The Stanford Cyber Policy Center, a joint initiative of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Stanford Law School, is Stanford University's research center for the interdisciplinary study of issues at the nexus of technology, governance and public policy focused on digital technologies impacting democracy, security, and geopolitics globally.
Spring Seminar Series | APRIL - JUNE
The Spring Seminar Series kicks off April 11th. For dates and speaker list visit the Spring Seminar Series page. Titles and abstracts coming soon.
The mission of the Global Digital Policy Incubator is to inspire policy and governance innovations that reinforce democratic values, universal human rights, and the rule of law in the digital realm. We serve as a collaboration hub for the development of norms, guidelines, and laws that enhance freedom, security, and trust in the global digital ecosystem. The bottom line question that guides this initiative: How do we help governments and private sector technology companies establish governance norms, policies, and processes that allow citizens and society to reap the upside benefits of technology, while protecting against the downside risks?
The Stanford Internet Observatory is a cross-disciplinary program of research, teaching and policy engagement for the study of abuse in current information technologies, with a focus on social media. Under the program direction of computer security expert Alex Stamos, the Observatory was created to learn about the abuse of the internet in real time, to develop a novel curriculum on trust and safety that is a first in computer science, and to translate our research discoveries into training and policy innovations for the public good.
The Program on Democracy and the Internet envisions digital technologies supporting rather than subverting democracy by maximizing the benefits and minimizing the threats through changes in policy, technology, and social and ethical technological norms. Through knowledge creation and education, and by leveraging the convening power of Stanford University, PDI creates and shares original empirical research around how digital technologies are impacting democracy to inform and educate decision-makers in the field, including the next generation of technologists, business leaders, and policymakers.
The Program on Geopolitics, Technology, and Governance (GTG) is dedicated to world-class scholarly and policy-oriented research on the political, legal, and economic implications of digital innovation and global competition. Artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and a proliferation of smart, connected devices will revolutionize warfare and create new challenges and opportunities in statecraft. They will enable automation in countless domains, and lead to as of yet unknown applications that catalyze new industries and business models—and in the process, massively alter how economic value is created, captured and distributed, with ripple effects in the domestic politics of nations and the broader global political economy.
The Program on Platform Regulation, headed by Daphne Keller, focuses on current or emerging law governing Internet platforms, with an emphasis on laws’ consequences for the rights and interests of Internet users and the public.
The Stanford Social Media Lab works on understanding psychological and interpersonal processes in social media. The team specializes in using computational linguistics and behavioral experiments to understand how the words we use can reveal psychological and social dynamics, such as deception and trust, emotional dynamics, and relationships.
A new volume, Digital Technologies in Emerging Countries, edited by Francis Fukuyama and Marietje Schaake gathers comparative data on digital technology issues affecting ECs that will inform government policy, the platforms, and civil society around the world.
The European Commission has sought input via a call for comments, as they evaluate access to data from very large online platforms and very large search engines by researchers, a key measure of the Digital Services Act.
In response to the U.S. surgeon general’s advisory about social media’s impacts on youth and adolescents, Stanford scholar Jeff Hancock reflects on what parents, policymakers, and educators can do to help children create healthy habits online. Published in Stanford News.
Joan Barata of the Program on Platform Regulation looks at the Fake News Bill of Brazil and the implications for freedom of expression. Published in Tech Policy Press.
Four legal experts, including PPR's Daphne Keller weigh in on two cases at the United States Supreme Court that could alter how the internet functions, how it is governed, and how users engage with it. Published in Freedom House.
In this Help Net Security video, James X. Dempsey, Senior Policy Advisor at Stanford University’s Cyber Policy Center, discusses large language models’ security and privacy risks.
Daphne Keller spoke with the Initiative for Digital Public Infrastructure at the University of Massachusetts Amherst about two potentially major cases currently before the Supreme Court
A transatlantic background and a decade of experience as a lawmaker in the European Parliament has given Marietje Schaake a unique perspective as a researcher investigating the harms technology is causing to democracy and human rights.
As the war in Ukraine continues to reshape security needs in Europe and globally, scholars from the Freeman Spogli Institute agree that Finland can play a unique leadership role in defense and cybersecurity alliances.
The second annual Trust & Safety Research Conference, sponsored by the Stanford Internet Observatory, will take place at the Alumni Center at Stanford University
A cornerstone of life online has been that platforms are not responsible for content posted by users. What happens if that immunity goes away? Daphne Keller spoke with Isaac Chotiner of The New Yorker about how the Supreme Court may change how the Internet functions.
Moderated Content host Evelyn Douek discusses Twitter’s data security problems and what this says about privacy regulation more generally with Whitney Merrill, the Data Protection Officer and Privacy Counsel at Asana and long-time privacy lawyer including as an attorney at the FTC, and Riana Pfefferkorn, a Research Scholar at the Stanford Internet Observatory.
Large-scale voting fraud may be a chimera, but counting a rising number of ballots quickly will require investments in state and local election administration. Published in the Wall Street Journal.
