Fourth Amendment Fiduciaries

Fourth Amendment law is sorely in need of reform. To paraphrase Justice Sotomayor’s concurrence in United States v. Jones, the idea that people have no expectation of privacy in information voluntarily shared with third-parties—the foundation of the widely reviled “third-party doctrine”—makes little sense in the digital age. In truth, however, it is not just the third-party doctrine that needs retooling today. It is the Fourth Amendment’s general approach to the problem of “shared information.” Under existing law, if A shares information with B, A runs the risk of “misplaced trust”—the risk that B will disclose the information to law enforcement. Although the misplaced trust rule makes sense as a default, it comes under strain in cases where A and B have no relationship of trust and the only reason that A shares information with B is to obtain a socially valuable (and practically indispensable) service. In such cases, I argue that the doctrine should treat B as an “information fiduciary” and analyze B’s cooperation with law enforcement—whether voluntary or compelled—as a Fourth Amendment search. The argument develops in three parts. Part I demonstrates that the Court has already identified two settings—if only implicitly—where fiduciary-style protections are necessary to safeguard constitutional privacy: medical care and hotels. When A is a patient and B is a doctor, and, likewise, when A is a guest and B is a hotel manager, the Court has been reluctant to apply the “misplaced trust” rule. Rightly so: the principle is mismatched to the underlying relationship. From there, Part II fleshes out the normative argument. Put simply, we do not “trust” information fiduciaries, in the everyday sense, at all. So it makes little sense—normatively, or even semantically—to speak of trust being “misplaced.” Rather, the information is held for the benefit of the sharing party, and its use should be constrained by implied duties of care and loyalty. Finally, Part III lays the groundwork for determining who are “Fourth Amendment fiduciaries.” The Article concludes by exploring various practical metrics that courts might adopt to answer this question

The Impact of Wetlands Rules on the Prices of Regulated and Proximate Houses: A Case Study

Federal, state and local wetlands protection laws that restrict landowners’ ability to develop their properties in certain ways could decrease the value of the affected properties. However, the regulations could also give benefits to nearby neighbors who no longer need worry about increased development in their area. Given that some properties may decline in value, while others increase, the impact on individual properties must be determined empirically. This study uses a data set from Newton, Massachusetts to examine the impact of wetlands laws on the regulated properties, as well as on proximate properties. Looking at house sales data from 1988 through 2005, the hedonic technique is used to estimate the effect of wetlands regulations on single family home prices and finds that having wetlands on a property decreases its value by 4% relative to non-regulated properties. Homes that are contiguous to regulated houses do not experience any change in price. Thus it seems unlikely that neighbors are receiving any benefit from knowing that further development is restricted in their immediate vicinity.Environment, housing, amenities, hedonic pricing, wetlands

Environmental Contamination and House Values: A Study of Market Adjustment

In many communities throughout the United States, contaminated sites are identified and addressed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In each of these communities, the EPA presents a plan of action and provides the community with information about progress being made. Does the housing market adjust quickly after announcements by EPA concerning the existence and toxicity of Superfund sites? Other studies have shown that the levels of house prices fall when people suspect there is a problem, and again when the EPA announces that the site is toxic (e.g. Kiel, 1995), but how can we tell when or if the market has completely adjusted to the existence of such a site? If the site is always perceived as an externality, then the coefficient on distance from the house to the site in the hedonic regression on house values should remain statistically significant and negative. Thus merely looking at the coefficient does not aid in determining when, or if, the market has cleared.hedonic models, environmental prices, housing, adjustment process

Environmental Contamination and House Values

A house is a bundle of many goods: The number of bedrooms, bathrooms, the quality of local public services, the tidiness of a neighbor’s yard, and the quality of the local environment. If transactions in the housing market reflect the interaction of informed buyers and sellers, then the price that the house sells for is the sum of the prices the buyer is willing to pay for each individual characteristic of the house. It is this notion that motivates environmental economists to study property values. If individuals consider the local environment as a component of the house they purchase, then information on the house and its sales price allows researchers to ‘tease out’ the price that individuals would be willing to pay for environmental goods. This approach relies on the use of the hedonic price model.hedonic models, environmental prices, housing

