We’re at a critical juncture right now where the benefits from technological advances are increasingly counterbalanced by harmful applications and perilous consequences. Cyberattacks are crippling hospitals and threatening public health, governments are using malware and online propaganda to undermine elections and democracies and widespread surveillance to violate human rights, while consumer privacy has become a casualty of unchecked corporate greed. To address these issues we need the critical thinking, creativity, and passion that ethical hackers and technologists use to strengthen cybersecurity applied to social causes and protecting the public interest.

In this panel, security technologist Bruce Schneier, Mozilla Fellow and Graphika Chief Innovation Officer Camille Francois and EFF Director of Cybersecurity Eva Galperin will discuss specific examples where public interest technologists are most needed to ensure an open, positive and safe digital society and provide suggestions for what hackers and security-forward companies can do to solve some of the biggest social problems we have and make a difference.

Bruce Schneier  |  Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School
Camille Francois  |  Chief Innovation Officer, Graphika
Eva Galperin  |  Director of Cybersecurity, Electronic Frontier Foundation