What removing legal threat to research that exposes online discrimination means

Christian Sandvig FACULTY Q&A A federal court has cleared the way for academic researchers, computer scientists and journalists to continue work that investigates online company practices for racial, gender or other discrimination. The ruling means that those who research online companies no longer have to fear prosecution for the work they do to hold tech companies accountable for their practices, said Christian Sandvig , the H Marshall McLuhan Collegiate Professor of Digital Media, professor of information and director of the Center for Ethics, Society, and Computing at the University of Michigan. The lawsuit Sandvig v. Barr was filed against the Department of Justice by the American Civil Liberties Union in June 2016 on behalf of Sandvig and researchers at Northeastern University, the University of Illinois and First Look Media Works, publisher of the Intercept. The suit challenged on First Amendment grounds a provision in the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act that made it a crime for researchers to set up false accounts in order to audit computer algorithms to check for hidden discriminatory practices. The ACLU argued this sort of audit procedure is not illegal in the offline world and should not be so in cyberspace. The lawsuit was filed on Sandvig's behalf as a private citizen, not as a representative of U-M, but the outcome has implications for researchers, computer scientists and journalists across the U.S. who were threatened with legal repercussions for violating a website's terms of service.