On Monday, Professor Edward Lee will be speaking at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics for a discussion over the question of whether Apple should follow the FBI’s order to break into an iPhone used by the San Bernardino shooters.
The event is part of UofC’s student-run News & Views series, in which experts from around the Chicago area are invited to discuss relevant hot-button topics.
Prof. Lee has written extensively on technology, privacy, and free speech. His prior scholarship traces the constitutional protections under the Free Press Clause that limit the government from intrusive interference with speech technologies.
“At its core, the freedom of the press was designed to protect speech technology. The printing press allowed the mass publication of works of all kinds, increasing exponentially the number of people who could publish their own works and have access to countless works published by others. To speak anachronistically, the printing press was the Internet of its day. It transformed the world from handwritten material scribed by monks into a world of printed material mass produced by machines. People felt it necessary to protect this revolutionary technology from governmental control, given the century and a half of Crown and Parliament control over virtually all aspects of the presses, including their total number, ownership, and use in England.”
-page 345 of Prof. Lee’s “Freedom of the Press 2.0” published in the Georgia Law Review (2008).
The discussion will take place Monday, March 7th at UofC’s Institute of Politics and is available only to students.
Jonathan D
Freedom and safety are the rights of everybody. Sadly, they are sometimes difficult to balance and defend.