Panel: Ask EFF: The Year in Digital Civil Liberties Panel

Presented at DEF CON 16 (2008), Unknown date/time (Unknown duration).

Get the latest information about how the law is racing to catch up with technological change from staffers at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the nation's premiere digital civil liberties group fighting for freedom and privacy in the computer age. This session will include updates on current EFF issues such as NSA wiretapping and fighting efforts to use intellectual property claims to shut down free speech and halt innovation, highlighting our open government efforts with documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act on government surveillance efforts, introducing the Coder's Rights Project, and much more. Half the session will be given over to question-and-answer, so it's your chance to ask EFF questions about the law and technology issues that are important to you.


Presenters:

  • Kurt Opsahl - Senior Staff Attorney, EFF
    Kurt Opsahl is a Senior Staff Attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation focusing on civil liberties, free speech and privacy law. Before joining EFF, Opsahl worked at Perkins Coie, where he represented technology clients with respect to intellectual property, privacy, defamation, and other online liability matters, including working on Kelly v. Arribasoft, MGM v. Grokster and CoStar v. LoopNet. For his work responding to government subpoenas, Opsahl is proud to have been called a "rabid dog" by the Department of Justice. Prior to Perkins, Opsahl was a research fellow to Professor Pamela Samuelson at the U.C. Berkeley School of Information Management & Systems. Opsahl received his law degree from Boalt Hall, and undergraduate degree from U.C. Santa Cruz. Opsahl co-authored "Electronic Media and Privacy Law Handbook." In 2007, Opsahl was named as one of the "Attorneys of the Year" by California Lawyer magazine for his work on the O'Grady v. Superior Court appeal, which established the reporter's privilege for online journalists.
  • Marcia Hofmann - Staff Attorney, EFF
    Marcia Hofmann is an EFF Staff Attorney focusing on government transparency and civil liberties issues. Along with her colleague David Sobel, she established EFF's FOIA Litigation for Accountable Government (FLAG) Project. Prior to joining EFF, Marcia was Director of the Open Government Project at the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), where she spearheaded EPIC's efforts to learn about emerging policies in the post-9/11 era and was lead counsel in several Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits. Documents made public though her work have been reported by the New York Times, Washington Post, National Public Radio, Fox News, and CNN, among others. She is a graduate of the University of Dayton School of Law and Mount Holyoke College.
  • Corynne McSherry - Staff Attorney, EFF
    Corynne McSherry is a Staff Attorney at EFF, specializing in intellectual property and free speech litigation. Representative cases include: Lenz v. Universal (copyright misuse), MoveOn.org et al. v. Viacom International (copyright misuse), Ricciuti et al v. Sony BMG (class action based on music label's use of DRM that introduced security flaws into users' computers), as well as numerous amicus briefs on trademark, copyright and patent issues. Prior to joining EFF, Corynne was a civil litigator at the law firm of Bingham McCutchen, LLP. Corynne holds a Ph.D from the University of California at San Diego, and a J.D. from Stanford Law School. While in law school, Corynne published Who Owns Academic Work?: Battling for Control of Intellectual Property (Harvard University Press, 2001).
  • Eva Galperin - Referral Coordinator, EFF
    Eva Galperin As the referral coordinator, Eva is usually the first person to encounter a request for legal assistance when it is brought to EFF. A lifelong geek, Eva misspent her youth working as a Systems Administrator all over Silicon Valley. Since then, she has seen the error of her ways and earned degrees in Political Science and International Relations from SFSU. She comes to EFF from the US-China Policy Institute, where she researched Chinese energy policy, helped to organize conferences, and attempted to make use of her rudimentary Mandarin skills. Her interests include aerials, rock climbing, opera, and not being paged at 3 o'clock in the morning because the mail server is down. This is her first DEFCON since 2001.
  • Kevin Bankston - Senior Staff Attorney, EFF
    Kevin Bankston an EFF Senior Staff Attorney specializing in free speech and privacy law, was EFF's Equal Justice Works/Bruce J. Ennis Fellow for 2003-05. His fellowship project focused on the impact of post-9/11 anti-terrorism laws and surveillance initiatives on online privacy and free expression. Before joining EFF, Kevin was the Justice William J. Brennan First Amendment Fellow for the American Civil Liberties Union in New York City. At the ACLU, Kevin litigated Internet-related free speech cases, including First Amendment challenges to both the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (Edelman v. N2H2, Inc.) and a federal statute regulating Internet speech in public libraries (American Library Association v. U.S.). Kevin received his J.D. in 2001 from the University of Southern California Law Center, and received his undergraduate degree from the University of Texas in Austin.
  • Jennifer Granick - Civil Liberties Director, EFF
    Jennifer Granick is the Civil Liberties Director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Before EFF, Granick was a Lecturer in Law and Executive Director of the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School where she taught Cyberlaw and Computer Crime Law. She practices in the full spectrum of Internet law issues including computer crime and security, national security, constitutional rights, and electronic surveillance, areas in which her expertise is recognized nationally. Before teaching at Stanford, Jennifer spent almost a decade practicing criminal defense law in California. She was selected by Information Security magazine in 2003 as one of 20 "Women of Vision" in the computer security field. She earned her law degree from University of California, Hastings College of the Law and her undergraduate degree from the New College of the University of South Florida.

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