Danielle K. Citron

Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Law

JD, cum laude, Fordham University School of Law
BA, cum laude, Duke University

Areas of Interest
Administrative Law, Automation, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Feminist & Critical Race Scholarship, Free Expression, Privacy, Privacy Governance
Contact
Biography

Danielle Citron is the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Law at the Boston University School of Law, where she teaches and writes about information privacy, free expression, and civil rights. Professor Citron has garnered awards nationally and internationally. She was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2019 based on her work on cyber stalking and sexual privacy. In 2015, the United Kingdom’s Prospect magazine named Professor Citron one of the “Top 50 World Thinkers.” The Maryland Daily Record named her one of the “Top 50 Most Influential Marylanders” of 2015.

Professor Citron’s book Hate Crimes in Cyberspace (Harvard University Press, 2014) was named one of the “20 Best Moments for Women in 2014” by Cosmopolitan magazine. She has published 40 law review articles, appearing in the Yale Law Journal, California Law Review (twice), Michigan Law Review (three times), Harvard Law Review Forum, Boston University Law Review (three times), Minnesota Law Review, Notre Dame Law Review (twice), George Washington Law Review, Texas Law Review, Washington University Law Review (three times), Southern California Law Review, Fordham Law Review (twice), Washington Law Review (twice), William & Mary Law Review, University of Chicago Legal Forum, among other major journals. Her opinion pieces have appeared in major media outlets, including the New York Times, the Atlantic, Slate, Time, CNN, the Guardian, New Scientist, and New York Daily News.

Professor Citron is the vice president of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, a nonprofit devoted to the protection of civil rights and liberties. She serves on the board of directors of the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Future of Privacy and on the advisory boards of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center for Technology and Society and Teach Privacy. In connection with her advocacy work, she advises tech companies on online safety and civil liberties. She serves on Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council and Facebook’s Nonconsensual Intimate Imagery Task Force.

Citron is an affiliate scholar at the Stanford Center on Internet and Society, Yale Information Society Project, and NYU’s Policing Project. She is a member of Axon’s advisory board on AI Ethics and the advisory board for the Center on Investigative Reporting. As a member of the American Law Institute, she serves as an adviser to the Restatement Third, Information Privacy Principles Project and Restatement (Third) Torts: Defamation and Privacy. She is a member of the board of directors for the Harvard–MIT AI Fund.

Professor Citron has advised federal and state legislators, law enforcement, and international lawmakers on privacy issues. In 2019, she testified before the House Intelligence Committee on the national security challenges of deep fakes and other forms of disinformation as well as before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on the responsibility of online platforms. In April 2015, she testified at a congressional briefing sponsored by Congresswoman Katharine Clark on the First Amendment implications of a federal cyber stalking legal agenda. She has advised the offices of Congresswoman Katharine Clark, Congresswoman Jackie Speier, Senator Diane Feinstein, Senator Elizabeth Warren, and Senator Kamala Harris on potential federal legislation. Professor Citron helped Maryland State Senator Jon Cardin draft a bill criminalizing the nonconsensual publication of nude images, which was passed into law in 2014.

From 2014 to December 2016, Professor Citron served as an advisor to then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris. She served as a member of AG Harris’s Task Force to Combat Cyber Exploitation and Violence Against Women. In October 2015, Professor Citron, with AG Harris, spoke at a press conference to discuss her office’s new online resource for law enforcement and individuals whose nude images were disclosed without consent. In 2011, Professor Citron testified about misogynistic cyber hate speech before the Inter-Parliamentary Committee on Anti-Semitism at the House of Commons.

Professor Citron has given more than 400 talks, including at federal agencies, meetings of the National Association of Attorneys General, the National Holocaust Museum, the Anti-Defamation League, major universities (such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, University of Chicago, University of Michigan, and MIT), and think tanks. Professor Citron has been quoted in hundreds of news stories in varied publications, such as the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, USA Today, HBO’s Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, Time, Newsweek, the New Yorker, New York Magazine, Cosmopolitan, Barron’s, Financial Times, the Guardian, Vice News, and BBC. She is a frequent guest on National Public Radio shows.

Before joining BU Law, she taught at the University of Maryland School of Law where she received the 2018 “UMD Champion of Excellence” award for teaching and scholarship. She has been a visiting professor at Fordham Law School and George Washington Law School. In 2016, she was a Dean’s Distinguished Visitor at Washington University School of Law and an interdisciplinary studies fellow at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Professor Citron will make a short visit to the University of Chicago School of Law in 2021 and at Harvard Law School in the fall of 2022.

