Every ping a phone sends is a digital breadcrumb - tracing where you sleep, work, worship, and wander. In Carpenter v. U.S., the Supreme Court confronted a question at the heart of modern privacy: do those invisible trails belong to you, or are they fair game for the government without a warrant? This case examines whether the government’s warrantless collection of 127 days of cell-site location information (CSLI) - data that tracks a person’s movements through cell towers - violates the 4th Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches. The case underscores growing concerns overlaw enforcement’s use of digital location data without warrants, raising critical questions about privacy in the modern era. Following the oral argument held on November 29, 2017, the key highlights and lowlights...
The US incurs hundreds of billions of dollars in losses each year due to cybercrime. In 2025, a surge in ransomware activity and AI-driven scams is expected, as well as increasingly complex and coordinated cyberattacks on healthcare infrastructure. While conventional crimes typically involve physical spaces, tangible properties, or direct human confrontation, cybercrime operates primarily within digital environments, using technology not merely as an accessory, but often as the very means, target, and method of deception. As a key component of critical infrastructure, the healthcare ecosystem remains vulnerable to a wide array of continuous and evolving threats. Attackers specifically target patients' personal identification information (PII) for various financial crimes, including identity theft and insurance fraud. Outlined below are the key threats contributing to the healthcare ecosystem’s...
Consent allegedly has become a cornerstone of modern privacy regimes, serving as one of the most commonly used mechanisms for legitimizing the collection and use of personal data, despite ongoing concerns about its effectiveness in truly safeguarding privacy. This paper explores the legal and historical foundations of consent within the framework of privacy law, examining its legal significance alongside its critiques and limitations. The historical development of consent in privacy law is rooted in the evolution of the concept of privacy itself, moving from philosophical discussions about personal space to legal frameworks addressing data collection and use. With Plato introducing the concept of the “receptacle” (chora”), and Aristotle focusing on the concept of “place” (topos) we learn that, although not...
For many of us, February 24, 2022, was just a regular day, while for the others it was the day when everything changed. Did Russia become more sophisticated at taking over countries? Who is next? During its invasion in Ukraine, Russia allegedly conducted Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, and deployment of wiper malware against various sectors. One of the most recent multifaceted and deliberate cyber-attacks reportedly started approximately one hour before the actual invasion and resulted in a partial interruption of Viasat Inc’s KA-SAT consumer-oriented satellite network. Despite Ukraine’s military being the main target, as it was believed, private and commercial internet users were affected as well, in addition to wind farms in central Europe. With Russia previously denying...
In the context of a DDoS attack impacting Protected Health Information (“PHI”) shared among multiple custodians, while responsibility for data privacy is shared, it ultimately rests with the data owners and holders. One approach to establishing accountability for privacy violations stemming from information flow during a DDoS attack - Boston Children’s Hospital (“BCH”) - calls for a nuanced application of Helen Nissenbaum’s Contextual Integrity framework. This involves carefully considering the complexity and variability of the contextual constraints that shape an individual’s expectations of privacy regarding how information should flow. For example, because BCH used the same Internet Service Provider (“ISP”) as seven other care institutions, the organized attack shad the potential to bring down multiple pieces of BCH’s critical infrastructure...
