URI Honors lecture series takes on cybersecurity and privacy

JAMES BAMFORD, who recently returned from an extensive interview in Moscow of former National Security Agency analyst Edward Snowden, is leading one of 12 lectures and discussions being produced by the URI Honors Colloquium on the topic of cybersecurity and privacy. / COURTESY UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND
JAMES BAMFORD, who recently returned from an extensive interview in Moscow of former National Security Agency analyst Edward Snowden, is leading one of 12 lectures and discussions being produced by the URI Honors Colloquium on the topic of cybersecurity and privacy. / COURTESY UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND

SOUTH KINGSTOWN – James Bamford, an investigative journalist who is most known for reporting on U.S. intelligence agencies (mainly the U.S. National Security Agency), will present the second talk in the University of Rhode Island’s 2014 Honors Colloquium on cybersecurity and privacy.
Bamford’s presentation, scheduled for Sept. 16, is titled “Everyone’s a Target: How America lost control of the National Security Agency and can it be reined in?” and will confront the NSA, which has cloaked itself in secrecy as it collected telephone data and bugged personal cell phones owned by allied leaders, among other breaches of privacy. He will explain how the NSA spun out of control, and he will also offer his thoughts on how (or if) the agency can be reined back in.
Bamford also will discuss his opinions on privacy, as well as fugitive Edward Snowden, whom Bamford recently spent three days interviewing in Moscow. Bamford’s meetings with Snowden are the longest that any reporter has spent with the fugitive since he fled to Russia after leaking classified NSA documents. His reporting of the conversations can be found in the Sept. issue of “Wired” magazine.

The URI Honors Colloquium will be held Tuesday evenings at 7:30 p.m. from Sept. 9 to Dec. 2 for all but two of the lectures. The full schedule is available HERE. All one dozen seminars are free and open to the public.

“We expect the audiences to be amazed at what’s going on,” said Ed Lamagna, URI professor of computer science and one of the four coordinators for the lecture series. “I would say nothing is private.”

The URI Honors Colloquium is in its 51st year. Other highlights of the series include an Oct. 21 panel on cybercrime, moderated by U.S. Rep. James R. Langevin, the Nov. 12 lecture by U.S. Federal Trade Commissioner Julie Brill on big data and data brokers, and the Nov. 18 talk given by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Julia Angwin, entitled, “Is Privacy Becoming a Luxury Good?”

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