Berkman Podcast: Cass Sunstein and Jonathan Zittrain on Presidential Wiretapping

Last night Harvard Law School Visiting Professor Cass Sunstein spoke with Jonathan Zittrain and Berkman Winter Camp students about the National Security Agency’s surveillance and wiretapping program.

Listen to the Berkman Podcast from last night’s event by clicking here.

It's a pretty intense Q&A on an issue important to all of us.  Here's a snippet from their exchange:

Jonathan Zittrain: "What exactly is going on here? If in fact what is going on...is this kind of data mining exercise, where we would say that every Internet exchange point is potentially being monitored and its contents being copied into a databank, because disk storage is cheap, forever, for the government to peruse at its pleasure...You then have a databank, where if things become Nixonian the ability of the system to heal itself is comprised. I'm not so sure given the extent of the power that we're handing the government which, to my eye, is exactly the power the fourth amendment was meant to speak to and to have meaning about."

Cass Sunstein: "I guess I'd say, I'd want to distinguish between foreign surveilience and domestic surveilience . . . The President has not asserted the authority to monitor a phone call between Chicago and Camdridge."

Jonathan Zittrain: "But don't his arguments suggest that?"

Click here to hear Professor Sunstein's response.  And click here to read more about Cass Sunstein’s talk on the Cyberlaw Wiki.