Biography

Paul Ohm is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Colorado Law School. He writes in the areas of information privacy, computer crime law, intellectual property, and criminal procedure. Through his scholarship and outreach, Professor Ohm is leading efforts to build new interdisciplinary bridges between law and computer science.

Before joining the University of Colorado, in 2006, Professor Ohm worked for the U.S. Department of Justice's Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section as an Honors Program trial attorney. Before that, he served as law clerk to Judge Betty Fletcher of the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and Judge Mariana Pfaelzer of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. He attended the UCLA Law School where he served as Articles Editor of the UCLA Law Review and received the Benjamin Aaron and Judge Jerry Pacht prizes.

Prior to law school, Professor Ohm worked for several years as a computer programmer and network systems administrator, and before that he earned undergraduate degrees in computer science and electrical engineering from Yale University. Even today, he continues to write thousands of lines of python and perl code each year. Professor Ohm blogs at Freedom to Tinker and has guest blogged at Concurring Opinions and The Volokh Conspiracy.

Recent and Upcoming Publications [SSRN Author Page]

Investigating Computer Crime: The Irrelevance of Justification Standards, 93 Minnesota Law Review ____ (forthcoming 2010)

The Rise and Fall of Invasive ISP Surveillance, 2009 University of Illinois Law Review ____ (forthcoming 2009).

When Net Neutrality Met Privacy, 52 Communications of the ACM ____ (forthcoming 2009).

Computer Programming and the Law: A New Research Agenda, 54 Villanova Law Review ___ (forthcoming 2009).

The Greatest Threat to Privacy, invited contribution to Deep Packet Inspection, A Collection of Essays from Industry Experts, Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (2009).

Good Enough Privacy, 2008 University of Chicago Legal Forum 1.

The Myth of the Superuser: Fear, Risk, and Harm Online 41 U.C. Davis Law Review 1327 (2008).

The Olmsteadian Seizure Clause, 2008 Stanford Technology Law Review 2.

[Full Listing]

Research Agenda

Professor Ohm writes at the intersection of computer science and law, attempting to bridge the two disciplines with rigor.

Current projects include:

1. Privacy: Developing privacy-related works-in-progress including:
   • The Probability of Privacy: Questioning efficacy of efforts to anonymize data to protect privacy in light of Computer Science theories about the probability of reidentification.
   • ISP Surveillance: Arguing that there is no greater threat to privacy in society than the ISP.
   • Justification Standards: Pointing out the flawed belief in the differences between probable cause and reasonable suspicion.
2. The Path of Internet Law: Calling for recognition of a new sub-discipline of legal scholarship focusing on the Internet as a dynamic subject and incorporating cutting-edge engineering principles.
3. Software Regulation Clearing House: Building a web-accessible, searchable database of Federal, State, and International laws and regulations that regulate software development.
4. Case Law Natural Language Processing: Using machine learning techniques to analyze case law.
5. Network Measurement Research Privacy Project: Working with Computer Science network researchers to develop rules, technologies, guidance, and processes to better protect the privacy of their research subjects.

Recent and Upcoming Presentations

Symposium on Cyber Civil Rights, Denver University Law Review, November 20, 2009

Limitless Probable Cause: The Misguided Debate Over Justification Standards, Minnesota Law Review Symopsium on Cyberlaw, October 16-17, 2009

DePaul Center for IP Law and Information Technology Symposium, Chicago, IL, October 15-16, 2009

The Future of Internet Law, Intellectual Property Scholars Conference, Cardozo University, New York, NY, August 6-7, 2009

The Probability of Privacy, Privacy Law Scholars Conference, Berkeley, CA, June 5, 2009

Teaching

Professor Ohm has taught courses in Criminal Procedure, Introduction to Intellectual Property, Copyright, Information Privacy, and Computer Crime. In spring 2009, he will not be teaching any courses.