Maureen Webb – Hackers & Democracy

Program Title: Maureen Webb – Hackers & Democracy
Description: The digital age has given birth to hackers who carry out cyberattacks on our personal data, our pipelines, energy grids and meat processing plants. And there are also white hat hackers who promote democracy by sharing software, open sourcing and the secure free flow of information. Maureen Webb, who has studied and written about these democracy hackers says they “are making some of the most important contributions to preserving our liberal democratic tradition in the 21st century. Confronted with concentrations of power, mass surveillance and authoritarianism enabled by new technology, hackers are trying to build out democracy into cyberspace. They have been developing tools for civilian encryption and privacy. They have fought for transparency, a fact-based discourse and accountability, all critical for a function democracy.”

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Featured Speakers/Guests: Maureen Webb is a labor lawyer and human rights activist. She has taught national security law as an Adjunct Professor at the University of British Columbia. She is the author of Illusions of Security: Global Surveillance and Democracy in the Post-9/11 World and Coding Democracy: How Hackers Are Disrupting Power, Surveillance, and Authoritarianism.

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