The lectures and readings listed here are subject to change, including in response to current events (i.e., major news items).

The most important readings for each lecture are shown in boldface.

Note that the date for the "Location" lecture has been changed to avoid Yom Kippur.

Monday, September 11
Introduction

Concepts:
Basic legal concepts (for computer science students). Basic cryptography and Internet architecture (for law students). Basics of machine learning.
Readings:
  • Orin S. Kerr. How to read a legal opinion: a guide for new law students. The Green Bag, Autumn 2007. Second series. LINK.
  • Steven M. Bellovin, Preetam K. Dutta, and Nathan Reitinger. Privacy and synthetic datasets. Stanford Technology Law Review, 2019. LINK, Section II.A.
  • Timothy B. Lee. A jargon-free explanation of how AI large language models work. Ars Technica, July 31, 2023. LINK.
  • Mark Warner. Warner urges wireless carriers and technology companies to preserve evidence related to the attack on the U.S. Capitol. Press release, January 9, 2021. LINK.
  • Brendan M. Sullivan, Gopikrishna Karthikeyan, Zuli Liu, Wouter Lode Paul Massa, and Mahima Gupta. Socioeconomic group classification based on user features. U.S. Patent 10,607,154, March 31, 2020. LINK, Abstract only.
  • Robert Gellman. Fair information practices: a basic history. April 6, 2022. Version 2.22. LINK.
  • Video, How the Internet Works. Slides here.
Important reading:
Monday, September 18

Concepts:
What is metadata. Metadata versus content. Third-party doctrine.
Readings:
  • Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967). Condensed, Full.
  • Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735 (1979). Condensed, Full.
  • Steven M. Bellovin, Matt Blaze, Susan Landau, and Stephanie Pell. It's too complicated: how the Internet upends Katz, Smith, and electronic surveillance law. Harvard Journal of Law and Technology, 30(1):1–101, Fall 2016. LINK, Section IV.
  • Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act, 18 U.S.C. 2510–2520, 1986. Full.
Wednesday, September 27
Location Privacy (18:20-20:10)
Location-Tracking Case Law
Note: to avoid Yom Kippur, this class is on Wednesday night at the usual time.

Concepts:
How location-tracking works. Third party doctrine.
Readings:
  • Dan Goodin. FTC sues data broker that tracks locations of 125M phones per month. Ars Technica, August 29, 2022. LINK.
  • Bennett Cyphers. Inside Fog Data Science, the secretive company selling mass surveillance to local police. EFF Deep Links, August 31, 2022. LINK.
  • Joy Dong. China's internet censors try a new trick: revealing users' locations. New York Times, May 18, 2022. LINK.
  • Matt Blaze. Hearing on the Geolocation Privacy and Surveillance (GPS) Act. May 17, 2012. Testimony for the House Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security. LINK.
  • Chaoming Song, Zehui Qu, Nicholas Blumm, and Albert-László Barabási. Limits of predictability in human mobility. Science, 327(5968):1018–1021, 2010. LINK.
  • Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye, César A. Hidalgo, Michel Verleysen, and Vincent D. Blondel. Unique in the crowd: the privacy bounds of human mobility. Scientific Reports, 2013. LINK.
  • Jennifer Valentino-DeVries, Natasha Singer, Michael H. Keller, and Aaron Krolik. Your apps know where you were last night, and they're not keeping it secret. New York Times, December 10, 2018. LINK.
  • Jennifer Valentino-DeVries. Service meant to monitor inmates' calls could track you, too. New York Times, May 10, 2018. LINK.
  • Joseph Cox. CDC tracked millions of phones to see if Americans followed COVID lockdown orders. Vice Motherboard, May 3, 2022. LINK.
  • Alex Pasternack. A showdown between an ad tech firm and the FTC will test the limits of U.S. privacy law. Fast Company, September 8, 2022. LINK.
  • Carpenter v. United States, 8 S. Ct. 2206 (2018). Condensed, Full.
Optional:
  • Kevin S. Bankston and Ashkan Soltani. Tiny constables and the cost of surveillance: making cents out of United States v. Jones. Yale Law Journal Online, January 9, 2014. LINK.
Skim:
Monday, October 02


Concepts:
Concepts of Internet of Things. Common architectures. Alternatives.
Readings:
  • Matt Olsen, Bruce Schneier, and Jonathan Zittrain. Don't panic: making progress in the “Going Dark” debate. Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, February 1, 2016. LINK.
  • Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27 (2001). Condensed, Full.
  • Cryptographic Hash Functions
Optional:
  • The Company v. United States, 349 F.3d 1132 (9th Cir. 2003). Full.
Monday, October 09
Homework due:


