Cato Event Podcast

From cases about free speech and religion, to the role of affirmative action in college admissions, this year’s Supreme Court docket covered some of the most important issues in America. Join Sphere Education Initiatives and a panel of Constitutional scholars to explore the major decisions of the court. Covering both the arguments of the majority and the dissents, this conversation will position you to bring these cases to life for your students this fall. This is the first of our four‐​part professional development series, Summer with Sphere ‘23 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank have shed light on the need for a major overhaul of the United States’ banking laws. For a century, the government has increased federal backing, regulation, and micromanagement of the financial sector. The approach has repeatedly failed. Yet, after recent bank failures, Congress immediately began flirting with even more federal backing, regulation, and micromanagement. Is there any way out of this vicious cycle?Join us for a conversation with Jeb Hensarling, former chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, and Jelena McWilliams, former chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, as they discuss the bank failures, the federal government’s response, and a path forward for banking regulation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Al Qaeda’s attacks on the United States plunged America into multiple military campaigns abroad in pursuit of the attackers. It also ushered in new surveillance programs before any investigations into the causes of the 9/11 intelligence failure had even begun. The first new, secret mass electronic surveillance program authorized by then president George W. Bush, Stellar Wind, was initiated just days after the attacks and with no judicial notification, much less review, as required by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). In a parallel public track, the Bush administration pushed for and received even more sweeping surveillance authorities via the congressionally approved Patriot Act. By the end of the Bush presidency, the FBI had been granted vast new domestic surveillance powers, gaining authority to open investigations on individuals or groups without needing a criminal basis to do so.The Obama era was marked not by reevaluations of these programs but instead by their continuity and political normalization. The Stellar Wind program was made nominally lawful through the passage of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008. And after National Security Agency contractor‐​turned‐​whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed in 2013 secret mass surveillance of Americans’ phone calls under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, Congress passed the USA Freedom Act ostensibly to partially curtail that program. Yet subsequent oversight actions and investigations would find that neither the Stellar Wind program nor the Section 215 telephone metadata surveillance program had stopped a single attack on the United States, all the while accumulating vast reams of information on innocent Americans.Have officials in the executive branch and Congress learned anything from these mistakes and overreaches? How many other surveillance programs and authorities that potentially threaten the privacy and even constitutional rights of Americans have yet to be subjected to meaningful oversight? Our panel will explore these and related issues Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On New Year’s Eve 2023, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act will expire absent congressional action to renew it. This controversial surveillance power was enacted in 2008 following over two years of debate in Congress after its secret, illegal predecessor—the National Security Agency’s Stellar Wind mass electronic surveillance program—was exposed by the New York Times in December 2005. Since that time, Section 702 has been renewed twice—once under President Obama and again under President Trump. And it has been renewed despite repeated, serious violations of the law by the FBI via so‐​called “back door” searches—literally millions of Section 702 database queries by FBI personnel for information on U.S. persons not necessarily wanted for a crime.What do we actually know about the alleged effectiveness of this sweeping surveillance power? What is the scope of the legal and compliance problems with Section 702? Should it be renewed unchanged, retained in modified form, or allowed to expire? Does the narrow focus on Section 702’s fate obscure the larger surveillance reform problems we face? The panel will tackle all these questions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Extreme political views and speech have been a feature of American political and social life virtually since the founding of the republic. The Founders intended for the First Amendment to protect governmental infringements on speech, but throughout the republic’s history those protections have been breached on multiple occasions. The Alien and Sedition Acts, the Anarchist Exclusion Act, and the Espionage Act are just some of the examples of federal laws that have criminalized certain kinds of speech. But in a landmark 1969 Supreme Court decision in Brandenburg v. Ohio, the high court ruled that speech deemed inflammatory or even threatening could only be prohibited by the government if it is “directed at inciting or producing imminent lawless action” and is “likely to incite or produce such action.” Ever since, that decision has provided protection against government attacks on speech by individuals or groups across the political spectrum deemed offensive or politically disfavored.But what happens when adherents of extremist ideologies no longer feel shouting their views is enough? The rise of the Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, John Brown Gun Club chapters, and other organized, armed groups raises the specter of a confrontation that morphs from a