Woodrow Hartzog
Professor of Law and Computer Science
Samford University, BA 2000
Samford University, JD 2002
George Washington University Law School, LLM 2004
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, PhD 2011
Samford University, JD 2002
George Washington University Law School, LLM 2004
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, PhD 2011
Professor Hartzog holds a joint appointment with the Khoury College of Computer Sciences, where he teaches privacy and data protection issues. His research focuses on law and policy issues related to privacy, digital technologies and artificial intelligence.
Professor Hartzog’s work has been published in numerous scholarly publications such as the Yale Law Journal, Columbia Law Review, California Law Review and Michigan Law Review, and popular national publications such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Atlantic and The Nation. He has testified three times before Congress on privacy and data protection issues. His book, Privacy’s Blueprint: The Battle to Control the Design of New Technologies (Harvard University Press, 2018), has been called “one of the most important books about privacy in our times.”
Prior to joining the Northeastern faculty in 2017, Professor Hartzog was the Starnes Professor of Law at Samford University’s Cumberland School of Law. He has also served as a visiting professor at Notre Dame Law School and the University of Maine School of Law. Professor Hartzog previously worked as an attorney in private practice and as a trademark attorney for the US Patent and Trademark Office. He also served as a clerk for the Electronic Privacy Information Center. He holds a PhD in mass communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, an LLM in intellectual property from the George Washington University Law School and a JD from Samford University.
Fields of Expertise
- Contracts
- Media
- Privacy and Data Protection
- Robotics and Artificial Intelligence
- Torts
Selected Works
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- Breached! Why Data Security Law Fails and How to Improve It (Oxford University Press, 2021)(co-author).
- Privacy's Blueprint: The Battle to Control the Design of New Technologies (Harvard University Press, 2018).
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- “A Duty of Loyalty for Privacy Law,” 99 Washington University Law Review (forthcoming).
- “The COVID-19 Pandemic and the Technology Trust Gap,” 51 Seton Hall Law Review 1505 (2021) (co-author).
- “The Surprising Virtues of Data Loyalty,” 71 Emory Law Journal (forthcoming) (co-author).
- “What is Privacy? That’s the Wrong Question,” 88 The University of Chicago Law Review 1677 (2021).
- “A Duty of Loyalty for Privacy Law,” 99 Washington University Law Review (forthcoming 2021) (co-author).
- “The COVID-19 Pandemic and the Technology Trust Gap,” 51 Seton Hall Law Review 1505 (2021) (co-author).
- “An Education Theory of Fault for Autonomous Systems,” 2 Notre Dame Journal on Emerging Technologies 33 (2021) (co-author).
- “A Comparative Study of Dark Patterns Across Web and Mobile Modalities,” ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW ’21). Virtual, October 2021 (co-author) (publication in proceedings).
- “Towards an Understanding of Dark Patterns Privacy Harms,” CHI Workshop “What Can CHI Do About Dark Patterns?,” 2021 ACM CHI Conference (co-author) (publication in proceedings).
- “A Relational Turn for Data Protection?,” 4 European Data Protection Law Review 1 (2020).
- “BIPA: The Most Important Biometric Privacy Law in the US?,” 96 Regulating Biometrics: Global Approaches and Urgent Questions (AI NOW 2020).
- “Privacy’s Constitutional Moment and the Limits of Data Protection,” 61 Boston College Law Review 1687 (2020) (co-author) (Winner of the Future of Privacy Forum’s Privacy Papers for Policymakers Award).
- “The Inconsentability of Facial Surveillance,” 66 Loyola Law Review 101 (2019) (co-author).
- “The Upsides of Deep Fakes,” 78 Maryland Law Review 960 (forthcoming 2019) (co-author).
- “The Pathologies of Digital Consent,” 96 Washington University Law Review (forthcoming 2019) (co-author).
- “The Public Information Fallacy,” 98 Boston University Law Review (2019).
- “The Case Against Idealising Control,” 4 European Data Protection Law Review 423 (2019).
- “The FTC Can Rise to the Privacy Challenge, but Not Without Help From Congress,”Lawfare (August 9, 2019).
- “Why You Can No Longer Get Lost in the Crowd,”The New York Times (April 17, 2019).
- “Body Cameras and the Path to Redeem Privacy Law,” 96 North Carolina Law Review 1257 (2018).
- “Facial Recognition Is the Perfect Tool for Oppression,”Medium (August 2, 2018).
- “Privacy and the Dark Side of Control,” The Institute of Art and Ideas (2017).
- “The Indispensable, Inadequate Fair Information Practices,” 76 Maryland Law Review 952 (2017) (symposium).
- “Privacy’s Trust Gap 126 Yale Law Journal” 1180 (2017) (book review with Neil Richards).
