Speakers
James Babb, We Won't Fly
James is libertarian grass-roots activist in the Philadelphia area. He is an advertising consultant by trade and a father of two young girls. As a strong advocate for total freedom, James has been involved in eminent domain opposition, jury nullification outreach, End-the-Fed, anti-prohibition education and other pro-freedom activities.
In the fall of 2010, when TSA X-Ray scanners were headed to Philadelphia International Airport, James began organizing local opposition. His friend and fellow activist, George Donnelly immediately volunteered to build a website to support the effort. Within days of creating WeWontFly.com, the site exploded across the internet and quickly became a key source of information for the anti-TSA movement. James quickly became a regular guest for national and international media.
James believes that the TSA's x-ray strip searches and gropings are just the visible "tip of the iceberg" of government abuse, where everything about our lives is open for government inspection and everything the state does is cloaked in secrecy.
James' goal is not to reform the TSA, but instead he advocates it's total abolishment. He believes that airline security should be an issue between airlines and customers, not between politicians and lobbyists.
Wes Benedict, Libertarian Party
Wes Benedict serves as Executive Director of the Libertarian National Committee in the Libertarian Party's headquarters in Washington, DC. He previously served as Executive Director of the Libertarian Party of Texas. There he broke records and made Texas one of the best performing state Libertarian Party chapters. He recruited a record 173 LP candidates for office in Texas for the November 2008 elections, which was 29 percent of the nationwide LP total. Mr. Benedict holds an MBA from the University of Michigan and a Mechanical Engineering Degree from the University of Texas. He has previously bought and sold a kitchen and bath countertop manufacturing business, and he has worked as a management consultant for PricewaterhouseCoopers and a manufacturing engineer for 3M Company.
Lillie Coney, EPIC
Lillie Coney is Associate Director with the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) in Washington, DC. Ms. Coney joined EPIC in 2004 to head up the organization’s voting and privacy project, and in 2005, she was named Associate Director.
Her work encompasses original research and writing on topics that impact civic participation. In 2004, she contributed the chapter "Mobilize Underrepresented Voters" to the New York Times Bestseller, 50 Ways to Love Your Country. In 2005, she co-authored, along with computing technologists and researchers, the paper, Toward a Privacy Measurement Criterion for Voting Systems. In 2006, Ms. Coney was the organizing force behind the first research conducted in a polling location to measure the usability of optical-scan and touch screen voting systems resulted in the report, Voting Technology, Election Administration, and Voter Performance, published by Stein, Vonnahme, Byrne, and Wallach (2008). In October 2008, EPIC's voting project published E-Deceptive Campaign Practices Report: Internet Technology and Democracy 2.0, the first report to review technology as a tool for online deceptive campaign practices. The report reviewed the potential for abuse of Internet technology in an election context, and made recommendations on steps that could be taken by Election Protection, Election Administrators, and voters to protect the integrity of the upcoming election. She has written and spoken extensively on the subject of voting technology and privacy. She has published several law and policy journal articles on elections and voting systems. [More].
Councilmember David Greenfield, NY City Council
David G. Greenfield was elected to the New York City Council after a decisive victory in a Special Election on March 23, 2010. David won a majority of votes in each and every neighborhood of the 44th Council District comprising of Midwood, Boro Park and Bensonhurst in Brooklyn, New York.
David is an experienced attorney who has been working for years to make New York more affordable. Prior to his election, David served as Executive Vice President of the Sephardic Community Federation, the umbrella government relations and public policy organization of the Sephardic Jewish Community. In that capacity, Greenfield worked closely with public officials at every level of government to improve the lives of all New Yorkers. David is also the volunteer Director and Counsel of TEACH NYS, an umbrella group that advocates on behalf of the parents of the 500,000 Catholic, Jewish, and Independent school children in New York State. David’s successful strategy for TEACH NYS led to recently enacted legislation that provides for $600 million in tax-credits for parents of all school-age children in New York.
