Cyber Security, Law, and Society Alliance

About the BU Cyber Alliance

The Boston University Cyber Security, Law, and Society Alliance (Cyber Alliance) is an interdisciplinary initiative that brings together experts across the university to address today’s most urgent challenges in technology law and policy. It is a convergence of scholars in law, business, and the social sciences with researchers in data science, computer science, and engineering. It tackles complex issues involving digital privacy, data governance, surveillance, AI ethics, and cyber law.

The Alliance is spearheaded by the Center for Reliable Information Systems & Cyber Security (RISCS) with strong participation from BU’s Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences (CDS), School of Law, College of Arts & Sciences, and the Hariri Institute for Computing. The Alliance positions BU as a national leader in shaping the future of technology law and policy.

Impact

The BU Cyber Alliance has made significant strides in education, research, and policy. The seminar and courses run by Cyber Alliance faculty have provided educational training and development to hundreds of students and have fostered critical dialogue on emerging challenges at the convergence of technology, law, and public policy. Research leadership is reflected in widely cited work on topics like algorithmic transparency and biometric privacy. Through public policy influence, faculty have helped shape legislation on topics like online safety, intellectual property, and data privacy via expert testimony and published commentary.

Activities

Seminar Series (2025-26)

The Cyber Alliance seminar series is currently co-organized by Stacey Dogan, Ngozi Okidegbe, and Mayank Varia. It features a rotating series of public talks featuring national experts in law, computer science, and the social sciences. Seminars are hosted at the Hariri Institute and the BU School of Law, with a focus on making scholarship accessible across disciplines. The seminars are open to all, and routinely have attendance from faculty and students from across Boston University as well as collaborators from Greater Boston Area institutions.

In the 2025-26 academic year, the Cyber Alliance is pleased to host the following talks (typically on Wednesday at 4:30-5:45pm).

9/8/2025 Ryan Calo, University of Washington, Virginia and Prentice Bloedel Professor
2/11/2026 Allison McDonald, Boston University, Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences – “Ethical Challenges and Opportunities for AI/ML Research using Nude Images”
2/25/2026 Elettra Bietti, Northeastern University, Assistant Professor of Law and Computer Science – “The Data-Attention Imperative”
3/5/2026 Céline Castets-Renard, University of Ottawa, Full Professor in the Faculty of Law – “The EU and the Future of Regulating AI”
3/18/2026 Morgan Weiland, Boston University, Assistant Professor in the Department of Mass Communication – “Courtroom as Laboratory: How the Reno Litigation Produced Legal Facts and Knowledge about the Internet”
3/25/2026 Catherine Powell, Fordham University, Professor of Law – “AI and Constitutional Democracy at 250”
4/15/2026 Marshall Van Alstyne, Boston University, Allen and Kelli Questrom Professor in Information Systems

Seminar Series (Prior Years)

From roundtables and speaker series to brown bag discussions, the Alliance convenes academic and practitioner communities to engage with evolving digital threats and societal responses. We provide below a list of Cyber Alliance talks and events for the past decade.

