Digital Future Talk: Andrew Burt on Data, Cyberspace, and the Dangers of the Digital World

Am 14. April findet ein Digital Future Talk als Livestream mit Andrew Burt, Visiting Fellow beim Information Society Project an der Yale Law School, statt. Er wird über die Schwachstellen der Digitalen Welt in Bezug auf Daten und Cyberspace sprechen. Die Veranstaltung findet auf Englisch statt, weitere Informationen untenstehend.

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Data, Cyberspace, and the Dangers of the Digital World –
Digital Future Talk with Andrew Burt
Wednesday, 14 April 2021 | 3 pm CEST | Livestream

For as long as software has been relied upon, officials and researchers alike have been sounding alarm bells about the vulnerability of all our data—sometimes comically, but nonetheless gravely. Here, for example, is how one Congressional report described the issue of data security: “If architects built buildings the way programmers build programs, then the first woodpecker to appear would destroy civilization.” This was in 1989.

Here’s how the head of the Central Intelligence Agency described a variation of the same problem: “We are staking our future on a resource that we have not yet learned to protect.” This was in 1998. Examples of these types of warnings are not hard to find—not because such prognostications require such foresight, but because it is not all that hard to be right about the risks of digital technologies. Their dangers are plentiful, and we use them more and more. Yet layered underneath all our profound privacy and security vulnerabilities, there are also three much less obvious effects of these trends, which form the basis of this essay: Privacy is dead. So is trust. And you’re not who you think you are.

After I overview each trend, I will make a handful of concrete suggestions about what we can and should do to address each development—as lawyers, as policymakers, and as citizens around the world. The sky may seem like it is falling in cyberspace, I will argue, and with good reason, but it need not fall as fast nor land as hard.

Andrew Burt is Managing Partner at bnh.ai, a boutique law firm focused on AI and analytics, and Chief Legal Officer at Immuta. Previously, Andrew served as Special Advisor for Policy to the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Cyber Division, where he served as lead author on the FBI’s after action report for the 2014 attack on Sony, among other assignments.

The event will be moderated by Amélie Heldt, who is is a junior researcher and PhD candidate within Research Programme 1 “Transformation of Public Communication” at the Leibniz-Institute for Media Research | Hans-Bredow-Institut.

To participate in the event, please register using the form below.You will receive the login details on the day of the event.