David is an expert in education policy and a mayoral appointee to the New York Non-Public School Standing Committee. This select committee serves as the liaison between New York government and the non-public school community. As a member of the committee, David played a critical role in addressing important issues affecting hundreds of thousands of New York’s children and advocating on their behalf. Most recently, Mr. Greenfield spearheaded a three-year campaign that culminated in the free tutoring services, valued at tens of millions of dollars each year, for thousands of students in New York City.
Kate Hanni, Flyers Rights Advocate
Kate Hanni is one of today’s most passionate and dedicated national figures, fighting for safeguards and protections for airline passengers. She is the Founder, Executive Director, and CEO of FlyersRights.org, formerly the Coalition for Airline Passengers' Bill of Rights (CAPBOR), the fastest growing airline passengers' coalition in the country. Whether in state capitols or in the halls of the U.S. Congress, Ms. Hanni has brought the need to enact legal rights and protections for the flying public to the national forefront.
Kate, her family, and thousands of airline passengers were stranded on the tarmacs of airports all over the country aboard 124 American Airlines flights during the Christmas holidays, December 29th, 2006. For close to ten hours, Kate and the rest of the passengers were given no food, no water, no medical attention, and not even working toilettes. Unable to deplane and sitting on the tarmac at Austin airport, Kate and other passengers decided to turn anger and frustration into advocacy by creating this coalition. "Our goal is to ensure that no other airline passenger has to experience what we went through," is the common message of the Coalition as they travel the country seeking support from the general public, travelers, partner organizations and public officials.
Over the last three years, CAPBOR has grown from 100 members to more than 28,000, and is supported by many consumer groups, pilots and flight attendants. On June 13, 2007, the Coalition announced the launch of a new 24 hour HOTLINE (1-877-flyers-6) for airline passengers to report their experiences. During the first day of operation, the CAPBOR Hotline received more than 920 calls from angry and frustrated passengers in less than 3 ½ hours. The steady decrease in number of calls, especially since the April, 2010, DOT rulemaking, is a testament to the success of CAPBOR’s efforts.
Kate’s accomplishments and those of FlyersRights.org are extensive. First, there was a successful rulemaking that forced air carriers to report diverted, cancelled and multiple gate return flights for time on the tarmac. Then, New York State passed an airline passengers' bill of rights. Additionally, the Department of Transportation (DOT) passed a doubling of the bumping compensation on May 18, 2008. Further, DOT introduced a passenger rights rulemaking, implemented on April 29, 2010, forcing air carriers to allow passengers the opportunity to deplane after three hours on the tarmac and providing basic human needs while stuck inside hot, sweaty aircraft. Without CAPBOR, those rules would never have been considered, much less implemented.
Kate Hanni has been a Licensed Real Estate Broker for 17 years. She is a licensed stock broker and mother of two boys, 14 and 24 years old. Kate’s husband is the first North American in history to earn the coveted Master of Wine credential.
Jim Harper, Cato Institute
As director of information policy studies, Jim Harper works to adapt law and policy to the unique problems of the information age, in areas such as privacy, telecommunications, intellectual property, and security. Harper is a member of the Department of Homeland Security's Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee and he recently co-edited the book Terrorizing Ourselves: How U.S. Counterterrorism Policy Is Failing and How to Fix It. He has been cited and quoted by numerous print, Internet, and television media outlets, and his scholarly articles have appeared in the Administrative Law Review, the Minnesota Law Review, and the Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly. Harper wrote the book Identity Crisis: How Identification Is Overused and Misunderstood. Harper is the editor of Privacilla.org, a Web-based think tank devoted exclusively to privacy, and he maintains online federal spending resource WashingtonWatch.com. He holds a J.D. from UC Hastings College of Law.
Rep. Rush Holt
Rep. Rush Holt has represented Central New Jersey in Congress since 1999.
