Overview
My research and expertise lies in understanding and analyzing the legal, regulatory, and human rights challenges posed by technology, informed by empirical and interdisciplinary methods and driven by a longer term commitment to “data justice”: the notion that state and private sector data and technology uses and practices, and regulatory approaches to both, should be consistent with human rights, equality, and fundamental fairness.
My research has pursued this expertise in two distinct but often overlapping areas: (i) privacy, surveillance, and data protection; and (ii) legal and regulatory issues in technology, including internet technologies and digital media and, more recently, emerging ones like automation, machine learning, and artificial intelligence (AI).
Doctoral Dissertation
Chilling Effects in the Internet Age: Three Case Studies, Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford (Balliol College). Successfully defended 2015; finalized 2016.
My interdisciplinary doctoral thesis examined regulatory chilling effects online via three empirical legal case studies, including including surveillance, online regulations, and automated legal enforcement. In examining the privacy and other human rights impacts of different regulatory responses to technology, it connects my two primary areas of focus: privacy and legal and regulatory issues in technology.
Books
Chilling Effects: Understanding Impact of Surveillance and Other Threats to Democracy, Cambridge University Press, 2020
My forthcoming book, based largely on my doctoral dissertation.
Academic Journals
Understanding Chilling Effects and their Harms (unpublished – forthcoming 2020)
Privacy and Legal Automation: The DMCA as a Case Study, (2019) 22 Stanford Technology Law Review 412
When Law Frees Us To Speak (with Danielle Citron) (2019) 87 Fordham Law Review 2317
Chilling Effects and Transatlantic Privacy (2019) 25(2) European Law Journal 122.
Internet Surveillance, Regulation, and Chilling Effects Online: A Comparative Case Study, (2017) 6(2) Internet Policy Review
Chilling Effects: Online Surveillance and Wikipedia Use, (2016) 31 Berkeley Technology Law Journal 117
The Cycles of Global Telecommunication Censorship and Surveillance, (2015) 35 University of Pennsylvania Journal of International Law 693
Internet Access Rights: A Brief History and Intellectual Origins (2011) 38 William Mitchell Law Review 10
Ivan Rand’s Ancient Constitutionalism (2010) 61 UNB Law Journal 43; (2010) 34 Manitoba Law Journal 43
Privacy and the New Virtualism (2008) 10 Yale Journal of Law & Technology 194
Essays / Contributions / Working Papers
Trudeau’s Blackface: The Chilling Effects of Disinformation on Political Engagement (with Joan Donovan, Brian Friedberg, and Nicole Leaver), Nieman Reports (October 3 2019)
Zeran v AOL’s Chilling Effect Claims in Eric Goldman, ed, Zeran v America Online 20 Years Later: A Compendium (forthcoming 2018)
Children and Cyberwar: Victimization and Protection in Dustin Johnson, ed, Allons-Y: Theory Into Action, vol 2 (The Roméo Dallaire Child Soldiers Initiative, August 2017).
Can Cyber-Harassment Laws Encourage Online Speech? in Harmful Speech Online: At the Intersection of Algorithms and Human Behavior, Berkman Klein Center Research Publication/Report, Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, Harvard University, 2017
Warrant Canaries Beyond the First Amendment in Internet Monitor 2014: Reflections on the Digital World: Platforms, Policy, Privacy, and Public Discourse, Berkman Klein Center Research Publication/Report, Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, Harvard University, 2014
Code is Law, But Law is Increasingly Determining the Ethics of Code in Internet Monitor 2014: Reflections on the Digital World: Platforms, Policy, Privacy, and Public Discourse, Berkman Klein Center Research Publication/Report, Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, Harvard University, 2014
Communications Disruption and Censorship Under International Law; History Lessons, Free and Open Communications on the Internet (FOCI) Working Paper No. 9, USENIX Security Symposium, Advanced Computing Systems Association (ACSA), Bellevue, Washington, 2012
Commentary / Op-Eds
Whose Speech Is Chilled by Surveillance?, Slate Magazine (Online), July 11, 2017
How Surveillance Harms, Policy Options (Blog), December 12, 2016, Institute for Research on Public Policy (IRPP), Montreal, QC
American Lessons for Bill C-51, Policy Options Magazine (May-June, 2015), Institute for Research on Public Policy (IRPP), Montreal, QC
How Laws Are Increasingly Determining the Ethics of Code, Slate Magazine, January 9, 2015
Doomed to Rely on the Mask, Policy Options Magazine , May-June, 2014) Institute for Research on Public Policy (IRPP), Montreal, QC
Forget CSIS: It’s the Political Parties that Own Our Privacy, Toronto Star, March 17, 2014
Fighting Surveillance: What Canadian Companies Can Do, Citizen Lab (Blog), Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto, February 13, 2014
Deleting Revenge Porn, Policy Options Magazine , (Nov-Dec 2013), Institute for Research on Public Policy (IRPP), Montreal, QC
Watching the Watchers: A Role for the ITU in the Internet Age, Cyberdialogue Blog, March 5, 2013, University of Toronto
Outsourcing Cyberwar, The Future of Fighting and How the Canadian Military Must Adapt: Strategic Studies Working Group, Canadian International Council & Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute, May 25, 2012
Ignatieff and Every Expat’s Gamble, The Tyee, November 30, 2009
Countering the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, Computer World (NZ), November 27, 2009
