Date: Thursday, August 28, 2025
Time: 11:45 a.m. to 12:45 p.m.
Location: G01 Gates Hall
Speaker: Susan Landau, Professor of Cyber Security and Policy in Computer Science, Tufts University
Abstract:
For over a decade, the United States talked internationally about the need for cybersecurity, while Russia and China espoused information security. The US's response was that protecting devices secures the information in them. US leadership failed to understand that information itself could be weaponized. Once that realization hit, the government's attention turned to TikTok. But TikTok is not the problem, merely the tip of a huge iceberg made up of the vast amounts of easily accessible personal data about private individuals.
Whether in policy discussions regarding the use of strong encryption, the collection of communications in bulk, or the deployment of surveillance technologies such as CCTVs, individual privacy and national security have long been seen as in opposition. While that viewpoint held some validity at the beginning of the Internet revolution, it no longer does. Digital technologies and the Internet provide capabilities that threaten to make everything that people do inside a nation highly visible to adversaries – and thus creating potential for great damage. Russia and China use this information about private individuals to destabilize not just the United States, but the liberal international order. The risk stems not from TikTok, but instead from the massive collection and availability of personal data. In this talk, I will discuss the threat – and what really needs to be done.
Bio:
Susan Landau is Professor of Cyber Security and Policy in Computer Science, Tufts University. As Bridge Professor of Cyber Security and Policy at The Fletcher School and School of Engineering, Department of Computer Science, Landau established an innovative MS degree in Cybersecurity and Public Policy joint between the schools.
Landau's research lies at the intersection of privacy, surveillance, cybersecurity, and law. She has testified before Congress and frequently briefed US and European policymakers on encryption, surveillance, and cybersecurity issues.
Landau has received the USENIX Lifetime Achievement Award, shared with Steven Bellovin and Matt Blaze, and the American Mathematical Society's Bertrand Russell Prize, , and several awards for her books on encryption, wiretap, and surveillance policy. Landau is a Guggenheim fellow, a fellow of Association for Computing Machinery and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She is also an inductee into the Information System Security Hall of Fame and the Cybersecurity Hall of Fame.