An active Member of Congress and a strong voice for his constituents, Rep. Holt serves on the Committee on Education and Labor, the Committee on Natural Resources, and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Holt is the only scientist and only Member from the New Jersey delegation to sit on the Intelligence Committee. Holt is also the Chairman of the Select Intelligence Oversight Panel. Created at the start of the 110th Congress in January 2007, the Panel is working to strengthen oversight of the intelligence community by ensuring that policymakers receive accurate assessments, civil liberties are safeguarded, and the intelligence community is protecting Americans.
Holt was honored to serve on the National Commission on Mathematics and Science Teaching for the 21st Century chaired by former Senator and astronaut John Glenn. He is co-chair of the Research and Development Caucus, and sits on Congressional caucuses concerning Children’s Environmental Health, Renewable Energy, Sustainable Development, Alzheimer’s, Diabetes, Biomedical Research, Internet, Community College, Farmland Protection, Human Rights, and a Women’s Right to Choose. Rep. Holt is also a member of the New Democrat Coalition and a member and Vice Chair of the Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition. Additionally, Holt is a member of the House Democracy Partnership, which is comprised of 20 Members who help promote and support the development of democratic governments around the world.
Rep. Holt has received numerous awards and citations for his work, including the Planned Parenthood Community Service Award, the Biotech Legislator of the Year, and the Science Coalition’s Champion of Science award. The magazine Scientific-American has also named Holt one of the 50 national “visionaries” contributing to “a brighter technological future.” He is also one of only two Members of Congress to receive a lifetime 100 percent rating from the League of Conservation Voters. He also has received perfect ratings in the current Congress from the Children's Defense Fund, the Drum Major Institute, the American Public Health Association, the Council for a Liveable World, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, AFSCME, the Allience for Retired Americans, ACLU, NARAL Pro-Choice America, and the Human Rights Campaign.
Nadhira Al-Khalili, CAIR
Nadhira Al-Khalili is the Legal Counsel for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). CAIR is America's largest Islamic civil liberties group, with regional offices nationwide and in Canada. Nadhira works in the national headquarters, located on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C. Since beginning her employment with CAIR, Nadhira has worked both as in-house counsel for the non-profit, and also as a civil rights advocate for CAIR constituents. Nadhira worked as an Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney at the Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office in Richmond, VA from 2001-2003. There she prosecuted drug, property, and personal crimes, including crimes involving child abuse and domestic violence. Her other community work has included serving on the Board of Directors for the American Muslim Women’s Association as its Legal Director from 2005 through 2006. Nadhira also worked in insurance defense civil litigation with as an associate with Jensen and Associates in Richmond, VA.
Nadhira worked as an Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney at the Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office in Richmond, VA from 2001-2003. There she prosecuted drug, property, and personal crimes, including crimes involving child abuse and domestic violence. Her other community work has included serving on the Board of Directors for the American Muslim Women’s Association as its Legal Director from 2005 through 2006. Nadhira also worked in insurance defense civil litigation with as an associate with Jensen and Associates in Richmond, VA. Nadhira earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Foreign/Language-Spanish from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, VA in 1996. She attended VCU on the Black Freshman Scholarship, where she majored in Foreign Language/Spanish and completed a semester abroad in Monterrey, Mexico. She earned a Juris Doctor from The Dickinson School of Law of The Pennsylvania State University in Carlisle, PA in 2000. While in law school, she won the prestigious Shirley M. Hodge Memorial Scholarship and also studied comparative law in Florence, Italy. In law school, Nadhira was an officer in the Minority Law Students Association and was a member of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America moot court team, which competed in regional moot court competitions.
Edward Luttwak, CSIS
Edward Luttwak is a CSIS senior associate and has served as a consultant to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the National Security Council, the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Army, Navy, and Air Force, and a number of allied governments as well as international corporations and financial institutions. He is a frequent lecturer at universities and military colleges in the United States and abroad and has testified before several congressional committees and presidential commissions. In 2004, he was awarded an honorary degree by the University of Bath (United Kingdom).
