2018–2019 Past Events

Deep Fakes: A Looming Challenge for Privacy, Democracy, and National Security with Bobby Chesney and Danielle Citron

12:00PM to 1:30PM

Room 122

Harmful lies are nothing new. But the ability to distort reality has taken an exponential leap forward with “deep fake” technology. This capability makes it possible to create audio and video of real people saying and doing things they never said or did. Machine learning techniques are escalating the technology’s sophistication, making deep fakes ever more realistic and increasingly resistant to detection. Deep-fake technology has characteristics that enable rapid and widespread diffusion, putting it into the hands of both sophisticated and unsophisticated actors.

VLP lunch talk with Solitary Gardens creator jackie sumell and Rodricus Crawford

12:10PM to 1:00PM

SLB 128

jackie sumell is the creator of Solitary Gardens, a public art project that denounces solitary confinement and fosters exchanges between persons in solitary and volunteers on the outside. She is joined by Rodricus Crawford, who was exonerated in 2016 after spending nearly five years on death row in Caddo Parish, Louisiana. Together, they will discuss the project and their work against mass incarceration.

Payson Wolff Talk: Alexandra Roberts

12:00PM to 1:30PM

Baker Hall Room 405

Trademark Use Online

Professor Roberts disccusses her papers "Trademark Failure to Function" and "Mark Talk". Both are about assessing trademark use to establish trademark rights, with a focus on producers’ use in the first work and consumers’ use in the second. 

Inside China's Digital Surveillance State, Megha Rajagopalan, BuzzFeed world correspondent

12:05PM to 1:30PM

Room 122

China's government is implementing mass surveillance programs that are aggressively targeting ethnic minorities and threatening individual privacy rights. Bolstered by tools like facial recognition cameras, predictive policing techniques and data-extraction devices for smartphones, these high-tech programs represent an ambitious effort to reshape and control the behavior of swathes of the country's populace. This talk will offer a window into how people live under surveillance in one of the world's most powerful authoritarian states as well as what it's like to be a journalist there.

Privacy Lab: Tracking Mobile Trackers

1:00PM to 2:00PM

Baker Hall 122

The Android and iOS ecosystems are a privacy minefield, filled with malware and untrustworthy software.  We'll dig into the world of mobile trackers, hidden code that runs inside the majority of apps.  Trackers might insert ads into apps, transmit your location, access personal information, or even follow your movements via ultrasonic tones, undetectable by the human ear.  Privacy Lab has approached the problem from many angles, and we'll explain basic forensic techniques such as static and network analysis.  We'll also demonstrate ultrasonic and bluetooth beacon tracking via the PilferShus

On the Organization of the U.S. Government for Responding to Cyber-Enabled Information Warfare and Influence Operations, Dr. Herb Lin, Stanford University

12:10PM to 1:00PM

Room 122

This talk will contrast cyber-enabled IW/IO to cybersecurity threats, describe the mechanisms underlying the operation of cyber-enabled IW/IO, address future IW/IO threats, and most importantly consider legal and organizational aspects of  how well the U.S. government is organized to respond to Russian cyber-enabled information warfare and influence operations (IW/IO).

Predicting Enemies, Ashley Deeks, Professor University of Virginia Law School

3:00PM to 4:30PM

SLB 120

Actors in our criminal justice system increasingly rely on computer algorithms to help them predict how dangerous certain people and certain physical locations are.

Freedom of Expression in an Age of Surveillance, Jack Balkin, Jennifer Granick, Neil Richards

12:00PM to 1:30PM

Room 122

This panel is the first in a series of events examining the role that the First Amendment should play in assessing the lawfulness of government surveillance.

Diving Into the Dark Web

2:00PM to 3:00PM

Baker Hall Room 122

The Dark Web has a scary reputation.  This workshop will show you how to navigate its waters safely.  We'll dive into Tor, learning all about its censorship-resistant design and how it protects a person's anonymity.  Our discussion will include examples from recent academic research into the Dark Web, and we'll talk about both its seedy and angelic nature.  We'll discover that even social media giants rely upon Tor and actively support the network.  Our journey will include "hidden services" for chat and filesharing, powered by FreedomBox private servers, and we will announce exciting devel

Book Talk: Humans as a Service: The Promise and Perils of Work in the Gig Economy

6:10PM to 7:00PM

Room 122

Cancelled

A discussion with Jeremias Prassl of his new book, Humans as a Service: The Promise and Perils of Work in the Gig Economy. Commentary provided by Professor David Schleicher.