A Toolkit for Exploring Affective Interface Adaptation in Videogames

From its humble beginnings back in the early 1960’s the videogame has become one of the most successful form of HCI to date. However if we look more closely at the interactions between the game and gamer it becomes evident little has changed since the advent of SpaceWar back in 1961. These interactions are for the most part static and thus predictable, given a particular set of circumstances a game will always react in one particular manner despite anything the player may actually do. Because of this the expected lifespan of a videogame is inherently dependant on the choices the videogame provides; once all possible avenues have been explored the game loses its appeal. In this paper we focus on adapting techniques used in the field of Affective Computing to solve this stagnation in the videogames market. We describe the development of a software development kit (SDK) that allows the interactions between man and machine to become dynamic entities during play by means of monitoring the player’s physiological condition

Factoring the Strong CP Problem

We present a new mechanism to solve the strong CP problem using $N\geq2$ axions, each dynamically relaxing part of the $\bar\theta$ parameter. At high energies $M\gg\Lambda_{QCD}$ the $SU(3)_{c}$ group becomes the diagonal subgroup of an $SU(3)^{N}$ gauge group, and the non-perturbative effects in each individual $SU(3)$ factor generate a potential for the corresponding axion. The vacuum is naturally aligned to ensure $\bar\theta=0$ at low energies, and the masses of these axions can be much larger than for the standard QCD axion. This mechanism avoids the introduction of a discrete $Z_2$ symmetry and associated 'mirror' copies of the SM fermions, and also avoids the introduction and stabilization of new light colored states to modify the running of the QCD gauge coupling found in other heavy axion models. This strengthens the motivation for axion-like particles solving the strong CP problem at points beyond the standard QCD axion curve in the $(m_a, f_a)$ plane.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figure

Performance of silica-supported copper oxide sorbents for SOx/NOx-removal from flue gas II. Selective catalytic reduction of nitric oxide by ammonia

The selective catalytic reduction (SCR) of nitric oxide by ammonia was studied for silica-supported copper oxide particles to be used as a sorbent/catalyst in a continuous process for the simultaneous removal of SOx and NOx from flue gases. The SCR-behaviour was determined as a function of the sulphation degree, i.e. the fraction of copper oxide converted to copper sulphate, at temperatures ranging from 20 to 450°C. Up to 350°C, the fresh catalyst with 0% CuSO4 showed a high selectivity towards production of nitrogen and water by the reaction of nitric oxide with ammonia and oxygen. At higher temperature, nitric oxide removal efficiencies decreased due to the oxidation of ammonia by oxygen. With an increase of the sulphation degree, the maximum temperature for selective catalytic reduction of nitric oxide gradually increased up to 420°C for a sulphation degree of 80%. In addition, the maximum nitric oxide removal efficiency increased as well. After regeneration of catalyst particles with a sulphation degree of 80%, realised by reduction with hydrogen and subsequent re-oxidation, the catalytic behaviour was similar to that of fresh catalyst particles with a sulphation degree of 5%. This is ascribed to the formation of some Cu2S during the reduction, which is oxidised to CuSO4 in the subsequent oxidation step. Since the selectivity towards the reduction of nitric oxide with ammonia is maintained up to about 375°C, a temperature which is very suitable for SOx removal as well, the silica-supported CuO investigated can be applied as a sorbent/catalyst for the simultaneous removal of SOx and NOx from flue gases. The reaction rate constants for SOx and NOx removal appeared to be of the same order of magnitude provided that the reduced sorbent/catalyst enters the absorber directly, i.e. without a separate pre-oxidation

Using Frustration in the Design of Adaptive Videogames

In efforts to attract a wider audience, videogames are beginning to incorporate adaptive gameplay mechanics. Unlike the more traditional videogame, adaptive games can cater the gaming experience to the individual user and not just a particular group of users as with the former. Affective videogames, games that respond to the user's emotional state, may hold the key to creating such gameplay mechanics. In this paper we discus how the emotion frustration may be used in the design of adaptive videogames and the ongoing research into its detection and measurement