Every day, corporations are connecting the dots about our personal behaviorsilently scrutinizing clues left behind by our work habits and Internet use. The data compiled and portraits created are incredibly detailed, to the point of being invasive. But who connects the dots about what firms are doing with this information? The Black Box Society argues that we all need to be able to do soand to set limits on how big data affects our lives. Hidden algorithms can make (or ruin) reputations, decide the destiny of entrepreneurs, or even devastate an entire economy. Shrouded in secrecy and complexity, decisions at major Silicon Valley and Wall Street firms were long assumed to be neutral and technical. But leaks, whistleblowers, and legal disputes have shed new light on automated judgment. Self-serving and reckless behavior is surprisingly common, and easy to hide in code protected by legal and real secrecy. Even after billions of dollars of fines have been levied, underfunded regulators may have only scratched the surface of this troubling behavior. Frank Pasquale exposes how powerful interests abuse secrecy for profit and explains ways to rein them in. Demanding transparency is only the first step. An intelligible society would assure that key decisions of its most important firms are fair, nondiscriminatory, and open to criticism. Silicon Valley and Wall Street need to accept as much accountability as they impose on others.

The Black Box Society: The Secret Algorithms That Control Money and Information

Weapons of Math Destruction presents a careful and sustained criticism of big data's dark side, the remarkable ability if its algorithms to “calculat[e] our potential as students, workers, lovers, ...

Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy

Information privacy refers to the desire of individuals to control or have some influence over data about themselves. Advances in information technology have raised concerns about information privacy and its impacts, and have motivated Information Systems researchers to explore information privacy issues, including technical solutions to address these concerns. In this paper, we inform researchers about the current state of information privacy research in IS through a critical analysis of the IS literature that considers information privacy as a key construct. The review of the literature reveals that information privacy is a multilevel concept, but rarely studied as such. We also find that information privacy research has been heavily reliant on studentbased and USA-centric samples, which results in findings of limited generalizability. Information privacy research focuses on explaining and predicting theoretical contributions, with few studies in journal articles focusing on design and action contributions. We recommend that future research should consider different levels of analysis as well as multilevel effects of information privacy. We illustrate this with a multilevel framework for information privacy concerns. We call for research on information privacy to use a broader diversity of sampling populations, and for more design and action information privacy research to be published in journal articles that can result in IT artifacts for protection or control of information privacy.

http://ftp.misq.org/skin/frontend/default/misq/pdf/appendices/2011/BelangerCrosslerAppendices.pdf

Privacy in the digital age: a review of information privacy research in information systems

Driven by the confluence between the need to collect data about people's physical, physiological, psychological, cognitive, and behavioral processes in spaces ranging from personal to urban and the recent availability of the technologies that enable this data collection, wireless sensor networks for healthcare have emerged in the recent years. In this review, we present some representative applications in the healthcare domain and describe the challenges they introduce to wireless sensor networks due to the required level of trustworthiness and the need to ensure the privacy and security of medical data. These challenges are exacerbated by the resource scarcity that is inherent with wireless sensor network platforms. We outline prototype systems spanning application domains from physiological and activity monitoring to large-scale physiological and behavioral studies and emphasize ongoing research challenges.

/pdf/wireless-sensor-networks-for-healthcare-f8ee00rnzw.pdf

Wireless Sensor Networks for Healthcare

This article summarizes and draws connections among diverse streams of theoretical and empirical research on the economics of privacy. We focus on the economic value and consequences of protecting and disclosing personal information, and on consumers' understanding and decisions regarding the trade-offs associated with the privacy and the sharing of personal data. We highlight how the economic analysis of privacy evolved over time, as advancements in information technology raised increasingly nuanced and complex issues associated with the protection and sharing of personal information. We find and highlight three themes that connect diverse insights from the literature. First, characterizing a single unifying economic theory of privacy is hard, because privacy issues of economic relevance arise in widely diverse contexts. Second, there are theoretical and empirical situations where the protection of privacy can both enhance, and detract from, individual and societal welfare. Third, in digital economies, consumers' ability to make informed decisions about their privacy is severely hindered, because consumers are often in a position of imperfect or asymmetric information regarding when their data is collected, for what purposes, and with what consequences. We conclude the article by highlighting some of the ongoing issues in the privacy debate of interest to economists.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID2744818_code1596912.pdf?abstractid=2580411&mirid=1&type=2

The Economics of Privacy

This brief, submitted to the Supreme Court of the United States by 15 information privacy law scholars in the case of Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins (No 13-1339), argues that in enacting the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), Congress crafted a bargain between aggressive, secretive data-aggregating businesses and the public: if those businesses limited disclosures and made reasonable efforts to adhere to practices ensuring “maximum possible accuracy,” they would enjoy a safe harbor from litigation under many other state and federal theories. The FCRA’s consumer transparency requirements and remedial provisions were designed to encourage steady improvement in consumer reporting practices and to relieve pressure on public enforcement authorities. The Petitioner’s claim that Respondents cannot pursue it for its violations of the FCRA would unravel that bargain, preserving consumer reporting agencies’ broad immunity from suit while diminishing incentives to handle data fairly.In an era in which employers increasingly practice “hiring by algorithm,” inaccurate consumer reports — even those that contain putatively favorable inaccuracies — can cause real economic injury to consumers. Such inaccuracies can lead employers to screen out prospective employees as overqualified or too well-paid. Alternatively, employers may suspect resume inflation and dishonesty if background checks reveal inconsistencies or unearned honors. More generally, lawmakers historically have recognized and responded to non-economic and dignity-based injuries by creating rights of action to remedy such wrongs in court. The FCRA follows that pattern. In enacting the FCRA, Congress did not create injury but rather recognized the injury worked by improper disclosure and mishandling of information. Petitioner’s argument to the contrary threatens to upset numerous privacy, consumer protection, and other laws.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID2659231_code1215500.pdf?abstractid=2656482&mirid=1

Information Privacy Law Scholars' Brief in Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins

Good enough Privacy

https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1836&context=wmborj

The Investigative Dynamics of the Use of Malware by Law Enforcement

SSRN's download statistics are criticized for being biased in favor of bloggers. Just how does the supposed bias work, and how strong is it? This paper reports the results of a small empirical study undertaken in April, 2007. While guest-blogging at the Volokh Conspiracy, the author used a small computer program to collect SSRN Abstract View and Download statistics every fifteen minutes. The study took on an unexpected dimension when links to some of the author's blog posts appeared in an article on the Slashdot website, one of the most widely-read technology websites. This allowed the author to compare the Volokh Effect with the better known and more often studied Slashdot Effect. This is a quickly-compiled draft summarizing and analyzing the results. The odds are very good that the author is collecting data about this abstract page, as well.

Do Blogs Influence SSRN Downloads? Empirically Testing the Volokh and Slashdot Effects

This essay proposes a new interdisciplinary research agenda called Computer Programming and the Law. By harnessing the power of computer programming, legal scholars can develop better tools, data, and insights for advancing their research interests. This essay presents the case for this new research agenda, highlights some examples of those who have begun to blaze the trail, and includes code samples to demonstrate the power and potential of developing software for legal scholarship. The code samples in this essay can be run like a piece of software - thanks to a technique known as literate programming - making this the world's first law review article that is also a working computer program.

Paul Ohm

Papers

Information Privacy Law Scholars' Brief in Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins

Good enough Privacy

The Investigative Dynamics of the Use of Malware by Law Enforcement

Do Blogs Influence SSRN Downloads? Empirically Testing the Volokh and Slashdot Effects

Computer Programming and the Law: A New Research Agenda