Lunch will be provided, beginning at 12:00 pm
Talk begins at 12:30 pm
Abstract: Wikileaks, DCleaks, and a host of other examples of mass hacking in recent times, have made headlines around the world, offering insights into politics and public policy impossible to attain under traditional access to information / freedom of information laws and similar transparency measures, while also exposing the private thoughts, personal information, and mundane life details of hundreds of innocent people caught up in the sweeping document dumps to mass privacy violations. This radical new transparency into American politics and media, inevitably raises a range of questions and complex legal, ethical, and public policy challenges, such as when is mass hacking and reports on its leaks legal and ethical (and when should it be)? Is this radical transparency the new normal and, if so, how did we get here and where are we going? Drawing on law, hacker culture (and its history), and present and past information conflicts, this talk will aim to offer insights on these and other questions, including the legal/historical origins of the mass hacking phenomenon, its implications for privacy and democracy in the Post-Snowden world, and ideas on how this new paradigm's excesses may be addressed.
Bio: Jon Penney is a lawyer, doctoral candidate at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford (Balliol College), and a research fellow at the Citizen Lab, Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto. A recent Fellow and then Affiliate at Harvard's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, Jon's interdisciplinary doctoral research explores regulatory chilling effects online and is affiliated with the Takedown Project, a research collective studying online intermediary regulatory systems globally, based at the University of California (Berkeley) School of Law and Columbia University's American Assembly. Jon has also spent time as a Google Policy Fellow at the Citizen Lab and has taught law in both Canada and the U.K. His research, more generally, concerns human rights and information law and policy (and its history), particularly where these areas intersect with privacy, censorship, and security.