Christian Erickson

I have studied systematically the interaction between internal security, surveillance, counterterrorism, countersubversion, counterespionage, and "cybersecurity policy," and civil liberties/human rights since the mid-1990s while a graduate student in political science at the University of California, Davis. The origins of my concern with the totalitarian dangers posed by the expansion of "the Apparatus" in the United States of America, and globally, lie in my participation in anti-war, anti-militarization, anti-fascist, protests in the United States since the early 1980s when, as a teenager,  I was involved in the hardcore punk ("Two Minutes Hate" a Concord, California "hardcore" punk band where I was a singer and guitarist), industrial/"rivethead," "goth, " and later LBTQIAetc., Act-Up, and BDSM "fetish" communities.  I have continued my "participant/observor" role since then, most recently participating in/and observing "Occupy," anti-G8/NATO, and "Black Lives Matter"/anti-police repression/Homan Square multi-jurisdictional torture/detention facility, protests in the Chicago, Illinois metro area, since 2011 to the present.In 1996 I received funding from the Joint Center for International and Security Studies (research center between UC Davis and the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterrey, California) Research Fellowship. My research for this fellowship produced a paper entitled, “Securing Cyberspace: Sovereignty, Complexity, Encryption.” I have also presented "cybersecurity" related research papers at academic conferences and workshops since that time. I have been designing and deploying websites, and have been teaching basic web design in an academic setting since 1995. In 1999 I received a “Professors for the Future” fellowship, and my project was to teach a group of UC Davis graduate students, from a variety of disciplines, basic web design (basic .html coding and selection of design elements and content).Most recently, I just presented a paper entitled “Blinding Leviathan: Whistleblowers/Leakers, Hacktivists/Hackers, and Human Rights NGO Opposition to Surveillance Programs in Comparative Context,” at the Midwest Political Science Association meeting, which took place April 4th to April 7th, 2019. I am considering submitting a revised version of this paper to the "American Political Science Review" or the journal "Surveillance and Society" (as of April 15, 2019).Additionally, I have been attending cybersecurity related conferences since the mid-1990s, including "Computers, Freedom, Privacy" in the years 1995, 1997, and 2000 (I received a USENIX fellowship to attend the conference in 2000).I most recently attended the DEFCON conference in 2012. I am considering submitting  an updated and revised version of the paper I just presented at the 2019 Midwest Political Science Association, to the 2019 DEFCON conference.Finally, I have extensive familiarity with policy makers/stakeholders in the areas of cybersecurity. I had a summer long internship at the Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington, DC in 1995.  I also delivered two guest lectures at the Chicago Police Academy on “Al Qaeda’s Financial Networks” in the mid-2000s.Since receiving my Ph.D., I have been a professor (assistant or adjunct) at Roosevelt University (Adjunct 2002-2004, Assistant 2004-2012)