Information Fiduciaries – LPE Project

A General Defense of Information Fiduciaries

Luke Herrine — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 12:00:00 +0000

This post is part of our series on “information fiduciaries” and data governance. In 2016, Jack Balkin introduced the highly influential idea of making digital companies “information fiduciaries” of their users (see here and here). This reform would impose fiduciary duties of loyalty, confidentiality, and care, intended to ensure that social media companies like Facebook, Google...

Source

Privacy Legislation, not Common Law Duties

Kate Redburn — Thu, 04 Jul 2019 10:00:46 +0000

The value of Balkin’s fiduciary framework, I argue, resides not in providing an enforceable legal relationship but providing a framework for privacy legislation. The existing frameworks – the Privacy Principles adopted by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in 1980 which rely heavily on notice and consent and the property framework introduced by Louis Brandeis in “The Right To Privacy” (both of which I discuss in this privacy white paper) – have significant limitations. Balkin’s proposed fiduciary framework provides a model for legislation that recognizes that the nature of the relationship between information collectors and aggregators requires imposing additional duties and restrictions to adequately protect consumers, while still enabling commerce and facilitating competition.

Radical Skepticism About Information Fiduciaries

Kate Redburn — Fri, 31 May 2019 11:30:21 +0000

NB: This post is part of the “Skepticism About Information Fiduciaries” symposium. Other contributions can be found here. I was delighted to read Lina M. Khan and David E. Pozen’s recent article, A Skeptical View of Information Fiduciaries describing the reasons to be skeptical of the “information fiduciary” concept as a promising one for solving the problems posed by giant companies like Facebook.

Source

When All You Have Is a Fiduciary

Kate Redburn — Thu, 30 May 2019 11:00:59 +0000

NB: This post is part of the “Skepticism About Information Fiduciaries” symposium. Other contributions can be found here. Online platforms do different things for (and to) users. Some of these things are a good fit for fiduciary principles, some are not. Perhaps most obviously, platforms collect data about users. Some of that data is inherently sensitive, like health records; some of it is...

Source

Scaling Trust and Other Fictions

Kate Redburn — Wed, 29 May 2019 11:30:04 +0000

NB: This post is part of the “Skepticism About Information Fiduciaries” symposium. Other contributions can be found here. The Centenal Cycle, the Hugo-nominated trilogy by novelist Malka Older, describes a not-too-distant future in which the existing liberal world order has been replaced by a regime of mass-mediated micro-democracy. With some exceptions—a handful of so-called null states that...

Source

Symposium: A Skeptical View of Information Fiduciaries

Kate Redburn — Tue, 28 May 2019 11:30:26 +0000

This post introduces a symposium on Lina Khan and David Pozen’s essay “A Skeptical View of Information Fiduciaries.” Read the rest of the posts here. * * * In recent years, the concept of “information fiduciaries” has surged to the forefront of debates on platform regulation. Developed by Professor Jack Balkin, the information–fiduciary proposal seeks to mitigate the asymmetry of power between a...

Source