276.11S sec. 001 - Cybersecurity in Context: Technology, Policy, and Law (Summer 2025)
Instructor: Chris Jay Hoofnagle (view instructor's teaching evaluations - degree students only | profile)
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Units: 3
Grading Designation: Graded
Mode of Instruction: In-Person
Meeting:
MTuWThF 09:00 AM - 12:10 PM
Location: Law 240
From July 28, 2025
To August 12, 2025
Enrollment info:
Enrolled: 9
Waitlisted: 0
Enroll Limit: 35
As of: 03/31 12:14 PM
Cybersecurity has become instrumental to economic activity and human rights alike. But as digital technologies penetrate deeply into almost every aspect of human experience, a broad range of social-political-economic-legal-ethical-military and other considerations have come to envelop the cybersecurity landscape. This course will explore the most important elements that shape the playing field on which cybersecurity problems emerge and are managed. The course will emphasize how ethical, legal, and economic frameworks enable and constrain security technologies and policies. It will introduce some of the most important macro-elements (such as national security considerations and the interests of nation-states) and micro-elements (such as behavioral economic insights into how people understand and interact with security features). Specific topics include policymaking (on the national, international, and organizational level), business models, legal frameworks (including duties of security, privacy issues, law enforcement access issues, computer hacking, and economic/military espionage), standards making, and the roles of users, government, and industry.
NOTE: Students will perform in-class "labs" using their laptop computer. Any computer---including a Chromebook---will suffice. Students who do not possess a laptop can contact the Law Library in advance for a computer loan.
Professor Chris Jay Hoofnagle focuses on the interplay of law and technology. At Berkeley Law, he teaches torts, cybersecurity, consumer protection, python programming, and seminars on new technologies. He is an affiliated faculty member of the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing, the Berkeley Risk and Security Lab, and the Center for Security in Politics.
Hoofnagle’s forthcoming book is Cybersecurity in Context (with Golden Richard III, 2024). He is also the author of Law and Policy for the Quantum Age (with Simson Garfinkel, Cambridge University Press, 2022) and Federal Trade Commission Privacy Law and Policy (Cambridge University Press, 2016).
Hoofnagle is of counsel to Gunderson Dettmer Stough Villeneuve Franklin & Hachigian, LLP, and an elected member of the American Law Institute. In Spring 2024, Hoofnagle was a Visiting Senior Research Fellow in the Department of War Studies, King’s College London.
Exam Notes: (P+) Course requires a series of papers.
(Subject to change by faculty member only through the first two weeks of instruction)
Course Category: Intellectual Property and Technology Law
This course is listed in the following sub-categories:
AI Law and Regulation
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