CDT POLICY POST Volume 8, Number 5, March 7, 2002

A BRIEFING ON PUBLIC POLICY ISSUES AFFECTING CIVIL LIBERTIES ONLINE
from
THE CENTER FOR DEMOCRACY AND TECHNOLOGY

CONTENTS:

(1) CFP2002 in San Francisco: Early Registration Deadline Approaching

(2) Sessions on Constitutional Law, Consumer Privacy, ICANN and 9/11 Response Feature CDT Staff

(1) CFP2002 IN SAN FRANCISCO: EARLY REGISTRATION DEADLINE IS MARCH 14

The Computers, Freedom and Privacy (CFP) conference is the pre-eminent forum for issues regarding democracy and technology. This year, it will be April 16-19 in San Francisco, California.

2002 marks CFP's 12th anniversary. As the Internet has grown, the conference has been able to maintain the collective and inclusive nature so elegantly chronicled in Bruce Sterling's book _Hacker Crackdown_. The CFP audience is as diverse as the Net itself, with attendees from the community of computer professionals, hackers, crackers and engineers who work the code of cyberspace as well as those from government, business, education, and non-profits grappling with the technology's public policy implications.

CFP is run on a non-profit basis under the auspices of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). All the planning work is done by volunteers - contributing to its wonderfully collaborative atmosphere.

March 14 is the deadline for early registration -- fees go up thereafter. Hotel discounts end on March 16.

For the schedule of events, general info and online registration, visit the CFP2002 site: http://www.cfp2002.org.

(2) SESSIONS ON LAW, PRIVACY, INTERNET GOVERNANCE, AND GLOBAL INTERNET POLICY ISSUES TO FEATURE CDT STAFF

The program this year features many of the preeminent thinkers and policy makers in the field, including featured speakers such as California Attorney General Bill Lockyer, US Federal Trade Commission Chairman Timothy Muris, author James Bamford, John Perry Barlow, State Senator Jackie Speier, former Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications Larry Irving, and author Bruce Sterling, among others.

CDT staff will be participating in many of this year's sessions:

CDT's Executive Director Jerry Berman will be on a panel entitled "PATRIOT and Privacy" to discuss the implications of the USA PATRIOT Act on communications monitoring by law enforcement.
Deputy Director James Dempsey will examine the various Internet policy challenges activists face around the globe and how those issues are being debated and regulated in a session called "Getting it Right: Global Internet Policy Issues."
Associate Director Alan Davidson will moderate a panel on "ICANN in Year 3" to debate whether ICANN's promise as a bottom-up global self-governing Internet body is actually possible.
CDT Staff Counsel John Morris will moderate a session on the open source movement and the standards process, which is expected to feature input from publisher and open source guru Tim O'Reilly.
CDT Staff Counsel Paula Bruening will be on a panel exploring the current state of consumer education in the area commercial privacy, highlighting CDT's continuing work on http://www.ConsumerPrivacyGuide.com.
CDT Policy Fellow Mike Godwin will teach both lawyers and non-lawyers about the basics of constitutional law and policy issues on the Internet in his always-popular tutorial "Constitutional Law in Cyberspace."
Other sessions will take up such diverse issues as biometrics, national and international security, activism, privacy, and intellectual property.

CDT has taken an active role in CFP preparations, through in-kind sponsorship, membership on the conference's program committee, and most especially through the work of Assocaite Director Ari Schwartz, who serves as CFP 2002 Chair.

Detailed information about online civil liberties issues may be found at http://www.cdt.org/.

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