Concepts:
Data purchases. Fourth Amendment protections against collection and analysis of public data. First Amendment protections for private collection and analysis of public data. Facial recognition. Machine learning and bias.
Readings:
Optional:
  • Van Buren v. United States, 141 S. Ct. 1648 (2021). Full.
Skim:
Monday, October 16

Concepts:
How people are tracking online. Web architecture. Federal Trade Commission jurisdiction.
Readings:
Optional:
  • Samuel Warren and Louis D. Brandeis. The right to privacy. Harvard Law Review, 4:193, 1890. LINK.
  • Paul Ohm. Broken promises of privacy: responding to the surprising failure of anonymization. UCLA Law Review, 57:1701–1777, 2010. U of Colorado Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 9-12. LINK.
  • Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, 578 U.S. 330 (2016). Full.
Monday, October 23
Homework due:


Concepts:
Free speech. Internet trolls. International issues. Machine learning and automated filtering.
Readings:
  • Christopher Cox. The origins and original intent of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. University of Richmond Journal of Law and Technology blog, August 27, 2020. LINK.
  • Taylor Hatmaker. Facebook Oversight Board says other social networks `welcome to join' if project succeeds. Techcrunch, February 11, 2021. LINK.
  • Communications Decency Act, 47 U.S.C. 230. Full.
  • Kate Cox. Proposed sec. 230 rewrite could have wide-ranging consequences. Ars Technica, February 8, 2021. LINK.
  • Alex Abdo. Why rely on the Fourth Amendment to do the work of the First? Yale Law Journal, 127:444, 2017. LINK.
  • NetChoice, LLC v. Attorney General, State of Florida, 34 F.4th 1196 (11th Cir. 2022). Condensed, Full.
  • NetChoice, LLC v. Paxton, 2022 U.S. App. LEXIS 26062, 2022 WL 4285917 (5th Cir. 2022). Condensed, Full.
Optional:
  • Eugene Volokh and Donald M. Falk. Google: First Amendment protection for search engine search results. Journal of Law, Economics, and Policy, 2012. Note: This is a white paper commissioned by Google. LINK.
  • Daniel Solove. Restoring the CDA Section 230 to what it actually says. Privacy + Security Blog, February 4, 2021. LINK.
  • Reno v. ACLU, 521 U.S. 844 (1997). Condensed, Full.
  • Malwarebytes, Inc. v. Enigma Software Group USA, LLC, 592 U.S. ___, 2020 WL 6037214 (2020). Full.
  • Daphne Keller. Six constitutional hurdles for platform speech regulation. Center for Internet and Society (blog), January 22, 2021. LINK.
  • Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. Submission to Facebook Oversight Board. February 11, 2021. LINK.
  • Kate Klonick. Inside the making of Facebook's Supreme Court. New Yorker, February 12, 2021. LINK.
  • Jack Balkin. How to regulate (and not regulate) social media. Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, March 25, 2020. LINK.
  • Jed Rubenfeld. Are Facebook and Google state actors? Lawfare Blog, November 4, 2019. LINK.
  • Solicitor General. Amicus brief in NetChoice. August 2023, pp. 1–20.
Monday, October 30


Concepts:
Fourth Amendement versus border protection. Computer forensics.
Readings:
  • Gina R. Bohannon. Cell phones and the border search exception: circuits split over the line between sovereignty and privacy. Maryland Law Review, 2019. LINK.
  • Hillel R. Smith. Do warrantless searches of electronic devices at the border violate the Fourth Amendment? Legal Sidebar LSB10387, Congressional Research Service, December 20, 2019. LINK.
  • Riley v. California, 573 U.S. 373 (2014). Condensed, Full.
  • Mike Masnick. Phew: EU Court Of Justice says right to be forgotten is not a global censorship tool (just an EU one). Techdirt, September 24, 2019. LINK.
  • Logan Koepke, Emma Weil, Urmila Janardan, Tinuola Dada, and Harlan Yu. Mass extraction: the widespread power of U.S. law enforcement to search mobile phones. Upturn, October 2020. LINK, Section 2.
Optional:
  • Alasaad v. Mayorkas, 2021 U.S. App. LEXIS 3586 (1st Cir. 2021). Full.
  • United States v. Cano, 934 F.3d 1002 (9th Cir. 2019). Full.
  • C‑507/17, Google LLC v. Commission nationale de l'informatique et des libertés (CNIL), ECLI:EU:C:2019:772 (E.C.J. [GC] 24 September 2019). Full.
Monday, November 06
Homework due:
Monday, November 13


