The Annual Privacy Lecture is presented by leading experts in the privacy field. Since its inaugural lecture in 2008, BCLT has been honored to have hosted the following list of distinguished speakers:
- 17th – Indra Spiecker, University of Cologne
- 16th – Daniel Solove, George Washington University Law School
- 15th – Joseph Turow, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
- 14th – Dorothy Roberts, University of Pennsylvania Law School
- 13th – Jon Michaels, UCLA Law School
- 12th – Abraham Newman, Georgetown University
- 11th – Shoshana Zuboff, Harvard Business School
- 10th – Christine Borgman, UCLA School of Education and Information Studies
- 9th – Robert Post, Yale Law School
- 8th – Alessandro Acquisti, Carnegie Mellon University
- 7th – Ross Anderson, Cambridge University
- 6th – Joel Reidenberg, Fordham University
- 5th – Susan Landau, Tufts University
- 4th – Lorrie Cranor, Carnegie Mellon University
- 3rd – Spiros Simitis, Goethe University
- 2nd – Richard Epstein, NYU Law School
- 1st – David Cole, Georgetown University
For more information on each lecture, see below.
17th Annual BCLT Privacy Lecture: Data Privacy on Trial
October 31, 2024 | 3:30 P.M.
International House, Chevron Auditorium
UC Berkeley
Presented by Professor Indra Spiecker, University of Cologne on “Data Privacy on Trial – A Comparative Analysis of Enforcement, Damages, Sanctions, and Standing in EU and U.S. Law” where she analyzed the reach of civil actions by the data subject and administrative actions through independent data protection agencies, of private damages and public sanctions, and of collective prosecutions. This lecture was moderated by Professor Paul Schwartz, UC Berkeley Law, and responses were given by Sari Mazzurco, Dedman School of Law at Southern Methodist University, and Margot E. Kaminski, University of Colorado Law School.
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16th Annual BCLT Privacy Lecture: Murky Consent
September 22, 2023 | 3:30 P.M.
University Club, California Memorial Stadium
UC Berkeley
Presented by Professor Daniel Solove, George Washington Law School, on “Murky Consent: An Approach to the Fictions of Consent in Privacy Law” where he discusses how “murky consent” will help resolve intractable problems with privacy consent. This lecture was moderated by Professor Paul Schwartz, Berkeley Law and responses given by Ari Ezra Waldman, Professor of Law, UC Irvine School of Law, and Rebecca Wexler, Berkeley Law.
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October 14, 2022
3:30 P.M.
University Club, California Memorial Stadium
UC Berkeley
Presented by Joseph Turow, Robert Lewis Shayon Professor of Media Systems & Industries at the University of Pennsylvania Annenberg School for Communications, with responses by Laura Brandimarte, Assistant Professor of Management Information Systems, University of Arizona Eller College of Management, and Fred Turner, Norman Chandler Professor of Communication, Stanford University, and introductions by Kiana Harkema and Katherine Wang, Privacy Law at Berkeley (PrivLab)
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3:30 P.M.
Virtual
13th Annual BCLT Privacy Lecture:
Digital and Physical Company Towns in the Age of Public Capitalism
November 7, 2019
Simon Hall
2745 Bancroft Way
Berkeley, CA
As national security and commercial data sharing issues have become intertwined, the politics of international privacy have been recast. In his BCLT Privacy Lecture, Prof. Newman will explore how privacy is no longer simply a legal tool to safeguard dignity but increasingly a highly politicized policy field used to protect citizens, firms and governments from foreign surveillance.
March 14, 2019
International House
UC Berkeley
2299 Piedmont Avenue
Berkeley, CA
November 16, 2017
Faculty Club
Berkeley, CA
Presented by Christine Borgman, Distinguished Professor and Presidential Chair in Information Studies at UCLA and Director of the UCLA Center for Knowledge Infrastructures, with responses by Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean and Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law, UC Berkeley School of Law and Katie Shilton, Associate Professor, College of Information Studies, University of Maryland. Moderated by Paul Schwartz, Professor at the UC Berkeley School of Law.
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October 6, 2016
Bancroft Hotel
Berkeley, CA
Presented by Robert Post, Yale Law School Dean, with responses by Leslie Kendrick, Professor at UVA Law School, and Eugene Volokh, Professor at UCLA Law School. Moderated by Paul Schwartz, Professor at the UC Berkeley School of Law.
