Simon Chesterman, Vice Dean and Professor of Law at the National University of Singapore, and Global Professor and Director of the NYU School of Law Singapore Programme, discusses his new book, One Nation Under Surveillance: A New Social Contract to Defend Freedom Without Sacrificing Liberty. The discussion begins with a brief overview of the NSA and how it garnered the attention of Americans after 9/11. Chesterman discusses the agency’s powers and the problems the NSA encounters, including how to sort through large amounts of data. The discussion then turns to how these powers can become exceptions to constitutional protections, and how such exceptional circumstances can be accommodated. Finally, Chesterman suggests that there has been a cultural shift in western society, where expectations of privacy have dimished with technological and cultural trends, so that information collection by the government is generally accepted. However, he says, society is concerned with how that information is used. According to Chesterman, there should be limits and accountability mechanisms in place for government agencies like the NSA.

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Related Links

• One Nation Under Surveillance: A New Social Contract to Defend Freedom Without Sacrificing Liberty, by Chesterman
• “Warrantless Wiretaps: A Guide to the Debate”, NPR
• Stronger Online Privacy Regulation Comes with Tradeoffs, TIME.com Techland

Derek Bambauer, associate professor of law at Brooklyn Law School, discusses his forthcoming University of Chicago Law Review article entitled Orwell’s Armchair. In the paper, Bambuer writes that America has begun to censor the Internet, and he distinguishes two forms of censorship: hard and soft. He defines hard censorship as open and transparent, and where the government directly controls what information can and cannot be transmitted. Soft censorship, says Bambauer, is indirect, where government tells third parties to prevent users from accessing information, and it’s not clear what is being censored. He submits that if America is going to censor the Internet, it should do so through hard censorship. Indirect censorship strategies, he writes, are less legitimate than direct regulation.

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Related Links

• Orwell’s Armchair, by Bambauer
• “Filtering On The March”, Info/Law
• “Revised ‘Net censorship bill requires search engines to block sites, too”, Ars Technica
• Open Net Initiative

David Brin, a physicist and Hugo and Nebula award-winning science fiction writer, wrote the prescient 1997 nonfiction book, The Transparent Society, which won the Freedom of Speech Award of the American Library Association. He’s written a new essay revisiting the themes of that book and discusses how the ideas presented in The Transparent Society relate to his new essay and to the world today. The government continues to increase its ability to look in on citizens, creating an Orwellian-like society that people may find alarming. According to Brin, reciprocal accountability, which is the ability for people to look back at the government and hold it accountable, is key to minimizing undesirable effects and behaviors. Brin goes on to discuss the benefits of a more pragmatic approach to transparency as opposed to immediate and radical transparency like WikiLeaks.

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Related Links

• davidbrin.com
• “Brin, Transaction costs and Do Not Track”, Jerry Brito
• The Transparent Society

Micah Sifry, co-founder of the Personal Democracy Forum, editor of techPresident.com, and author of the new book, Wikileaks and the Age of Transparency, discusses government transparency. Sifry talks about the various purposes of government transparency, technology’s effect on it, and bi-partisan competition that can promote it. He also discusses Bradley Manning’s case, the evolution of WikiLeaks, and the transparency, or lack thereof, within the WikiLeaks organization.


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Related Links

• “WikiLeaks, Assange, and Why There’s No Turning Back,” by Sifry at the Huffington Post
• “WikiLeaks and the Age of Transparency: Micah Sifry explores the history, successes and failures of online transparency,” BoingBoing
• “April Book of the Month: ‘WikiLeaks and the Age of Transparency,’” Yale Books

Joseph Hall, a postdoctoral researcher at the UC Berkeley School of Information and a visiting postdoctoral fellow at the Princeton Center for Information Technology Policy, discusses e-voting. Hall explains the often muddled differences between electronic and internet voting, and talks about security concerns of each. He also talks about benefits and costs of different voting systems, limits to having meaningful recounts with digital voting systems, why internet voting can be a bad idea, and the future of voting.


