Max Hailperin's FT01 Study Questions (Fall 1998)

These would be good questions to think about in reviewing for the final exam.
  1. What are the competing values that suggest broader vs. more restricted access to strong cryptography?
  2. What major technical changes have made cryptography policy more of an issue?
  3. What means have the last several administrations used to restrict strong cryptography? How have those restrictions been relaxed recently?
  4. What happened to attempts in the last congress to legislate broader access to strong cryptography?
  5. What are the competing values that favor greater vs. lesser governmental ability to wiretap?
  6. How has the legal status of wiretapping evolved through successive Court decisions and congressional acts? (What are the key decisions and laws?)
  7. How have recent technological changes affected wiretapping?
  8. What transpired in the congressional battle over what eventually became CALEA? What compromises were reached?
  9. What are the points of contention in the implementation of CALEA?
  10. What are the competing values that suggest greater vs. lesser governmental control over sexual material on the Internet?
  11. What technical developments have influenced the nature of the debate about sexual materials on the Internet? In what way?
  12. What are the legal definitions of obscenity and of harmful to minors? What cases do those definitions stem from?
  13. What was the fate of the CDA?
  14. How does COPA differ from CDA?
  15. In what alternative ways might the Court judge COPA's constitutionality?
  16. How does the U.S. stance on controlling sexual materials on the Internet relate to other nations' attempts at controlling Internet content?
  17. If the U.S. government is going to take action regarding sexual materials on the Internet, and the choice is between doing so by conventional regulation vs. by the promotion of labeling and filtering, what values issues are at stake? What legal questions?
  18. When the government acts not as lawmaker but as the operator of public libraries, what values questions arise in how it treats sexual material on the Internet? What legal questions? What is the current status of this area?
  19. What topics did your fellow students report on? How did they relate to the course?