shouting match into a firefight in an American community between two ideological, violent factions. Does inflammatory speech always result in real violence? Does the Supreme Court’s decision in Brandenburg v. Ohio still draw the right line between constitutionally protected speech and that which is not? Has the rise and proliferation of social media platforms made the transition from violent speech to violent action easier and faster? Our panelists will examine all these issues and more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The explosion in the use of facial recognition and other biometric technologies by government and private‐​sector entities has sparked a national debate about such systems. Just over a year ago, a Pew Research Center survey of American attitudes toward artificial intelligence also asked how people felt about law enforcement use of facial recognition. Among those surveyed, 46 percent thought the use of facial recognition by law enforcement is a good idea, even though two‐​thirds of respondents said police “would be able to track everyone’s location at all times and that police would monitor Black and Hispanic neighborhoods much more often than other neighborhoods.”How reliable is facial recognition? Can biases be unconsciously worked into the algorithms that make facial recognition possible? How many cases of mistaken identity have been attributed to facial recognition to date? How does the law at the federal, state, or local level impact the use of biometric technology? Is the technology advancing faster than the law and policy designed to govern its use? What is the state of the Transportation Security Administration’s facial recognition and biometrics programs for air travel? Can a person be forced to put their finger on their phone to open it for law enforcement officers absent a criminal predicate? Can private companies field facial recognition technology for the purpose of deciding who can or cannot buy a product or service, attend a concert, or even enter a building absent a safety concern? Our expert panel will tackle these and related questions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There are legitimate concerns about the safety and well‐​being of children online. This has stimulated the interest of policymakers, and numerous legislative and regulatory proposals are being debated. Like many areas, however, civil society—not government—likely holds the best solutions. Government intervention is a blunt instrument and will itself create additional problems—particularly in the areas of freedom of expression and privacy—as compared with individual solutions undertaken by parents and families themselves.This virtual policy forum brings together policy and child safety experts to discuss the risks and benefits young people may experience online and the tools parents and policymakers can consider to encourage a positive online experience and respond to concerns that they may face without sacrificing speech or privacy more generally. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This panel explores the impacts and outcomes of critical social justice ideology on black wellbeing in k‑12 and higher ed. Starting in pre‑K and ending in the university, education that claims to empower students within a liberal arts education often seems disempowering and quite illiberal. This toxic tutelage, according to the team at Free Black Thought, does more harm than good. Hear members of Free Black Thought have a conversation on what needs to be done, what can be done, and what is already being done to combat the detriments of critical social justice pedagogy in our schools.Panelists for this webinar include Dr. Tabia Lee, a founding member of Free Black Thought, Jason Littlefield, executive director of EmpowerED Pathways, Connie Morgan, author and UX researcher, and Erec Smith, associate professor of rhetoric at York College of Pennsylvania and visiting scholar at the Cato Institute. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Letters in Black and White is an epistolary correspondence between a white woman and black man who are both concerned with the condition of contemporary race relations. The book is a defense of classical liberalism as a guiding ideology for understanding and improving race in America. The authors object to the use of race as a rigid identity, especially in schools, universities, and the workplace. As Twyman starts his correspondence with Richmond: “There are 40,000,000 black individuals with 40,000,000 different stories. Not everyone can correspond with everyone else, but we can get to know and see each other as individuals.” And thus starts an extraordinary correspondence across the color line that sees these two strangers become friends as they wrestle with their different ideas; a diversity, equity, and inclusion bureaucracy; and a vocal illiberal minority on how to imagine a new American identity. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In May 2018, the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) became effective. The immediate impact was seen in the millions of dollars and man hours spent on compliance; the loss of certain websites or services from the European Union, such as the Los Angeles Times; and changes to user experiences and privacy choices. Advocates of the GDPR have argued that the tradeoffs are worth it for improved cybersecurity and the increased privacy rights of EU citizens, but critics have pointed to the potential impact on other values, such as speech and innovation, and have questioned if the GDPR has actually led to improvements or just increased red tape.Five years on, the impact of the GDPR on Americans and American companies as well as their European counterparts continues to be felt. As the United States debates its own potential federal data privacy law and sees an emerging patchwork of state laws, what lessons can we learn from the GDPR about benefits and consequences of data privacy regulation? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.