Under the signature JOHN, the blog Q Palantir published on June 19, 2013 an interview of  Bill Moyers with Harvard Prof. Lawrence Lessig, Roy Furman Prof of Law at Harvard Law School and the founder of the Stanfor Center for Internet and Society, on the binomials privay-freedom and technology-security. Few activities are today more polemic, difficult to grasp and even more difficult to define and regulate fairly without braking the democratic rules.

Lawrence Lessig, Roy L. Furman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and the founder of the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, has long been at the forefront of thinking about how law and technology interact.  His influential book, Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, included his now famous assertion that “Code is law.” He contends that the architecture of technology itself, at least as much as traditional legal structures, dictates how privacy and civil liberties are protected for those who use it. As he states in a recent interview with Bill Moyers, “We’ve got to think about the technology as a protector of liberty too.” Check out the full interview to hear Lessig discuss this theme in greater depth. He mentions Palantir’s PCL-protective capabilities at 13:30

Lessig’s recognition of the important role played by technology in protecting privacy and civil liberties has had a significant influence on our own approach to these issues. We continue to look for ways in which technology and law can support each other by building effective analytic capabilities that protect privacy and civil liberties at the same time.