Seminar Talks

4/23/2025 Dan Roche, U.S. Naval Academy – What FTC cases tell us about developing and managing secure software systems
3/26/2025 Fanna Gamal, UCLA School of Law – The Algorithmic Racial Proxy
2/19/2025 Ignacio Cofone, University of Oxford – The Privacy Fallacy: Harm and Power in the Information Economy
1/29/2025 Catherine D'Ignazio, MIT – Another AI Is Possible
10/30/2024 Andrew Selbst, UCLA Law School
10/23/2024 Andy Sellars, Boston University – Independent Research as Regulatory Partner in Software Accountability
3/6/2024 Haochen Sun, University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law – The Ethics of AI Creativity
1/24/2024 Carolina Rossini, Boston University – Bridging Academia and Civil Society: A Collaborative Approach to Public Interest Technology
11/8/2023 Gaia Bernstein, Seton Hall University – Unwired: Gaining Control over Addictive Technologies
3/22/2023 Ellen Goodman, Rutgers University
6/21/2022 Nikolas Guggenberger, Yale Information Society Project – Allocating Network Effects
4/6/2022 Ran Canetti, Boston University – Legal verification dilemmas and Zero-Knowledge proofs: Can technological feasibility affect existing legal doctrines?
3/16/2022 Tamar Kricheli-Katz, Tel Aviv University – Biased Reputations: using cross-listed properties to identify the negative effects of race on users’ reputations on Airbnb
1/19/2022 Salome Viljoen, Columbia Law School – Data relations and the digital economy
4/28/2021 Gordon Pennycook, University of Regina – Intuition, Reason, and Social Media
3/3/2021 Bryan Choi, Ohio State University – AI Malpractice
1/27/2021 Kobbi Nissim, Georgetown University – Towards the Construction of Hybrid Legal-Technical Concepts
12/2/2020 Ryan Calo, University of Washington – Is Tricking a Robot Hacking?
11/18/2020 Julissa Milligan
10/21/2020 Tesary Lin, Boston University – Valuing Intrinsic and Instrumental Preferences for Privacy
9/30/2020 Dawn Nunziato, George Washington University Law School – Misinformation Mayhem: Social Media Platforms’ Efforts to Combat Medical and Political Misinformation
9/9/2020 Garrett Johnson, Boston University – Privacy & Market Concentration: Intended & Unintended Consequences of the GDPR
3/4/2020 Sam Weinstein, Cardozo School of Law – Blockchain Neutrality
2/26/2020 Leslie John, Harvard Business School – Privacy and Disclosure in the Digital Age
2/12/2020 Chiara Longoni, Associate Professor of Marketing, Questrom School of Business – Resistance to Medical AI
1/15/2020 Cameron F. Kerry, Ann R. and Andrew H. Tisch Distinguished Visiting Fellow, Brookings Institution – Policy, Politics, and Privacy: Shaping Comprehensive Federal Privacy Legislation
12/11/2019 Gianluca Stringhini, Boston University – Computational Methods to Measure and Mitigate Weaponized Online Information
12/4/2019 Gabe Kaptchuk, Johns Hopkins University
11/20/2019 Yiling Chen, Harvard University – Algorithm-in-the-Loop Decision Making: Disparate Interactions and Limitations
11/6/2019 Kristopher Grahame, Intelligence Analyst, FBI – Disinformation in the Age in Social Media: A Foreign Influence Briefing
10/23/2019 John Abowd, Cornell University – The U.S. Census Bureau Tries to be a Good Data Steward in the 21st Century
10/16/2019 Hemu Nigam, Founder of SSP Blue – When Hackers Attack: A View of the Ensuing Chaos from the Inside
10/9/2019 Alan Mislove, Northeastern University
9/25/2019 Tiffany Li, Boston University – Biometric Privacy
9/11/2019 Alan Rozenshtein, University of Minnesota – Silicon Valley’s Speech
8/13/2019 Katrina Ligett, Hebrew University of Jerusalem – Shifting the Balance Between Individuals & Data Processors: Asserting Cooperative Autonomy Over Personal Data While Generating New Value
4/17/2019 Asaf Lubin, Tufts and Yale – location: Hariri
4/8/2019 at 12:30-2pm Kate Klonick, St. John’s – location: Hariri
4/3/2019 Ron Rivest, MIT – location: Law
3/20/2019 Neil Richards, Washington University – location: Law
3/6/2019 James Grimmelmann, Cornell – location: Hariri
2/27/2019 Marshall Van Alstyne, BU – location: Law
1/30/2019 Susan Landau, Tufts – It’s Too Complicated, How the Internet Upends Katz, Smith, and Electronic Surveillance Law – location: Law
1/16/2019 Jeff Kosseff, US Naval Academy – The 26 Words That Created the Internet: The History and Future of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act – location: Hariri
12/12/2018 Sarah Scheffler, BU – From Soft Classifiers to Hard Decisions: How Fair Can We Be? – location: Law
11/28/2018 Danny Weitzner, MIT – Computer science and the law: what the fields need from each other in the Information Age (video)
11/14/2018 Leah Plunkett, UNH – Sharenthood: How the Digital Tech Habits of Parents, Teachers, and Other Trusted Adults Harm Kids & Teens
10/31/2018 Jonathan Frankle, MIT – Machine Learning and Neural Networks for Lawyers
10/17/2018 Andrea Matwyshyn, Northeastern – The Internet of Bodies (video)
10/10/2018 Joan Feigenbaum, Yale
10/3/2018 Aloni Cohen, MIT – Towards Modeling Singling Out
9/19/2018 Moon Duchin, Tufts – Gerrymandering: Can Computing Cut the Gordian Knot?
9/5/2018 Yaniv Benhamou, University of Geneva – Self-Regulation and Certification: An Appropriate Tool to Regulate the Platforms and AI-Industries (video)
7/31/2018 Danielle Citron (University of Maryland)
5/14/2018 Robot Lawyers: Automating Legal Compliance for Transferring Private Data – Stephen Chong (Harvard University)
5/7/2018 Digital Advertising: A View from the Inside – John Byers (Computer Science)
4/30/2018 Machine Generated Culpability: Inscrutable Machine Evidence in the Criminal Legal Process – Ahmed Ghappour (BU Law) (video)
4/4/2018 Rory Van Loo (BU Law)
3/12/2018 Bridging Privacy Definitions: Differential Privacy and Privacy Concepts from Law and Policy – Alexandra Wood (Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University)
2/20/2018 Using Machine Learning to Improve Policy Problems: An Econometric Perspective – Sendhil Mullainathan (Harvard University)
2/5/2018 How Computer Scientists Can Wrest Tech Policy Out of the Cold, Dead Grip of the Invisible Hand – Paul Ohm (Georgetown)
2/2/2018 Governing the Internet: Public Access, Private Regulation (symposium) – Journal of Science and Technology Law
11/15/2017 Algorithmic Transparency for the Smart City (Wednesday@Hariri event) – Ellen Goodman (Rutgers)
11/8/2017 Beyond Snowden: Privacy, Mass Surveillance and the Struggle to Reform the NSA (book talk & Wednesday@Hariri event) – Tim Edgar (Brown University)
10/25/2017 Privacy’s Blueprint: The Battle to Control the Design of New Technologies (book talk & Wednesday@Hariri event) – Woodrow Hartzog (Northeastern University)
10/13/2017 Claiming Design – Mark McKenna (University of Notre Dame)
10/11/2017 The Rise of Big Data Policing: Surveillance, Race, and the Future of Law Enforcement (book talk & Wednesday@Hariri event) – Andrew Ferguson (University of the District of Columbia)
11/30/2016 Emergent Normative and Legal Aspects of Automated Systems: The Intricacies of Machine Learning Algorithms – Argyro Karanasiou & Dimitris Pinotsis
11/4/2016 The Future of Fair Data Practices – Frank Pasquale

