Privacy Rights and Wrongs: Balancing Moral Priorities for the 21st Century (2009)

April 21 2009 | Lincoln Center Campus

With presentations from well-known academics and experts, this multidisciplinary conference explored a number of issues related to the topic of privacy and privacy rights, especially in light of recent technological developments and current concerns about terrorism. In addition, this conference addressed the problem of defining and defending “privacy rights” within the context of varying legal, moral, and political discourses, as well as the importance of understanding the value of privacy against the backdrop of other values and concerns, such as the doing of justice, the preserving of the common good, and the maintenance and fostering of personal accountability.

Speakers

• • Anita L. Allen
    Henry R. Silverman Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy
    University of Pennsylvania
    Anita L. Allen is a leading expert on privacy law and contemporary ethics. She is a graduate of Harvard Law School and earned a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Michigan. Allen is the author of Unpopular Privacy (Oxford, 2010); Privacy Law and Society (West, 2007); Why Privacy Isn’t Everything: Feminist Reflections on Personal Accountability (2003); Uneasy Access: Privacy for Women in a Free Society (1988); and The New Ethics: A Guided Tour of the 21st Century Moral Landscape (2004). Allen has been a visiting Professor at Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Waseda University in Tokyo. Allen serves as a consultant to law firms, businesses, and government. She has lectured at major colleges and universities across the United States and abroad. Allen has appeared on numerous nationally broadcast television and radio programs. Allen frequently contributes to popular magazines, newspapers, and websites, and sits on the boards of organizations that include the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the Hastings Center and the Association of Practical and Professional Philosophy

• • Barbara Hilkert Andolsen
    James and Nancy Buckman Chair in Applied Christian Ethics
    Professor, Theology Department
    Fordham University
    Dr. Andolsen is the James and Nancy Buckman Chair in Applied Christian Ethics in the Theology Department at Fordham University. Prior to coming to Fordham, she was the Helen Bennett McMurray Chair in Social Ethics at Monmouth University. Dr. Andolsen is the author of three books, editor of one volume, and author of numerous journal articles and book chapters. She has served on the board of the Society of Christian Ethics and received the Ann O’Hara Graff Memorial Award for contributions to feminist theology at the Catholic Theological Society of America conference in 2008.

• • Amitai Etzioni, Keynote Speaker
    University Professor of International Affairs and Director, Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies
    The George Washington University
    After receiving his PhD in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley in 1958, Dr. Amitai Etzioni served as a Professor of Sociology at Columbia University for 20 years; part of that time as the Chairman of the department. He was a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution in 1978 before serving as a Senior Advisor to the White House from 1979-1980. In 1980, Dr. Etzioni was named the first University Professor at The George Washington University, where he is the Director of the Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies. From 1987-1989, he served as the Thomas Henry Carroll Ford Foundation Professor at the Harvard Business School.
    Dr. Etzioni served as the president of the American Sociological Association in 1994-95, and in 1989-90 was the founding president of the international Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics. In 1990, he founded the Communitarian Network, a not-for-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to shoring up the moral, social and political foundations of society. He was the editor of The Responsive Community: Rights and Responsibilities, the organization’s quarterly journal, from 1991-2004. In 1991, the press began referring to Dr. Etzioni as the ‘guru’ of the communitarian movement.Dr. Etzioni is the author of numerous books, including The Monochrome Society (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), The Limits of Privacy(New York: Basic Books, 1999), The New Golden Rule (New York: Basic Books, 1996), which received the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s 1997 Tolerance Book Award, The Spirit of Community (New York: Crown Books, 1993), The Moral Dimension: Toward a New Economics, (New York: Free Press, 1988), My Brother’s Keeper: A Memoir and a Message (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), and From Empire to Community: A New Approach to International Relations (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). His latest book Security First: For a Muscular, Moral Foreign Policy was published by Yale University Press in the Spring of 2007.
    Outside of academia, Dr. Etzioni’s voice is frequently heard in the media. In 2001, he was named among the top 100 intellectuals as measured by academic citations in Richard Posner’s book, Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline.Also in 2001, Dr. Etzioni was awarded the John P. McGovern Award in Behavioral Sciences as well as the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. He was also the recipient of the Seventh James Wilbur Award for Extraordinary Contributions to the Appreciation and Advancement of Human Values by the Conference on Value Inquiry, as well as the Sociological Practice Association’s Outstanding Contribution Award.

• • Jennifer Stisa Granick
    Civil Liberties Director
    Electronic Frontier Foundation
    Jennifer Granick is the Civil Liberties Director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Before EFF, Granick was a Lecturer in Law and Executive Director of the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School where she taught Cyberlaw and Computer Crime Law. She practices in the full spectrum of Internet law issues including computer crime and security, national security, constitutional rights, and electronic surveillance, areas in which her expertise is recognized nationally. Before teaching at Stanford, Jennifer spent almost a decade practicing criminal defense law in California. She was selected by Information Security magazine in 2003 as one of 20 “Women of Vision” in the computer security field. She earned her law degree from University of California, Hastings College of the Law and her undergraduate degree from the New College of the University of South Florida.

