Silicon Flatiron's Center Hosts Law and Ethics of Networking Monitoring Conference

On December 5, the Silicon Flatirons Center hosted a conference on the Law and Ethics of Network Monitoring, consisting of three expert panel discussions around five different themes. (1) For Network Management v. Network Monitoring the panelists opinions varied on the level to which they felt personal data collection for advertising purposes constituted a violation of privacy. (2) With regards to Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), Mark Eckenwiler, a director at the Department of Justice (he spoke on his own behalf), believed the ECPA is technology neutral, citing the fact that while the internet did not exist when the law was written, it still has applicability. (3) Under the Consent topic, the panelists agreement that monitoring without user consent is wrong, ambiguity arose on what constitutes consent, both in terms of the law as well as the ethics. Several panelists commented that the consent exception has been relatively narrowly construed by the courts even in cases as extreme as inmates using prison phones. (4) For Responsibilities of ISPs v. other companies, the panelists discussed whether an ISP should be held to a higher standard of privacy protection than other types of companies such as Google, since an ISP provides purely transit of data and not party to the conversation as a website would be and the breadth of personal data to which an ISP has access. Arguments against different standards for ISPs focused on concerns over making distinctions in rules by company types. Regulating in a company-type specific way is in many ways analogous to technology-specific legislation – they can easily be circumvented on technicalities. (5) For Non-legal Regulation of Network Monitoring, federal or state legislation is not the only way to enforce, or at least encourage, some level of restraint in monitoring.  

Read a complete summary of the conference.