Marvin Ammori

The Stanford Technology Law Review has published the articles for its 2012 symposium on First Amendment Challenges in the Digital Age. You can read Marvin’s piece, entitled “The Year in ‘First Amendment Architecture'” here.

Below is an excerpt:

The core question we should focus on is whether all Americans have plentiful spaces for speech, access to diverse sources of speech, and the ability to participate in public discourse. This past year, millions of people expressed their political dissent to the powerful in physical and virtual spaces. The question of what kind of democracy we should have—a question asked here and in nations around the world—is a question we do not answer once and for all. We struggle to give answers every day through personal and collective decisions. Determining the scope of our individual free speech rights, and the general  architecture of our free speech system, is fundamental to determining the kind of democracy we are capable of achieving.

Marvin will be speaking this morning at the National Press Club for Networked Nation, an event jointly sponsored by National Journal and The Atlantic, with the support AllState. Networked Nation examines the new dynamic of communication between business and their customers through social media tools, and how that evolving relationship affects the economy at large. Marvin’s remarks will focus on the importance of an open Internet for promoting and preserving unrestricted speech in this area, and why it is in the interest of companies to promote open Internet policies.

Other speakers include Scott Monty, Global Head of Social Media of Ford Motor Company, Edward Reilly, CEO of FD Americas, and Matthew Slutsky, Director of Partnerships of Change.org.

Each year, the magazine Fast Company issues a list of its 100 Most Creative People In Business, an “annual celebration of business innovators who dare to think differently.” This year they’ve named Marvin as one of those innovators, for his work in raising important First Amendment concerns over copyright legislation earlier this year. Those who’ve worked with him know how creative and effective he is, though he’d be the first to say he is simply one of millions of people and dozens of leaders responsible for changing the debate on SOPA and PIPA in Washington and across the country.

Congratulations to him and to all who led the way in battling for a free and open Internet against flawed legislative proposals that threatened it.

Marvin Ammori has been named one of the New America Foundation’s 2013 Bernard L. Schwartz Fellows. Prestigious and highly competitive, the Schwartz Fellows Program supports leading  journalists, academics, and public policy analysts in crafting  critical analysis and perspective  on important challenges confronting modern society.

Former Schwartz Fellows who are legal scholars include Columbia’s Tim Wu, Harvard’s Noah Feldman, and Duke’s Jedediah Purdy. Since I was one of his students when Marvin was a law professor, I’m happy to see him in such good company.

New America itself “invests in new thinkers and new ideas to address the next generation of challenges facing the United States,” and does significant work in promoting technology and innovation, in addition to its efforts in other policy areas.  Some of the acclaimed books authored by Schwartz fellows include Rebecca MacKinnon’s Consent of the Networked, Noam Scheiber’s Escape Artists, Nicolas Schmidle’s To Live or to Perish Forever: Two Tumultuous Years in Pakistan, Liza Mundy’s The Richer Sex: How the New Majority of Female Breadwinners Is Transforming Sex, Love and Family, Tim Wu’s The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires, Nir Rosen’s In the Belly of the Green Bird: The Triumph of the Martyrs in Iraq, and Peter Beinart’s The Crisis of Zionism.

Marvin will be writing a book on challenges facing the First Amendment in the twenty first century, drawing on his law review writings and focusing on topics such as network neutrality, SOPA and PIPA, and the digital speech issues of tomorrow.

Like Wu and Feldman, Marvin will keep his day job while a fellow, and will continue running the Ammori Group, working on cutting edge legal and policy issues and providing expertise and advice to our great clients, something of which I’m quite proud to be a part.

At Stanford Technology Law Review’s annual symposium last month, Harvard Law Professor Yochai Benkler gave remarks on physical and digital spaces, as part of a panel discussing Marvin’s article on First Amendment Architecture. You can view his talk below:

Georgetown University’s Institute for Law, Science, and Global Security hosted a discussion this morning between the Institute’s Director, Dr. Catherine Lotrionte, and US Cyber Command’s Legal Counsel, Col. Gary Brown*, on the topic of “Legal Challenges to Advancing Cybersecurity.” The purpose of the discussion was to highlight some of the lessons learned from a conference held last year on the same topic, in which policymakers and other leaders in cyber attempted to tackle the legal complexities of cybersecurity.
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The Heritage Foundation held an event this morning on cyber threats, with particular attention paid to House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers’ bill, HR 3523 – the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act of 2011.
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Talk to the average person, and they might tell you U.S. Cyber Command is the first real effort the US military has made at addressing cyberspace. The Atlantic Council’s event yesterday, entitled “Lessons From Our Cyber Past: The First Military Cyber Units,” dispelled that myth, and revealed some insights into how exactly the US has been approaching the very real threats posed by our adversaries in the online realm.

