Speaker: Asaf Lubin, resident fellow, Information Society Project; 2016-17 Robert L. Bernstein International Human Rights Fellow; JSD candidate, Yale Law School

The digital age brought with it a new epoch in global political life, one neatly coined by Professor Howard as the “Pax Technica”. In this new world order, government and industry are tightly bound in technological and security pacts which serve to push forward an information and cyber revolution of unparalleled magnitude. While the rise of information technologies tells a miraculous story of human triumph over the physical constraints that once shackled him, these very technologies are also the cause of grave concern. As the recent revelations by NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden had uncovered, intelligence agencies have been involved in the practice of global indiscriminate surveillance, sweeping in the telephone, internet, and location records of whole populations. Today’s political leaders and corporate elites are increasingly engaged in these kinds of programs of mass collection, mining, and exploitation of data that are easily susceptible to gross abuse and impropriety. In the process, intelligence agencies emerge as wellsprings of power in our society. Operating with a cloak of secrecy draped over their activities, these agencies, and the governments that control them, find very few de jure and de facto restrictions on their routine operations. It is in this sense that the call of editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks Julian Assange, to “fight total surveillance with the laws of man, has been proving arduous.” This lunch talk will focus on these issues as they relate to the international human right to privacy, as enshrined in the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and in many other international and regional treaties.

Asaf Lubin is a former intelligence analyst with Israeli intelligence and a JSD candidate at Yale Law School, whose research focuses on the international law of espionage, with particular emphasis on the effects that technological advancements have had on the practice of espionage and the right to privacy in an age of mass governmental surveillance. Asaf is additionally a resident fellow at the Information Society Project and a Robert L. Bernstein International Human Rights Fellow (2016-2017) serving as a Legal Officer with Privacy International. Asaf holds a joint LL.B./B.A degree in law and international relations from Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, as well as an LL.M. degree in law from Yale Law School.

Photo credit: Bill Smith/Creative Commons

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