Information Tools

Affiliate Position

  • Co-Founder, Center for an Informed Public

Biography

Ryan Calo is the Lane Powell and D. Wayne Gittinger Professor at the University of Washington School of Law and holds a joint appointment in the Information School and a courtesy appointment in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering. He is a founding co-director (with Batya Friedman and Tadayoshi Kohno) of the interdisciplinary UW Tech Policy Lab and a co-founder (with Chris Coward, Emma Spiro, Kate Starbird, and Jevin West) of the UW Center for an Informed Public.

Professor Calo's research on law and emerging technology appears in leading law reviews (California Law Review, University of Chicago Law Review, and Columbia Law Review) and technical publications (MIT Press, Nature, Artificial Intelligence) and is frequently referenced by the national media. His work has been translated into at least four languages. Professor Calo has testified before the German Parliament, the California Little Hoover Commission, and the full Judiciary and Commerce Committees of the United States Senate. He has organized events on behalf of the National Science Foundation, the National Academy of Sciences, and the Obama White House. He has been a speaker at President Obama's Frontiers Conference, the Aspen Ideas Festival, and NPR's Weekend in Washington.

Professor Calo is a board member of the R Street Institute and an affiliate scholar at the Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society (CIS), where he was a research fellow, and the Yale Law School Information Society Project (ISP). He serves on numerous advisory boards and steering committees, including University of California's People and Robots Initiative, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), Without My Consent, the Foundation for Responsible Robotics, and the Future of Privacy Forum. In 2011, Professor Calo co-founded the annual robotics law and policy conference We Robot with Michael Froomkin and Ian Kerr.

Professor Calo worked as an associate in the Washington, D.C. office of Covington & Burling LLP and clerked for the Honorable R. Guy Cole, the Chief Justice of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Prior to law school at the University of Michigan, Professor Calo investigated allegations of police misconduct in New York City. He holds a B.A. in Philosophy from Dartmouth College.

Professor Calo won the Phillip A. Trautman 1L Professor of the Year Award in 2014 and 2017 and was awarded the Washington Law Review Faculty Award in 2019.

Education

  • JD, University of Michigan Law School, 2005
  • AB, Philosophy, Dartmouth College, 1999

