Policy Analysis
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Former Research Scholar, Stanford Internet Observatory
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Riana Pfefferkorn was a Research Scholar at the Stanford Internet Observatory. She investigated the U.S. and other governments' policies and practices for forcing decryption and/or influencing the security design of online platforms and services, devices, and products, both via technical means and through the courts and legislatures. Riana also studies novel forms of electronic surveillance and data access by U.S. law enforcement and their impact on civil liberties. 

Previously, Riana was the Associate Director of Surveillance and Cybersecurity at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, where she remains an affiliate. Prior to joining Stanford, she was an associate in the Internet Strategy & Litigation group at the law firm of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, and a law clerk to the Honorable Bruce J. McGiverin of the U.S. District Court for the District of Puerto Rico. During law school, she interned for the Honorable Stephen Reinhardt of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Riana has spoken at various legal and security conferences, including Black Hat and DEF CON's Crypto & Privacy Village. She is frequently quoted in the press, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, and NPR. Riana is a graduate of the University of Washington School of Law and Whitman College.

Complete list of publications and recent blog posts here.

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Eloise Duvillier

Eloise Duvillier is the Program Manager of the Program on Democracy and the Internet at the Cyber Policy Center. She previously was a HR Program Manager and acting HR Business Partner at Bytedance Inc, a rapidly-growing Chinese technology startup. At Bytedance, she supported the globalization of the company by driving US acquisition integrations in Los Angeles and building new R&D teams in Seattle and Silicon Valley. Prior to Bytedance, she led talent acquisition for Baidu USA LLC’s artificial intelligence division. She began her career in the nonprofit industry where she worked in foster care, HIV education and emergency response during humanitarian crises, as well as helping war-torn communities rebuild. She graduated from University of California, Berkeley with a bachelor’s degree in Development Studies, focusing on political economics in unindustrialized societies.

Program Manager, Program on Democracy and the Internet
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Nicole Feldman
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Facebook and Congress Must Create Regulations Together

Featuring Eileen Donahoe, executive director of the Global Digital Policy Incubator and Allison Berke, executive director of the Stanford Cyber Initiative. Both programs are housed at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI). Written by Nicole Feldman.

For the past two days, the United States Senate and House of Representatives grilled Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on everything from user privacy to platform bias to Russian interference in the 2016 elections. Though prompted by Cambridge Analytica’s improper use of user data, Zuckerberg’s testimony provided a broader platform to talk about Facebook’s role in today’s increasingly digital world and regulation for the tech industry as a whole. FSI scholars Eileen Donahoe and Allison Berke give us their top take-aways from Zuckerberg’s testimony.

 
Photo of Eileen Donahoe

Eileen Donahoe

 

There were two big “take-aways” from Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony before Congress this week.

Digital privacy is a form of security that matters to Facebook users and to citizens in our democracy.

The good news that came out of the hearings is that the American public and our representatives in Congress are waking up to the importance of citizens’ privacy in our democracy, as well as to the consequences of the loss of privacy for freedom and security. The Cambridge Analytica — Facebook saga has succeeded in bringing to public consciousness a significant security threat to our democracy, which until now has been relatively invisible in public debate: how failure to protect user’s digital privacy can have real world consequences for democratic processes, national security, and citizens’ liberty. Earlier un-nuanced assertions expressed by many in the technology community that “privacy is over” and users don’t care about how their data is shared, can no longer function as a dominant operating assumption. The hard reality ahead of us is how challenging it will be to protect citizens’ privacy in a context where digital platforms, tools and services are intertwined with our daily lives. The bottom line is that digital platforms now will be required to have much more nuanced conversations with their users about the tradeoffs of using free services in exchange for monetizing personal data. This will have consequences for Facebook’s business model and all freemium digital services.

Congressional hearings are not an adequate vehicle for educating legislators about how to regulate digital platforms.

