A Stanford Law School Symposium: Securing Privacy in the Internet Age

What legal regimes or market initiatives would best prevent the unauthorized disclosure of private information while also promoting business innovation?

March 13-14 2004
Stanford Law School

As individuals do more – shopping, talking, working – on-line, they leave private information behind in databases stored on Internet-connected servers. Companies store proprietary data on networked servers connected to the Internet. Computer security experts struggle to develop technology and best practices to protect this information from unauthorized intruders or inadvertent leaks. Are private initiatives sufficient to protect private and confidential information, or should the law allocate the responsibility of keeping the server secure, and if so, on whom? And will the imposition of this legal and economic burden impede further exponential advances like those the computer industry has made in the past decade?

The Law, Science and Technology Program (LST) and the Center for Internet and Society (CIS) at Stanford Law School invite you to join us at a symposium where the speakers will present papers that address the ways in which application of various legal doctrines could induce software vendors, hardware companies and system administrators to adopt security-enhancing practices, report unauthorized disclosures of private information, properly value and remedy harm flowing from privacy breaches, while promoting vigorous competition and innovation.