Presented at
HOPE X (2014),
July 20, 2014, 11 a.m.
(60 minutes)
Service providers have always had to shoulder a tremendous ethical burden because of the volume of personal information they hold, including files, metadata, and geolocation data. Some, like Calyx and Lavabit, have been willing to take extra steps to protect their customers' privacy rights. After Edward Snowden's revelations about the U.S. government, some larger providers have become more willing to fight for their users in court or speak publicly about surveillance demands. But many court dockets remain sealed. This talk will explore the telecommunications privacy landscape as we now know it, including the extent of the surveillance regime that some of us suspected all along. The focus will be on best practices for service providers at many levels: software design, API design, network design, policy, and more.
Presenters:
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Nicholas Merrill
Nicholas Merrill is the executive director of The Calyx Institute, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to educate the public about privacy in digital communications and to develop and test building blocks that service providers can use to build "privacy by design" into their service offerings. In a previous career, he was the president of Calyx Internet Access, one of the first ISPs in New York City, founded in 1994. He was the plaintiff in Doe v. Ashcroft - the first legal challenge to the USA PATRIOT Act's National Security Letters provision.
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Ladar Levison
Ladar Levison is the founder of Lavabit, LLC. Founded in 2004 (and originally named Nerdshack), Lavabit served as a place for free private and secure email accounts. By August of 2013, Lavabit had grown to over 410,000 users, with more than 10,000 paid subscribers. He created Lavabit because he believes that privacy is a fundamental, necessary right for a functioning, fair, and free democracy. On August 8, 2013, he made the bold decision to shut down his business after "refusing to become complicit in crimes against the American people." Presently, he is serving as the project manager and lead architect for the Dark Mail Initiative, while continuing to vigorously advocate for the privacy and free speech rights of all Americans.
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Declan McCullagh
Declan McCullagh is the chief political correspondent for CNET. Previously, he was a senior correspondent for CBS News' website, and was for four years the Wired bureau chief in Washington, D.C., where he spent over a decade before moving to the San Francisco Bay Area. An award-winning journalist, Declan writes and speaks frequently about technology, law, and politics; his work has appeared in scores of publications including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times Magazine, Playboy Magazine, Communications of the ACM, and the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy.
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