The Lawfare Podcast

Intel Security's Chris Young gives a talk on the current cybersecurity landscape. And we hold a debate on using Big Data to protect personal privacy, featuring Daniel Weitzner of MIT, Laura Donahue of Georgetown Law, Susan Hennessey of Brookings and Lawfare, Greg Nojeim of the Center for Democracy and Technology, and David Hoffman of Intel: Is Big Data just a privacy threat? Or is it part of the solution too?

Direct download: Episode_168.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 11:03am EDT

This week on the podcast, Benjamin Wittes and Cliff Kupchan talk about the future of U.S-Russia relations and to delve into the Russian intervention in Syria. Kupchan is the Chairman and Practice Head for Eurasia at the Eurasia Group, where he covers Russia’s domestic and foreign policy, as well as its energy sector. He argues that the United States has good reason to talk to and work with Russia on a host of crises, including Syria. While he calls Russia a “revisionist power without a vision,” he also warns that the United States would be foolish to dismiss the country’s concerns out of hand. Instead, American officials should strive to work with Moscow in Syria, where he argues that the national interest requires it, as an anti-Russian obstructionism will benefit neither the United States nor the international community. 

Direct download: Podcast_167--Kupchan_on_Russia.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:29pm EDT

Apple and the FBI may have been settled out of court, but that doesn’t mean the fight is over. With Congress on the verge of considering new legislation to compel technology companies to decrypt data, the Going Dark debate is alive and well. 

Last week on a panel at the IAPP Global Privacy Summit in Washington D.C., Lawfare's Editor-in-Chief Ben Wittes and Daniel Weitzner discussed the fallout from the battle between Apple and the FBI and what is likely to come of the Going Dark debate. Weitzner is the Director of the MIT Internet Policy Research Initiative and Principal Research Scientist at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab; he was formerly the United States Deputy Chief Technology Officer for Internet Policy at the White House. He and Ben parse the contours of the recent dispute between the Bureau and the technology giant, explore the boundaries of commercial use encryption, and debate the role of backdoors in law enforcement investigations. They conclude with thoughts on the policy implications of the latest reemergence of the cryptowars. 

 

Direct download: Episode_166--Daniel_Weitzner_and_Ben_Debate.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 4:44pm EDT

Eric Schwartz, dean of the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota and previously U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees, and Migration, explains why the United States has an interest in alleviating the Syrian refugee crisis. 

Direct download: Episode_165.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:01pm EDT

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