Publications
  1. Danielle Citron & Ryan Calo, "The Automated Administrative State: A Crisis of Legitimacy," Emory Law Journal (forthcoming).
    SSRN | Scholarly Commons
  2. Danielle Citron, "Cyber Mobs, Disinformation, and Death Videos: The Internet As It Is (And As It Should Be)," review of Nick Drnaso, Sabrina, Drawn & Quarterly (2018), 118 Michigan Law Review (2020). SSRN | Scholarly Commons
  3. Danielle Citron & Mary Anne Franks, "The Internet As a Speech Conversion Machine and Other Myths Confounding Section 230 Reform Efforts," University of Chicago Legal Forum (forthcoming).
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  4. Danielle Citron, "A New Compact for Sexual Privacy," William & Mary Law Review (forthcoming).
    SSRN | Scholarly Commons
  5. Danielle Citron & Robert Chesney, "21st Century-Style Truth Decay: Deep Fakes and the Challenge for Privacy, Free Expression, and National Security," in Symposium Truth Decay: Deep Fakes and the Implications for Privacy, National Security, and Democracy, 78 Maryland Law Review 882 (2019).
  6. Danielle Citron & Robert Chesney, "Deep Fakes: A Looming Crisis for Privacy, Democracy, and National Security," 107 California Law Review 1753 (2019).
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  7. Danielle Citron & Mary Anne Franks, "Evaluating New York’s “Revenge Porn” Law: A Missed Opportunity to Protect Sexual Privacy," Harvard Law Review Blog (March 19, 2019).
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  8. Danielle Citron, "The Roots of Sexual Privacy: Warren and Brandeis & the Privacy of Intimate Life," in Symposium Owning Personality: The Expanding Right of Publicity, 42 Columbia Journal of Law & the Arts 383 (2019).
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  9. Danielle Citron, "Sexual Privacy," 128 Yale Law Journal 1870 (2019).
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  10. Danielle Citron & Jonathon Penney, "When Law Frees Us to Speak," in Symposium Gender Equality and the First Amendment, 87 Fordham Law Review 2317 (2019).
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  11. Danielle Citron, "Why Combating Online Abuse Is Good For Free Speech," in Free Speech in the Digital Age , Susan Brison & Katharine Gelber, eds., Oxford University Press (2019).
  12. Danielle Citron, "Why Sexual Privacy Matters for Trust," 96 Washington University School of Law Review 1189 (2019).
    SSRN | Scholarly Commons
  13. Danielle Citron, "Extremist Speech, Compelled Conformity, and Censorship Creep," 93 Notre Dame Law Review 1035 (2018).
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  14. Danielle Citron & Neil Richards, "Four Principles for Digital Speech (You Won’t Believe #3!)," 95 Washington University School of Law Review 1353 (2018).
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  15. Danielle Citron & Quinta Jurecic, "Platform Justice: Content Moderation at an Inflection Point," No. 1811 Aegis Series (2018).
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  16. Danielle Citron, "A Poor Mother’s Right to Privacy: A Review," review of Khiara Bridges, The Poverty of Privacy Rights, Stanford University Press (2017), 98 Boston University Law Review 1139 (2018). SSRN | Scholarly Commons | Publisher
  17. Danielle Citron & Benjamin Wittes, "The Problem Isn't Just Backpage: Revising Section 230 Immunity," 2 Georgetown Law Technology Review 453 (2018).
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  18. Danielle Citron & Daniel Solove, "Risk and Anxiety: A Theory of Data Breach Harms," 96 Texas Law Review 737 (2018).
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  19. Danielle Citron & Benjamin Wittes, "The Internet Will Not Break: Denying Bad Samaritans Section 230 Immunity," in Symposium Terrorist Incitement on the Internet, 86 Fordham Law Review 401 (2017).
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  20. Danielle Citron & Liz Clark Rinehart, "The Surveillance Implications of Combatting Cyber Harassment," in Cambridge Handbook of Surveillance Law , David Gray & Stephen Henderson, eds., Cambridge University Press (2017).
  21. Danielle Citron, "The Privacy Policymaking of State Attorneys General," 92 Notre Dame Law Review 747 (2016).
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  22. Danielle Citron, "Addressing Cyber Harassment: An Overview of Hate Crimes in Cyberspace," 6 Case Western Reserve Journal of Law, Technology & the Internet 1 (2015).
    SSRN | Scholarly Commons
  23. Danielle Citron, "Protecting Sexual Privacy in the Information Age," in Privacy in the Modern Age: The Search for Solutions , Marc Rotenberg, Jeramie Scott & Julia Horwitz, eds., The New Press (2015).
