Web tracking is pervasive: the average popular website incorporates over fifty third-party tracking mechanisms. And web tracking is unpopular: a majority of Americans oppose the practice. Do Not Track is a technology and policy response that would provide users with a simple, universal web tracking opt out. Both the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Commerce have signaled support. This talk explores central questions in the ongoing web privacy debate:

* What information do third parties collect about users?
* What technologies do third parties use to track users?
* What limits does the online advertising industry's self-regulation impose?
* What should Do Not Track prohibit?
* Who should enforce it, and how?
* What would the economic impact be?
* Could it actually happen?

To learn more, visit http://donottrack.us and follow @donottrack.

Speaker Biography:

Jonathan Mayer is a computer science Ph.D. student and 3L at Stanford University. He graduated from Princeton University in 2009 with a concentration in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.  Jonathan's area of study encompasses the intersections of policy, law, and computer science - with particular emphasis on national security and international relations. Jonathan works extensively with the Stanford Security Laboratory within the Computer Science Department and the Center for Internet and Society within the Stanford Law School.

The 11^th Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam was significant in several respects. It placed diplomacy in the forefront of Vietnam’s efforts to maintain peace, stability, and national security, including naming more diplomats as full members of the Central Standing Committee. For the first time, the Party officially identified protecting national interest as the top priority of Vietnam’s foreign policy. The Party continued to push for broader horizons in policymaking to facilitate Vietnam’s integration in the larger world. The Party also agreed that Vietnam should anchor itself to ASEAN and promote its relations with China and the United States. Prof. Tuan will discuss these and other aspects and implications of Vietnam’s foreign policy.

Ta Minh Tuan is a member of Vietnam’s Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific (CSCAP Vietnam), CSCAP’s Study Group on Countering the Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Asia Pacific, and Pacific Forum CSIS’s Young Leaders Program. He has been a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution and the University of South Carolina. His degrees are from the Polish Academy of Sciences’s Institute of Political Studies (PhD), Mahatma Gandhi University’s School of International Relations (MA), and the Hanoi University of Foreign Studies (BA).

In September 2011 the U.S. bilateral alliance system in the Asia-Pacific—the “San Francisco System” (SFS)—turned 60 years old. Against the expectations of theorists who argue that alliances cannot be sustained in the absence of a commonly perceived mutual external threat, the SFS remains operative and viable. It remains so even as multilateral approaches to regional order-building in the Asia-Pacific have proliferated. Although the identity and functions of the SFS have evolved, the speakers will argue that it remains—and will remain—a critical security mechanism in the likely absence of a comprehensive and consensual regional security arrangement that could supersede it. Their remarks will convey the findings and projections of a recent study of Asia-Pacific security undertaken by  Australian National University (ANU) and supported by the MacArthur Foundation’s Asia Security Initiative.

John Ravenhill returned to ANU in 2004, after holding the chair of politics at the University of Edinburgh from 2000. He currently directs the School of Political Science and International Relations at ANU’s College of Arts and Social Sciences. Before joining ANU in 1990, he was an associate professor at the University of Sydney, and assistant professor at the University of Virginia, after completing his PhD at the University of California, Berkeley.  He has held visiting professorships at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies; Nanyang Technology University, Singapore; the University of Geneva; the International University of Japan; and the University of California, Berkeley. His many articles have appeared in leading journals including World Politics, International Organization, Review of International Political Economy, Review of International Studies, New Political Economy, World Policy Journal, World Development, and International Affairs. His research interests include global political economy, especially the fields of trade and production, and Australian foreign policy.

William T. Tow came to ANU in early 2005, having been a professor of international relations (IR) at the University of Queensland and at Griffith University, and an assistant professor of IR at the University of Southern California. His visiting-scholar positions have included APARC (1999) and the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London. Among his many writings are Politics in the Asia-Pacific: A Regional–Global Nexus? (edited, Cambridge University Press, 2009); Asia Pacific Strategic Relations: Seeking Convergent Security (Cambridge University Press, 2001); and articles in the China Journal, Review of International Studies, International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, China Quarterly, International Affairs, Survival, and Asian Survey. He also heads the ANU IR component of the Centre of Excellence in Policing and Security, was editor of the Australian Journal of International Affairs, has held positions with the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Australian Fulbright Commission, and received an Australian Award for University Teaching in the Social Sciences Category.

