Meeting Program

By the time I arrived at the FTC I had invented technology, pursued technology business ventures, became a technology educator, researcher and scholar, worked with privacy advocacy groups, exposed technology-society clashes, and busted myths about privacy protections. I have three patents and have authored about 100 academic publications. Two federal regulations explicitly cite my work. Still, it was not until I became the Chief Technologist at the FTC that I transcended those angular perspectives to see the whole. I could see what worked, what did not, and most importantly, where opportunities for improvements exist. I can see how computer and social scientists can lead to a better tomorrow.

Latanya Sweeney, Ph.D., is a professor of government and technology at Harvard University, former Chief Technology Officer at the United States Federal Trade Commission, was a Distinguished Career Professor of Computer Science, Technology and Policy in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, and remains the Director and founder of the Data Privacy Lab. Latanya creates and uses technology to assess and solve societal, political and governance problems, and teaches others how to do the same. This year she received the distinguished Louis D. Brandeis Privacy Award from Patient Privacy Rights. Her work has also received awards from numerous other organizations, including the American Psychiatric Association, the American Medical Informatics Association, and the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association. The American College of Medical Informatics inducted her as a Fellow in 2006. In 2009, she was appointed to the Federal HIT Policy Committee. Dr. Sweeney received her Ph.D. in computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2001, the first black woman to do so. Her undergraduate degree in computer science was from Harvard University. More information about Dr. Sweeney is available at her Web site, latanyasweeney.org

Daniel Geer is Chief Information Security Officer at In-Q-Tel, a non-profit organization that invests in intelligence community technologies.  He spent ten years in clinical and research medical computing followed by five years running MIT's Project Athena, the first distributed computing emplacement that pioneered the X Window System and Kerberos, founded the first information security consulting firm on Wall Street (1992), convened the first academic conference on electronic commerce (1995), and was the principal author of and spokesperson for Cyberinsecurity: The Cost of Monopoly (2003), co-founder of SecurityMetrics.Org (2004), convener of MetriCon (2006-present), author of Economics & Strategies of Data Security (2008), and author of "Cybersecurity & National Policy" (2010).  Geer has testified five times before the U.S. Congress and has been an advisor to the Federal Trade Commission, the Departments of Justice and Treasury, the National Academy of Sciences, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Secret Service, the Department of Homeland Security, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and the White House. 

Daniel Weitzner is the Director of the MIT CSAIL Decentralized Information Group and teaches Internet public policy in MIT’s Computer Science Department. His research includes development of accountable systems architectures to enable the Web to be more responsive to policy requirements. From 2011–2012, Weitzner was the United States Deputy Chief Technology Officer for Internet Policy in the White House. He led initiatives on privacy, cybersecurity, Internet copyright, and trade policies promoting the free flow of information. He was responsible for the Obama Administration’s Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights and the OECD Internet Policymaking Principles.