Christopher Hoofnagle

Paul Schwartz, Christopher Hoofnagle React to Facebook’s Political Strategy

The New York Times, March 28, 2011 by Miguel Helft and Matt Richtel
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/29/technology/29facebook.html?scp=2&sq=Berkeley&st=nyt

Mr. Schwartz said Facebook seemed to have learned quickly that demands for regulation would pile up, not just from users and advocacy groups, but from competitors. “What they’re doing is pragmatic, and it’s pragmatic to do it sooner rather than later,” he said.

“The practical implication is it’s going to make it more difficult for advocates to convince members of Congress that Facebook presents a privacy problem,” said Chris Jay Hoofnagle…. “One of the big points is to show lawmakers that Facebook is important to their own campaigns,” Mr. Hoofnagle said. “Once that fact is established, Congress will not touch Facebook.”

Christopher Hoofnagle Informs Analysis of Identity Theft Report

Business Insider, February 10, 2011 by Adam Levin
http://read.bi/hMKT7c

Frankly, the financial services sector has always been pretty guarded when it comes to such disclosures. UC Berkeley’s Professor Chris Hoofnagle has been quite outspoken over the years about their “close to the vest” disclosure policies, and his groundbreaking study tracking the frequency of bank data breaches is absolutely worth a read.

Christopher Hoofnagle Notes Mobile Privacy App Challenge

Washington Internet Daily, February 8, 2011 by Louis Trager
http://www.warren-news.com/internetservices.htm (registration required; go to H:\Law School in the News\In the News 2011\News Clips for article)

Chris Hoofnagle, the director of the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology’s information privacy programs, said a challenge had just been announced for developers to create apps to help users of mobile of devices understand and protect their privacy.

Christopher Hoofnagle Says Privacy Self-Regulation Falls Flat

-The Daily Online Examiner, January 27, 2011 by Wendy Davis
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=143778

“We’ve tried voluntary codes for over a decade now, and in the privacy field, it hasn’t gone too well,” writes Berkeley Law’s Chris Hoofnagle. “In the absence of substantive privacy law, commercial data brokers created the very citizen databases that the Privacy Act of 1974 sought to prevent. The government can simply buy data on its citizens now instead of collecting it directly.”

-National Journal, Tech Daily Dose, January 28, 2011 by Juliana Gruenwald
http://techdailydose.nationaljournal.com/2011/01/groups-firms-weigh-in-on-priva.php

Noting that FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz has pushed Congress to provide the FTC with greater rulemaking authority, Hoofnagle said in his comments that, “The Department of Commerce should support these initiatives in order to bolster its narrative surrounding FTC enforcement.”

Christopher Hoofnagle Raises Concerns Over Akamai’s Tracking Technology

The Wall Street Journal, Digits Blog, November 30, 2010 by Julia Angwin
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/11/30/a-new-type-of-tracking-akamais-pixel-free-technology/

Privacy advocates say companies like content-delivery networks and search providers have a lot of data at their fingertips that could be useful in advertising. Akamai “has access to an astonishing amount of Web traffic” and thus could track many users, says Chris Jay Hoofnagle.

Christopher Hoofnagle Comments on Former FTC Employee’s Suit Against Google

The Wall Street Journal, Digits Blog, October 7, 2010 by Jennifer Valentino-DeVries
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/10/07/former-ftc-employee-files-complaint-over-google-privacy/

A former Federal Trade Commission employee has filed a complaint with the agency accusing Google Inc. of not adequately protecting the privacy of consumers’ search queries…. “I think what is interesting about his complaint is not the legal theory. It’s the machinations and the colloquy between Google and advertisers that no normal person would ever know about,” he said.