Aaron Williamson

Recent revelations about the scope of government surveillance have touched off renewed interest in encryption and personal data privacy, and prompted technology companies to offer more protections for users' data. In response, the U.S. government has made moves toward increased regulation of encryption software. This talk will discuss the laws regulating surveillance and cryptography, how those laws apply to free software, and opportunities for community response to the new crypto wars.

Free software runs most of the smartphones in the world, but it's difficult to tell. Between network carriers who want to charge for everything they can and handset manufacturers who want differentiate their products as much as possible from their competitors', nobody is eager to give users control over their phones. In the U.S., the Digital Millennium Copyright Act prevents users from circumventing the access controls increasingly used to lock phones down. In this talk, a free software lawyer will discuss the legal and practical obstacles to free mobile operating systems and about SFLC's effort to get the Copyright Office to recognize a DMCA exception allowing users to install free software on mobile phones. (Spoiler alert: it didn't work.)