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November 12, 2015
Booth Auditorium, Boalt Hall
Berkeley, CA
Presented by Professor Alessandro Acquisti of Carnegie Mellon University with responses from Joseph Farrell, UC Berkeley, Haksoo Ko, Seoul National University, School of Law, and Jan Whittington, University of Washington. Moderated by Paul Schwartz, Professor at the UC Berkeley School of Law.
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October 6, 2014
Booth Auditorium, Boalt Hall
Berkeley, CA
Presented by Professor Ross Anderson, Cambridge University, with responses by Carl Shapiro of Berkeley Haas, James Aquilina of Quarles & Brady, and Anupam Chander of Georgetown Law. Moderated by Paul Schwartz, Professor at the UC Berkeley School of Law.
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February 28, 2013
Bancroft Hotel
Berkeley, CA
Presented by Professor Joel Reidenberg, Fordham University, with responses by Kurt Wimmer and Professor Anu Bradford. Moderated by Professor Paul Schwartz.
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March 19, 2012
Bancroft Hotel
Berkeley, CA
Presented by Dr. Susan Landau, Tufts University, with responses from Dr. Rolf H. Weber and Dr. Felix Wu. Moderated by Professor Paul Schwartz.
Designers of the first electronic telephone switches nicknamed them the “large immortal machines” because switches last decades. The 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) requires that all digital-switched telephone networks be built wiretap enabled; the law took longevity of switches into account byauthorizing funding to update switches in place. But by failing to analyze how threat models would change in a highly connected IP-based world, CALEA did not consider the longevity of switches prospectively. As an architected security breach, CALEA compliance is a ticking time bomb. Alleviating this was the subject of this talk.
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February 17, 2011
Bancroft Hotel
Berkeley, CA
Presented by Dr. Lorrie Cranor, Carnegie Mellon University, with responses from Dr. Thomas Fetzer and Dr. Jennifer Gove. Moderated by Professor Paul Schwartz.
Visit the conference page for more information. Download the audio from this event.
April 5, 2010
Bancroft Hotel
Berkeley, CA
In this lecture, Professor Spiros Simitis, Goethe University, discussed the famous article by William Prosser, Privacy, which appeared in the California Law Review fifty years ago. He identified the comparable approaches in other legal systems, and especially in German law. He also described and analyzed the gradual replacement of traditional privacy approaches by modern information privacy statutes, which are termed “data protection laws.” He concluded with a depiction of the increasingly awkward situation of privacy against the background of a constantly expanding Internet. Professor Spiros Simitis is the father of modern European information privacy law. Through his scholarship, policy entrepreneurship, and political engagement, he has played a uniquely significant role in shaping major European regulation in the area of privacy.
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March 18, 2009
Bancroft Hotel
Berkeley, CA
Presented by Richard Epstein, Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law, New York University and Director of the Classical Liberal Institute
It is easy to fall into the trap of assuming that legal systems typically resolve dyadic relationships in which a plaintiff seeks to gain something from a defendant. But in the many social settings the operative arrangements involve three or more parties, and the question is how to sort out the arrangements among them. These questions can arise in private law, for example, when one person lends property to a third person for safekeeping. These three cornered problems have generated interesting legal solutions under the law of bailments when property has been destroyed by a third person. More close to home, there is a long line of cases that addresses the question of whether the bailee of tangible property is in a position to claim any privilege of his bailor when that property is sought by government investigators. The mode of search and request may change as we move from tangible documents to cyberspace, but the principle of analysis says the same. Professor Epstein argued that privileges against government intrusion into information are these same in all settings and that the owner of property should not be required to forfeit protection when that information is transferred to third parties.
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April 14, 2008
Bancroft Hotel
Berkeley, CA
Presented by: David Cole, Georgetown University
In the first two years after 9/11, U.S. authorities detained over 5,000 foreign nationals in anti-terrorism preventive detention measures. Today, all have been released, and not one stands convicted of a terrorist offense. In the United Kingdom, by contrast, authorities rounded up far fewer suspects in the wake of September 11 or their own terrorist subway and bus bombings on July 7, 2005. At the same time, privacy protections in the UK appear to be substantially less robust than in the United States, as a matter of law and practice. Closed-circuit television cameras are ubiquitous, the police have been authorized to make suspicionless stop-and-frisks throughout London since 9/11, and wiretapping is subject to far less oversight than in the US. We often talk about the balance between liberty and security, but this comparison suggests that there may also be significant trade-offs between liberties. The less a government knows about where threats lie, the more likely it may be to conduct expansive sweeps and preventive detention in the face of a security threat. A comparison of the UK and US response to terrorism suggests that trade-offs between rights may themselves be as fraught, and as significant, as the trade-offs between rights and security.
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