Leading thinkers on how the Internet is eroding privacy rights – and what can be done to halt digital incursions into our lives – discussed the topic at a public forum on Tues., April 24, hosted by Columbia's Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science, and the Marconi International Fellowship Foundation. More than 200 people turned out for the high-level forum that brought together experts on telecommunications, computer technology and security, and privacy law. A webcast of the program may be viewed at http://www.cvn.columbia.edu/

Moderated by Zvi Galil, an encryption expert and dean of engineering at Columbia, participants included Whitfield Diffie, whose breakthrough formulations 25 years ago established the key to secure electronic communications; John Podesta, White House chief of staff under President Clinton and now visiting professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center; Michael Rabin, professor of computer science at Harvard University, who has developed a new computer security code reported recently in the media based on a "vanishing" key; author and journalist Steven Levy, a Newsweek technology writer whose books "Crypto" and "Hackers" explore privacy in the information age, and Eli Noam, an authority on telecommunications strategy and policy at Columbia Business School.

The 2001 Marconi Forum on Internet Privacy was a collaboration between Columbia's engineering, business and journalism schools and the Marconi Foundation, which makes its academic home at the Fu Foundation School and each year recognizes creative work in telecommunications and information technology and its benefit to humanity through a $100,000 fellowship.