Deirdre K. Mulligan comes to the I School from the UC Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall), where she was a clinical professor of law and the director of the Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic. She served previously as staff counsel at the Center for Democracy & Technology in Washington.

Professor Mulligan’s current research agenda focuses on information privacy and security. Current projects include qualitative interviews to understand the institutionalization and management of privacy within corporate America, and role of law in corporate information security policy and practice. Other areas of current research include digital rights management technology and privacy and security issues in sensor networks and visual surveillance systems, and alternative legal strategies to advance network security.

Her current research is focused in three core areas:

1. The identification of and response to “policy-making technology” — providing institutions within society with means for identifying instances where technology is embedding, and sometimes displacing, policy choices and strategies and processes for managing this phenomena consistent with the institutions place in society;
2. The effect of surveillance, dataveillance, and network architecture on norms and policies around privacy, public places, and policing; and
3. Organizational behavior surrounding the conceptualization and institutionalization of privacy, security and trust, and in particular how law influences the understanding and operationalization of these values.