Meet the EFF

DEF CON 18

Presented by: Kevin Bankston, Eva Galperin, Jennifer Granick, Marcia Hofmann, Kurt Opsahl
Date: Friday July 30, 2010
Time: 18:00 - 18:50
Location: Royale 2-3-4
Track: Track 1

Get the latest information about how the law is racing to catch up with technological change from staffers at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the nation’s premiere digital civil liberties group fighting for freedom and privacy in the computer age. This session will include updates on current EFF issues such as Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) use and misuse (and--maybe--the much delayed exemptions), whether breaking Captchas breaks the law, Digital Due Process (updating communications privacy law), legal and policy issues with walled gardens, and much more. Half the session will be given over to question-and-answer, so it's your chance to ask EFF questions about the law and technology issues that are important to you.

Jennifer Granick

Jennifer Granick is the Civil Liberties Director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Before EFF, Granick was a Lecturer in Law and Executive Director of the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School where she taught Cyberlaw and Computer Crime Law. She practices in the full spectrum of Internet law issues including computer crime and security, national security, constitutional rights, and electronic surveillance, areas in which her expertise is recognized nationally. Before teaching at Stanford, Jennifer spent almost a decade practicing criminal defense law in California. She was selected by Information Security magazine in 2003 as one of 20 "Women of Vision" in the computer security field. She earned her law degree from University of California, Hastings College of the Law and her undergraduate degree from the New College of the University of South Florida.

Kevin Bankston

Kevin Bankston , a senior staff attorney specializing in free speech and privacy law, was the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Equal Justice Works/Bruce J. Ennis Fellow for 2003-05. His fellowship project focused on the impact of post-9/11 anti-terrorism laws and surveillance initiatives on online privacy and free expression. Before joining EFF, Kevin was the Justice William J. Brennan First Amendment Fellow for the American Civil Liberties Union in New York City. At the ACLU, Kevin litigated Internet-related free speech cases, including First Amendment challenges to both the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (Edelman v. N2H2, Inc.) and a federal statute regulating Internet speech in public libraries (American Library Association v. U.S.). Kevin received his J.D. in 2001 from the University of Southern California Law Center, and received his undergraduate degree from the University of Texas in Austin.

Marcia Hofmann

Marcia Hofmann is a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, where she focuses on electronic privacy, computer crime, and other civil liberties issues. Documents made public though her Freedom of Information Act work have been reported by the New York Times, Washington Post, National Public Radio, Fox News, and CNN, among others. Prior to joining EFF, Marcia was Staff Counsel and Director of the Open Government Project at the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), where she worked on a broad range of privacy issues and spearheaded EPIC's efforts to learn about emerging government policies in the post-9/11 era. She is a graduate of the University of Dayton School of Law and Mount Holyoke College.

Kurt Opsahl

Kurt Opsahl is a Senior Staff Attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation focusing on civil liberties, free speech and privacy law. Before joining EFF, Opsahl worked at Perkins Coie, where he represented technology clients with respect to intellectual property, privacy, defamation, and other online liability matters, including working on Kelly v. Arribasoft, MGM v. Grokster and CoStar v. LoopNet. For his work responding to government subpoenas, Opsahl is proud to have been called a "rabid dog" by the Department of Justice. Prior to Perkins, Opsahl was a research fellow to Professor Pamela Samuelson at the U.C. Berkeley School of Information Management & Systems. Opsahl received his law degree from Boalt Hall, and undergraduate degree from U.C. Santa Cruz. Opsahl co-authored "Electronic Media and Privacy Law Handbook. In 2007, Opsahl was named as one of the "Attorneys of the Year" by California Lawyer magazine for his work on the O'Grady v. Superior Court appeal.

Eva Galperin

Eva Galperin is a lifelong geek. She misspent her youth working as a Systems Administrator all over Silicon Valley. Since then, she has seen the error of her ways and earned degrees in Political Science and International Relations from SFSU. She comes to EFF from the US-China Policy Institute, where she researched Chinese energy policy, helped to organize conferences, and attempted to make use of her rudimentary Mandarin skills. Her interests include aerials, rock climbing, opera, and not being paged at 3 o'clock in the morning because the mail server is down.


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