Luttwak is the author of numerous articles and several books, including The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire (John Hopkins, 1976–2005); Turbo-Capitalism: Winners and Losers in the Global Economy (HarperCollins, 1999); The Endangered American Dream (Simon & Schuster, 1993); and Coup d’etat (Harvard, 1985), which has been published in 14 languages. His new edition of Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace (Harvard, 2001) has been published in Chinese, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Estonian, and Turkish as well as English editions. Luttwak serves on the editorial board of the Washington Quarterly and Geopolitique (Paris). He received his Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins University, and he speaks French, Italian, and Spanish among other languages.
Ginger McCall, EPIC
Ginger McCall is Assistant Director of EPIC's Open Government Project. Ms. McCall works on a variety of issues at EPIC, including consumer protection, open government requests, amicus curiae briefs, and national security matters. She litigates EPIC's Freedom of Information Act lawsuits and is a co-editor of Litigation Under the Federal Government Laws 2010. Ms. McCall has co-authored several amicus curiae briefs on privacy issues to the Supreme Court of the United States. She has been invited to speak on privacy and open government issues in a variety of academic and conference venues, including the 2009 Computers, Freedom, and Privacy Conference, the Internet Governance Forum USA 2009 Conference, and the New England Consortium of State Labor Relations Agencies 11th Annual Conference. Ms. McCall has also provided expert commentary for local, national, and international media, including NPR, MSNBC, and Al Jazeera.
Ms. McCall is a graduate of Cornell Law School and graduated magna cum laude from the University of Pittsburgh with a B.A. in English Literature. While in law school, she interned at the American Civil Liberties Union in Pittsburgh and at EPIC. Ms. McCall was the president of the Cornell Law School National Lawyers Guild and was awarded Cornell's Freeman Prize for Civil and Human Rights.
Ralph Nader
Ralph Nader is one of America's most effective social critics. Named by The Atlantic as one of the 100 most influential figures in American history, and by Time and Life magazines as one of the hundred most influential Americans of the twentieth century, his documented criticism of government and industry has had widespread effect on public awareness and bureaucratic power. He is the "U.S.'s toughest customer" says Time magazine. His inspiration and example have galvanized a whole population of consumer advocates, citizen activists, and public interest lawyers who in turn have established their own organizations throughout the country.
For over four decades, Nader has exposed problems and organized millions of citizens into more than 100 public interest groups to advocate for solutions. His efforts have helped create a framework of laws, regulatory agencies, and federal standards that have improved the quality of life for two generations of Americans. Because of Ralph Nader we drive safer cars, eat healthier food, breathe better air, drink cleaner water, and work in safer environments.
The crusading attorney first made headlines in 1965 with his book Unsafe at Any Speed, a scathing indictment that lambasted the auto industry for producing unsafe vehicles. The book led to congressional hearings and a series of automobile safety laws passed in 1966, including the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act.
Chip Pitts, Stanford Law School & Oxford University
Chip Pitts is a Lecturer in Law at Stanford Law School, Professorial Lecturer at Oxford University, Professorial Fellow at the SMU Law Institute of the Americas, and lifelong human rights/civil liberties/privacy advocate. Previously a partner at Baker & McKenzie global law firm, then Chief Legal
Officer of Nokia, Inc., he has been an investor and founding executive of
startup businesses in Austin and Silicon Valley. He is former Chair of
Amnesty International USA, and currently serves on the board and executive
committee of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee (BORDC), having served for
five years as the volunteer president/board chair of the organization. A
frequent delegate of the US government and NGOs to UN human rights bodies
for more than two decades, he is advisor to the UN Global Compact, a board
member of the ACLU Dallas, and advisory board member of UTD's Negotiations
Center, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, and the London-based
Business and Human Rights Resource Centre, among others. A frequent speaker
and commentator on privacy, technology, and civil liberties issues in the
national and international media, he is the author of both books and
articles on corporate social responsibility, sustainable global business,
and human rights, privacy, and civil liberties.
Anant Pradhan, Pro Se Plaintiffs in Redfern v. Napolitano
Anant is a second year law student at Harvard, and will be working in the environmental division at the Department of Justice this year. He has a Bachelors of Science in Biochemical Engineering from the Colorado School of Mines. As an undergraduate, he studied the development of energy policy in the United States and worked closely with policymakers in Washington D.C.
