Academic Programs From
Case Western Reserve University

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Case Western Reserve University

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Programs for the Topic ‘Governance’


Monday, September 17th, 2018


Encryption: Privacy v. Public Safety

Avidan Cover, J.D.
Professor of Law and Director
Institute for Global Security Law and Policy
Case Western Reserve University School of Law

Raymond Ku, J.D.
Professor of Law and Director, Center for Cyberspace Law & Policy
Case Western Reserve University School of Law

Monday, September 17, 2018
4:30 – 6:00 p.m.
Moot Courtroom
CWRU School of Law
11075 East Boulevard, Cleveland, OH 44106-1769

The social contract upon which the United States government is based obliges the government to protect its citizens,and this may restrict certain of their liberties. Thus, a balance must be struck between the government’s duty to provide protection and a person’s right to privacy.

Pressure to eliminate the digital privacy of individuals is increasing. From the FBI’s efforts to decrypt the iPhone of the December 2015 San Bernardino mass shooter to Carpenter v. US (2017), the debate on privacy versus public safety needs to be addressed. How can the federal government strike a balance between privacy and public safety? What, if any, restrictions should be placed on the government when accessing private data during the course of a criminal investigation?

Sponsored by the Office of the President, Office of Government and Community Relations,
Department of Political Science, Center for Policy Studies, and School of Law

About Our Guests

Avidan Cover, J.D. is Professor of Law at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law and Director of the Institute for Global Security Law & Policy. Cover teaches in the Civil Rights and Human Rights Clinic in the Milton A. Kramer Law Clinic Center, where he supervises students representing clients in civil lawsuits primarily in the areas of civil rights, including freedom of speech, unlawful force, and housing discrimination as well as documenting human rights abuses. He also teaches courses in constitutional law, race and American law and international humanitarian law. Cover’s scholarship focuses on human rights, civil rights and national security law. He has appeared in numerous news media, including The New York Times, Washington Post, BBC, CNN, MSNBC, CSPAN, FOX News and Court TV.

Raymond Ku, J.D., is a Professor of Law at Case Western Reserve University School of Law. After graduating cum laude from New York University School of Law, Professor Ku practiced constitutional, intellectual property, and antitrust law with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, LLP, and First Amendment/media and intellectual property law with Levine Pierson Sullivan & Koch, L.L.P. Now an internationally recognized scholar, Professor Ku writes on legal issues impacting individual liberty, creativity, and technology. His articles appear in the law reviews and journals of Berkeley, Chicago, Georgetown, Minnesota, Vanderbilt, and Wisconsin among others, and he is the lead author of the first casebook devoted exclusively to the study of cyberspace law.