Surveillance pricing changes fundamental fairness in creating a world where consumers are left in the dark on how much they will have to pay for goods compared to their counterparts. Surveillance pricing defies normal supply and demand and instead uses consumer algorithms and artificial intelligence (AI) to set personalized prices based on a customer’s ability or willingness to pay. Surveillance pricing can use data factors such as an individual consumer’s location, personal demographics, virtual history, and credit history to then categorize the consumer’s data to a set of different targeted prices for products and services.
Uber has launched a nationwide social media campaign against state laws requiring rideshare drivers to have commercial auto insurance. On Uber’s website, they specifically list California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, and Texas as some of the states with the highest insurance costs for ridesharing. Uber has especially targeted their lobbying efforts towards California, whose insurance mandates, “have resulted in rideshare coverage costs to be approximately 30 times higher than personal vehicles and 10 times higher than taxis.”
Imagine this: you start a company that designs, patents, and sells tweezers in the United States, but all manufacturing happens overseas. When foreign knock-offs start flooding the market, you weigh your options to stop this infringing activity. Suing for patent infringement in district court could secure damages against an infringing importer, but this relief could take years. On the other hand, the International Trade Commission (ITC) offers a much faster route to stem the influx of infringing knock-offs. But there is a catch: a patent holder seeking an importation exclusion order from the ITC must show they meet the “domestic industry” statutory requirement.
Flock cameras are car tracking cameras from Flock Safety, a company formed in 2017. The company is one of the fastest-growing Atlanta-based companies and has infiltrated thousands of cities across the United States, including Columbus suburbs like Powell, Grandview Heights, Hilliard, Worthington and Dublin. The cameras have even infiltrated college campuses, with The Ohio State University installing more than 60 Flock cameras on and near campus.
It’s safe to say that social media has become a big part of our everyday lives. It’s a space where we connect with friends and family, stay updated with the latest news, and keep up with trends in culture. It’s also where we can learn new things, discover hobbies, or just unwind with a good laugh. But beyond the social interaction, social media has also become a constant stream of advertisements, whether from brands promoting their own products, celebrities sharing their latest endorsements, or the influencers we follow for lifestyle inspiration.
On President Trump’s first day in office, he signed Executive Order 14172, titled “Restoring Names That Honor American Greatness.” Among the order’s demands was for the Secretary of the Interior to take all “appropriate actions to rename as the ‘Gulf of America’ the U.S. Continental Shelf area” and the seaward boundary of Mexico and Cuba, formerly known as the “Gulf of Mexico.” The U.S. Board on Geographic Names (BGN), the U.S. agency in charge of making official maps, is also tasked with carrying out this act. Other countries will likely not reciprocate the renaming, with Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum claiming that for the rest of the world, it is still the Gulf of Mexico. But can President Trump unilaterally rename a shared location?
The twenty-first century has been defined by rapid advancements in technology, particularly communications technologies that have dramatically changed the world. Technological advancements have sparked a revolution in how people communicate, how businesses operate, and how states conduct diplomacy. This blog will focus on the role that private technology and communications corporations, such as SpaceX, play in international competition between states.
Weather technology has come a long way in America. What is now the National Weather Service was established by President Ulysses S. Grant in 1870. By signing a joint resolution of Congress, he authorized the Secretary of War to establish the National Weather Service and required them to provide meteorological observations taken at military stations and notice of approaching storms.
House Bill 315 (HB 315), signed by Governor Mike DeWine, allows police to charge money for the “estimated cost” of processing a video when body cam footage is requested. Beginning this month, both state and local law enforcement agencies can charge up to $750 for the preparation of their video records for inspection or production. The money is supposed to cover the costs of things such as blurring, redacting, producing the video records, and any other staff time that goes into compliance with a request. In this blog, I will address the background of HB 3115, along with some of the purported state interests for it. Then, I want to explain the consequences of HB 315 on chilling access to information, along with some of the other significant arguments against it.
