, with written permission of the instructor. The auditor’s fee is $100 per course, per semester, plus any additional course fees.

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Speaking at ATJ Confernce in Wenatchee

By Brian Rowe | May 24, 2010


I will be speaking at this years ATJ Conference in Wenatchee on June 5th. Here is the panel I am on : Technology Power Tools for Justice

Development and advances in technology have provided the justice system with transformative tools that can effectively, efficiently and economically make available both information and services to vast numbers of people almost anywhere in minutes. These tools can serve and empower people who have been powerless, excluded, underserved – and do so in practical ways with concrete effects. These tools can also enable and make real diversity in the people we serve, inclusiveness in the justice system and those who govern and work in it, and enable intergenerational communication and cooperation and leadership development at all levels. Focused on understanding how to use technology to serve our fundamental values and deliver meaningful justice in the daily lives of all people, we will demonstrate important tools and opportunities available now, and some exciting future directions.

We are likely to cover a lot of accessibility tools along with some other cutting edge projects. My hope is to include CC, twitter, mobile access, social media and Diaspora in the conversation.

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