Harvard Club of Washington, DC

Cyber Privacy: Who has your Data and Why You Should Care 

Our moderator will be T.K. Yang AB ’98, Immediate Past President, Harvard Club of Washington, DC and currently Director, Data Security and Risk Management at Procter & Gamble.  Join our  talk with April Falcon Doss, a cybersecurity and privacy expert who has worked for NSA, the US Senate and is a lawyer. Currently she serves as Executive Director of the Georgetown Institute for Tech Law & Policy. She reviews the data being collected on people and used by companies, governments, even employers and schools.

Why join us? Your personal data is being tracked at all times, across multiple platforms. If that makes you uneasy, it should.

We live in an era of unprecedented data aggregation. No matter where we live or what demographic groups we fall into, someone is collecting our data: to profile, target, and assess us; to predict our behavior and analyze our attitudes; to influence the things we do and buy—even to impact our vote. Employers, schools, and governments have access to unprecedented volumes of data, and highly detailed user profiles are being amassed by major brands.

You shouldn’t have to be a privacy expert to understand what happens to your data.

Technology is evolving quickly, while the laws and policies meant to protect us are not. It’s time to rethink notions of privacy and what, if anything, limits the power of those who are constantly watching, listening, learning about, and influencing us.

And that’s where Cyber Privacy: Who Has Your Data and Why You Should Care comes in. April Falcon Doss, a cybersecurity and privacy expert and former national security lawyer, has seen this imbalance in action.

Cyber Privacy demystifies data-driven technologies. It tackles big questions, like how data aggregation undermines personal autonomy, how to measure what privacy is worth, and how society can benefit from big data while taking a clear-eyed view of its costs. Most important, it offers realistic strategies for law, policy, and ethics to keep pace with technology, and practical ways we can regain control over the data about us that is collected, and used every day. Please join us with your questions.

A LINK to the AMAZON listing of the book is found here. The book has been selected as a finalist for the 2021 American Bar Association's Silver Gavel Awards.

Using the code HARVARDCLUB will provide a 40% discount off all formats of the book - including signed copies - purchased directly from the publisher: https://benbellabooks.com/shop/cyber-privacy/

BIO of APRIL FALCON DOSS -- April Falcon Doss (Yale '89) spent 13 years at the National Security Agency, where she held a number of positions that included managing operational programs and technology innovation efforts, a posting as an overseas foreign liaison officer, and servred as Associate General Counsel for Intelligence Law. Since then, she has served as Senior Minority Counsel for the Russia Investigation at the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.  She currently chairs the cybersecurity and privacy practice of a major U.S. law firm, and is the author of Cyber Privacy: Who Has Your Data and Why You Should Care.  She teaches at the University of Maryland Law School, and contributes commentary on issues relating to national security, cybersecurity and data privacy.  She's appeared on news outlets including CNN, MSNBC, NPR, and CBC, and her articles appear in key publications including The Atlantic, The Weekly Standard, Lawfare, Bustle, and the Washington Post.  She's on Twitter @AprilFDoss.