Speaking at the event were the leaders of these first forays into cyber: Col. Walter “Dusty” Rhoads, USAF (Ret.), who was the Founding Commander of the 609^th Information Warfare Squadron; Lt. Gen. John H. “Soup” Campbell, USAF (Ret.), who was the Founding Commander of Joint Task Force – Computer Network Defense; and Maj. Gen. James D. Bryan, US Army (Ret.), who was the Founding Commander of Joint Task Force, Computer Network Operations. The Atlantic Council’s Jason Healey moderated the event.
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Earlier today, the Atlantic Council hosted a panel discussion on NATO’s developing role in cyber defense and security. Participants included IBM’s NATO and European Defence Leader Leendert Van Bochoven, IBM’s Vice President Security Counsel & Chief Privacy Officer Harriet P. Pearson, and the Director of the Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative, Jason Healey. Barry Pavel, the Director-Designate and Arnold Kanter Chair of the Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security at the Atlantic Council, moderated the event.

The event highlighted the Atlantic Council’s recent publication, NATO’s Cyber Capabilities: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow, which the council hopes will provide guidance to NATO at its upcoming summit in Chicago later this year.

Bochoven provided a brief introduction in which he noted that cybersecurity is one of NATO’s top priorities, and that as member states continue to connect information systems to industrial systems and other platforms, we must be able to defend those connected systems properly. Healey echoed this point, also noting that the alliance’s goal should be on “the basics,” and defending and securing NATO systems before broadening the focus to helping member states secure their individual systems.

Pearson spoke of NATO’s general cyber strategy, noting that the institution needs to provide a tight linkage between the operations side and the strategic side of cyber matters, and on the strategic side to have a long term focus. Collaboration is also key – not just in terms of member states working together but also cooperation between NATO and the private sector.

Asked what their single most important recommendation would be for NATO, each provided similar answers. Healey suggested the organization must be able to “unpack” the complex issues into simpler components that can be reasonably dealt with, as opposed to becoming mired in abstract discussions on “unsolvable problems” that ultimately lead nowhere. Pearson offered that leadership needs to clearly establish the reality in which NATO operates, and set key areas for the organization to focus on and take action. Bochoven said setting clear terminology for current and future efforts is essential, pointing to the phrase “full operational capacity” as an example of a misnomer that muddles the understanding of NATO’s progress in this area.

In response to an audience question on the subject of public private partnerships, Healey cautioned that NATO and government officials need to ask at the offset, “what do we want to accomplish?” so as to not lead to only marginally beneficial results because of a lack of clarity on those desired outcomes. Bochoven also pointed out that these partnerships need to have two-way value, so that there is a strong incentive on the part of the private sector to actively participate.

On the matter of information sharing, Pearson said the rate and pace of collaboration needs to pick up considerably, and at the same time transform from solely post-hoc sharing about cyber incidents to a system that incorporates anticipatory sharing, that can yield more valuable results. Ideally these relationships and sharing practices are devised before a major incident and not on the fly, Healey added, also noting that NATO countries need to be more willing to declassify information so it can actually benefit the private sector, citing the example of malware signatures.

Healey made an interesting comment that fits within some of the broader discussions taking place in the midst of Congress taking action on cybersecurity legislation, stating that we’re not teaching “cyber-mindedness.” He explained further by noting that during his time in the Air Force, airmen were taught about past battles and leadership, strategy, etc. to hone “air mindedness,” and that so far we’ve failed to do so for cyber. An interesting project might be to see what efforts to encourage cyber-mindedness have been taken so far, and evaluate those efforts as leadership on both sides of the Atlantic seeks to answer these important strategic questions on cybersecurity.

Next week, ACUS will be hosting an event on the history of US military cyber units, all of which were precursors to the recently stood up US Cyber Command.