Cryptic Commons workshop video 17 of 18 - Roundtable
Channel: Cryptic Commons
Date: 28/10/2021

Susan Landau is Bridge Professor in Cyber Security and Policy at The Fletcher School and the School of Engineering, Department of Computer Science, Tufts University. Landau works at the intersection of cybersecurity, national security, law, and policy. Landau has written four books, including People Count: Contact-Tracing Apps and Public Health and Listening In: Cybersecurity in an Insecure Age, which came about because of her Congressional testimony in the Apple/FBI case. Landau has frequently briefed US and European policymakers on encryption, surveillance, and cybersecurity issues. She has been a Senior Staff Privacy Analyst at Google, a Distinguished Engineer at Sun Microsystems, and a faculty member at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Wesleyan University. Landau is currently a member of the National Academies Forum on Cyber Resilience and has served on the National Academies Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, the NSF Computer and Information Science Advisory Committee, and the Information Security and Privacy Advisory Board. She is a member of the Cybersecurity Hall of Fame and of the Information System Security Hall of Fame; she is a fellow of the AAAS and ACM, as well as having been a Guggenheim and Radcliffe Fellow. 

In the preface to her 2017 book “Listening In: Cybersecurity in an Insecure Age”, Landau writes: “The encryption debate, a subject that previously occupied only techies and policy wonks, has now become critically important (…). How do we secure ourselves in the face of the Digital Revolution, in which our world is increasingly being controlled through bits? This revolution has brought humanity tremendous economic, technological, scientific, and cultural benefits. But it also provides bad actors with the ability to steal and disrupt at a distance, performing serious mischief at scale.” 

It is our hope that with the breathtaking insight and experience that she brings with her, Prof. Landau can help us think together about how to address this “revolution” in a cryptic commons where community needs are incorporated and understood, and insights from mathematics, engineering, cryptography and the humanities come together to find meaningful solutions.