Related Talks

While the following events were not hosted by the Cyber Alliance, they contribute to the University’s broad interest at the intersection of law, technology, social sciences, and the humanities.

3/15/2018 BU Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar Series presents Accountability in an Age of Algorithms: How Should Ethics and Technology Converse?
2/20/2018 BU Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar Series presents Open Access and Research into History: Issues of Copyright – Casey Westerman (Institute of Advanced Studies) on Kurt Gödel’s Max Phil notebooks, with commentary from Peter Suber (Harvard University)

Roundtable Discussions

4/26/2017 Online Political Speech & Computational Fact Checking Tools
12/16/2016 Law Enforcement, Sex Trafficking, Policing & Gun Control, with Valiant Richey, King County Prosecutor

Brown Bag Lunch Series

11/28/2017 Pinning Down “Privacy” in Statistical Data Analysis – Adam Smith
10/23/2017 Training Data and Innovation in Markets for AI – Michael Meurer
10/2/2017 A Crash Course in Data Encryption: Concepts, Techniques, Limitations, and Unrealized Potential, Part II – Ran Canetti
7/17/2017 A Crash Course in Data Encryption: Concepts, Techniques, Limitations, and Unrealized Potential – Ran Canetti
2/17/2017 Sharing Knowledge without Sharing Data: On the false choice between the privacy and utility of information – Azer Bestravros
12/12/2016 & 12/21/2016 Software Copyright – Wendy Gordon
11/21/2016 Surveillance and Traffic Shaping – Sharon Goldberg
10/31/2016 Intellectual Property Rights and Online Intermediaries – Stacey Dogan

