February 2017 Archives

News digest | Open Society Information Program | Week ending 24 February 2017
====================================================
The Information Program NEWS DIGEST, published the second and fourth Thursdays of each month, aims to update colleagues in the Open Society Foundations and friends further afield about the news, opinions and events the Program team have been watching this fortnight. The views expressed in these stories do not necessarily reflect those of the Information Program or the OSF. Prepared by Wendy M. Grossman.

Our staff, advisers and major grantees tweet at http://bit.ly/13j5fjq. Current and former grantees featured in this issue: Citizen Lab, EDRi, EFF, La Quadrature du Net.

NEWS
=====
For breaking news stories, visit: http://pinboard.in/u:osi_info_program/t:news/

EU passes Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
The BBC reports that despite protests the European Parliament has passed the Canada-EU trade agreement CETA by 408 votes to 254. Some parts of the deal, such as tariff reduction, will now come into force; others, such as the court system for settling investor-state disputes, will require ratification by EU member states. Before the vote, La Quadrature du Net called on MEPs to dump the agreement because "it endangers our freedoms and fundamental rights".BBC: http://bbc.in/2lcJjRy
LQDN: http://bit.ly/2moVLxA

US: Immigration proposes to search social media profiles
----------------------------------------------------------------------
At Access Now, Drew Mitnick reports that US Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly has told members of the US Congress that the Trump administration is considering requiring visa applicants from the seven countries included in President Donald Trump's travel ban - Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen - to disclose passwords for their social media accounts and personal devices as part of enhanced screening. Mitnick notes that the move would not only violate the human rights of the travelers, but also those of any friends and relatives in their social graph, and warns of potential security hazards such as continued monitoring via malware. EFF supplies additional background to the proposal and is collecting stories of experiences at the border. At the Freedom to Tinker blog, Dan Wallach suggests technical counter-measures.
Access Now: http://bit.ly/2lOSFq1
EFF: http://bit.ly/2luQZAX
Freedom to Tinker: http://bit.ly/2l3ANTX

Facebook's AI searches images by their contents
----------------------------------------------------------------------
At TechCrunch, John Mannes reports that Facebook's Lumos computer vision platform can search photographs using terms related to the objects appearing in them rather than via metadata tags users apply to the images when they're uploaded. The system is based on a deep neural network classifier that has been trained on tens of millions of the billions of images stored on the service. Mannes expects Facebook to expand Lumos to its growing store of videos, and to use it to improve its ad targeting and fight spam.
TechCrunch: http://tcrn.ch/2mbGvYG

Germany: Telecommunications watchdog order My Friend Cayla dolls destroyed
----------------------------------------------------------------------
The New York Times reports that the German Federal Network Agency, the country's telecommunications watchdog, has classified the "smart doll" My Friend Cayla as an "illegal espionage apparatus" and is encouraging parents to destroy or deactivate it. The concern is that it violates the law against manufacturing, selling, or possessing surveillance devices disguised as another object, and that hackers could exploit insecure Bluetooth connections to record private conversations. Mattel's competing Hello Barbie is not sold in Germany. The dolls are also controversial in the US, where EPIC has filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission and sparked a Congressional investigation, and in Norway, where last year the Norwegian Consumer Council found that the doll failed to safeguard basic consumer rights, security, and privacy.
NY Times: http://nyti.ms/2mbHUih
EPIC (PDF): http://bit.ly/2lzrQUg
NCC: http://bit.ly/2lOKJVI


Kenya, Mexico: Citizens suspect state manipulation on Twitter
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Global Voices reports that both the Kenyan and Mexican governments are suspected of emulating China and Venezuela in using Twitter to try to change national opinion. In Kenya, public support for a nationwide strike by doctors protesting the government's failure to honor the collective bargaining agreement has been accompanied by social media messages using hashtags such as #greedydoctors. Local bloggers have found a strong correlation between the accounts posting these messages and those posting other professional-government messages. In Mexico, data scientists at the Jesuit University of Guadajara linked disruptions of public protests to accounts previously identified as bots or trolls that harassed journalists and social activists. For example, Twitter streams using the hashtag #gasolinazo to protest higher gasoline prices have been disrupted with others bearing the hashtag #SaqueaUnWalmart ("loot a Walmart") and false images of people rioting. Put together with other analyses by Citizen Lab, Global Voices believes these developments suggest an increasingly threatening environment for citizen advocates in Mexico.
Global Voices: http://bit.ly/2lzpyUZ


