Course Syllabus

Important Announcements regarding Class Schedule:

  • This course is offered as a Computer Science course. This means that the class schedule will follow the AS&E calendar, not the Fletcher calendar.
  • Fletcher students should note that the first day of classes is Wednesday September 4.
  • There will be an extra optional class on Saturday September 7, time TBD, on how the Internet works. Those who taken/are taking networking courses, Cyber for Future Policymakers, or How Systems Work can comfortably skip. Those who do not know how the Internet works will find the class useful. This extra class is not required.
  • No class on October 2; in lieu of class, there is a video to watch with a short reflection piece due on October 15th.
  • Fletcher students should also note that there will be classes on November 12 and 13 (Fletcher New York Career days), but these will be on Zoom and taped to accommodate Fletcher students who are on the New York trip.

Readings:

There will be a number of readings, including US Supreme Court cases, various government reports, law review articles and other papers, The course reading is demanding; please plan on reading intensively and apportion time accordingly.

There will be a required online text that we will use periodically: James Grimmelmann, Internet Law: Cases and Problems, 12th edition. The Grimmelmann text is available for download only at Semaphore Press. I encourage you to read about Semaphore Press's publishing approach on its website, a piece of which I am excerpting here:

"Each publication has a suggested price. We price full casebooks based on our belief that it is fair to ask a student pay about $1 for the reading material for each one-hour class session. Different schools use different calendars and credit hours, so we've settled on a suggested price for most of our casebooks of $30. We ask that you pay the suggested price either with a credit card (by clicking the appropriate link on our page), or by sending us a check, and then download a digital copy of the casebook. Note that if your professor has assigned, e.g., only 10 class sessions of material from a Semaphore Press book, then we suggest that you pay $10."

I strongly support this pricing model and hope you will as well. Thank you.

Assignments:

  • There will be two short policy briefs due September 29th and October 27th. Each will count 15% of your grade.
  • Instead of class on October 2, you will view a short video and then write a short reflection (200-300 words) on how seeing the video changed your thinking. The reflection piece will count 5% of your grade and will be due October 15th.
  • In addition, each of you will participate in a group project in which you prepare a group policy brief and do a group presentation in class arguing one side of an issue; there will be an opposing group arguing the other side. The group policy brief will count 20% of your grade, the group presentation and response to questions, 10%. These presentations will be on November 25, December 2 and 4. Each of you will develop part of the group policy brief; these will be shared with your group and me two weeks before the group presentation.  Then the group will put together the group presentation. Your individual presentations will not be graded; only the group one will be. The group policy briefs will be due one week before your presentation.
  • There will be a final that will count 23% of the course grade.
  • Class participation is worth 10% of the grade. Note that the course has extensive readings that are an integral part of the course; I expect you to reflect on the readings and participate actively in class.
  • And submitting a short description of yourself and your interests by September 8 5 pm is the remaining 2% of your grade.

NOTE: the readings may change slightly; please check the week before class in case there are updates.

Introduction

September 4: Introduction to the course

  • Why a course on cyberlaw and cyberpolicy;
  • Why this choice of topics;
  • Rules of the road.

 

Code is Law and Law is Code: Internet Governance

September 9: Sorting out the technical complexities of Internet traffic

  • What is the client-server model?
  • What is peer-to-peer traffic?
  • What is utility computing?
  • What does it mean to say "data is in the cloud"? 
  • Why do these different architectures matter from a legal viewpoint?

Readings:

For those of you for whom computing and the Internet are unfamiliar, please also read:

 

September 11: Baking the Cake: The Making of Laws in the US

  • How are laws made in the US? The federal system and state systems;
  • The implementation of laws/administrative law: how did this work in the case of CALEA?

Readings:

 

September 16: Who governs the Internet?

  • What roles do governments play?
  • What roles do international organizations have?
  • Who are the different players—ITU, ICANN, IETF—and what do they do?
  • What role do tech companies play?

Readings:

 

September 18: Administrative Law:  Fair Information Practice Principles in practice

  • Laws don't work out all the issues in controlling a technology; regulators do. How does this work?
  • How has this worked in the case of privacy?
  • How has it worked in the case of building surveillance capabilities into communications networks?