Interdisciplinary Coursework

Research Scholarship and Public Engagement

Researchers in the Cyber Alliance have received grant awards from the U.S. National Science Foundation and DARPA to conduct convergence research between the computational and social sciences. Alliance faculty have also testified before Congress and participated in national briefings on encryption, surveillance, deepfakes, and online privacy—helping to shape public understanding and policy frameworks.

We highlight below a few selected journal and conference publications, awards, newspaper articles, manuscripts, and public events by Cyber Alliance faculty and students.

Congressional testimony and briefings

6/2019 Danielle Citron – Testimony to the House Intelligence Committee on ‘Deep Fakes’ (written remarks)
2/2019 Azer Bestavros, Andrei Lapets, and Mayank Varia
9/2018 Azer Bestavros and Mayank Varia
6/2017 Mayank Varia
6/2016 Sharon Goldberg

Selected research articles

A. Bestavros. It’s time to tell students what they need to know. Published by The Washington Post.
R. Canetti, A. Cohen, N. Dikkala, G. Ramnarayan, S. Scheffler, and A. Smith. From Soft Classifiers to Hard Decisions: How fair can we be? Published at FAT* 2019
A. Z. Rozenshtein, M. Varia, and C. V. Wright. How Congress Can De-Escalate the Second Crypto War: Fund Research and Broker a Crypto Armistice. Posted at the Lawfare blog.
A. Sellars. Roadmap to Data Generated by New Technologies and the Stored Communications Act. Available at SSRN.
A. Sellars. Twenty Years of Web Scraping and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. 24 B.U. J. Sci. & Tech. L. 372. Available at SSRN.
M. Varia. A Roadmap for Exceptional Access Research. Posted at the Lawfare blog.
C. V. Wright and M. Varia. Crypto Crumple Zones: Enabling Limited Access Without Mass Surveillance. Published at Euro S&P.
S. Goldberg. Surveillance without Borders: The “Traffic Shaping” Loophole and Why It Matters. Available at The Century Foundation.
R. Ingber, Interpretation Catalysts in Cyberspace. 95 Texas Law Review 1531. Available at SSRN and Scholarly Commons.

Selected media interviews and mentions

D. Wakabayashi. Legal Shield for Websites Rattles Under Onslaught of Hate Speech. The New York Times. August 6, 2019.
The Tech Whisperers. Boston University 2018 Annual Report. December 2018.
K. McAlpine. Patch Fixes Won’t Stop Massive Data Breaches. What Will? BU Research. December 4, 2018.
J. Milligan. Interview on Bloomberg Baystate Business. December 3, 2018.
A. Jahnke. Are Computer-Aided Decisions Actually Fair?. BU Research, November 26, 2018
E. Wilkins. New Tech Could Resolve Student Data-Privacy Dilemma: Ed Dept. Bloomberg Government, September 24, 2018.
S. Stalinsky. Tech titan efforts to stop terrorists from ‘going dark’ are, so far, inadequate. The Hill, April 30, 2018.
J. Vijayan. New Method Proposed for Secure Government Access to Encrypted Data. Dark Reading, March 19, 2018.
C. Osborne. Cryptographic crumpling: The encryption ‘middle ground’ for government surveillance. ZDNet, March 19, 2018.

Cross-disciplinary research awards

U.S. National Science Foundation: Multi-regulation computation (grant 1915763)
DARPA: Optimized Relations Auditing for Compliance with Laws and Ethical Statements (agreement HR00112020021) - news article

Public Interest Technology

Want to learn more or get involved?

For details on current initiatives and upcoming activities of the BU Cyber Security, Law, and Society Alliance, please contact Mayank Varia and request to be added to our mailing list. The Alliance is open to a variety of exciting future opportunities for faculty and students, including: resident scholars, joint workshops, and collaborative development of educational training materials and curricula.