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On March 27, Schulich School of Law Professor Jonathon Penney presented 鈥溾�� as part of the Luncheon Speaker Series at Princeton University鈥檚 (CITP). To the audience gathered in Room 306 Sherrerd Hall on campus, Penney discussed how online surveillance and forms of Internet regulation 鈥渃hill鈥� or deter people from exercising their rights and freedoms online, with some serious implications for access to information and deliberative democracy. 聽

鈥淲ith Internet censorship and mass surveillance on the rise globally, understanding regulatory 鈥榗hilling effects鈥欌�攖he idea that laws, regulations, or state surveillance can deter people from speaking and acting freely鈥攊n our post-Snowden and now post-Cambridge Analytica world has taken on greater urgency and public importance,鈥� says Penney. 鈥淭his talk draws on my recent research to provide insights on a range of related questions.鈥�

In addition to teaching upper-year seminar law and technology as well as first-year contract law at Schulich Law, Penney (JD 鈥�03) is director of our law school鈥檚 Law and Technology Institute (LATI) and a 2017鈥�2019 technology policy research affiliate at CITP. He is also a research affiliate of the University of Toronto鈥檚 Citizen Lab, as well as a research collaborator at the at the MIT Media Lab. His background in the legalities of online privacy, surveillance, and information security, and his research on chilling effects and self-censorship online, are a perfect fit for the projects and studies being conducted at CITP.

With Internet censorship and mass surveillance on the rise globally, understanding regulatory 鈥榗hilling effects鈥� has taken on greater urgency and public importance. 鈥斅�Professor Jonathon Penney

鈥淧rinceton has special expertise in computation, social science, engineering, and technology policy more generally, which fits nicely with my legal research,鈥� says Penney. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a great opportunity to meet new people doing cutting-edge work in this space.鈥�

CITP provides interdisciplinary research that questions the intersection of technology, policy, and society. As a research affiliate, Penney has a formal relationship with CITP but isn鈥檛 required to keep a full-time residency at Princeton. Affiliate terms usually last two years, with the possibility of an extension, and engage in CITP鈥檚 work remotely鈥攖hrough research collaborations, posts on the CITP鈥檚 Freedom to Tinker blog, or other joint projects.

One project Penney is involved with tracks the impact of automated legal processes on Internet users and involves computational social scientists from Princeton and computer scientists from the MIT Media Lab. 鈥淭his project explores the impact of automated legal processes, including those powered by machine learning algorithms, and how to mitigate them,鈥� says Penney. 鈥淢y previous research on surveillance and regulatory chilling effects gained some media attention in the U.S., which I think helped garner more interest in my work.鈥�

Penney was recently awarded an SSHRC Insight Award for his investigative research, along with his research partners, Teresa Scassa of Ottawa Law and Pamela Robinson of Ryerson University. The group will receive $190, 000 over four years for their research entitled 鈥淒eveloping a public interest-based approach to ownership, users rights, and privacy interests in publicly accessible platform data.鈥�

In the first year of his three-year term as LATI鈥檚 director, Penney has been busy thinking through a new mission and strategic plan for the next academic year along with Professor Lucie Guibault, LATI鈥檚 new associate director. 鈥淲e have some new ideas in the work to expand, re-think, and re-envision the Institute and its place in the law school, including the research and advocacy we pursue and how we communicate and disseminate that work. Stay tuned!鈥