Hot on the heels of the Senate voting to overturn Obama-era online privacy rules that were created by the Federal Communications Commission to protect individual consumers, it looks like we’ve got an even more controversial privacy issue on our hands — an online duel between a privacy lawyer and a T14 consumer protection professor.
Last week, Professor Omri Ben-Shahar of the University of Chicago Law School published a piece online at Forbes, “The Illinois Invention of Useless Privacy Protection,” in which he attacks efforts by the Illinois state legislature to implement stronger consumer privacy protections. Noted privacy advocate Jay Edelson (also known as the “most hated person in Silicon Valley”) of Edelson PC, did not take kindly to Ben-Shahar’s views on the subject; in fact, he disagreed with just about everything.
Seeing as Edelson and Ben-Shahar know each other and live in the same Chicago neighborhood, Edelson decided to challenge Ben-Shahar via Twitter to a moderated debate. The good professor accepted that invitation, and as a courtesy, Edelson sent him a formal invitation. To that end, Professor Todd Henderson agreed to moderate the debate, and Edelson even managed to secure a sponsor for the event.
[pdfjs-viewer url=”https://abovethelaw.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2017/03/Does-Privacy-Matter-Debate-Letter-from-Jay-Edelson-to-Omri-Ben-Shahar.pdf”]
This would have been an entertaining debate to watch, but there’s just one thing… Ben-Shahar backed out of the debate after receiving the formal invitation from Edelson. Here’s a Tweet from Edelson after he learned he would no longer have a debate partner:
.@omribenshahar has backed out of the #privacy debate, ironically asking me to keep his emails private. #papertiger Op-ed to follow.
— Jay Edelson (@jayedelson) March 28, 2017
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Hmm, it sure seems like Professor Ben-Shahar is interested in some “useless” privacy protection, doesn’t it? We wonder why he backed out, but we suppose we’ll never know.
Staci Zaretsky is an editor at Above the Law. She’d love to hear from you, so feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.