Publications and Contributions

  • Book, Scholarly-New
    The Cambridge Handbook of Generative AI and the Law (2025)
    ISBN/ISSN: 9781009492553 Editors: Mimi Zou, Cristina Poncibò, Martin Ebers, Ryan Calo
  • Book, Scholarly-New
    Robot Law: Volume II (2025)
    pp. 380, ISBN/ISSN: 9781800887299 Editors: Ryan Calo, A. Michael Froomkin, Kristen Thomasen
  • Editorial
    American academic freedom is in peril (2024)
    Science Authors: Ryan Calo, Kate Starbird
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    Distinguishing Privacy Law: A Critique of Privacy as Social Taxonomy (2024)
    Columbia Law Review, 124(Unknown Issue), pp. 507-562 Authors: Maria P. Angel, Ryan Calo
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    Auditing Google's Search Headlines as a Potential Gateway to Misleading Content: Evidence from the 2020 US Election (2022)
    Journal of Online Trust & Safety, 1(4) Authors: Jevin West, Himanshu Zade, Morgan Wack, Yuanrui Zhang, Kate Starbird, Ryan Calo, Jason Young
  • Comments
    Comments to the Federal Trade Commission re: Commercial Surveillance ANPR, R111004 (2022)
    Federal Trade Commission 2022 Authors: Clara Berridge, Aylin Caliskan, Ryan Calo, Mary D. Fan, Alexis Hiniker, Tadayoshi Kohno, Franziska Roesner
  • Book, Chapter in Scholarly Book-New
    Law Controlling Technology (2022)
    Joshua Hall & Alice Kassens Author: Ryan Calo
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    Modeling Through (2022)
    Duke Law Journal, 71(Unknown Issue), pp. 1391-1423 Author: Ryan Calo
  • White Paper
    Ways to Grow: New Directions for Agricultural Technology Policy (2022)
    Authors: Stephanie Ballard, Ryan Calo, Ishita Chordia, Batya Friedman, Elias Greendorfer, David G. Hendry, Nicholas Logler
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    Why Govern Broken Tools? (2022)
    The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, 50(4), pp. 805-806 Author: Ryan Calo
  • Journal Article, Professional Journal
    Artificial Intelligence and the Carousel of Soft Law (2021)
    IEEE Transactions on Technology and Society, 2(4), pp. 171-174, ISBN/ISSN: 2637-6415 Author: Ryan Calo
  • Newspaper
    Banning Trump from Twitter and Facebook isn’t nearly enough (2021)
    Los Angeles Times Author: Ryan Calo
  • Magazine/Trade Publication
    FTC warns the AI industry: Don’t discriminate, or else (2021)
    The Conversation Author: Ryan Calo
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    How do you solve a problem like misinformation? (2021)
    Science Advances, 7(50) Authors: Ryan Calo, Christopher Coward, Emma Spiro, Kate Starbird, Jevin West
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    The Automated Administrative State: A Crisis of Legitimacy (2021)
    Emory Law Journal, 70(4), pp. 797-845, ISBN/ISSN: 0094-4076 Authors: Ryan Calo, Danielle Keats Citron
  • Journal Article, In-House Journal
    Contact-tracing apps are not a solution to the COVID-19 crisis (2020)
    Brookings Institution TechStream Authors: Ryan Calo, Carl T. Bergstrom
  • Book Editor, Scholarly
    Telling Stories: On Culturally Responsive Artificial Intelligence (2020)
    Authors: Batya Friedman, Ryan Calo, Tadayoshi Kohno, Hannah Almeter, Nicholas Logler
  • Response or Comment
    Commuting to Mars: A Response to Professors Abraham and Rabin (2019)
    Virginia Law Review Online Author: Ryan Calo
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    Privacy Law's Indeterminacy (2019)
    Theoretical Inquiries in Law Author: Ryan Calo
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    Regulating Bot Speech (2019)
    UCLA Law Review, 66(Unknown Issue), pp. 988-1028 Authors: Madeline Lamo, Ryan Calo
  • Article Response
    A Long-Standing Debate: Reflections on Risk and Anxiety: A Theory of Data Breach Harms by Daniel Solove and Danielle Keats Citron (2018)
    Texas Law Review Online, 96(Unknown Issue), pp. 59-62, ISBN/ISSN: 0040-4411 Author: Ryan Calo
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    Is Tricking a Robot Hacking? (2018)
    UW Law Digital Commons Authors: Ryan Calo, Ivan Etimov, Earlence Fernandes, Tadayoshi Kohno, David O'Hair
  • Conference Panel Discussion Transcript
    Panel 2: Accountability for the Actions of Robots (2018)
    Seattle University Law Review, 41(4) Authors: Ryan Calo, Howard Jay Chizeck, Elizabeth Joh, Blake Hannaford
  • Book, Chapter in Scholarly Book-New
    Robotica in Context: An Introduction to the Commentaries (2018)
    Robotica: Speech Rights and Artificial Intelligence, pp. 71-74 Author: Ryan Calo
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    Artificial Intelligence Policy: A Primer and Roadmap (2017)
    UC Davis Law Review, 51(Unknown Issue), pp. 37 Author: Ryan Calo
  • Book, Chapter in Scholarly Book-New
    Privacy, Vulnerability, and Affordance (2017)
    Cambridge Handbook of Consumer Privacy, pp. 591-604, ISBN/ISSN: Cambridge Handbook of Consumer Privacy Author: Ryan Calo
