CITP

Was 2012 a watershed moment in the evolution of data on campaigns or just a billion dollar snow job? What information do modern political campaigns really have access to, how do they use it, and where do we go from here? Join the Data Director from Obama’s 2012 campaign for a revealing look at the fact and fiction behind the brave new world of American political campaigning.

Ethan is a failed performance artist who works in American politics. Currently the Executive Director of NOI, he ran the Data department for the Obama presidential campaigns in 2008 and 2012, pioneering the use of a large-scale data operation to support individualized, relationship-based organizing. His experience also includes local and federal political campaigns as well as pro-labor and gay rights advocacy. Ethan has also done extensive work in Election Administration including managing the Voting Information Project in partnership with Pew and Google in 2009 and 2010.

Today it is easier to record and analyze information about what each of us says and does more than ever before. And while this used to be true primarily about activity on the Internet, today's incredibly cheap cameras and sensors mean that constant data collection is rapidly proliferating in the offline world. Given this inexorable trend, will there be any privacy left? In particular, what is to become of restrictions on the government's power to engage in surveillance of private citizens, and what will the Fourth Amendment's prohibition on "unreasonable searches" mean in the 21st century? Join an attorney with the ACLU's Speech, Privacy & Technology Project for a tour of the organization's recent work to ensure that as technology advances, civil liberties will not be left behind. Topics will include the ACLU's recent litigation against the NSA's mass call-logging program.

Catherine Crump is a staff attorney with the ACLU's Speech, Privacy & Technology Project as well as a non-residential fellow at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. For the past eight years, she has been on the forefront of litigation and advocacy in the area of free speech, privacy and new technologies. She has testified before Congress and the European Parliament about such topics as warrantless cell phone tracking and the NSA's mass call-logging program, and has presented argument before courts around the country.

In the early years of the third millenium, most professors are still teaching in virtually the same way they were taught and their teachers were taught, stretching back centuries. This situation is likely to change, and soon. Technology is transforming (if not threatening to overwhelm) higher education, as MOOCs and online content become widely available. University students seeking to learn a topic who now have little if any choice are about to be presented with a vast array of choices. What student would not want to swap a tired professor writing slowly on a chalkboard for a well-produced series of videos and associated content, given by a world leader in the field? We are on the verge of a transformation on the scale of the transformation wrought by Gutenburg. This imminent change raises a host of fascinating and far-reaching questions.

Robert Sedgewick is the founding chair and the William O. Baker Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Princeton and a member of the board of directors of Adobe Systems.

Professor Sedgewick's research interests revolve around algorithm design, including mathematical techniques for the analysis of algorithms. He has published widely in these areas and is the author of sixteen books, including a well-known series of textbooks on algorithms that have sold over one-half million copies. His other recently published books are An Introduction to Programming in Java: An Interdisciplinary Approach (with K. Wayne) and Analytic Combinatorics (with P. Flajolet). He is currently actively engaged in developing web content and online courses based on these books.

Join us for a panel discussion on the evolving legal, policy, and technical issues associated with the use of personal mobile devices for work. The panelists will explore the tension between the need to protect business information (including personal information for which businesses are responsible) and respect for users’ privacy and personal content. The current advantages and limitations of “sandboxing”technology will be covered, focusing on opportunities for enhanced information security (on the business side) and privacy (on the personal side).

The panelists will be Keith Epstein, General Attorney & Associate General Counsel Advanced Mobility Solutions, AT&T Services, Inc.; Bart Huffman, Privacy & Data Security Practice, Locke Lord LLP; and Andy Aiello, Chief Operating Officer, OpenPeak, Inc., which provides multimedia touch-screen device and device management platforms.

Streaming Live: https://www.youtube.com/user/citpprinceton

Privacy is currently undergoing a phase transition as digital technologies collect, combine, and reveal deeply personal information about us at any unprecedented scale. This conference will bring together experts in computer science and public policy to examine three key questions that define the new era of “big privacy”— aggregate big-data style analytics applied to private data. This shift alters our understanding of what constitutes personal information. It raises new questions as monitoring expands from our computers to our everyday activities in the physical world. It calls for new approaches to measuring the collection and use of data, and the implications of inferences made from data. Academics, policymakers, and practitioners will convene in Princeton to discuss these challenges.

