Direct note just sent to Jonathan Mayer <jonathan.ma...@princeton.edu> below. Letter to the Office of the Dean of the Faculty at Princeton University will follow later.
Dear Jonathan: I am a lawyer with an interest in online privacy. You are named as a "team member" on <https://measurement.cs.princeton.edu/privacystudy/>;. While writing a polite note trying to understand how your name can be associated with an initiative that seems to be so out of character with your impressive and adimrable profile, I received notice of your generic response to Anne P. Mitchell on the subject, in which you characterize this part of the study as "requesting information from websites" and generally state your openness to answer questions. [1] With all due respect, your characterization omits the most important of the many problematic aspects of the research: the fraudulent and possibly illegal (I am not licensed to practice in the US but have been told that CAN-SPAM applies) information requests ends up on the desk of an individual person and that individual person is thus involuntarily enrolled as research subject without meaningful consent. Can you see this point of view? A letter to the Office of the Dean of the Faculty at Princeton University is in preparation and will be sent out later today. [2] At this point, the only question that may influence the content of that letter is: are the researchers responsible for the harvesting of email addresses and the sending of fraudulent GPRD/CCPA requests willing to suspend immediately all harvesting and emailing activity, pending ethical review; and engage with the community on a redesign of their harmful data collection practice? [1] <https://www.mail-archive.com/mailop@mailop.org/msg14687.html> [2] <https://www.mail-archive.com/mailop@mailop.org/msg14679.html> Sincerely, -- Yuval Levy, JD, MBA, CFA Ontario-licensed lawyer _______________________________________________ mailop mailing list mailop@mailop.org https://list.mailop.org/listinfo/mailop