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Related Links

• “E-voting and Direct Democracy,” by Hall
• “Security debate grows over Internet voting,” USA Today
• “Hacker infiltration ends D.C. online voting trial,” Washington Post

Declan McCullagh, chief political correspondent for CNET and former Washington bureau chief for Wired News, discusses WikiLeaks. McCullagh gives a quick recap of the WikiLeaks saga so far, comments on the consequences of the leaks themselves, and talks about the broader significance of the affair. He also offers a few insights into Julian Assange’s ideology based on his interactions with Assange in early ’90s cypherpunk circles. Lastly, McCullagh discusses the future of diplomacy and the chance that Assange will be indicted in the United States.


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Related Links

• “DOJ sends order to Twitter for Wikileaks-related account info”, by McCullagh
• “Assange legal case could hang on contradiction”, by McCullagh
• “Amid criticism, WikiLeaks shifts focus”, by McCullagh
• “Wikileaks’ war files disclosure roils Washington”, by McCullagh

Caren Myers Morrison, assistant professor at Georgia State University College of Law, discusses how internet tools are affecting our jury system, which she details in her new paper, Jury 2.0.  She cites examples of jurors using the internet to seek information about cases, Facebook-friending witnesses and defendants, and even blogging about trials on which they are deliberating.  She also expounds upon jury tradition in America, the evolution of impartiality’s definition, jury secrecy and integrity, ramifications of jurors’ internet activities, and the future of the jury — Jury 2.0


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Related Links

• Jury 2.0, by Caren Myers Morrison
• “Judge punishes Michigan juror for Facebook post”, AP
• “As Jurors Turn to Web, Mistrials Are Popping Up”, New York Times
• “Jurors Gone Wild”, Miami New Times

Birgitta Jónsdóttir, Member of the Icelandic Parliament for the Movement party, and one of the chief sponsors of the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative, discusses the initiative.  She explains how it was crafted, who it would protect and how, and Wikileaks’ influence on it.  Jónsdóttir specifically discusses the proposal’s impact on journalists, sources, whistleblowers, libel tourism, superinjunctions, freedom of information, prior restraint, and government transparency.  She also talks about the inspiration behind the initiative, which stems partly from her background as a writer and activist, and her path to the Icelandic Parliament.


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Related Links

• Icelandic Modern Media Initiative
• “Iceland aims to become a legal safe haven for journalists”, guardian.co.uk
• “What will Iceland’s new media laws mean for journalists?”, Nieman Journalism Lab
• “No Secrets: Julian Assange’s mission for total transparency”, The New Yorker
• Birgitta Jónsdóttir official blogspot

Gina Trapani, blogger, author, software developer, and creator of ThinkTank, and Anil Dash, director of Expert Labs and blogging pioneer, talk about Expert Labs, an organization that seeks to improve government by letting policy makers tap into the collective wisdom of the public, and ThinkTank, an open source tool that the White House is using to crowdsource and sort policy ideas, insights, and recommendations offered through social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook.


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Related Links

• “The Next Apollo Project in 140 Characters” at Miller-McCune Online
• Smarterware, Trapani’s blog about how to work smarter with digital tools
• Dashes.com, Dash’s blog about making culture
• This Week in Google podcast with Leo Laporte, Jeff Jarvis, and Gina Trapani
• Six Apart, blogging services for many of the world’s most influential websites, where Dash served as chief evangelist
• Lifehacker, tips and downloads for getting things done, where Trapani served as founding editor

John Wonderlich, the Policy Director at the Sunlight Foundation, discusses the government transparency movement. The discussion also turns to the work of the Sunlight Foundation and Lawrence Lessig’s recent article on “naked transparency.”


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Related Links

• The Sunlight Foundation
• OpenRegs.com
• StimulusWatch.org
• Recovery.gov
• Data.gov
• The Open Government Initiative at the White House
• The Annotated Constitution at the Cornell University Law School
• MAPLight.org
• Against Transparency by Lawrence Lessig at The New Republic