Concepts:
Cryptographic protocols. End-to-end encryption versus the Fourth Amendment.
Readings:
  • Harold Abelson, Ross Anderson, Steven M. Bellovin, Josh Benaloh, Matt Blaze, Whitfield Diffie, John Gilmore, Matthew Green, Susan Landau, Peter G. Neumann, Ronald L. Rivest, Jeffrey I. Schiller, Bruce Schneier, Michael A. Specter, and Daniel J. Weitzner. Keys under doormats: mandating insecurity by requiring government access to all data and communications. Journal of Cybersecurity, September 2015. LINK, doi:10.1093/cybsec/tyv009.
  • Carnegie Foundation. Moving the encryption policy conversation forward. September 2019. LINK.
  • R. M. Needham and M. Schroeder. Using encryption for authentication in large networks of computers. Communications of the ACM, 21(12):993–999, December 1978. LINK.
  • Bernstein v. Dep't of Justice, 176 F.3d 1132 (9th Cir. 1999). Condensed, Full.
  • In re Order Requiring Apple, Inc. to Assist in the Execution of a Search Warrant Issued, 149 F. Supp. 3d 341 (E.D.N.Y. 2016). Condensed, Full.
Optional:
  • Robert Post. Encryption source code and the First Amendment. 15 Berk. Tech. L.J. 713, 2000. LINK.
Monday, November 20


Concepts:
Fifth Amendment. Cell phone security architecture.
Readings:
  • Seo v. Indiana, 148 N.E.3d 952 (Ind. Supreme Court 2019). Full.
  • Orin S. Kerr. Compelled decryption and the privilege against self-incrimination. Texas Law Review, 2019. LINK.
  • Matthew Green. Why can't Apple decrypt your iPhone? A Few Thoughts on Cryptographic Engineering, October 4, 2014. LINK.
Optional:
  • Maximilian Zinkus, Tushar M. Jois, and Matthew Green. Data security on mobile devices: current state of the art, open problems, and proposed solutions. White paper, January 11, 2021. LINK, skim.
Monday, November 27

Homework due:


Concepts:
Anonymous browing. Mixnets and Tor.
Readings:
  • David L. Chaum. Untraceable electronic mail, return addresses, and digital pseudonyms. Commun. ACM, 24(2):84–90, 1981. doi:10.1145/358549.358563.
  • Roger Dingledine, Nick Mathewson, and Paul Syverson. Tor: the second-generation onion router. In Proceedings of the 13th USENIX Security Symposium. August 2004. LINK.
  • McIntyre v. Ohio Election Commission, 514 U.S. 334 (1995). Full.
  • Paul Alan Levy. Developments in Dendrite. Florida Coastal Law Review, 2012. LINK.
  • Application for a search warrant, June 10, 2015, paragraphs 21--22
Monday, December 04
The NSA and Bulk Surveillance
Location:Zoom
Guest lecturer: Scott Bradner

Concepts:
Bulk surveillance and how it works. Intelligence law versus criminal law.
Readings:
  • Anunay Kulshrestha and Jonathan Mayer. Estimating incidental collection in foreign intelligence surveillance: Large-Scale multiparty private set intersection with union and sum. In 31st USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security 22), 1705–1722. Boston, MA, August 2022. USENIX Association. LINK.
  • National Research Council. Bulk Collection of Signals Intelligence. National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 2015. LINK, executive summary.
  • Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. Report on the telephone records program conducted under Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act and on the operations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. January 23, 2014. LINK, executive summary.
  • Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. Report on the surveillance program operated pursuant to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. September 28, 2023. LINK, Especially the Executive Summary.
  • ACLU v. Clapper, 785 F.3d 787 (2015). Full.
  • Cameron Kerry. The FISA reauthorization should codify safeguards for non-U.S. persons. Lawfare Blog, October 31, 2023. LINK.
Exceedingly optional:
  • Office of the General Counsel. Intelligence Community Legal Reference Book. Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Winter 2020. LINK.
  • Jeffrey L. Vagle. Being Watched: Legal Challenges to Government Surveillance. NYU Press, New York, December 2017.
Optional:
  • Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. Executive order 12333. April 2021. LINK, see especially Section III.
  • Ed Felten and Travis LeBlanc. Board members Ed Felten and Travis LeBlanc's statement on Executive Order 12333 Public Report. April 2, 2021. LINK.
Monday, December 11
Readings:
Optional:
Monday, December 18
Class Presentation of the Final Project (19:10-22:00)