Borders and Bits with Jennifer Daskal

Description

 Borders and Bits View Video

 Our personal data is everywhere and anywhere, moving across national borders in ways that defy normal expectations of how things and people travel from Point A to Point B. Yet, whereas data transits the globe without any intrinsic ties to territory, the governments that seek to access or regulate this data operate with territorial-based limits. This Article tackles the inherent tension between how governments and data operates, the jurisdictional conflicts that have emerged, and the power that has been delegated to the multi-national corporations that manage our data across borders as a result. It does so through the lens of the highly contested and often conflicting approaches to the jurisdictional reach of law enforcement over data, the so-called right to be forgotten, and a range of other privacy regulations–engaging in an in-depth analysis as to how these issues are playing out across both Europe and the United States. It highlights the flaws with the straightforward application of old jurisdictional rules onto the new medium of data—taking on recent scholarship on this issue. And it shines a spotlight on the unilateral rule-making by powerful states and the powerful multinational companies that manage our data, which in turn puts private, multinational companies increasingly in control of whose rules govern and thus the substance of both privacy and speech rights on a global, or near-global, basis.

Bio: Jennifer Daskal is an Associate Professor of Law at American University Washington College of Law, where she teaches and writes in the fields of criminal, national security, and constitutional law. She was on academic leave from 2016-2017, and has received an Open Society Institute Fellowship to work on issues related to privacy and law enforcement access to data across borders. From 2009-2011, Daskal was counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for National Security at the Department of Justice. Prior to joining DOJ, Daskal was senior counterterrorism counsel at Human Rights Watch, worked as a staff attorney for the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia, and clerked for the Honorable Jed S. Rakoff. She also spent two years as a national security law fellow and adjunct professor at Georgetown Law Center.

Sponsoring Organization(s)

FAIA, ISP, TechSoc, NSG