It's break time now at CIS/STLR's Digital Privacy Symposium, so what better time for a blog post? The day has been going well so far -- we've had three of our five panels, everything is going smoothly, and the substantive discussion and comments have been absolutely great.
One thing I've really appreciated so far is the sheer diversity in viewpoints that have been presented today. We've gotten to hear, among others Mr. Downing, a DOJ Computer Crime section prosecutor; Mr. Salgado, who is counsel at Yahoo; Jim Dempsey, policy director at Center for Democracy and Technology; and David Molnar, a grad student / RFID expert from Berkeley...{C}
We've also heard not only from tech savvy professors like Paul Ohm and the always entertaining Orin Kerr, but from criminal experts such as Donald Dripps, Chris Slobogin, and, up next, Alexandra Natapoff and SLS's Bob Weisberg.
Surprisingly, for the most part, they have all been able to speak the same language. There are, of course a bewildering variety of views of what should be the goals of 4th Amendment privacy protection, as well of the means -- Constitutional? statutory interpretation? re-interpretation of prior precedent? The presence of strong pro-government and law enforcement voices, as well as academic voices searching out new solutions, have made for a vibrant debate.
All in all, I feel like a lot of things are being thrown at me at once. Luckily, the event audio is being recorded and will be available soon on the CIS website -- definitely check it out if you aren't able to make today's live event.