Harvard Law Today: “Should Facebook be considered an “information fiduciary” when it comes to the privacy of its clients? How should we weigh the pros and cons of encryption schemes which might bolster privacy and data security at the risk of shutting out law enforcement? And why shouldn’t Facebook tell users how much advertising revenue their respective data generates on a daily basis? Those were some of the questions Facebook Co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg discussed with Jonathan Zittrain ’95, HLS’s George Bemis Professor of International Law, in a conversation among students at Harvard Law School on Feb. 11.

The nearly two-hour discussion was part of a series of study sessions for Harvard’s Techtopia initiative, a program for students across the University to explore problems in technology and governance, and it included participants from Zittrain’s course on Internet & Society: The Technologies and Politics of Control. Zittrain launched the conversation at HLS by raising the question of whether Facebook and other data-hungry internet companies should become “information fiduciaries.” Developed with Yale Law Professor Jack Balkin, the concept involves making such companies abide by a duty of loyalty to their users when handling sensitive data–including putting the user’s interests in front of profits–much the same way a lawyer or doctor must protect a client’s confidentiality…”