Liza Barry-Kessler, Esq.

Network Neutrality

On the heels of my favorite conference, BlogHer, I wrote my first piece for BlogHer.com, “BlogHer, Verizon, Google, and the Future of the Internet, or, Why You Should Care About Network Neutrality.”

Upcoming Event!

Are you going to BlogHer Business ’10 this August?

If you are a company that markets to women, you should be! The BlogHer Business Conference is described as “an annual “crash course” on best practices for reaching the most influential and powerful consumers — women online — in the quickly evolving social media world.”

Last year, the roughly 200 attendees learned from awesome social media success stories like Coach and Fiskars. This year is shaping up to be even more exciting — and not just because I’ll be speaking on a panel with 3  fantastic social media leaders (BlogHer’s co-founder and COO, Elisa Camahort Page, Stacey Ferguson from the FTC, and WOMMA’s Executive Director, Kristen Smith).

Here’s the description of our panel:

The FTC Guidelines have been a hot topic for the majority of the year – but have they had any significant impact on how marketers and bloggers do business? What changes have we seen in social media marketing as a result? What kinds of enforcement actions have been taken? Are you and the brands or bloggers you work with in compliance with the new rules?

Hope to see you in New York! (The regular BlogHer conference is sold out, but you can still get tickets for BlogHer Business ’10.)

Speaking at UWM on May 4, 2010

Announcements: Wired Wisconsin & Digital Due Process

First, I’m excited to announce that I’ll be joining Wired Wisconsin for a talk on Government 2.0, Utilizing Social Media.

Our last program like this was a lot of fun, and attendees, like Wendy Soucie, indicated that our presentation was unique and valuable. So if you are in Madison, or can get there on April 14, please join us!

Also, I’ve just joined the Digital Due Process Coalition, which is a group of non-profit, corporate, academic, and legal privacy advocates, who are working together to advocate for modernization of our federal government surveillance laws. The group’s guiding principal is:

To simplify, clarify, and unify the ECPA standards, providing stronger privacy protections for communications and associated data in response to changes in technology and new services and usage patterns, while preserving the legal tools necessary for government agencies to enforce the laws, respond to emergency circumstances and protect the public.

Presently, the only way to describe the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, and other associated laws concerning how the federal government can legally obtain access to information about US citizens’ and residents’ communication activities is that they are a hot mess.

There are differences in what standards the government must meet depending on whether a person has opened an email message or not, whether the interception is while the message is in transit or has been delivered to their email provider’s email server, and there are special protections for your movie rental records. And those are just a few examples. (CDT used to have a great traffic-light-style color-coded chart showing what data receives what level of protection, but I cannot find it anywhere. Except in black & white as an appendix in my book, which is not as beautifully clear as the original.)

(Leave aside the question of whether or not the government is actually following the rules. We should have good rules, AND we should hold law enforcement agencies accountable for following the rules, whatever they are. NSA, I’m looking at you.)

It would be great for everyone — law enforcement, citizens, and companies/organizations who have to provide information — if federal law w asclearer, more consistent, and easier for everyone to understand. It should also do a better job of protecting the individual privacy, particularly for  those of us who are not the targets of current criminal (or terrorism) investigations.