These discussions are an ongoing series organized and moderated by Dr. Tara Smith, Professor of Philosophy at UT. They're free and open to the public.

Panelists:

Marc Rotenberg, Executive Director of EPIC, the Electronic Privacy Information Center

Fred Cate, an expert in cyber security law who’s been quoted in recent weeks in the New York Times and & interviewed on NPR

Jim Harper, Director of Information Policy Studies at the Cato Institute

(Fuller bios below)

The format is audience-friendly:  brief presentations by the three guests, followed by about 40 minutes of interview-style dialogue, then about a half hour of questions from the floor

Fuller information about the series is available at: http://www.utexas.edu/cola/orgs/bbtobjectivism/free-speech-dialogues/about-the-series.php

Or at freespeechdialogues.org

And questions can be directed to Amy Hendrick:  [masked],[masked]

Marc Rotenberg is Executive Director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) in Washington, DC. He also teaches information privacy law at Georgetown University Law Center.

Mr Rotenberg has served on both national and international advisory panels, including panels of the OECD and UNESCO, on such topics as Cryptography Policy, Cyberspace Law, and countering spam. He has testified before Congress on a number of issues and currently chairs the American Bar Association’s Committee on Privacy and Information Protection.

A graduate of Harvard College and Stanford Law School, Mr Rotenberg served as Counsel to Senator Patrick J. Leahy on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and has edited or co edited three books: Privacy and Human Rights; The Privacy Law Sourcebook; Information Privacy Law.

A tournament chess player, Mr. Rotenberg won the 2007 Washington, DC Chess Championship.

Fred Cate is a Distinguished Professor Law at Indiana University, where he also  directs the Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research and the Center for Law, Ethics and Applied Research in Health Information. He specializes in privacy, security, and other information law issues, appearing regularly before Congress, government agencies, and professional and industry groups. Professor Cate serves as an advisor or committee member for a number of groups, including Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing Academic Advisory Board, the Department of Homeland Security Data Privacy and Integrity Committee Cybersecurity Subcommittee, and the Defense Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (aka DARPA) Privacy Oversight Board.

Professor Cate is the author of numerous books and articles, appears regularly in the press, and is a founding editor of the journal, International Data Privacy Law. He received his J.D. and his A.B. from Stanford University.

Jim Harper is Director of Information Policy Studies at the CATO Institute, where he works to adapt law and policy to unique problems of the information age in areas such as privacy, telecommunications, intellectual property, and security.

Mr. Harper co-edited Terrorizing Ourselves: How U.S. Counterterrorism Policy Is Failing and How to Fix It  (2010), and is the author of Identity Crisis: How Identification Is Overused and Misunderstood. He is the editor of Privacilla.org, a Web-based think tank devoted exclusively to privacy issues, and was a founding member of the Department of Homeland Security’s Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee.

He publishes both in scholarly and popular forums and his work is widely discussed in various media outlets. Mr. Harper holds a J.D. from the Hastings College of Law.