The range of complex, multilayered challenges that must be tackled to optimally govern digital platforms in democracy cannot be addressed effectively through a brief set of public hearings. Many Senators and members of Congress displayed a lack of understanding of how Facebook works, which strands of the debate warrant deeper inspection, or which issues must be prioritized to protect the liberty and security of citizens on digital platforms. Representatives jumped around from one subject to the next — from political bias in restricting content on Facebook, to whether Facebook is a monopoly, to whether citizens own their data, to the efficacy of user consent to terms of service — without adequately framing any of these important subjects. In effect, the Senate and Congressional hearings themselves were shown to be poor vehicles for deepening regulators’ knowledge or helping progress toward an optimal approach to regulating Facebook or other digital platforms. Other than moving toward passage of the bipartisan Honest Ads Act sponsored by Senators Amy Klobuchar (D), Mark Warner (D), and John McCain(R), which regulates political advertising on digital platforms in the same way as on television and radio, our representatives are not yet well-prepared to regulate digital services. A different mode of engagement between government representatives and technology companies must be developed, if legislators want to help protect citizens in the digital realm, while also allowing users to continue to enjoy the benefits of digital platforms they have come to rely upon in their daily lives.

 
Photo of Allison Berke, executive director of the Stanford Cyber Initiative at FSI.

Allison Berke, executive director of the Stanford Cyber Initiative at FSI. Working across disciplines, the Stanford Cyber Initiative aims to understand how technology affects security, governance, and the future of work.

Mark Zuckerberg prepared for his testimony as though expecting to face hostile opposing counsel. His notes — leaked, ironically, by a press photographer when left open on his table during a bathroom break — show prepared language to address calls for his own resignation, and for compensation for users whose data was improperly shared, though these topics were not raised during questioning. Despite promising to work with legislators on regulations, Zuckerberg stopped short of proposing specific measures. Though he voiced his support of the Honest Ads Act, when asked if he would return to Washington to aid its passage, he offered someone on his team instead and noted that he “doesn’t come to Washington too often.” The implications, both that he doesn’t need to and that he doesn’t want to be involved in forming regulations, revealed a relationship between Facebook and lawmakers with distance, shading from incomprehension to distrust to antagonism, on both sides.

Many of those watching the hearings noted the Senators’ and Representatives’ clunky and repetitive lines of questioning, their difficulty choosing the precise terminology to communicate the technological gist of their inquiries, and the inability of a five-minute oral format to properly convey — and convey strictly enough to reign in a witness looking for a question’s easiest possible interpretation — the nuance in, for example, the points made by Senators Blunt and Wicker about Facebook’s cross-platform tracking between a device hosting a logged-in Facebook app and a device registered to the same user but lacking the Facebook login.

One could imagine a more collegial relationship between Facebook and Washington DC, in which representatives would have discussed their questions with Zuckerberg and his team at greater length, and perhaps behind closed doors, and could use the testimonial hearing format to place prior agreements and understandings on the record. Facebook’s apparent openness to exploring regulation should be taken as an opportunity by policymakers, both to craft regulation that may need to be complex — to cover the myriad ways in which data can be collected and mixed, and to ensure that a savvy company can’t avoid both compliance and detection — and to forge a closer relationship between the tech giant and its community representatives. That may require Zuckerberg visiting Washington a little more often, and it will also require the acquisition of more technological knowledge and expertise by legislators and their staff, which may require them to visit Silicon Valley more, too.


Views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies or Stanford University, both of which are nonpartisan institutions.

 

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The Consequences of Technological Developments for Politics and Government

Tuesday, April 24, 2018


Reception at 5:00pm. Talk from 5:30pm - 6:45pm.

RSVP required online.

The consequences of contemporary technological innovations for the lives and values of future generations are enormous. The wide range of expected – and unexpected – applications require rethinking governance arrangements, legal regimes, economic structures, and social relations. Exploration of such topics is the subject of the 2017-18 CASBS symposium series.

The first symposium, held in November 2017, focused on “AI, Automation, and Society.” Read about and view a video of that event here.

The second symposium, held in March 2018, involved “The Effects of Technology on Human Interactions.” View the event video here.

In this final installment of the 2017-18 series, CASBS presents a conversation featuring two 2017-18 CASBS fellows – Stanford professor Nate Persily, an expert on law, democracy, and the internet; and Carrie Cihak, a senior policy expert and practitioner at one of the most innovative county governments in the U.S. They will outline the challenges that recent technology-based advances pose to democracy, public policy, and governance systems. Social media platforms increasingly are viewed as vehicles for exploiting political discourse, rather than as democratizing forces. How should our institutions respond? Though modern technological innovations more easily connect people, what are the implications for issues of “digital equity,” government capacity, and regulatory frameworks? Though the positive impacts are substantial, how do we address the numerous negative impacts of the technology sector’s concentration in certain regional economies – including the San Francisco Bay Area and the greater Seattle area? These are just a few questions that will stimulate a thought-provoking discussion between the panelists and with the audience.