Brendan Taylor’s writings include Sanctions as Grand Strategy (2010); American Sanctions in the Asia-Pacific (2010); and articles in Asian Security, the Australian Journal of International Affairs, International Affairs, and Survival.  In addition to leading the ANU-MacArthur Asia Security Initiative Focus Group (since 2009), he has served as associate investigator, Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Policing and Security; graduate studies convenor, Political Science and International Relations, ANU; and lecturer and post-doctoral fellow, SDSC.

David Envall is a Japan specialist with an interest in how foreign policy is made. He edits the ANU-MacArthur Project’s policy papers. His essays will appear in the Asian Journal of Political Science and in volumes on Australian-Japanese politico-security relations and on strategic and structural changes in the Asia-Pacific security environment.

The Nuclear Power Plant Exporters' Principles of Conduct are an industry code of conduct resulting from a three-year initiative to develop norms of corporate self-management in the exportation of nuclear power plants. In developing and adopting the Principles of Conduct, the world's leading nuclear power plant vendors have articulated and consolidated a set of principles that reaffirm and enhance national and international governance and oversight, and incorporate recommended best practices in the areas of safety, security, environmental protection and spent fuel management, nonproliferation, business ethics and internationally recognized systems for compensation in the unlikely event of nuclear related damage.

Speaker Biography:

Ariel (Eli) Levite is a nonresident senior associate in the Nonproliferation Program at the Carnegie Endowment. He is a member of the Israeli Inter-Ministerial Steering Committee on Arms Control and Regional Security and a member of the board of directors of the Fisher Brothers Institute for Air and Space Strategic Studies.

Prior to joining the Carnegie Endowment, Levite was the Principal Deputy Director General for Policy at the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission. Levite also served as the deputy national security advisor for defense policy and was head of the Bureau of International Security and Arms Control in the Israeli Ministry of Defense.

In September 2000, Levite took a two year sabbatical from the Israeli civil service to work as a visiting fellow and project co-leader of the "Discriminate Force" Project as the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) at Stanford University.

Before his government service, Levite worked for five years as a senior research associate and head of the project on Israeli security at the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University. Levite has taught courses on security studies and political science at Tel Aviv University, Cornell University, and the University of California, Davis.

The complex triangular relationship between China, Taiwan, and the United States has a long and storied history, and most recently, China’s meteoric economic rise has forced a reconsideration of positions by all parties involved. China is on target to become the largest world economy in terms of purchasing power parity within the next decade, and this explosive economic growth is coupled with military expansion that challenges the existing security circumstances in the region. These developments, in turn, have put Taiwan on a path towards economic dependence, international isolation, and security threats, and Beijing’s increasing leverage in Washington allows for yet further indirect influence on cross-Strait relations.

Dr. Yeong-kuang Ger will discuss the background surrounding these issues to provide a context for analysis on the future of this important triangular relationship, and will address in particular the policy moves made by all three parties in adjustment to this changing status quo, as well as the strategy of President Ma’s administration since his election in 2008. Dr. Ger will conclude with a discussion of the implications of these developments for the United States moving forward, with an emphasis on Taiwan’s geopolitical importance to the peace and prosperity of the region as a whole.

Dr. Yeong-kuang Ger is a Member of the Control Yuan of the Republic of China, and a Professor in the Department of Political Science and the Graduate Institute of National Development at National Taiwan University. Dr. Ger received his undergraduate degree from National Taiwan University, and his Ph.D. from the Department of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 2009 he was awarded the Freedom Medal of Honor by the Philippine Council for World Freedom. 

In addition to his responsibilities with the Yuan and NTU, he acts as a Board Member of the American Association for Chinese Studies; and he is also a Member of the Review Committee, Center for Asian Studies, Chu Hai College in Hong Kong. Dr Ger has authored nine books and over 80 journal articles and conference papers on politics, culture, development and security in Taiwan and East Asia. His recent books include: Political Parties and Electoral Politics (2011); Security Challenges in the Asia Pacific Region: The Taiwan Factor with M.J. Vinod and S.Y. Surendra Kumar (2009); Ideology and Development: Dr. Sun Yat-sen’s Thoughts and Taiwan’s Developmental Experience (2005); and Party Politics and Democratic Development (2001).