March 18, 2014 at 12:30pm ET
Berkman Center for Internet & Society, 23 Everett St, 2nd Floor
Governments around the world are hacking into IT-systems, with deep implications for privacy, IT-security, the legal process and geopolitics. This talk will explore three real-life cases to unpack those implications: the German Constitutional Court ruling on the 'Bundestrojaner' malware, the Dutch 'Bredolab' botnet mitigation and the hacking law proposed in its aftermath, and recent Snowden revelations on making 100.000 routers around the world 'wiretap ready' for ubiquitous surveillance by intelligence agencies. Should governments actually have the ability and the right to hack, and to weaken global communications networks? And do conventional concepts such as privacy and communications secrecy sufficiently capture the status quo, or do we need a new constitutional right for IT-security as proposed by the German court? Addressing these questions sets the stage for an interactive discussion with the audience to formulate an agenda for technical, legal and ethical research, policy and activism.
About Axel
Axel Arnbak is a cybersecurity and information law researcher at the Institute for Information Law, University of Amsterdam. At Berkman, Axel will analyze U.S. and E.U. cybersecurity governance models and their interplay with communications freedoms. In particular, Axel seeks to develop new approaches to communications security governance that apprises constitutional values.
As of September 2013, Axel has published on HTTPS/TLS governance, cloud surveillance by intelligence agencies, communications security conceptualizations and mandatory blocking of The Pirate Bay. His publications have spurred several parliamentary debates on the European and Dutch level, lately on internet surveillance by intelligence agencies on both sides of the Atlantic. His work has been covered by a wide range of (inter)national outlets, a.o. the Financial Times, CBS News, RT, Farsi News, the Hindu Times and the Wall Street Journal. [More..]