  24. Danielle Citron, "Spying Inc.," in Symposium Cybersurveillance in the Post-Snowden Age, 72 Washington & Lee Law Review 1243 (2015).
    SSRN | Scholarly Commons | HeinOnline
  25. Danielle Citron & Mary Anne Franks, "Criminalizing Revenge Porn," 49 Wake Forest Law Review 345 (2014).
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  26. Danielle Citron, Hate Crimes in Cyberspace, Harvard University Press (2014).
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  27. Danielle Citron & Frank Pasquale, "Promoting Innovation While Preventing Discrimination: Policy Goals for the Scored Society," 89 Washington Law Review 1413 (2014).
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  28. Danielle Citron & Frank Pasquale, "The Scored Society: Due Process for Automated Predictions," 89 Washington Law Review 1 (2014).
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  29. Danielle Citron & David Gray, "Addressing the Harm of Total Surveillance: A Reply to Professor Neil Richards," 126 Harvard Law Review Forum 262 (2013).
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  30. Danielle Citron, David Gray & Liz Clark Rinehart, "Fighting Cybercrime After United States v. Jones," 103 Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology 745 (2013).
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  31. Danielle Citron & David Gray, "The Right to Quantitative Privacy," 98 Minnesota Law Review 62 (2013).
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  32. Danielle Citron & David Gray, "A Shattered Looking Glass: The Pitfalls and Potential of the Mosaic Theory of Fourth Amendment Privacy," 14 North Carolina Journal of Law & Technology 381 (2013).
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  33. Danielle Citron & Helen Norton, "Intermediaries and Hate Speech: Fostering Digital Citizenship for the Information Age," 91 Boston University Law Review 1435 (2011).
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  34. Danielle Citron & Frank Pasquale, "Network Accountability for the Domestic Intelligence Apparatus," 62 Hastings Law Journal 1441 (2011).
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  35. Danielle Citron, "Civil Rights in Our Information Age," in The Offensive Internet: Speech, Privacy, and Reputation , Martha Nussbaum & Saul Levmore, eds., Harvard University Press (2010).
  36. Danielle Citron, "Fulfilling Government 2.0’s Promise with Robust Privacy Protection," 78 George Washington Law Review 822 (2010).
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  37. Danielle Citron & Helen Norton, "Government Speech 2.0," 87 Denver Law Review 899 (2010).
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  38. Danielle Citron, "Mainstreaming Privacy Torts," in Symposium Prosser's Privacy at 50: A Symposium on Privacy in the 21st Century, 98 California Law Review 1805 (2010).
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  39. Danielle Citron & Leslie Meltzer Henry, "Visionary Pragmatism and the Value of Privacy in the Information Age," review of Daniel Solove, Understanding Privacy, Harvard University Press (2008), 108 Michigan Law Review 1107 (2010). SSRN | Scholarly Commons | Publisher
  40. Danielle Citron, "Cyber Civil Rights," 89 Boston University Law Review 61 (2009).
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  41. Danielle Citron, "Law’s Expressive Value in Combating Cyber Gender Harassment," 108 Michigan Law Review 373 (2009).
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  42. Danielle Citron, "The Privacy Implications of Deep Packet Inspection," in Deep Packet Inspection: A Collection of Essays by Industry Experts , Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (2009). Publisher
  43. Danielle Citron, "Open Code Governance," in Symposium Law in a Networked World, 2008 University of Chicago Legal Forum 355 (2008).
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  44. Danielle Citron, "Technological Due Process," 85 Washington University School of Law Review 1249 (2008).
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  45. Danielle Citron, "Reservoirs of Danger: The Evolution of Public and Private Law at the Dawn of the Information Age," 80 Southern California Law Review 241 (2007).
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  46. Danielle Citron, "Minimum Contacts in a Borderless World: Voice over Internet Protocol and the Coming Implosion of Personal Jurisdiction Theory," 39 U.C. Davis Law Review 1481 (2006).
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  47. Danielle Citron, "Planned Parenthood v. Casey: From U.S. “Rights Talk” To Western European “Responsibility Talk 16 Fordham International Law Journal 761 (1992).
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