Should artwork created by artificial intelligence get intellectual property protection? A federal appeals court recently said no, and did so unanimously. With the rapid increase in original work produced by AI, some are wondering whether this decision should be reconsidered. Is the U.S. Copyright Office’s human authorship requirement outdated, or even unconstitutional? One computer scientist certainly thinks so. This blog will discuss a recent court decision denying a copyright for a painting that was created using generative AI.
There are all sorts of negative headlines floating around the internet at all times. Not many of them are fun to read. There are enough articles about tragedy and suffering, so here’s an article about whales.
As cybercrime, which is “any illegal activity carried out using computers or the internet,” becomes more prevalent in day-to-day life states, individuals, and private businesses are having to adapt to a host of new threats. The nature of cybercrime and the internet allows criminals based anywhere in the world to steal money or damage infrastructure in the United States or elsewhere. Domestic criminal justice systems have shown to be the most effective at preventing and prosecuting cybercriminals, this is especially true when these domestic systems are working together within a larger international framework. The principal international law of due diligence, and treaties such as the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime, encourage states to use domestic systems to prevent international cybercrime.
After cryptocurrency companies like Coinbase and Ripple contributed over $119 million to the 2024 elections, comprising nearly half of all corporate donations, President Donald Trump has prioritized pro-crypto regulation. Trump signed an executive order emphasizing the importance of digital assets to U.S. innovation and economic development by declaring his administration’s support for “the responsible growth and use of digital assets, blockchain technology, and related technologies across all sectors of the economy”. Key policy actions include safeguarding the right of individuals and private entities to use open public blockchain networks for lawful purposes, promoting the sovereignty of the U.S. dollar through dollar-backed stable coins, protecting fair access to banking services, providing regulatory clarity for digital assets, and protecting Americans from the risks posed by Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs).
Technology plays an important role in monitoring compliance, and some specific technologies have been employed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) specifically to ensure compliance with environmental statutes such as the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, and the Safe Drinking Water Act. This blog will explore how a statute of this kind is constructed and how some of these technological systems play an important role in monitoring compliance.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (S.E.C.) sued Elon Musk in federal court in Washington on January 14, 2025, claiming that he failed to disclose his ownership of X (formally known as Twitter) stock in early 2022 before he bought the site for $44 billion. The complaint from the S.E.C. contends that Musk violated securities laws by amassing a large stock position in the company without filing proper notification. The S.E.C. requires these regulatory filings so shareholders can “monitor large investors and potential takeover bids.” Alex Spiro, Musk’s lawyer, called the lawsuit a “sham,” citing what he believes to be a “campaign of harassment” against Musk. This lawsuit marks the third time the S.E.C. has sued Musk. The first lawsuit “arose from inappropriate market-moving social media posts where Musk mused” about taking Tesla, his car company, private.
Trump signed an Executive Order on January 23, 2025 (the “AI Order”), that aims to make the United States the world capital for artificial intelligence (AI) and to develop AI that is free from “ideological bias.” This overturns many of Biden’s policies, including his sweeping 2023 Executive Order 14110 (EO 14110). In this blog, I aim to address the apparent goals from Trump’s AI Order, what will change, and what will stay the same.
On January 1, 2025, Matthew Livelsberger exploded his rented Tesla Cybertruck in front of the Trump International Hotel. Within hours after the explosion, Tesla was able to track all of Livelsberger’s movements in detail and confirm to the FBI that the explosives in the truck were the problem, not the truck itself. While the information collected by Tesla was essential to the case, it highlighted the sheer amount of data cars are able to store and share with others. David Choffnes, the executive director of the Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute at Northeastern University, said the event “[revealed] the kind of sweeping surveillance going on.” He warned that “[w]hen something bad [like this] happens, it’s helpful, but it’s a double edged sword. Companies that collect this data can abuse it.”
You ever feel like your phone is listening to you? You ever mention a product in casual conversation, and then suddenly start seeing ads for it? There’s a good chance that’s exactly what’s going on—or at least that’s what a lawsuit against Apple says.
