We live in an era of mass surveillance. Private companies monitor our comings and goings, and ad-supported cloud services record and mine our online activities. At the same time, governments have been conducting extensive surveillance in the name of national security. To a large extent, citizens and lawmakers have accepted loss of privacy in exchange for increased security. Can computing technology promote both personal privacy and national security? Panelists will explore how state-of-the-art cryptography, security, networked systems, and data-management technology might enable government agencies to acquire actionable, useful information about legitimate targets of investigation without intruding upon the electronic activity of innocent parties. They will also address the need to use laws and policies in conjunction with technology to hold government agencies accountable for proper use of private information.

Panelists

Joan Feigenbaum, Yale University (Moderator); Whitfield Diffie (2015 Turing Laureate), Stanford University; Bryan Ford, EPFL (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology); Nadia Heninger, University of Pennsylvania; and Paul Syverson, U.S. Naval Research Laboratory