It was nice to see the Stanford Lawyer raise the question of Internet privacy in the Fall 2011 issue (“Your Privacy at Risk”). But it was also somewhat disappointing to see how the article ultimately answered the question asked. Fortunately, the courts, the Congress, international organizations, and just about everyone else is working to update law to respond to new challenges brought about by changes in business practices and government investigative techniques.
To provide just a few recent examples: The Federal Trade Commission reached important settlements with Facebook and Google concerning their business practices, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the warrantless use of a GPS tracking device is impermissible, the European Commission set out a comprehensive proposal to update the EU Data Protection Directive, and the Congress is considering legislation on a wide range of topics from locational privacy to data breach notification and limiting the use of airport body scanners. We can draw a particularly relevant lesson from the recent decision of the Court in U.S. v. Jones. There may be a disagreement as to how best the law should protect privacy, but there is no disagreement as to the need to protect privacy.  (Note: This letter was edited for space, see the full version here.)