Tech law seminar on the end of encryption

Class 01 (Law and technology)

1. Read our syllabus.
2. By Thursday at noon eastern: Create a list of 200 potential future technologies.
   1. Identify the first 100 technologies without using any external sources or tools.
   2. Identify the second 100 technologies by critically engaging with (and therefore not merely copy) external sources and tools (including generative AI).
   3. Ensure your document complies with the course instructions for assignments, name the file "Class01 TechnologyList.pdf", and upload it here.
   4. Bring a printed copy to class.
3. Read Law and Technology.
4. Browse the website for TechInLaw: The Technology, Innovation, and Law Collaborative.
5. Slides for class

Class 02 (Problem-solving overview)

1. Reflect on how you solve problems, and create a flowchart showing your problem-solving process. Bring a copy to class.
2. Read Peace Corps Theory of Change Model.
3. Read John Gilmore et al., Four Reasons Lawyers Fail to be Viewed as Strategic Advisors.
4. Read Ben W. Heineman, Jr., William F. Lee, and David B. Wilkins, Lawyers as Professionals and as Citizens: Key Roles and Responsibilities in the 21st Century (pages 9 to 16 only).
5. Read Questions for the Revised Bloom's Taxonomy.
6. Create a vignette for class: Prepare a talk that, in no more than 60 seconds, presents an issue to your colleagues. The issue can be a topic, a challenge, or an opportunity. For example, "Covid-19" is a topic, "South Carolina's vaccine rate is too low" is a challenge, and "Can we use what we've learned during the pandemic to reduce the impact of other diseases such as the flu?" is an opportunity. The issue does not need to be legal in nature (although it can be). It does need to be understandable and otherwise accessible to your colleagues -- and your talk should provide the information necessary for your colleagues to meaningfully analyze it. You should also be prepared to answer any questions your colleagues pose about the issue.

Class 03 (Topic overview)

1. Re-read Law and Technology.
2. This semester we will use a structured problem-solving model to explore the implications of an end to modern encryption. This model will involve researching this topic, brainstorming challenges and opportunities, framing an underlying problem, brainstorming solutions, selecting and developing a best solution, and creating outputs with a view toward outcomes and impacts. ​Your charge is not to solve or even describe this entire topic but rather to make an original, credible, and meaningful contribution to an important dimension. Each step will require substantial research and reflection to combine knowledge, insights, and skills from inside and outside the law. In particular, many but not all of the frameworks, tools, impediments, risks, opportunities, issues, arguments, and strategies that you ultimate identify will involve law.
3. Reread the prior paragraph. It's especially important. What's the relationship between (1) your best solution and (2) your final deliverable?
4. Perform initial research to help you begin to understand (1) what data are encrypted, (2) how those data are encrypted, and (3) how that encryption might be broken.
5. Prepare to interview Professor Adam Scott Wandt, who will join us on Friday as our (virtual) expert, at length.
6. Read the two articles shared by Prof. Wandt:
   1. What Is Post-Quantum Cryptography?
   2. The Promise and Peril of Quantum Computing and Its Implications for Cyber Insurance
7. Consider how our logic model can help you prepare for this interview:
   1. Impacts: In the class sessions that follow, you will more effectively problem-solve our specific topic.
   2. Outcomes (to enable the impacts): You and your colleagues will understand more about this topic.
   3. Outputs (to enable the outcomes): You will obtain clear answers from me that connect my knowledge to climate engineering.
   4. Activities (to enable the outputs): You will ask initial and follow-up questions that are designed to solicit clear and relevant answers.
   5. Inputs (to enable the activities): You will have conducted the research (into our topic and into me) necessary to formulate effective questions.
8. Prepare an initial research strategy memo that sketches both a classwide research strategy and an individual research strategy.
   1. What are key procedural questions? What are key substantive questions? What subtopics seem especially important or interesting? What information, both in and outside law, would help to better identify problems and, eventually, solutions? What kinds of resources might help to produce that information?
   2. You may prepare this memo individually or in a group of your choice.
   3. Although I am far more interested in quality than quantity, I suggest about two succinct single-spaced pages per person in either prose or outline form.
   4. Bring two printed copies of this memo to class.
9. Document your course-relevant inputs, activities, outputs, outcomes, and impacts up to class three.

Class 04 (Preliminary research)

1. As soon as practical
   1. Upload your memo from class three to our shared folder. (If you would like, you may make changes before sharing it.)
   2. Review your colleagues' memos from class three.
2. By Monday at 11:59pm
   1. In a shared document, identify a foundational subtopic that you will research for this week.
   2. Begin researching your subject using credible sources.
3. By Wednesday at 11:59pm
   1. Create a concise outline that helpfully summarizes the results of your research into your subtopic.
   2. Your outline should include citations (in any useful format) and be no more than one single-spaced page.
   3. Include essential details; exclude extraneous details.
4. By class time
   1. Read all of the outlines, identify connections and gaps, and prepare questions for discussion to advance our collective understanding of our topic. You will not present your subject in class; rather, you will answer your classmates' questions with a view toward advancing our collective understanding of our topic. This will require you to know more about your subject than you have shared in your outline.
   2. Document your course-relevant inputs, activities, outputs, outcomes, and impacts up to class four.
5. Just for your planning
   1. In the following week, you will continue researching our topic and begin brainstorming challenges.
   2. We will be following a schedule similar to the 2024 course, except that I plan to remove the class session on criteria so we have more time to develop a best solution.