By: Yuval Shany
Welcome to the tenth newsletter of the The Federmann Cyber Law Program!
I would like to use this newsletter issue to share with you two significant developments in our program. Firstly, in cooperation with the Clinical Legal Studies Centre at the Hebrew University Faculty of Law, we opened a digital rights clinic in October 2018 – the first of its kind in Jerusalem. The clinic, headed by Adv. Dana Yaffe (and academically supervised by Dr. Tamar Berenblum and myself), comprises a group of 17 law students and strives to protect and promote individual rights in an online environment. This allows the program to play an active part in shaping Israeli law and practice in the field, train the next generation of digital rights lawyers and activists, and identify suitable topics for further research.
The first cases and projects undertaken by the clinic illustrate how these goals can be achieved. They include a successful attempt to influence the contents of a proposed “online pornography” bill discussed in the Knesset: the Clinic played a part in encouraging lawmakers to switch from mandatory to optional filtering mechanisms and in raising awareness of the technological limits of content filtering. Other ongoing cases include instances when content removal has adversely affected a political party advocating drug legalization and blocked access to the social media page of a serving government minister; privacy infringements in the database supporting a new public transportation smartcard; and export controls over online surveillance technology and services. These and other projects underscore the wide variety of cutting edge questions occupying legal systems in Israel and beyond, and the need for more research on such topics. Like all the clinics at the Faculty of Law, our services are provided pro bono.
A second major recent development has been the receipt of a major gift pledge by the Federmann family to the Hebrew University Cyber Security Research Center, enabling the Center and the CyberLaw program to continue their operations indefinitely. The establishment of the Research Center three years ago was possible thanks to the vital support of the Israeli government Cyber Security Directorate, which provided us with “startup” funding for a limited period. The new gift will enable the Center – now renamed the Federmann Cyber Security Center – to consolidate its achievements and perpetuate its work. We are very grateful to the Federmann family and the University for securing such a generous gift.
With the start of 2019, let me wish us all a most productive year, one that will bring good tidings for our program and for CyberLaw…
Sincerely,
Yuval Shany
Program Director