 


 

As Chief of Policy for King County Executive Dow Constantine, the highest ranking elected official of King County, WA, the 13th largest county in the United States, Carrie S. Cihak is responsible for identifying the highest priority policy areas and community outcomes for leadership focus and for developing and launching innovative solutions to issues that are complex, controversial and cross-sectoral. She is an architect of some of the county’s key initiatives, such as Best Starts for Kids as well as nationally-recognized work on equity and social justice. Prior to her work in Constantine’s administration, Cihak served for eight years as a senior-level analyst for the King County Council and as lead staff for the King County Board of Health. She also served as a staff economist on international trade and finance for President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers. As a policy fellow during the 2017-18 academic year, Cihak is leading projects at CASBS and in King County that advance meaningful collaboration between academic researchers and governments. She is spearheading efforts in King County on evidence-informed decision making and is co-director of CASBS’s Impact Evaluation Design Lab, launched in March 2018. She is also using time at CASBS to explore the science and evidence-base of belonging, while working back home to help launch a cross-sector partnership called “You Belong Here,” which seeks to build civic muscle and inclusive growth in the Seattle region.


Nate Persily is the James B. McClatchy Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, with appointments in the departments of political science, communication and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Prior to joining Stanford, Persily taught at Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and as a visiting professor at Harvard, NYU, Princeton, the University of Amsterdam, and the University of Melbourne. His scholarship and legal practice focus on American election law or what is sometimes called the “law of democracy,” which addresses issues such as voting rights, political parties, campaign finance, redistricting, and election administration. He has served as a special master or court-appointed expert to craft congressional or legislative districting plans for Georgia, Maryland, Connecticut, New York and, most recently, North Carolina. He also served as the Senior Research Director for the Presidential Commission on Election Administration. In addition to numerous articles (many cited by the Supreme Court) on the legal regulation of political parties, issues surrounding the census and redistricting process, voting rights, and campaign finance reform, Persily is coauthor of an election law casebook, The Law of Democracy. As a fellow at CASBS supported by the Annenberg Foundation, he is examining the impact of changing technology on political communication, campaigns, and election administration. In 2016, he received an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship to pursue this work. Persily also co-directs the Stanford Project on Democracy and the Internet.

 

*There will be valet parking at the event.

Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University
75 Alta Road
Stanford, CA 94305

Nate Persily The James B. McClatchy Professor of Law Stanford Law School
Carrie Cihak Chief of Policy for King County Executive Dow Constantine King County, Washington
Lectures
Encina Hall, C433 616 Jane Stanford Way Stanford, CA 94305-6055
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Shelby Grossman is a research scholar at the Cyber Policy Center. Her research focuses on online safety. Shelby's research has been published in Comparative Political Studies, PNAS Nexus, Political Communication, The Journal of Politics, World Development, and World Politics. Her book, "The Politics of Order in Informal Markets," was published by Cambridge University Press. She is co-editor of the Journal of Online Trust and Safety, and teaches classes at Stanford on open source investigation and online trust and safety issues. 

Shelby was an assistant professor of political science at the University of Memphis from 2017-2019, and a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law from 2016-17. She earned her Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University in 2016.

Research Scholar
CDDRL Postdoctoral Fellow, 2016-17
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Former SK Center Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
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PhD, MPP

Yong Suk Lee was the SK Center Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Deputy Director of the Korea Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University. He served in these roles until June 2021.

Lee’s main fields of research are labor economics, technology and entrepreneurship, and urban economics. Some of the issues he has studied include technology and labor markets, entrepreneurship and economic growth, entrepreneurship education, and education and inequality. He is also interested in both the North and South Korean economy and has examined how economic sanctions affect economic activity in North Korea, and how management practices and education policy affect inequality in South Korea. His current research focuses on how the new wave of digital technologies, such as robotics and artificial intelligence affect labor, education, entrepreneurship, and productivity.

His research has been published in both economics and management journals including the Journal of Urban Economics, Journal of Economic Geography, Journal of Business Venturing, Journal of Health Economics, and Labour Economics. Lee also regularly contributes to policy reports and opinion pieces on contemporary issues surrounding both North and South Korea.

Prior to joining Stanford, Lee was an assistant professor of economics at Williams College in Massachusetts. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from Brown University, a Master of Public Policy from Duke University, and a Bachelor's degree and master's degree in architecture from Seoul National University. Lee also worked as a real estate development consultant and architecture designer as he transitioned from architecture to economics.