Imagine this: you have invented your wonderful, new widget and filed a patent application. You are eager to start negotiating licensing deals with widget manufacturers, but you are stuck in a holding pattern until the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) grants your patent application. Without knowing the exact scope of your patent claims, it is difficult to convince potential licensees of the value of your invention and of the necessity of a license.
The practice of gathering intelligence from publicly accessible sources, known as open-source intelligence (OSINT), has been a tool for intelligence services for decades. Gathering OSINT has become increasingly prevalent in recent years, particularly by social media users who are not associated with an intelligence service or law enforcement agency. These private citizens are able to use publicly available tools that were previously only available to military, intelligence, or police agencies, to investigate matters. This growth is due in part to the growth of the internet and social media, making it easier to collect and disseminate information, as well as public access to new tools such as access to commercial satellites. OSINT has become a valuable tool in tracking conflicts as well as documenting and investigating war crimes. While OSINT has provided useful information and has proven effective at identifying perpetrators who violate the laws of armed conflicts or international human rights laws, there are unresolved legal and ethical questions concerning that practice.
It is tricky to determine the extent to which LexisNexis and Thomson Reuters Westlaw, two of the largest commercial providers of electronic legal research materials, are intertwined with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). In 2022, Thomson Reuters said it would reevaluate its work selling personal data to ICE—but that it had “no intention of severing ties with the government agencies.” A year later in 2023, a group of 80 civil society, racial justice, and immigration advocacy organizations urged the Department of Homeland Security to cancel ICE’s $22 million contract with Lexis, which was set to renew that year. Both instances were the cumulation of years of advocacy work that included coordinated multicampus law student protests, but it is unclear if these actions had the tangible effect of cutting ties between ICE and the data brokers law students and lawyers are forced to rely on.
The dawn of the digital era happened long ago. Yet courts still struggle to deliver a demand for remedies that move at a faster pace––like the internet. Some courts have discovered that the internet is the answer in the form of online dispute resolution (ODR). Courts in at least 40 U.S. states are considering ODR programs, and the market share of ODR is expected to increase over 350% by 2028. ODR uses digital technologies, such as web-based platforms, chatbots, and other tools that the public can use to resolve conflicts more efficiently. More specifically, “ODR includes automated decision-making, as well as online negotiation, mediation, arbitration, community courts, and variations thereof. Its efficiency, accessibility, and ease expand access to justice that moves at the pace of technology, thus allowing for innovation.” This blog focuses on how court-sponsored ODR can decrease the distance gap and provide access to justice for rural communities.
It is no secret that oppressive regimes often utilize technology to suppress and surveil certain populations. A poignant example of this concept is the way Israel implements surveillance and weapons technologies to assert power and control over those living in occupied Palestine. Israeli forces have used advanced technology, including artificial intelligence, to create a surveillance state and to train weapon programs used against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
On January 20, 2025, the White House released a Presidential Action stating that executive branch Government employees would be required to return to in-person work full time, subject to necessary exemptions. Working remotely existed prior to the pandemic but increased dramatically beginning in 2020. As the number of remote workers increased, so did legal issues. The legal landscape had to adapt to the new norm during the pandemic. As people have returned to the office and, now with the Presidential Action requiring many Government employees to return to the office, additional legal issues will likely arise. This blog will focus mainly on some prevalent legal issues that surfaced with the rise of remote work, as well as some of the forward-looking issues that may come up as people return to the office.
On January 13, 2025, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton brought suit against Allstate and its subsidiary Arity for illegally collecting, using, and selling the geolocation and movement data of Texan drivers. Allstate and Arity are alleged to have paid millions of dollars to app developers to integrate Allstate’s tracking software into their apps to gather consumers’ driving data. The Texas Attorney General’s Office claims that Allstate and Arity targeted apps with built-in location-based features, such as Routely, Life360, and Fuel Rewards, to discreetly collect data without alerting consumers. The data collected from customers’ phones included geolocation, accelerometer, magnetometer, and gyroscopic information, recording precise details such as a phone’s “altitude, longitude, latitude, bearing, GPS time, speed, and accuracy.” In total, Allstate amassed location data spanning trillions of miles from over 45 million consumers and created the “world’s largest driving behavior database.”
