Christopher Hoofnagle quoted in Wired, August 24, 2015
“The law has always imposed responsibility on companies for the care of their customers. When you’re in the restaurant you have to be protected against slips and falls or food-borne illness,” says Hoofnagle. “Data is just something new that companies have to protect if they want to bear the benefits of collecting it.”
Christopher Hoofnagle quoted in The New York Times, March 14, 2015
Christopher Hoofnagle … said that while it was noteworthy that data merchants were seeking greater personal privacy themselves, they also may well be on the right track. A nondisclosure agreement, which keeps intimate information from ever getting online where it can spread, “is the sensible thing to do.”
Christopher Hoofnagle quoted in The Washington Post, December 3, 2014
“This attack looks more like a crime meant to harm the victim than to extract some economic benefit, which makes it very different from the card breaches and the like.”
Christopher Hoofnagle quoted in Deseret News National, November 12, 2014
“Companies can confuse the user by promoting ‘trust’ or brand awareness instead of real privacy protections,” Hoofnagle said.
Christopher Hoofnagle quoted in Pacific Daily News, September 16, 2014
It turns out that Google, which bases its business on collecting and analyzing huge reams of data for advertising purposes, has been scanning users’ emails even before users have a chance to open or read them, including email messages that are deleted without being opened.
Christopher Hoofnagle writes for Medium, August 4, 2014
Privacy surveys find that individuals care about privacy, but any observer of social networks can find a great deal of profligate, ill-advised information sharing.
Chris Hoofnagle quoted on PBS Frontline, May 20, 2014
“Gmail was a privacy disaster,” Chris Hoofnagle, director of the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology, told Frontline. “The moment you allow people to look at the content of your communication for some advertising purpose is the moment that the government is going to come along and say, ‘If you’re going to let them listen in for advertising, why don’t you let us listen in for anti-terrorism or for serious crimes?’”
Chris Hoofnagle quoted in Bloomberg Businessweek, February 27, 2014
Chris Hoofnagle … said in an e-mail that while the Google case is “very important,” courts “almost never award the full amount of potential statutory damages in privacy cases. Defendants in these cases often have mitigating circumstances that reduce damage awards, and they argue that extra-large awards violate their due process.”
Paul Schwartz, Deirdre Mulligan, Chris Hoofnagle quoted in Forbes TECH blog, January 6, 2014
Paul [Schwartz] explained that the state-federal dialogue has broken down because the current Congress is gridlocked. Meanwhile, California continues enacting “a tidal wave of California privacy laws.” He cautioned against waiting for a “federal Godot,” i.e., expecting Congress to reengage productively on privacy regulation.
Deirdre Mulligan … praised California’s long reputation for privacy leadership. She said regulators outside California look to California as a laboratory of experimentation, and those experiments have ripple effects across the globe.
Chris Hoofnagle … said notice-and-choice is based on rational choice theory, but consumers don’t always act rationally…. He believes consumers see the words “privacy policies” as seals, i.e., certifications of minimum protections. He favors correcting this by establishing minimum substantive legal standards for anyone who uses the term “privacy policy.”
Chris Hoofnagle quoted in Washington Post, December 10, 2013
“On a macro level, ‘we need to track everyone everywhere for advertising’ translates into ‘the government being able to track everyone everywhere,'” said Chris Hoofnagle, a lecturer in residence at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law. “It’s hard to avoid.”