While at APARC, Dr. Lee led and participated in several research projects, including Stanford-Asia Pacific Innovation; Digital Technologies and the Labor Market; Entrepreneurship, Technology, and Economic Development; The Impact of Robotics on Nursing Home Care in Japan; Education and Development in the Digital Economy; and New Media and Political Economy.

Former Deputy Director of the Korea Program at Shorenstein APARC

Encina Hall, C148
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305

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Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Director of the Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy
Research Affiliate at The Europe Center
Professor by Courtesy, Department of Political Science
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Francis Fukuyama is Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a faculty member of FSI's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). He is also Director of Stanford's Ford Dorsey Master’s in International Policy Program, and a professor (by courtesy) of Political Science.

Dr. Fukuyama has written widely on issues in development and international politics. His 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man, has appeared in over twenty foreign editions. His most recent book,  Liberalism and Its Discontents, was published in the spring of 2022.

Francis Fukuyama received his B.A. from Cornell University in classics, and his Ph.D. from Harvard in Political Science. He was a member of the Political Science Department of the RAND Corporation and of the Policy Planning Staff of the US Department of State. From 1996-2000 he was Omer L. and Nancy Hirst Professor of Public Policy at the School of Public Policy at George Mason University, and from 2001-2010 he was Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of International Political Economy at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University. He served as a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics from 2001-2004.  

Dr. Fukuyama holds honorary doctorates from Connecticut College, Doane College, Doshisha University (Japan), Kansai University (Japan), Aarhus University (Denmark), and the Pardee Rand Graduate School. He is a non-resident fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Rand Corporation, the Board of Trustees of Freedom House, and the Board of the Volcker Alliance. He is a fellow of the National Academy for Public Administration, a member of the American Political Science Association, and of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is married to Laura Holmgren and has three children.

(October 2024)

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CDDRL
Stanford University
Encina Hall, C147
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 724-6448 (650) 723-1928
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Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution
Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science and Sociology
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MA, PhD

Larry Diamond is the William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. He is also professor by courtesy of Political Science and Sociology at Stanford, where he lectures and teaches courses on democracy (including an online course on EdX). At the Hoover Institution, he co-leads the Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region and participates in the Project on the U.S., China, and the World. At FSI, he is among the core faculty of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, which he directed for six and a half years. He leads FSI’s Israel Studies Program and is a member of the Program on Arab Reform and Development. He also co-leads the Global Digital Policy Incubator, based at FSI’s Cyber Policy Center. He served for 32 years as founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy.

Diamond’s research focuses on global trends affecting freedom and democracy and on U.S. and international policies to defend and advance democracy. His book, Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency, analyzes the challenges confronting liberal democracy in the United States and around the world at this potential “hinge in history,” and offers an agenda for strengthening and defending democracy at home and abroad.  A paperback edition with a new preface was released by Penguin in April 2020. His other books include: In Search of Democracy (2016), The Spirit of Democracy (2008), Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation (1999), Promoting Democracy in the 1990s (1995), and Class, Ethnicity, and Democracy in Nigeria (1989). He has edited or coedited more than fifty books, including China’s Influence and American Interests (2019, with Orville Schell), Silicon Triangle: The United States, China, Taiwan the Global Semiconductor Security (2023, with James O. Ellis Jr. and Orville Schell), and The Troubling State of India’s Democracy (2024, with Sumit Ganguly and Dinsha Mistree).

During 2002–03, Diamond served as a consultant to the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and was a contributing author of its report, Foreign Aid in the National Interest. He has advised and lectured to universities and think tanks around the world, and to the World Bank, the United Nations, the State Department, and other organizations dealing with governance and development. During the first three months of 2004, Diamond served as a senior adviser on governance to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. His 2005 book, Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq, was one of the first books to critically analyze America's postwar engagement in Iraq.

Among Diamond’s other edited books are Democracy in Decline?; Democratization and Authoritarianism in the Arab WorldWill China Democratize?; and Liberation Technology: Social Media and the Struggle for Democracy, all edited with Marc F. Plattner; and Politics and Culture in Contemporary Iran, with Abbas Milani. With Juan J. Linz and Seymour Martin Lipset, he edited the series, Democracy in Developing Countries, which helped to shape a new generation of comparative study of democratic development.

Download full-resolution headshot; photo credit: Rod Searcey.

Former Director of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
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