Chris Hoofnagle quoted in Online Media Daily, December 4, 2013

“Really smart people may come to different conclusions about what ‘sponsored’ means,” said Chris Hoofnagle, a lecturer in residence at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. Hoofnagle added that he thinks “sponsored by” indicates an arrangement—which was typical on PBS—where a company pays to have its name associated with a show that was created independently. Online, however, “sponsored by” often refers to content that an advertiser has created.

Christopher Hoofnagle interviewed by Marketplace, November 8, 2013

“What’s happening is the privacy risk is changing from 100s of trackers to just a handful of them,” Hoofnagle said. The word is that tech giants just might start tracking our devices. Hoofnagle says right now, consumers can set their browsers to block cookies. But if your device is being tracked? “People will not be able to block collection,” he said. “So you have to trust that they’ll use it responsibly.”

Christopher Hoofnagle quoted in San Jose Mercury News, October 29, 2013

Chris Hoofnagle … predicted the new methods will give consumers “less privacy, because they will have less control.”

Christopher Hoofnagle writes for The Huffington Post, October 21, 2013

In The Circle, Dave Eggers describes a near future where a single company—The Circle—intermediates all communication. Convinced of its own benevolence, Circle employees expand the company’s offerings into creepier and creepier domains, while propounding punched-up versions of the philosophies of Larry Page, Eric Schmidt and Mark Zuckerberg.

Christopher Hoofnagle quoted in San Francisco Chronicle, October 11, 2013

So the move does no favors for the company’s tired mantra of “Don’t Be Evil,” something academics like Chris Hoofnagle, director of Information Privacy Programs at the UC Berkeley Center for law and technology have argued is “an albatross” and should be disregarded because most of Google’s self-described gallantry is prescribed by law anyway.

Chris Hoofnagle quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle, October 2, 2013

“Google knows exactly who you are because there is so much authentication built into Google’s services,” Chris Hoofnagle…said in an e-mail. “We are moving to an authenticated Web where one is always signed in, and that authentication, even if on the surface (it’s) pseudonymous, typically indicates the user’s identity.”

Christopher Hoofnagle writes for San Francisco Chronicle, July 28, 2013

We have to limit the ability of firms to collect and maintain data. Firms take the same position on privacy as the NSA: They believe that collecting data does not raise any privacy interest; only the use of data can create a privacy problem. This is an appealing but dangerous position. It leaves personal information in the hands of institutions desperate to monetize it, with little ability for individuals to prevent or even detect objectionable uses of data.

Christopher Hoofnagle quoted in WUSA9, June 25, 2013

“Stores can take this information to a data-broker and ask them to match up the name with the zip-code in order to get the person’s home address. And they can get other information too. They might be able to get an e-mail address or a phone number as well,” says Chris Hoofnagle with UC Berkeley Law School.

Christopher Hoofnagle quoted in The New York Times, April 22, 2013

Enforcement is at a turning point, Mr. Hoofnagle said, and fines could blossom, especially if a tech company’s privacy violation caused serious harm. “We’re still working out as a society what the harms are for privacy violations, and we’re not likely to see hundreds of millions of dollars in fines unless blood is spilled,” he said. “But you can see how that could happen.”

Christopher Hoofnagle quoted in McClatchy Newspapers, March 18, 2013

Consumer protections for mobile payments aren’t really on policymakers’ agendas, said Chris Jay Hoofnagle…. “The FTC knows about these problems and it has written about them, but we’re very early in this process and these types of data transfers are not noticeable to the consumer, so one question is will the consumer ever object?” he said. “Going to mobile payments – unless rules are put in place – will be zero privacy,” he said.