Document Type
Article
Abstract
What I offer below is a theoretical framework for evaluating competing societal interests: the value our society assigns to the free-flow of information to the public, including highly sophisticated computergenerated analyses of gargantuan data sets—information that helps inform better individual and collective decision-making; and on the other hand, the value we place on privacy even in the context of technological advances. One’s most personal actions and thoughts—what we type into search engines, which videos we watch, for how long or how often, which books or articles we read, with whom we communicate and the contents of those communications—should not be rendered public information merely by our using Facebook, Google, Amazon, Instagram, YouTube, Hulu, WhatsApp, or Zoom, or because our faces are posted on the internet, with or without consent. This essay posits a schematic matrix defined by three interrelated indices by which, I believe, any new and potentially privacy-intruding technology may be assessed. I then proceed to identify and “plot” onto that rubric a handful of judicial precedents which serve as recognized guideposts, collectively forming the “constellation” into which any new “star” may be appropriately mapped.
Recommended Citation
Steven D. Zansberg,
Charting The Skies: Where Does Facial Recognition Technology "FIT" In The Data Privacy Cosmos?,
2
Notre Dame J. on Emerging Tech.
292
(2021).