Curriculum Guide · Courses

Professor Marc Rotenberg

J.D. Course 342 (cross-listed) | 2 credit hours

This course examines "information privacy," an individual's right to control his or her personal information held by others. The aim of the course is to understand how courts and the Congress seek to protect information privacy as new technologies and new institutional practices emerge. The course traces the origins of the right to information privacy in American law, through Constitutional law, tort law, and modern statutory law. Case studies of landmark privacy legislation illustrate how expectations of privacy are translated into legal frameworks. The course looks at recent controversies involving domestic surveillance, identification systems, social network sites, DNA databases, locational privacy, and airport body scanners. The course also considers the impact of the European privacy directive, the growth of the Internet, and the availability of cryptography and other Privacy Enhancing Technologies on the future of privacy law in the United States. Guest speakers include leading privacy officials from government and practitioners from the private sector.