Surveillance Technology

(RS) Brin suggests a transparent society will lead to less crime, since the violators will immediately be caught. Assuming criminals can figure out a way to protect their identity, will an open society cause MORE crime, since the criminals will know where any person is at any particular time? How will the law change to deal with this situation?

(RS) If everything can be found out about a person - where they like to go, what activities they engage in, etc - employers may start using this information in their hiring decisions. How will the anti-discrimination
laws react?

(RS) If the world becomes more and more transparent, what additional technologies or techniques will people invent to keep certain areas of their lives truly private?

(J.F.) Would a future significant loss of privacy have a "chilling effect" on speech?

(J.F.) Would the anticipation of a "chilling effect on speech" make for a stronger legal argument to maintain a high standard of privacy?

(J.F.) How does it compare with the strength of Prosser's argument in 1960 on a privacy tort? (page 72 of The Transparent Society)

(J.F.) Is this inquiry separate from the rational used by Stevens in 1989? (page 76)  

(J.F.) In addition to information symmetry, would a "credit bureau model", showing who had inquired and received your information, and the right to correction, also meet many of the authors needs? Which coordinates from page 86 does the  "credit bureau model" fall within.

(DF) How can the rules of evidence adjust to the easy availability of digital manipulation technology?

(DF) In a transparent society, how does an inventor prove that he has satisfied the "first to invent" requirement of U.S. patent law? What difficulties would arise under the alternative "first to submit" rule of European patent law? Does transparency increase the relative advantage of one system over the other?

Legal research from Ryan McCarthy