Jennifer Granick, Center for Internet and Society (CIS) Stanford

The State of Cyber Law
Sp 421, 1500 - 1550, 18 May 2006

Abstract:
Has your privacy become a commodity? Could you be going to jail for a cyber crime you didn't even know you committed?

When the Federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and the Electronic Communications Privacy Act were passed in 1986, most people had a telephone, but that's about it.

Today people have telephones, cell phones, email, instant messenger, web sites and e-commerce. These activities leave a digital trail, not just of phone numbers, but the contents of communications, what we buy, what we read, even our physical location is revealed by cell phone records and ubiquitous video cameras. All this information can be stored forever in easily searchable databases.

Two facts of modern life have become clear: 1. Current privacy laws donŐt deal well with special issues of digital technology, and 2. The computer crime laws are so broad that innocent people are getting convicted without helping security or privacy.

Bio:
Jennifer Stisa Granick joined Stanford Law School in January 2001, as Lecturer in Law and Executive Director of the Center for Internet and Society (CIS). She teaches, speaks and writes on 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.

Granick came to Stanford after almost a decade practicing criminal defense law in California. Her experience includes stints at the Office of the State Public Defender and at a number of criminal defense boutiques, before founding the Law Offices of Jennifer S. Granick, where she focused on hacker defense and other computer law representations at the trial and appellate level in state and federal court. At Stanford, she currently teaches the Cyberlaw Clinic, one of the nation's few law and technology litigation clinics.