Susan P Crawford, Columnist

Cyberwar Hysteria Aids Consultants, Hurts U.S.: Susan Crawford

July 24, 2011 at 8:01 PM EDT

Susan Crawford, the John A. Reilly visiting professor in intellectual property at Harvard Law School, is the author of "Captive Audience." Her book "The Responsive City," with co-author Stephen Goldsmith, will be published in September. In 2009, Susan Crawford served as special assistant to President Barack Obama for science, technology, and innovation policy. She is a former law partner at Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering (now WilmerHale). She is the founder of OneWeb Day, a global Earth Day for the Internet held each Sept. 22. She earned a bachelor’s degree, summa cum laude, and a law degree from Yale University.

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On Feb. 3, President Barack Obama and the entire West Wing lost access to e-mail for more than seven hours. A tree-trimmer had accidentally cut the lines running out of the White House data center. White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer sent a bulletin via Twitter -- the only way he could get the news out, he said -- letting the world know that “Verizon is working to solve the problem.”

A single, careless scissor snip had compromised the center of the most powerful government in the world. Staffers accustomed to constant, twitchy BlackBerry attachment were stopped in their tracks. “It felt like a snow day,” one adviser told the Washington Post.

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