• • Helen Nissenbaum
    Professor, Media, Culture & Communication
    New York University
    Helen Nissenbaum is Professor of Media, Culture and Communication, and Computer Science, at New York University, where she is also Senior Faculty Fellow of the Information Law Institute. Her areas of expertise span social, ethical, and political implications of information technology and digital media. Nissenbaum’s research publications have appeared in journals of philosophy, politics, law, media studies, information studies, and computer science. She has written and edited three books and a fourth, Privacy in Context: Technology, Policy, and the Integrity of Social Life, is due out in 2009, with Stanford University Press. The National Science Foundation, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Ford Foundation, and U.S. Department of Homeland Security have supported her work on privacy, trust online, and security, as well as several studies of values embodied in computer system design, including, search engines, digital games, and facial recognition technology. Nissenbaum holds a PhD in philosophy from Stanford University and a BA (Hons) from the University of the Witwatersrand. Before joining the faculty at NYU, she served as Associate Director of the Center for Human Values at Princeton University.

• • Joel R. Reidenberg
    Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs and Associate Chief Academic Officer
    Professor of Law and Founding Director of the Center on Law & Information Policy
    Fordham University
    Joel R. Reidenberg is the Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs/Associate Chief Academic Officer of Fordham University and holds the rank of Professor of Law. He is also the Founding Director of the Fordham Center on Law and Information Policy. Dr. Reidenberg’s published books and articles explore both information privacy and information technology law and policy. He has served as an expert adviser to the U.S. Congress, the Federal Trade Commission and the European Commission on data privacy matters and has chaired the Section on Defamation and Privacy of the Association of American Law Schools (the academic society for American law professors) and is a former chair of the association’s Section on Law and Computers. Dr. Reidenberg received an AB degree from Dartmouth College, a JD from Columbia University, and both a DEA droit international économique and a PhD in law from the Université de Paris-Sorbonne. He is admitted to the Bars of New York and the District of Columbia.

• • Noah Shachtman
    Contributing Editor
    Wired Magazine
    Noah Shachtman is a contributing editor at Wired magazine, and the editor of its national security blog, “Danger Room,” which won the Online Journalism Award for best beat reporting. He’s written about technology, national security, politics, and geek culture for The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Village Voice, Slate, Salon, Esquire, Popular Science, The New York Post, Popular Mechanics, The American Prospect Online, The Forward, The New York Times Magazine, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and others. He’s been interviewed by the Associated Press, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS radio, NPR, BBC radio—as well as by newspapers, radio programs, and television stations across the country. Before turning to journalism, Shachtman worked as a professional bass player, book editor, and campaign staffer on Bill Clinton’s first presidential campaign. He lives in New York City with his wife, Elizabeth.

• • Daniel Solove
    Professor of Law
    The George Washington University Law School
    Daniel J. Solove is a professor of law at the George Washington University Law School. An internationally-known expert in privacy law, Solove is the author of several books, including Understanding Privacy (Harvard 2008), The Future of Reputation: Gossip and Rumor in the Information Age (Yale 2007) (winner of the 2007 McGannon Award), and The Digital Person: Technology and Privacy in the Information Age (NYU 2004). Professor Solove is also the author of a textbook, Information Privacy Law with Aspen Publishing Co. now in its third edition, with co-author Paul Schwartz. Solove has published more than 30 articles and essays, which have appeared in leading law reviews such as the Yale Law Journal, Stanford Law Review, California Law Review, Michigan Law Review, NYU Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and Duke Law Journal. Professor Solove has testified before Congress and has been interviewed and featured in several hundred media broadcasts and articles, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, USA Today, Associated Press, Time, Newsweek, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, and NPR. A graduate of Yale Law School, he clerked for Judge Stanley Sporkin, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and Judge Pamela Ann Rymer, U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. He also worked at the law firm Arnold & Porter in Washington, DC. Professor Solove teaches information privacy law, criminal procedure, criminal law, and law and literature. He blogs at www.concurringopinions.com, which in 2007 and 2008 was selected by the ABA Journal as among the 100 best law blogs.

• Valerie Steeves
  Assistant Professor, Department of Criminology
  University of Ottawa
  Valerie Steeves (JD, PhD) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Criminology at the University of Ottawa. Her main area of research is human rights and technology issues. Professor Steeves has written and spoken extensively on privacy from a human rights perspective, and is currently a researcher with the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada-funded New Transparency project at Queen’s University, which is examining surveillance as a technology of governance in late modern societies. Professor Steeves is also an active participant in the privacy policy making process and a frequent intervener before parliamentary committees on technology and human rights issues. She is a member of the Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Technical Committee on Privacy of the Canadian Standards Association, and Chair of the National Privacy Coalition. In 2004, Professor Steeves she was awarded the Labelle Lectureship at McMaster University, a juried prize that recognizes scholars engaged in cutting-edge multi-disciplinary research who are challenging existing methods or accepted ideas.