Our contemporary debates about cybersecuri ty\, surveillance and the law are steeped in 21st century technology\, but the problem of interception is not new. Surveillance and information warfa re played an essential role in the American revolution and in the negotiati ons that led to independence. Ben Franklin\, John Jay and other founders p articipated in these dark arts\, with varying degrees of success. This tal k will explore this history and consider what it means for us today.
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Timothy H. Edgar is a former national security and intelligenc e official\, cybersecurity expert\, privacy lawyer and civil liberties acti vist. He teaches at Brown University and Harvard Law School.
Edgar la unched his professional career at the American Civil Liberties Union shortl y before the terrorist attacks of September 11\, 2001. He left the ACLU to become the intelligence community’s first deputy for civil liberties in 200 6. Edgar tells the story of trying to make a difference inside America’s gr owing surveillance state in Beyond Snowden: Privacy\, Mass Surveillance and the Struggle to Reform the NSA\, winner of the 2018 Chicago-Kent College o f Law/Roy C. Palmer Civil Liberties Prize.
In 2009\, after President Barack Obama announced the creation of a new National Security Council posi tion “specifically dedicated to safeguarding the privacy and civil libertie s of the American people\,” Edgar moved to the White House\, where he advis ed Obama on privacy issues in cybersecurity policy.
In 2013\, Edgar l eft government for Brown University to help launch its professional cyberse curity degree program. At Brown\, he is a Professor of the Practice of Comp uter Science and a senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. Edgar is a contributing editor to Lawfare and his work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal\, the Los Angeles Tim es\, the Guardian\, Foreign Affairs\, and Wired.
Christopher T. Bavitz is the WilmerHale Clinical Profe ssor of Law and Vice Dean for Experiential and Clinical Education at Harvar d Law School. He is also Managing Director of HLS’s Cyberlaw Clinic\, based at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. And\, he is a Faculty Co-Director of the Berkman Klein Center. Chris has taught courses including the Counseling and Legal Strategy in the Digital Age and Music & Digital M edia seminars\, and he concentrates his practice activities on intellectual property and media law (particularly in the areas of music\, entertainment \, and technology).
Chris oversees many of the Cyberlaw Clinic’s proj ects relating to copyright\, speech\, advising of startups\, and the use of technology to support access to justice\, and he serves as the HLS Dean’s Designate to Harvard’s Innovation Lab. Chris's research and related work at the Berkman Klein Center addresses intermediary liability and online conte nt takedown regimes as well as regulatory\, ethical\, and governance issues associated with technologies that incorporate algorithms\, machine learnin g\, and artificial intelligence.
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