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Across the FieldAmicus brief on the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act
In Van Buren v. United States of America
Aaron Rieke, Natasha Duarte, Sarika Ram, and Logan Koepke
Amicus briefAlongside the ACLU, the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, First Look Media, and several academics, we filed an amicus brief in Van Buren v. United States of America, a case in front of the Supreme Court. Our brief argued that the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act should not criminalize violations of computer use policies, like terms of service. Such a broad interpretation of the CFAA would chill critically important online discrimination testing, which frequently requires researchers to violate computer use policies.
Related Work
We filed a legal brief arguing that Section 230 should not fully immunize Facebook’s Ad Platform from liability under a California antidiscrimination law.
Across the FieldOur empirical research showed that Facebook’s “Special Audiences” ad targeting tool can reflect demographic biases. We provide experimental proof that removing demographic features from a real-world algorithmic system’s inputs can fail to prevent biased outputs.
Across the FieldWe argued that HUD’s proposed changes to its disparate impact rule would undermine crucial housing protections for vulnerable communities by reducing plaintiffs’ ability to address discriminatory effects from the use of algorithmic models.
HousingWorking with the Cyberlaw Clinic at Harvard Law School, we filed a brief in New Jersey v. Pickett supporting the defense’s request to fully examine TrueAllele, the probabilistic DNA analysis software used in the case, in order to assess its reliability.
Criminal Courts