We have reached a tipping point on the issues of professional ethics, secure communications, and data security. From criminal defense attorneys representing domestic clients to library staff assisting patrons with online research and basic technology access to journalists needing to keep their sources safe, all professionals are impacted by the new political and technological reality of multi-state mass surveillance technology. As the world’s highest legal official for counter-terrorism and human rights, the UN Special Rapporteur, concluded in a recent report on cybersecurity, “The hard truth is that the use of mass surveillance technology effectively does away with the right to privacy of communications on the Internet altogether.”

But there are still steps we can, and should, take as individuals and as professionals to protect our own and others’ data. In this session we will discuss the current challenging climate and help participants—journalists, librarians, attorneys, and anyone else who is interested—understand how to ethically engage with information technology. There will be time at the end for questions about specific privacy-protecting tools, so bring your laptop or other device.

Jonathan Stribling-Uss, Esq is the director of Constitutional Communications, a nonprofit organization that specializes in information security for professionals and civil society organizations. He has led trainings and CLEs for nearly two hundred attorneys on cybersecurity, privacy rights, and attorney-client communications with the NYCLA Bar Association, Law For Black Lives, and the Continuing Legal Resource Network at CUNY.  He has also trained journalists, grantors, activists, and technologists at the Center for Constitutional Rights, Thoughtworks, the International Development Exchange, the Bertha Foundation, the Legal Clinics of CUNY School of Law, and Brazil de Fato.