Internet Freedoms and Their Consequences - An Evening Debate with Andrew McLaughlin & Evgeny Morozov

Evgeny Morozov and Andrew McLaughlin will debate the sincerity, utility and repercussions of America's commitment to a free Internet. They will discuss the desireability of network neutrality and network regulation in the context of US foreign policy, the ways to balance user privacy with the growing needs of law enforcement agencies; and the emerging threats to freedom of expression that are inherent in the technical design as well as the business imperatives of today's Web.

Andrew McLaughlin is a technology law and policy nerd. He is Executive Director of Civic Commons, a new non-profit that help cities and other governments share and implement low-cost technologies to improve public services, management, accountability, transparency, and citizen engagement. He is also a director of Code for America and is a Non-Residential Fellow for the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. From 2009-2011, Andrew McLaughlin served on President Obama's White House staff as Deputy Chief Technology Officer of the United States, focusing on Internet, technology, and innovation policy, including open government, cybersecurity, online privacy and free speech, federal R&D priorities, spectrum policy, entrepreneurship, and building open technology platforms for health care, energy efficiency, and education. In 2000, Time Magazine named Andrew one of its Digital Dozen. In 2001, he was named a Global Leader for Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum. He is a fellow of the Young Leaders Forum of the National Committee on US-China Relations.

Evgeny Morozov is the author of The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom. Morozov is currently a visiting scholar at Stanford University and a Schwartz fellow at the New America Foundation. He is a contributing editor to Foreign Policy and Boston Review. He was formerly a Yahoo! fellow at the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University and a fellow at George Soros's Open Society Institute, where he remains on the board of the Information Program. Before moving to the US, Morozov was Director of New Media at Transitions Online, a Prague-based media development NGO active in 29 countries of the former Soviet bloc. Morozov's writings have appeared in The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Newsweek, The Washington Post, The International Herald Tribune, The Globe and Mail, The New Republic, Times Literary Supplement, Prospect, The Sunday Times, The Boston Globe, Slate, Le Monde, San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Review, Foreign Policy, Project Syndicate, Dissent and many other publications