Legal Concepts Meet Technology: A 50-State Survey of Privacy Laws

Informational privacy consists of the ability to control how others use our personal information. Over the past several decades, we have lost a significant degree of control as a result of advances in information processing technology and the rise of the Internet. We pose two questions: (1) What legal concepts of privacy and privacy protection have developed in response to changing technology? (2) Are these responses adequate? To answer these questions, we provide a detailed survey and analysis of current US state privacy and security laws, which illustrate the limits of current practical legal concepts of privacy. Our analysis reveals that when evaluated against the background of relevant technological developments, the answer is that the response has clearly been inadequate. We offer the analysis here as a starting point toward a more adequate response