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    Robots as Legal Metaphors (2017)
    Harvard Journal of Law and Technology, 30(1) Author: Ryan Calo
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    The Taking Economy: Uber, Information, and Power (2017)
    Columbia Law Review, 117(Unknown Issue), pp. 67 Authors: Ryan Calo, Alex Rosenblat
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    Can Americans Resist Surveillance? (2016)
    University of Chicago Law Review, pp. 23-43 Author: Ryan Calo
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    Privacy and Markets: A Love Story (2016)
    Notre Dame Law Review, pp. 649-690 Author: Ryan Calo
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    Push, Pull, and Spill: A Transdisciplinary Case Study in Municipal Open Government (2016)
    Berkeley Technology Law Journal, pp. 1899-1966 Authors: Jan Whittington, Ryan Calo, Mike Simon, Jesse Woo, Meg Woo, Peter Schmiedeskamp
  • Book, Scholarly-New
    Robot Law (2016)
    pp. 402, ISBN/ISSN: 9781783476725 Author: Ryan Calo
  • When a Robot Kills, Is It Murder or Product Liability? (2016)
    Slate Author: Ryan Calo
  • Magazine/Trade Publication
    App Stores for the Brain: Privacy & Security in Brain-Computer Interfaces (2015)
    IEEE Technology & Society Magazine, 34(2), pp. 32-39 Authors: Tamara Bonaci, Ryan Calo, Howard Chizeck
  • Report
    Augmented Reality: A Technology and Policy Primer (2015)
    Authors: Ryan Calo, T Denning, Batya Friedman, Tadayoshi Kohno, Lassana Magassa, E McReynolds, Bryce Newell, F Roesner, J Woo
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    For Whom the Bell Trolls (2015)
    Boston University Law Review Author: Ryan Calo
  • Book, Chapter in Scholarly Book-New
    Robot-Sized Gaps in Surveillance Law (2015)
    Privacy in the Modern Age: The Search for Solutions, ISBN/ISSN: 9781620971079 Author: Ryan Calo
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    Robotics and the Lessons of Cyberlaw (2015)
    California Law Review, 103(Unknown Issue) Author: Ryan Calo
  • Conference Paper
    Augmented Reality: Hard Problems of Law and Policy (2014)
    ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing, pp. 1283-1288 Authors: Franzi Roesner, Tamara Denning, Bryce Clayton Newell, Tadayoshi Kohno, Ryan Calo
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    Code, Nudge, or Notice? (2014)
    Iowa Law Review, 99(Unknown Issue), pp. 773-802 Author: Ryan Calo
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    Communications Privacy for and by Whom? (2014)
    University of Pennsylvania Law Review Online, 162(Unknown Issue), pp. 231-238, ISBN/ISSN: 1942-8537 Author: Ryan Calo
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    Digital Market Manipulation (2014)
    George Washington Law Review, 82(Unknown Issue), pp. 998-1051 Author: Ryan Calo
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    Privacy Harm Exceptionalism (2014)
    Colorado Technology Law Journal, 12(Unknown Issue), pp. 361-364 Author: Ryan Calo
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    Consumer Subject Review Boards: A Thought Experiment (2013)
    Stanford Law Review Online, 66(Unknown Issue), pp. 97-102 Author: Ryan Calo
  • Journal Article, Professional Journal
    Tiny Salespeople: Mediated Transactions and the Internet of Things (2013)
    IEEE Security & Privacy, 11(5), pp. 3 Author: Ryan Calo
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    Against Notice Skepticism In Privacy (And Elsewhere) (2012)
    Notre Dame Law Review, 87(Unknown Issue), pp. 1027-1072 Author: Ryan Calo
  • Book, Chapter in Scholarly Book-New
    Robots and Privacy (2012)
    ROBOT ETHICS: THE ETHICAL AND SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS OF ROBOTICS, pp. 187-202 Author: Ryan Calo
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    Open Robotics (2011)
    Maryland Law Review, 70(3), pp. 42 Author: Ryan Calo
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    Privacy’s Broken Window: An Invitation to Professor Abril (2011)
    Wake Forest Law Review Author: Ryan Calo
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    The Boundaries of Privacy Harm (2011)
    Indiana Law Journal, 86(3) Author: Ryan Calo
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    The Drone as Privacy Catalyst (2011)
    Stanford Law Review Online, 64(Unknown Issue) Author: Ryan Calo
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    Peeping HALs: Making Sense of Artificial Intelligence and Privacy (2010)
    European Journal of Legal Studies Author: Ryan Calo
  • Journal Article, Academic Journal
    People Can Be So Fake: A New Dimension to Privacy and Technology Scholarship (2010)
    Penn State Law Review, 114(3), pp. 49 Author: Ryan Calo
  • Note
    Scylla or Charybdis: Navigating the Jurisprudence of Visual Clutter (2005)
    Michigan Law Review Author: Ryan Calo

