News

Supreme Court justice, lawyers and news media to hold forum at Penn State Lehigh Valley

News Article

July 10, 2014

Jurists, lawyers, journalists and academics will hold a forum on technology and privacy issues that is free and open to the public at 2 p.m. July 16 at Penn State Lehigh Valley.

Panelists will include Supreme Court Justice Correale F. Stevens; Matt Jackson, head of the Department of Telecommunications at Penn State University; and Kay Murray, an assistant general counsel at Tribune Publishing, parent of The Morning Call. The moderator will be Francine Schertzer, director of programming for Pennsylvania Cable Network, which will televise the event later on PCN July 16-19.

The forum will be held in the multipurpose room (Room 135) at Penn State, 2809 Saucon Valley Road, Center Valley. Audience members will be invited to question the panelists.

The forum is a project of the Pennsylvania Bar Association's (PBA) Bar/Press Committee, a group made up of representatives for the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association and the PBA. It will explore how technology is eroding privacy, how traditional definitions of privacy are becoming blurred and how the government’s increasing use of surveillance comes into play.

“Technology continues to affect privacy at an increasing rate. The law is hard-pressed to keep up,” said Craig Staudenmaier, a partner in the Nauman Smith law firm, Harrisburg, and co-coordinator of the panel. “The panel is uniquely qualified to discuss the current state of these issues and how the law may continue to evolve to keep pace with the conflicting demands by the public of greater access and use of technology and the desire to still keep aspects of our lives private.”

The Morning Call’s editor and vice president, David Erdman, co-coordinator of the panel with Staudenmaier, said, “We'll be exploring how this issue plays out in the media, the law, the government and elsewhere — especially in social media.

“Pew Research says that about half of Americans worry about the amount of personal information widely available on the Internet and worry about privacy in general — this is a topic of importance to every citizen,” said Erdman, who is representing the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association in the initiative.

The program will be viewable online at www.pcntv.com. A list of channel designations is available at https://pcntv.com/in-your-area/channel-designations.