Readings:

 

September 23: Understanding Jurisdiction: Part I

  • Once it was believed that the Internet transcended borders; now we understand otherwise. What does this mean in practice for speech?
  • For criminal activities?

Readings:

 

September 25: Understanding Jurisdiction: Part II

  • The Internet simplifies conducting activities across borders. Which international treaties handle cyber issues?
  • What policy actions effectively act as establishing jurisdiction on cyber matters outside a state's borders?

Readings:

 

Controlling—and Failing to Control—Speech

 

September 30: Free Speech in the US: Genesis and Rationale

  • What does the U.S. First Amendment say?
  • What's the rationale behind the First Amendment?
  • How does it work in practice?

Readings:

October 2: NO CLASS; instead viewing and an Assignment:

 

October 7: Offensive, Dangerous, and Prohibited Speech

  • What dangers can ensue from free speech?
  • Is uncontrolled speech on the Internet a serious danger?
  • What forms of control are there to limit certain types of problematic speech?

Readings:

 

October 9: International Conflict on Free Speech

  • Which entities control speech on the Internet?
  • Are their controls effective? What does "effective" mean?
  • Some states regulate speech; can globally reachable platforms actually support free speech?

Readings:

 

October 14:  Indigenous Peoples' Day: NO CLASS

 

Search in Digital Environments

 

October 16: Searching Communications

  • What does the Fourth Amendment mean?
  • How is searching communications different from searching "persons, houses, papers, and effects"?

Readings:

 

October 21: Searching the non-content part of communications

  • Katz protects communications, but what about the non-content aspects of online speech?
  • What information does non-content reveal?
  • What protections does non-content have?
  • How do governments use this information?

Readings:

 

October 23: Foreign Intelligence Surveillance

  • What is the law on electronic surveillance in foreign intelligence cases and how does it differ from criminal cases?
  • What challenges does the Internet pose?
  • What advantages does the Internet provide to foreign intelligence surveillance?
  • What challenges does that advantage create?

Readings:

 

October 28: Conducting electronic searches: law and practice

  • What information must the warrants contain?
  • How is a search of electronic devices conducted?
  • How is chain of custody established?
  • What processes and procedures must be done when searching electronic devices?

Readings:

October 30: Electronic Surveillance; Encryption Issues

Readings: None

Copyright in the online world (a brief look)

November 4: No Class

 

November 6: Copyright

  • What is the purpose of copyright?
  • Copyright law allows some uses of content without reimbursement. Why?
  • What challenges does digitization and the Internet present to copyright?

Readings:

 

November 12  (ZOOM CLASS—link in announcements): Consequences of the DMCA—implications for security research, fair use, and the "right to repair"—and Responses

  • How is copyright working in the digital age?
  • Is copyright working in the digital age?
  • Are there ways to enable author control while also enabling fair use, reuse in derivative works, etc.?

Readings:

 

The Coming Challenges

November 13 (ZOOM CLASS—link in announcements):  Governing the Ungovernable: A Case Study in ML Challenges and Solutions: A Case Study in Contestability

  • How do ML systems work?
  • What challenges do ML systems present governments?
  • How do governments propose to meet those challenges?

Readings:

 

November 18: Market Concentration and Tech Platforms

  • Why are tech platforms so concentrated, that is, largely lacking competition?
  • Does market concentration in high tech—the Fearsome Five (Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Twitter)—benefit US consumers?
  • What are the costs stemming from this concentration?

Readings:

 

November 20: Hacking Back

  • If someone breaks into your computer, can you follow them back and recover your data?
  • What would happen if the break-in was from abroad?
  • How do different nations handle zero-day vulnerabilities?
  • Where does that leave with international agreements regarding cyberattacks?

Readings:

 

Presentations

November 25: The Google Decision plus Presentation

Readings:

  • Presentation briefs; see announcements.

 

December 2: The Conundrum of Cyberdefense: Using Vulnerabilities plus Presentation

Readings:

  • How does the US handle zero-day vulnerabilities?
  • Presentation briefs: See announcements.

Readings:

 

December 4: The Conundrum of Cyberdefense: Using Vulnerabilities plus Presentation

  • How do different nations handle zero-day vulnerabilities?
  • Where does that leave with international agreements regarding cyberattacks?

Readings:

 

 

Summing Up

December 9: Summing Up