Ethics and the Law on the Electronic Frontier

Lecture Notes

LEC #

TOPICS

LECTURE OUTLINES

1

Course Overview and Introduction

Policy Making and the Structure of Law

 

Unit A: Regulating the Decentralized Internet

2

The Internet meets the U.S. Constitution

(PDF)

3

The Legacy of Reno: The Strengths and Limits of Filtering and User Control

 

Unit B: Regulating Government Use of Surveillance Technology

4

Fourth Amendment Foundations and the First Century of Electronic Surveillance

(PDF)

5

International Issues

(PDF)

6

Technology-driven Public-private Boundary Shifts

The Crypto Wars

(PDF ‑ 2.1 MB)

(PDF)

7

Profiling and Datamining Post-9/11

(PDF)

 

Midterm Exam

 

Unit C: The Transparency Challenge

8

Anonymity vs. Transparency

(PDF)

9

Personal Information on the Web

(PDF)

10

Transparency in Consumer Protection and Commercial Regulation

(PDF)

11

Origins of Broadcast Regulation

(PDF)

12

Semantic Web Public Policy Challenges

(PDF)

 

Exams

This section provides a sample exam that was given to students in the course.

Sample Midterm Exam (PDF)

 

Projects

This section contains the term paper assignment, along with exemplary term papers by students in the class.

Guidelines and Expectations for Final Papers (PDF)

Exemplary Student Papers

All papers appear courtesy of the students named and are used with permission.

PAPER TOPICS

AUTHORS

Fall 2005

Facebook: Threats to Privacy (PDF - 1.7 MB)

Harvey Jones and José Hiram Soltren

Get to Know GoogleTM: Because They Know You

Stefanie Alki Delichatsios and Temitope Sonuyi

The Freedom of Information Act: Holding Government Accountable (PDF)

Daniel Peng

Policy and Practice in Student Records (PDF)

Waseem Daher

MIT Privacy Protection of Job Applicant and Employee Information (PDF)

Jacqueline Tio

Fall 2004

The MIT ID Card System: Analysis and Recommendations (PDF)

Priya Agrawal, Neha Bhargava, Chaitra Chandrasekhar, Al Dahya, and J. D. Zamfirescu

Privacy, SmartCards and the MBTA: A Policy Analysis of the MBTA's New Automated Fare Collection System

Ian Brelinsky, Brian Myhre, Jennifer Novosad, and Chris Suarez

Sensors in Public Spaces: The Law and Technology of Anonymity

Shuvo Chatterjee, Mabel Feng, Brian Keegan, Sarah Ma, and Jennifer Wang

Fall 2003

Netwatcher: A design of an internet filter based on an adaptive version of naive Bayes

Jean Almonord and Daniel Yoon

Updating Copyright Laws to Address Concerns of Google's Cached Page Service (PDF)

Parul Deora

Progress Against the Law: Fan Distribution, Copyright, and the Explosive Growth of Japanese Animation (PDF)

Sean Leonard

Analysis of Fair Use and Fan Culture on the Internet (PDF)

Sean Whaley

Bloggers' Expectations of Privacy and Accountability: An Initial Survey. Published as
Viégas, F. B. "Bloggers' expectations of privacy and accountability: An initial survey." Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 10, no. 3 (2005). Article 12.

Fernanda B. Viégas

Fall 2002

TCPA and Palladium: Are the Benefits of the Hardware Changes Enough to Justify an Upgrade? (PDF)

Omar Bakr, Hareesh Nair, Aman Narang, and Tony Scelfo

Underlying Motivations in the Broadcast Flag Debate. A revised version of this paper appears in the August-September 2004 issue of the journal Telecommunications Policy. (PDF)

Roshan Baliga, Deb Dasgupta, Anna Dreyer, and Allan Friedman

Spring 2002

PARANOIA Security Standard for Wireless Networks (PDF)

Richard Hu, Pius A. Uzamere II, and Fei Xing

A Proposal for a Ubiquitous Privacy Notice Standard (PDF)

Roland Burton and Corinna Sherman

The Personal Internetworked Notary and Guardian (PING): The Policy Implications of a Patient-Controlled Electronic Medical Record (PDF)

Daniar Hussain, Andrew Werner, and Neil Desai

Carnival Booth: An Algorithm for Defeating the Computer-Assisted Passenger Screening System (PDF)

Samidh Chakrabarti and Aaron Strauss

Digital Balance (PDF)

Tin Lun (Bruce) Au

Analysis of Local Boston Television News Story Selection Bias, 1993-2002 (PDF)

Keith Winstein