- “Trusting Big Data Research” 65 DePaul Law Review 579 (2017) (symposium) (with Neil Richards).
- “Taking Trust Seriously in Privacy Law,” 19 Stanford Technology Law Review 431 (2016) (with Neil Richards).
- “Anonymization and Risk,” 90 Washington Law Review 703 (2016) (with Ira Rubinstein).
- “The Internet of Heirlooms and Disposable Things,” 17 North Carolina Journal of Law and Technology 581 (2016) (symposium) (with Evan Selinger).
- “Inefficiently Automated Law Enforcement,” 2015 Michigan State Law Review 1763 (2016) (with Gregory Conti, Lisa Shay and Jon Nelson).
- “Unfair and Deceptive Robots,” 74 Maryland Law Review 785 (2015).
- “The Scope and Potential of FTC Data Protection,” 83 George Washington Law Review 2230 (2015) (symposium) (with Daniel J. Solove).
- “Surveillance as Loss of Obscurity,” 72 Washington and Lee Law Review 1343 (2015) (symposium) (with Evan Selinger).
- “The FTC and the New Common Law of Privacy,” 114 Columbia Law Review 583 (2014) (with Daniel J. Solove).
- “Reviving Implied Confidentiality,” 89 Indiana Law Journal 763 (2014).
- “The Value of Modest Privacy Protections in a Hyper Social World,” 12 Colorado Technology Law Journal 332 (2014) (symposium).
- “Social Data,” 74 Ohio State Law Journal 995 (2013) (symposium).
- “Obscurity by Design,” 88 Washington Law Review 385 (2013) (with Fred Stutzman) (symposium).
- “The Fight to Frame Privacy,” 111 Michigan Law Review 1021 (2013) (book review).
- “The Case for Online Obscurity,” 101 California Law Review 1 (2013) (with Fred Stutzman).
- “Big Data in Small Hands,” 66 Stanford Law Review Online 81 (2013) (with Evan Selinger).
- “Chain-Link Confidentiality,” 46 Georgia Law Review 657 (2012) (symposium).
- “Website Design as Contract,” 60 American University Law Review 1635 (2011).
- “Promises and Privacy: Promissory Estoppel and Confidential Disclosure in Online Communities,” 82 Temple Law Review 891 (2009).
- “Falling on Deaf Ears: Is the 'Fail Safe' Triennial Exemption Provision in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act Effective in Protecting Fair Use?,” 12 Journal of Intellectual Property Law 309 (2005).
- “Gaining Momentum: A Review of Recent Developments Surrounding the Expansion of the Copyright Misuse Doctrine and Analysis of the Doctrine in its Current Form,” 10 Michigan Telecommunications and Technology Law Review 373 (2004).
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- “Obscurity and Privacy” in The Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Technology, eds. Joseph Pitt and Ashley Shew (2016) (with Evan Selinger).
- “Do Robots Dream of Electric Laws? An Experiment in Law as Algorithm,” in Robot Law (Edward Elgar: Ryan Calo, Michael Froomkin, & Ian Kerr, eds. 2016) (with Lisa Shay, Greg Conti, Dominic Larkin, and John Nelson).
- “Confronting Automated Law Enforcement,” in Robot Law (Edward Elgar: Ryan Calo, Michael Froomkin, & Ian Kerr, eds. 2016) (with Lisa Shay, Greg Conti, and John Nelson).
- “Terms of Use,” in Social Media and the Law: A Guide for Professional Communicators (Routledge: Daxton Stewart, ed. 2012).
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- “‘Dark Patterns’ in Consumer Data Privacy Garner Policy Attention,” Bloomberg Law (March 23, 2021).
- “Facing Bias in Facial Recognition Technology,” The Regulatory Review (March 20, 2021).
- “What Happens When You Click ‘Agree’?,” The New York Times (January 21, 2021).
- “Banning Trump from Twitter and Facebook isn’t Nearly Enough,” Los Angeles Times (January 15, 2021).
- “Twitter and Facebook Have the Right to Ban Trump’s Accounts. But That Won’t Stop the Violent Rhetoric,” Northeastern News (January 11, 2021).
- “The Dangers of Tech-Driven Solutions to COVID-19,” The Brookings Institute (June 17, 2020).
- “Boston City Council Hearing on Proposed Ordinance to Ban Face Surveillance,” ACLU's Data for Justice Project (June 9, 2020).
- “Does Containing COVID-19 Mean Surrendering Our Privacy?,” Northeastern News (May 20, 2020).
- “Op-Ed: Coronavirus Tracing Apps Are Coming. Here’s How They Could Reshape Surveillance as We Know It,” Los Angeles Times (May 12, 2020).
