The Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School is a leader in the study of the law and policy around the Internet and other emerging technologies.
The Internet was going to set us all free. At least, that is what U.S. policy makers, pundits, and scholars believed in the 2000s. The Internet would undermine authoritarian rulers by reducing the government’s stranglehold on debate, helping oppressed people realize how much they all hated their government, and simply making it easier and cheaper to organize protests. Read more about Democracy's Dilemma
Amazon founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos on Thursday debuted a new lunar landing module, to be constructed by his space exploration company, Blue Origin. Read more about Jeff Bezos’s new plans for space have stirred up old fights in science fiction
Gavin Williamson was just fired as Britain’s defense secretary after being accused of leaking information. Read more about Britain’s defense secretary was just fired over Huawei. Here’s what’s going on.
Last week, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo complained about Republicans in Congress who were grandstanding for harsher sanctions on Iran. Now, he has joined the grandstanders, announcing that the Trump administration is stepping up its maximum pressure campaign against Iran by ending waivers that had allowed some states to import Iranian crude oil. Read more about By Punishing Iran, Trump Is Weakening America
We are constantly exposed in public. Yet most of our actions will fade into obscurity. Do you, for example, remember the faces of strangers who stood in line with you the last time you bought medicine at a drugstore? Probably not. Thanks to limited memory and norms against staring, they probably don’t remember yours either. Read more about Why You Can No Longer Get Lost in the Crowd
Russell Muirhead and Nancy Rosenblum’s new book, “A Lot of People Are Saying: The New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy,” comes out today. I asked them how their theories applied to modern American politics, including Attorney General William P. Barr’s suggestion that the FBI spied on the Trump campaign. Read more about The attorney general’s FBI conspiracy theory is all conspiracy and no theory
Kenneth Scheve (@kfscheve) is professor of political science at Stanford University, and David Stasavage (@stasavage) is dean for the social sciences and the Julius Silver professor in the politics department at New York University. They are the authors of the recent book, “Taxing the Rich: A History of Fiscal Fairness in the United States and Europe.” I asked them what their findings meant for current proposals to tax rich people. Read more about AOC and Elizabeth Warren want higher taxes on the rich. Selling that is tricky.
This week, the House will vote on H.R. 1644, introduced by Rep. Mike Doyle, which would reinstate the net neutrality protections of the FCC’s 2015 Open Internet Order as of January 19, 2017. H.R. 1096, a competing measure introduced by Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, purports to restore the Open Internet Order’s rules against blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization, as well as the transparency rule.
Both bills have been touted as means to restore comprehensive net neutrality protections for all Americans.
Human rights lawyers have sued Sri Lankan presidential hopeful Gotabaya Rajapaksa in federal court in the Central District of California. Rajapaksa, who is a joint Sri Lankan-U.S. citizen, was served with process in the parking lot of a Trader Joe’s, of all places. Read more about BREAKING: Sri Lankan Presidential Hopeful Sued in Federal Court for Human Rights Violations
Nine years ago, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg claimed that people do not care about privacy. Things have changed. Last week, he called for the US and other countries to adopt comprehensive privacy protection in line with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, shortly after he had promised to rebuild Facebook around an encrypted privacy-focused platform. Read more about Facebook is finally learning to love privacy laws