Christopher Hoofnagle interviewed by National Public Radio, Morning Edition, March 18, 2013

“After all, we are talking about transparency, and many of us exist in a kind of Disneyland of false belief that these systems are well-secured and impervious against wrong-doers.”

Christopher Hoofnagle writes for The Daily Californian, March 18, 2013

CalMail appeared to be one of those poorly performing campus services best handled by a vendor…. And many other schools have outsourced their information technology services to Google and Microsoft. But if we think about this more deeply, we might conclude the opposite: Communications and information services are so critical to academic freedom that trusting them with an outside vendor can be problematic.

Christopher Hoofnagle interviewed by National Public Radio, Morning Edition, January 28, 2013

“Most companies are very secretive about civil and law enforcement requests for user data,” says Chris Hoofnagle, who specializes in privacy issues at Berkeley Law…. “Google is going out on a limb here because, by making these statements, they might be creating customer expectations that certain process will be followed when their data is revealed to law enforcement.”

Christopher Hoofnagle quoted in Associated Press, December 18, 2012

“These services are publicly advertised as ‘free,’ but the free label masks costs to privacy, which include the responsibility of monitoring how these companies sell data, and even how they change policies over time,” said Chris Hoofnagle, director of Information Privacy Programs at the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology.

Christopher Hoofnagle quoted in The Washington Post, December 4, 2012

The “metadata” that’s embedded in files is particularly treacherous, said Chris Hoofnagle, a law professor at U.C.-Berkeley. Businesses made so many accidental releases that several programs now are available to help scrub out comments and deletions in documents that are intended to remain private. Rules in some states govern what information lawyers can use when opposing counsel inadvertently shares private information in metadata fields. The rapid spread of smartphones has made it even harder for most users to monitor the creation and flow of personal information, Hoofnagle said. “It has trapped a lot of people, this problem. We’re often not aware of the metadata that’s created.”

Chris Hoofnagle study cited in The New York Times, November 17, 2012

Among the trackers setting the most cookies on the top 1,000 Web sites in the United States, for example, BlueKai was first, with 2,562 cookies, while Rubicon came in second, with 2,470, according to research conducted last month by the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology.

Christopher Hoofnagle quoted in The New York Times, November 12, 2012

Chris Hoofnagle … said he hoped the data would set a baseline, providing all sides in the debate with empirical information as to the optimum method to regulate tracking. “I’m hoping that it will inform which approach is the best,” Mr. Hoofnagle said. “We are not going to be well-served unless we measure these trends more rigorously.”

Christopher Hoofnagle quoted in The New York Times, September 21, 2012

“This is a big deal. The development of these tools in the private sector directly affects civil liberties. The ultimate application is going to be — can we apply these patterns in video surveillance to automatically identify people for security purposes and maybe for marketing purposes as well?”

Chris Hoofnagle quoted in The Register-Guard, August 26, 2012
In the case of identity theft, creditors simply pass off the costs to merchants and consumers, he said. The credit reporting agencies have little incentive to inform consumers that their numbers may be compromised because it would cost them money, Hoofnagle said. “Consumers are not customers to CRAs (credit reporting agencies), businesses are. Businesses prefer to have more information, even if some of that information is incorrect, than to have less,” he said. “Consumers have no way to opt out of the credit reporting system or to otherwise influence how these firms operate.”

Christopher Hoofnagle quoted in Reuters, August 9, 2012

“There are a number of problems there—from somebody stealing your device to the problem of the drive-by download,” said Chris Hoofnagle, a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley Law School. “On the other hand, maybe presenting your name and face could reduce skimming risk—of somebody taking your card and copying the information.”