CITP

A lecture by Dr. Richard Linderman, Chief Scientist, Information Directorate, Air Force Research Laboratory, Rome, N.Y ( full biography)

The mission of the US Air Force (AF) is to fly, fight and win in air, space and cyberspace. AF missions are integrated with and enabled by the interdependent network of information technology (IT) infrastructures, including the internet and telecommunication systems, known as cyberspace. With global cyber threat activity growing at an alarming rate, the creation of cyber-based foundational elements are required to form an agile, resilient, trusted, persistent yet affordable cyber infrastructure that can operate in the presence of threats while providing the AF assurance it requires to successfully complete its missions to defend and protect this nation.

Topics will include:

1. Strategic capabilities that develop roots of trust in the cyber infrastructure. Mitigation of supply chain intervention, trust for applications, functions and missions and development of mathematically proven techniques to represent missions, applications and infrastructure for provably correct mission characterizations in contested environments.
2. Creating of the next-generation AF cyber warrior. Selection, education, training, and augmentation, and visualization of cyberspace for superior performance of AF cyber warriors.
3. Development of an affordable, resilient, agile, trusted architectures from a mix of government and commercial components that can avoid, fight through and recover from cyber attacks.
4. Technology for assuring AF missions while cyber threats are avoided, identified, contained or defeated providing AF mission awareness, integrated full spectrum operations and Command, Control and Decision support.

Patents are often opaque and confusing for everyone except patent attorneys. Engineers and scientists are nevertheless encouraged to pursue patents and warned to avoid patent infringement. Policy makers continue to debate about whether the United States’ approach to patents fosters innovation. Companies like Google have paid billions for patent portfolios of their competitors. Congress recently passed new patent legislation. Manny Schecter will present an overview of how patents are created, what makes for strong patents, and why they exist in the first place.

2011 is shaping up to be a year of profound political change, possibly on par with 1989, 1968 or 1848. One of the many unanswered questions raised by the Arab Spring, the London Riots, the Occupy Wall Street movement is the relationship between new media and social change. Ethan Zuckerman, incoming director of MIT’s Center for Civic Media, will examine the relationship between social media and social change in the Arab Spring. More broadly, his talk will serve as an overview of emerging scholarship about media and the Arab Spring, and of research underway at MIT on the emerging field of civic media.

Ethan Zuckerman is director of the Center for Civic Media at MIT, and a principal research scientist at MIT’s Media Lab. With Rebecca MacKinnon, Ethan co-founded international blogging community Global Voices. Global Voices showcases news and opinions from citizen media in over 150 nations and thirty languages. Ethan’s research focuses on issues of internet freedom, civic media in the developing world and cosmopolitanism in a digital age. He blogs at http://ethanzuckerman.com/blog and lives in the Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts.

Reception immediately following in 3rd floor atrium

This event is reserved for Princeton students/faculty/staff only.

The Center for Information Technology Policy (CITP) is a research center located on the third floor of Sherrerd Hall that examines the myriad ways that information technology influences society and introduces policy dilemmas. Our work includes privacy and social media, computer security, broadband policy, government transparency, digital rights management, electronic voting and decision-making, online free speech, and much more. Come at 6:30 pm on October 13th to eat, meet current students and faculty, and learn about:

• our new undergrad certificate
• what recent CITP-affiliated undergrads are up to
• how we can help you find internships, jobs, and graduate studies
• research opportunities at the center
• upcoming events
• how to connect with our visiting scholars, who are experts in their fields
• other tech policy connections on campus

Assuming there is sufficient interest, we may also have a Wii Tennis face-off.

During the June 2011 New Jersey primary election, something went wrong in Cumberland County, which uses Sequoia AVC Advantage direct-recording electronic voting computers. I served as an expert witness in the resulting lawsuit. From this I learned several things (see the full report).

1. New Jersey court-ordered election-security measures have not been effectively implemented.
2. There is a reason to believe that New Jersey election officials have destroyed evidence in a pending court case, perhaps to cover up the noncompliance with these measures or to cover up irregularities in this election. There is enough evidence of a cover-up that a Superior Court judge has referred the matter to the State prosecutor’s office.
3. Like any DRE voting machine, the AVC Advantage is vulnerable to software-based vote stealing by replacing the internal vote-counting firmware. That kind of fraud probably did not occur in this case. But even without replacing the internal firmware, the AVC Advantage voting machine is vulnerable to the accidental or deliberate swapping of vote-totals between candidates. It is clear that the machine misreported votes in this election, and both technical and procedural safeguards proved ineffective to fully correct the error.

