The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court: Myth versus reality

January 18, 2018

4:30 p.m. - 5:30 p.m. ET

Gates Hillman Centers 4401, Rashid Auditorium

Joint CyLab Security and Privacy Institute, Institute for Software Research, Institute for Politics and Strategy Distinguished Lecture and Panel

Distinguished Speaker

Judge Reggie B. Walton was born in Donora, Pennsylvania on February 8, 1949. He graduated from West Virginia State University in 1971. While at West Virginia State, he was a three-year letterman on the football team and played on the 1968 nationally ranked conference championship team. He was also the Chief Justice of the Student Court during his senior year at State. Judge Walton received his Juris Doctor from the American University, Washington College of Law, in 1974.

Judge Walton assumed his current position as a U.S. District Judge for the District of Columbia in 2001. Judge Walton has presided over notable trials, including those of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby and of former Major League Baseball player Roger Clemens. He was also appointed by President George W. Bush in 2004 as the Chair of the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission, a commission created by Congress to identify methods to curb the incidents of prison rape. The U.S. Attorney General substantially adopted the Commission’s recommendations for implementation in federal prisons; other federal, state and local officials throughout the country are considering adopting the recommendations. In 2007, Chief Justice John Roberts appointed Judge Walton to a 7-year term as a Judge of the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, and he was subsequently appointed Presiding Judge in 2013. He completed his term on that court on May 18, 2014. In 2016, Judge Walton was also appointed to serve as a member of the Defense Advisory Committee on Investigation, Prosecution and Defense of Sexual Assaults in the Armed Forces.

Judge Walton previously served as an Associate Judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia from 1981 to 1989 and 1991 to 2001. From 1989 to 1991, Judge Walton served as President George H. W. Bush’s Associate Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy in the Executive Office of the President, and also as the Senior White House Advisor for Crime. Judge Walton served as the Executive Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia from 1980 to 1981, and was an Assistant U.S. Attorney there from 1976 to 1980. From 1979 to 1980, Judge Walton was the Chief of the Office’s Career Criminal Unit. He was a staff attorney in the Defender Association of Philadelphia from 1974 to 1976.

Panelists

Lorrie Cranor, FORE Systems Professor of Computer Science and Engineering & Public Policy and Director, CyLab Usable Privacy and Security Laboratory, Carnegie Mellon University

Jay D. Aronson, Associate Professor of Science, Technology, and Society, and Director, Center for Human Rights Science, Carnegie Mellon University

Lorrie Faith Cranor is the FORE Systems Professor of Computer Science and of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University where she is director of the CyLab Usable Privacy and Security Laboratory (CUPS). She is associate department head of the Engineering and Public Policy Department and co-director of the MSIT-Privacy Engineering masters program. In 2016 she served as Chief Technologist at the US Federal Trade Commission. Lorrie's research has spanned a wide range of privacy, security, and usability issues. She is a past chair of the Computers, Freedom and Privacy Conference and previously served on the board of directors of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. She is a fellow of the ACM and IEEE and a member of the ACM CHI Academy.

Jay D. Aronson is founder and director of the Center for Human Rights Science at Carnegie Mellon University. He is also Associate Professor of Science, Technology, and Society in the History Department. Jay’s research and teaching focus on the interactions of science, technology, law, politics, and human rights in a variety of contexts. His current work examines the use of video evidence in human rights investigations and he recently completed a a long-term study of the ethical, political, and social dimensions of post-conflict and post-disaster identification of the missing and disappeared. For the past several years, he has taught courses that address the technological, legal, and ethical challenges of surveillance, drone warfare, and lethal autonomous weapons systems.

This event is sponsored by the following institutes at Carnegie Mellon University: CyLab Security and Privacy Institute, Institute for Software Research, Institute for Politics and Strategy

For more information, please contact: lorrie@cs.cmu.edu

Upcoming Events