Presentations

  • The Need to Protect Americans’ Privacy and the AI Accelerant (2024)
    U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science & Transportation - Washington, DC
  • Auditing Google’s Search Headlines as a Potential Gateway to Misleading Content: Evidence from the 2020 US Election (2022)
    Stanford Trust and Safety Research Conference - Virtual
  • Bringing Dark Patterns to Light: An FTC Workshop (2021)
    Federal Trade Commission - Virtual
  • Science and Technology Studies Toolkit: A Guide for Handling Mis- and Disinformation (2021)
    University of Notre Dame‘s Technology Ethics Center - Virtual
  • Telling Stories (2021)
    Northwest Science Writers Association (NWSW) - Seattle, WA
  • Enlisting Big Data in the Fight Against Coronavirus (2020)
    U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science & Transportation - Washington, DC
  • The Automated Administrative State (2020)
    Northeastern Law Center for Law, Innovation and Creativity 2020 IP/Tech Lecture Series - Boston, MA USA
  • The Role of Law, Policy and Technology in Countering the Flow of Misinformation (2020)
    iSchool Alumni Association Speaker Series - Virtual
  • Who can we trust? Technology's impact on democracy (2020)
    Town Hall Seattle - Seattle, WA
  • Big Data, Big Decisions (2019)
    Washington State Appellate Judges - Washington
  • Second Global Summit on Tech Policy: Toward Culturally Responsive Artificial Intelligence (2018)
    UW Tech Policy Lab - Seattle, WA
  • Inclusive AI: Technology and Policy for a Diverse Urban Future (2017)
    University of California--Santa Cruz, Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society, Banatao Institute, and Microsoft - California
  • Technology as the Game Changer for Data Protection (2017)
    Start with Privacy Conference, Washington State Office of Privacy and Data Protection - Washington
  • Embodying Data: Artificial Intelligence: Law and Policy (2016)
    The White House and the University of Washington School of Law, Tech Policy Lab - United States
  • Exploring Augmented Reality: Hearing (2016)
    U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science & Transportation - Washington, DC
  • Reflections and Next Steps (2016)
    Artificial Intelligence: Law and Policy, The White House and the University of Washington School of Law, Tech Policy Lab - United States
  • The Effects of Robotics on Economics, Labour and Society (2016)
    The Bundestag (German Parliament), Committee on the Digital Agenda - Berlin, Germany
  • Beyond IRBs: Designing Ethical Review Processes for Big Data Research (2015)
    Future of Privacy Forum - United States
  • Listening Machines (2015)
    Microsoft Research and New York Times R&D Lab Summit - United States
  • Privacy and Markets: A Love Story (2015)
    8th Annual Privacy Law Scholars Conference - Berkeley, California
  • Responsible Innovation: A Cross Disciplinary Lens on Privacy and Security Challenges (2015)
    College of Engineering Public Lectures Series, University of Washington - Seattle, WA
  • Robotics and the Lessons of Cyberlaw (2015)
    Faculty Colloquium, Duke Law School - Durham, North Carolina
  • The Implications of Open Data (2015)
    Conference on Responsible Use of Open Data: Government and the Private Sector, New York University Law School - New York, New York
  • The Surveillance Paradox (2015)
    Law Review Symposium--National Security: The Impact of Technology on Separation of Powers, University of Chicago Law School - Chicago, Illinois
  • Hearing on the Future of Drones in America: Law Enforcement and Privacy Considerations (2013)
    U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary - Washington, DC