As soon as Trump took office, his administration empowered U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to expand its reach and activities. ICE put out a request for contractors to provide them with technological tools to surveil and monitor non-citizens. This is not anything new, ICE and the FBI have been using facial recognition in driver’s license databases in their surveillance for years. The actions of ICE, both past and present, raise serious issues concerning safety and constitutional rights of both non-citizens and citizens alike. In this blog, I want to talk about previous surveillance efforts and some of the recent developments in ICE action, along with the constitutional and ethical risks that accompany these developments.
By settling lawsuits, are tech giants creating a new Big Tech playbook? Is this a dangerous precedent or just business as usual? This blog will explore Meta’s recent settlement with President Trump, and its potential implications.
On February 19, 2025, Microsoft unveiled its Majorana 1 chip, a groundbreaking advancement in the field of quantum computing. According to Microsoft, this chip utilizes a topoconductor, known as a topological superconductor, which can create an entirely new state of matter. This topological state of matter is used to produce more stable qubits, the units that quantum computers use to store data.
On July 9, 1962, the United States detonated a nuclear warhead 400 kilometers above the Earth’s surface. This test aimed to study the impacts of a nuclear detonation in space on satellite surveillance, communications systems, and the “basic characteristics of a high altitude nuclear blast.” The test, known as Starfish Prime, resulted in a 1.4 megaton explosion, which was far more powerful than anticipated, causing unexpected havoc in the Earth’s low orbit and on the surface. The blast created radiation belts which significantly damaged satellites in orbit, and as a result of the test seven satellites were destroyed within months of the detonation.
The Trump administration sent employees at the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) deferred resignation offers, raising concerns about cybersecurity. Similar resignation offers directed towards intelligence officers from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency has sparked fear among cybersecurity experts. Established by President Trump in 2018, CISA played a key part in discovering and responding to the “Salt Typhoon” espionage campaign by Chinese state-sponsored hackers. Despite its role in national security, Kristi Noem, President Trump’s pick to lead DHS, has vowed to shrink the agency.
“Discovery is the formal process by which the parties to a case in court exchange information about the case. This includes information about the witnesses and evidence to be presented at trial. Its purpose is to make the parties aware of the evidence which may be presented at trial.” Electronic discovery (e-discovery) is an ever growing and evolving part of the discovery process. In many cases, the discovery process for legal cases will involve electronically stored information (ESI) which may be requested for production. Examples of ESI are emails, electronic documents, voicemails, social media, and websites. Since emails, electronic documents, social media, and other forms of e-discovery are widely used, the volume of data available for discovery is extensive, which can raise challenges for parties handling this process. This blog will cover the basics of e-discovery, the challenges associated with e-discovery, and some programs that have been developed in order to help with the complex e-discovery process.
A geofence warrant is the information that the government compels from large data companies, such as Google, that provides information about who was present in a given area at a specified time. This data about mobile devices in certain areas is often in an anonymized form, but it can be identified without much difficulty. This raises serious constitutional concerns surrounding the Fourth Amendment and warrants. This blog will go further in depth about what a geofence warrant is, how it might be an unconstitutional search, and how it might be unconstitutional for warrant purposes.
The misuse of user data by Big Tech has been a growing concern for the past decade and continues to be a hot button issue. A recent report reaffirmed Big Tech’s personal data overreach, going past acceptable boundaries in their handling of user data. This report validates the long-standing concerns voiced by consumer advocates, shedding a light on how tech companies handle user data in ways that lack transparency and violate data privacy. This blog will summarize the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) report and the effect of these exploitative data practices.
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