- “Professor Hartzog and Leading Technology Scholars Oppose Facial Recognition Bill,” Northeastern Law News Announcement (May 12, 2020).
- “Don’t Use Face Recognition to Fight COVID: We Need Disease Surveillance, Not a Surveillance State,” New York Daily News (May 11, 2020).
- “Will Contact-Tracing Apps Infringe on Data Privacy? Germany May Soon Find Out,”Northeastern News (April 30, 2020).
- “A Scramble for Virus Apps That Do No Harm,” The New York Times (April 29, 2020).
- “Masks and Our face-recognition Future: How Coronavirus (Slightly) Clouds the Picture Painted by Tech Firms,” New York Daily News (April 6, 2020).
- “Coronavirus Testing Website Goes Live and Quickly Hits Capacity,”The New York Times (March 16, 2020).
- “Why Europe's GDPR Magic Will Never Work in the US,”Wired (February 20, 2020).
- “The Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know It,” The New York Times (January 21, 2020).
- “Award-Winning Paper: “Privacy’s Constitutional Moment and the Limits of Data Protection”,”Future of Privacy Forum (January 7, 2020).
- “Think Alexa Is Too Creepy For Your Kitchen? Don’t Give It to Aunty Mary,”The New York Times (December 25, 2019).
- “The Time for Privacy Reform is Now,”The Source (November 18, 2019).
- “Whhat Happens When Employers Can Read Your Facial Expressions?,”The New York Times (October 17, 2019).
- “Why You Can’t Really Consent to Facebook’s Facial Recognition,” OneZero (September 30, 2019) (co-author).
- “Tech Addiction and the Dark Art of Persuasive Design,” Al Jazeera's All Hail The Algorithm Series (July 31, 2019).
- “Cute Robots, Smart Underwear, and Facial Recognition in Church: Have We Gone Too Far?,”Northeastern news (March 28, 2019).
- “You Give Apps Sensitive Personal Information. Then They Tell Facebook,”The Wall Street Journal (February 22, 2019).
- “It’s Time to Try Something Different on Internet Privacy,”The Washington Post (December 20, 2018).
- “Facebook’s Failure to End ‘Public by Default’,”Medium (November 7, 2018).
- “Obscurity by Design: One thinker proposes a shift in the way we think about user privacy,”Postlight (November 7, 2018).
- “Product Design as an Exercise of Power and Manipulation,” The Privacy Advisor Podcast (August 24, 2018).
- “Uber Fills 'Critical' Role of Chief Privacy Officer,” CNN News (July 18, 2018).
- “Amazon Needs to Stop Providing Facial Recognition Tech for the Government,”Medium (June 21, 2018).
- “User Agreements Are Betraying You,”Medium (June 5, 2018).
- “Amazon: Stop Giving Dystopian Facial Recognition Tech to the Government,”The Guardian (July 6, 2018).
- “Amazon Needs to Stop Providing Facial Recognition Tech for the Government,”Medium (June 21, 2018).
- “User Agreements Are Betraying You,”Medium (June 4, 2018).
- “We Know You’re Not Reading All Those New Terms of Service Emails. You might Want To,”Northeastern News (May 22, 2018).
- “What is GDPR and Why Should You Care?,” WIRED (May 24, 2018).
- “How the Internet Tricks You Out of Privacy Using 'Dark Patterns' of Design,” ABC News (April 29, 2018).
- “With In-Car Delivery, Amazon Tests Whether Customers Will Sacrifice Privacy for Convenience,” Los Angeles Times (April 25, 2018).
- “Facebook Fuels Broad Privacy Debate by Tracking Non-Users,” Reutuers (April 15, 2018).
- “Fact-checking Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's Congressional Testimony,” PolitiFact (April 12, 2018).
- “What's at Stake for Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg as He Testifies Before Congress,” USA Today (April 10, 2018).
- “Click by Click, Drowning in Data, We Internet 'Users' Are Being Used,”The Boston Globe (March 28, 2018).
- “With No Clear Liability Against Facebook, Professor Calls for Stronger Data Privacy Laws,”Northeastern News (March 22, 2018).
- “Should Robots Have Rights?”Northeastern News (December 8, 2017).
- “The Story Behind the Pentagon Papers, Told by the Journalists Who Lived It,” Northeastern News (November 29, 2017).
- “SCOTUS Case Could Redefine 'Reasonable Expectation of Privacy',” Northeastern News (November 29, 2017).
- Podcast: “Hartzog on Robocops and Automated Law Enforcement,”Philosophical Disquisitions (October 28, 2017).
- “The Evolving Law and Rules Around Privacy, Data Security, and Robots,”Northeastern News (September 6, 2017).
