Concurring Opinions

I am now blogging at Concurring Opinions.

I am no longer updating this blog.

A Model Regime of Privacy Protection

Chris Hoofnagle of the Electronic Privacy Information Center and I have written a short paper that makes specific proposals for protecting information privacy.

The paper is called A Model Regime of Privacy Protection.

After the ChoicePoint security debacle, and in light of the recent security breaches at LexisNexis, there has been considerable legislative interest at both the state and federal level in regulating the data broker industry as well as information privacy more generally. Having frequently been asked for specific proposals and ideas, we decided to try an experiment -- set forth some specific legislative recommendations and solicit comments and reactions. Our paper makes 16 specific proposals for regulating the databroker industry, grappling with identity theft, and regulating government access to private sector information. We aimed to keep it as short as possible -- it is less than 15 pages, so it shouldn't be a burdensome read.

We aim to update and revise the proposals. We also aim to develop a commentary section where we discuss comments or criticisms that raise problems or issues that are worth addressing and thinking about. We will acknowledge those suggesting ideas we incorporate and will discuss comments in the commentary section. I often have debates about privacy issues on a rather abstract level, so this endeavor is an experiment for me. Chris and I hope it will be useful to starting a fruitful discussion, one that will be of help to policymakers.

So if you want to share your thoughts, please either post comments here or email us.

The Beginning

After much hesitation, I've finally decided to create a blog. I was afraid that it would become an addiction -- the electronic version of crack cocaine. Creating the blog was quite easy. So is getting addicted, I suppose. Now I have to keep my blog supplied with thoughtful interesting posts. That won't be so easy.

I am a law professor at George Washington University Law School. I teach and write about information privacy law issues, as well as criminal law, criminal procedure, legal philosophy, constitutional theory, and law and literature.

As you can guess, my posts to this blog will most likely focus on these topics.