The Web has enabled unprecedented levels of communication and sharing, expanding access to information around the globe, while also raising broad concerns about the future of individual privacy. This talk will explore some of the current technology and policy problems under debate – from Do Not Track to the right to be forgotten.

Bios:

Will DeVries is Policy Counsel for Google, focusing on privacy and consumer protection. In that role, Will works on regulatory and legislative issues ranging from social networking to online advertising to government access to records. He also teaches E-Commerce Law and Information Privacy Law at the George Washington University Law School, and speaks regularly on related topics. Prior to Google, Will worked in the Communications, Privacy and Information Law group at WilmerHale LLP. Will is a graduate of Princeton University and the University of California, Berkeley School of Law.

Heather West is a Policy Analyst for Google, focusing on privacy, free expression, and transparency. In that role, Heather works on regulatory and legislative issues from social networking to online advertising to government data. Prior to Google, Heather worked at the Center for Democracy and Technology.

We are in an era of constantly changing and “improving” communications technologies. Electronic access to judicial records and proceedings has the prospect of furthering transparency of the ‘Third Branch’ of government and increasing public trust. On the other hand, there may be times when secrecy or confidentiality mandate that access be restricted. A set of “Best Practices” for confidential and access were issued by the Sedona Conference in 2005. Are these still useful? Does technology require a new approach to balancing access with secrecy or confidentiality? Join us for a day-long presentation on where we were, where we are, and where we may be.

Reception immediately following in 3rd floor atrium

In this talk Julie Cohen will discuss the discourse of information policy reform that has been organized principally around the themes of “access to knowledge” and “network neutrality.” Some information policy problems, however, cannot be solved simply by prescribing greater “openness” or more “neutrality.” In particular, the legal specification of information rights and the design of information architectures should be guided by the need to preserve room for play in the use of cultural resources, the performance of identity, and the ongoing adaptation of artifacts to everyday needs.

Bio:
Julie E. Cohen is a Professor at the Georgetown University Law Center. She teaches and writes about intellectual property law and privacy law, with particular focus on copyright and on the intersection of copyright and privacy rights in the networked information society. She is the author of Configuring the Networked Self: Law, Code, and the Play of Everyday Practice (Yale University Press, forthcoming 2011) and a co-author of Copyright in a Global Information Economy (Aspen Law & Business, 3d ed. 2010), and is a member of the Advisory Boards of the Electronic Privacy Information Center and Public Knowledge.

Thursday, April 28, 2011 - 12:30 PM - 5:00 PM Friday, April 29, 2011 - 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM CITP will host a day-and-a-half W3C workshop at Princeton University on April 28 and 29, 2011.

This workshop serves to establish a common view on possible Recommendation-track work in the Web privacy and tracking protection space at W3C, and on the coordination needs for such work.

The workshop is expected to attract a broad set of stakeholders, including implementers from the mobile and desktop space, large and small content delivery providers, advertisement networks, search engines, policy and privacy experts, experts in consumer protection, and other parties with an interest in Web tracking technologies, including the developers and operators of Services on the Web that make use of tracking technologies for purposes other than to behavioral advertising.

Topics for discussion include, but are not limited to:

• whether a do not track proposal is advisable, and whether there are other means that would achieve the same or similar ends;
• the benefits and challenges of various browser-based approaches, including tracking protection lists and a do not track user preference;
• additional approaches toward better user privacy in the face of frequent online tracking.

All participants are required to submit a position paper by March 25, 2011. W3C membership is not required to participate in this workshop.

For more details:http://www.w3.org/2011/track-privacy/

This conference is free and open to the public. To register, please RSVP using this form. Attendees registered by Monday, March 28, 2011 will receive lunch and a name tag.

China and the United States are two of the leading countries in the world for technology innovation, internet business, and telecommunications. Technology’s rapid evolution is exciting, but it poses challenging policy questions. How does a country best encourage technology innovation in a global marketplace? How do the Chinese and American internet marketplaces differ? What unique policy questions arise on the internet within and between the two countries? What can Americans learn from Chinese expertise in telecommunications and wireless manufacturing? How do these geographically large and diverse countries facilitate broadband buildout and adoption? This event aims to forge bridges between Chinese and American scholars, innovators, and policymakers seeking to better understand their counterparts.