Please register.

The result of the 2012 election are in, and the millions of people who signed petitions, called Congressional offices and otherwise protested SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act) want to know: What does it mean for the Internet? Gigi Sohn, President and CEO of the public interest organization Public Knowledge, will talk about what technology policy issues the next President and Congress will focus on over the next term. She will also discuss a number of critical technology policy cases now in the federal courts that could have a great impact on whether the Internet stays open and free. These issues include: copyright enforcement, copyright reform, broadband competition, network neutrality, data caps and the future of the first sale doctrine. She will also discuss the changing role of government in protecting Internet users.

The Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton is pleased to host “E-Voting: Risk and Opportunity,” a live streamed symposium on the state and future of voting technology. At 1:30pm (Eastern) on November 1, 2012, electronic voting experts from across the United States will discuss what to expect on Election Day, how we might build a secure, convenient, high-tech voting system of the future, and what policymakers should be doing. The current U.S. e-voting system is a patchwork of locally implemented technologies and procedures — with varying degrees of reliability, usability, and security. Different groups have advocated for improved systems, better standards, and new approaches like internet-based voting. Panelists will discuss these issues and more, with a keynote by Professor Ron Rivest, one of the pioneers of modern cryptography. You can watch the event streamed live at https://citp.princeton.edu, or view the recording after the event.

Hashtag: ask questions and add comments via Twitter at #PrincetonEvoting

On September 16, 2011, President Obama signed the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA), the most significant change to the US Patent system since the Patent Act of 1952. The result of years of efforts to revise and reform the laws governing patent practice in the US, many consider the AIA to be a success. However, the AIA is not without its critics. “Patent Success or Failure?” will bring together government officials, judges, lawyers, and academics to consider the effects of the AIA on the patent landscape.

Registration required

What if trademark law applied and used information theory as a guide? Trademark law invokes information and search costs to explain its structure and normative outcomes. In this view trademarks are vessels of information, create information marketplaces, and even exhibit signal and noise characteristics. This talk applies Shannon’s view of information to analyze trademark law’s conception of information, challenge some presumptions of trademark law, and explore what trademark law can learn from an information based account of trademarks.

Deven Desai is a law professor and currently on leave. While on leave, he is serving as Academic Research Counsel at Google, Inc. As a law professor, he teaches trademark, intellectual property theory, and information privacy law. He was also a Visiting Fellow at Princeton University’s Center for Information Technology Policy. Professor Desai’s scholarship examines how business interests and economic theories shape privacy and intellectual property law and where those arguments explain productivity or where they fail to capture society’s interest in the free flow of information and development.

His articles include From Trademarks to Brands, Florida Law Review (2012) (forthcoming); The Life and Death of Copyright 2011 Wisc. Law Review 220 (2011); Brands, Competition, and the Law 2010 BYU Law Review 1425 (2010) (Spencer Waller co-author); Privacy? Property?: Reflections on the Implications of a Post-Human World 18 Kansas J. of Law & Public Policy (2009); Property, Persona, and Preservation, 81 Temple Law Review 67 (2008); and Confronting the Genericism Conundrum, 28 Cardozo Law Review 789 (2007) (Sandra L. Rierson, co-author).

Copyright enforcement in the digital era has been an ongoing game of cat-and-mouse. As new technologies emerge for storing and transmitting creative works, content creators struggle to identify the best response. The content industry has employed different tactics over time — including technological copy protection, litigation against infringers, and collaboration with Internet Service Providers (ISPs). In August of 2011, some members of the content industry signed an historic Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with some of the largest ISPs, agreeing to a “graduated response” system of policing. ISPs agreed to notify their subscribers if allegedly infringing activity was detected from their connection and, if infringement continued after multiple warnings, to impede access. Meanwhile, a wave of “copyright troll” litigation has continued to sweep the country and burden the courts. Use of takedown notices under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act has continued to evolve. This event will examine enforcement efforts to date, and debate the merits of the new private approach embodied in the MOU framework. It will feature discussions between members of the content industry, internet service providers, web companies, and academics.

For more information and to register: https://citp.princeton.edu/event/copyright-cat-and-mouse/