Jeffrey Redfern, Pro Se Plaintiffs in Redfern v. Napolitano
Jeffrey is a second year law student at Harvard, where he is an editor for the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy. During the summer of 2010, he worked at the Institute for Justice, a libertarian public interest law firm dedicated to restoring constitutional limits on government. He has English degrees from Carleton College and University of Chicago.
Michael Roberts, Airline Pilot
Michael Roberts is a pilot for ExpressJet Airlines, Inc., dba Continental Express Airlines, based in Houston, TX. On October 15, 2010, he was denied entry to the terminal area of Memphis International Airport when he withheld consent to be virtually strip searched by means of Advanced Imaging Technology (AIT) or, in lieu of AIT, to be physically frisked by government security agents without probable cause.
He and another pilot are now suing the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration to uphold the constitutionally guaranteed rights and freedom of all travelers and citizens. Specifically, they are seeking the restoration of the Fourth Amendment prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures and calling for an end to the unlawful use of AIT systems and physically invasive frisking procedures in the primary airport security screening regime.
Michael and his wife, Patti, are home-schooling parents of six children ranging from ages one to eight. He has been interviewed by major national and global news media on numerous occasions and his writing has been featured in a variety of print and Internet publications. He urges fellow Americans and people throughout the world not to abdicate their natural rights and liberty and to resist the overtures of tyranny under all pretenses.
Jeffrey Rosen, George Washington University
Jeffrey Rosen is a professor of law at George Washington University and the legal affairs editor of The New Republic. His new book is The Supreme Court: The Personalities and Rivalries that Defined America, the companion book to the PBS series on the Supreme Court. He is also the author of The Most Democratic Branch, The Naked Crowd, and The Unwanted Gaze. Rosen is a graduate of Harvard College, summa cum laude; Oxford University, where he was a Marshall Scholar; and Yale Law School. His essays and commentaries have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, on National Public Radio, and in The New Yorker, where he has been a staff writer. The Chicago Tribune named him one of the ten best magazine journalists in America and the L.A. Times called him "the nation's most widely read and influential legal commentator." He lives in Washington, D.C. with his wife Christine Rosen and two sons.
Marc Rotenberg, EPIC
Marc Rotenberg is Executive Director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) in Washington, DC. He teaches information privacy law at Georgetown University Law Center and has testified before Congress on many issues, including access to information, encryption policy, consumer protection, computer security, and communications privacy. He testified before the 9-11 Commission on "Security and Liberty: Protecting Privacy, Preventing Terrorism." He has served on several national and international advisory panels, including the expert panels on Cryptography Policy and Computer Security for the OECD, the Legal Experts on Cyberspace Law for UNESCO, and the Countering Spam program of the ITU. He chairs the ABA Committee on Privacy and Information Protection. He is a founding board member and former Chair of the Public Interest Registry, which manages the .ORG domain. He is editor of "The Privacy Law Sourcebook" and co-editor (with Daniel J. Solove and Paul Schwartz) of "Information Privacy Law" (Aspen Publishing 2006). He is a graduate of Harvard College and Stanford Law School. He served as Counsel to Senator Patrick J. Leahy on the Senate Judiciary Committee after graduation from law school. He is the recipient of several awards, including the World Technology Award in Law.
Bruce Schneier, Counterpane Systems
Bruce Schneier is the Chief Technology Officer of BT Counterpane, the world leader in Managed Security Monitoring. Counterpane provides security monitoring services to Fortune 2000 companies worldwide. He is the author of seven books on security and cryptography, including his most recent book, Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World. His first book, Applied Cryptography, has sold over 150,000 copies and is the definitive work in the field. Schneier designed the Blowfish and Twofish encryption algorithms, and writes the influential "Crypto-Gram" monthly newsletter. He is a frequent lecturer on computer security and cryptography.