FEATURES AND ANALYSIS
====================
For more features and analysis selected by the Program team, visit:
http://pinboard.in/u:osi_info_program/t:oped/

Minority languages and social media
----------------------------------------------------------------------
In this posting at Global Voices, Derek Lackaff examines the difficulty of adapting computer systems for local and minority languages, focusing in particularly on Irish Gaelic but also touching on Icelandic, Frisian, and Lakota. The shift to mobile has made typing these languages more difficult due to changes in technology (predictive text, software keyboards), and the multicultural nature of social media audiences generally favors the use of majority languages. Lackaff argues that the pressures of globalization and assimilation are endangering linguistic and cultural diversity.
Global Voices: http://bit.ly/2lzCIS8

Canada: Privacy in the age of Trump
----------------------------------------------------------------------
In this video clip at TVO, University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist discusses the consequences for Canadian privacy of recent US moves such as the executive order issued by President Donald Trump that rolled back protection for non-US citizens under the Privacy Act. Geist suggests that the country's long-standing commitment to human rights and the country's privacy laws may require the Canadian intelligence agencies to cease sharing data with their US counterparts. While noting the difficulties inherent in annoying the country's closest neighbor and largest trading partner, he urges the Canadian Privacy Commissioner to review the situation.
TVP: http://bit.ly/2lzq0Tg

Theft: A History of Music
----------------------------------------------------------------------
In this graphical book published by Duke University and available for free download as a PDF under a Creative Commons license, James Boyle, Jennifer Jenkins, and Keith Aoki tell an alternative history of the last 2,000 years of music by focusing on recurring attempts to restrict borrowing and cultural exchange. The authors identify a variety of reasons behind these restrictions as the technology of music changes.
Duke: http://bit.ly/2moV1sq

Big data, elections, and Cambridge Analytica
----------------------------------------------------------------------
In this Bloomberg column, mathematician Cathy O'Neil dissects claims that UK firm Cambridge Analytica's big data-fueled psychological analytics gave the winning side the edge in both the election of US President Donald Trump and the UK's vote to leave the EU - see, for example, Berit Anderson's discussion of the company's "automated propaganda" at Medium. Although O'Neil doubts that big data made the difference in Trump's case - not least because it's likely the Clinton campaign had more data - she notes the dangers inherent in the asymmetry of information represented by the new, highly-tailored generation of political ads. This has been a long-running theme for the Center for Digital Democracy, as in a recent blog posting, where CDD's Yewande Ogunkoya details the inner workings of the "commercial surveillance system". At Medium, Paul-Olivier Dehaye provides a quick guide to requesting your data from Cambridge Analytica.
Bloomberg: http://bloom.bg/2mgzcvM
Medium (Anderson): http://bit.ly/2mbIqwJ
CDD: http://bit.ly/2luOn6j
Medium (Dehaye): http://bit.ly/2kQFuVY

Scoping the algorithmic age
----------------------------------------------------------------------
In this blog posting, primary researchers Lee Rainie and Janna Anderson summarize Pew Research Center's new report on algorithmic transparency "Code-Dependent: Pros and Cons of the Algorithm Age". The researchers conducted a survey of 1,302 technology experts, scholars, corporate practitioners, and government leaders, many of whom are quoted in the report. Seven consistent themes emerged: algorithms will continue to spread; there will be many benefits; the loss of human input is creating a flawed, logic-driven society; algorithm-driven systems are biased; algorithmic categorizations deepen divides; unemployment will rise; there is a growing need for algorithmic literacy, transparency, and oversight.
Pew: http://pewrsr.ch/2ld4S4a

Estimating OER savings
----------------------------------------------------------------------
In this blog posting, Open Oregon Educational Resources explains the thinking behind the commonly-used estimated savings from OER adoption of $100 per student. The article compares several approaches and studies, taking into account variations in textbook cost in different fields, differing levels of enrollment, and local bookstore prices.
Open Oregon: http://bit.ly/2mgicpk

Biopolitical art
----------------------------------------------------------------------
In this posting at e-flux conversations, the artist Heather Dewey-Hagborg discusses her series of projects on mass biological surveillance. Stranger Visions explored what can be learned about individuals from the artifacts we shed; DNA Spoofing considers how to be anonymous in an era of genetic surveillance; Radical Love is about forced invisibility. Dewey-Hagborg concludes by arguing for "biopolitical art" that exposes and questions power structures.
e-flux: http://bit.ly/2mp2kA3

***

DIARY
==============
To see more events recommended by the Information Program team, visit:
https://pinboard.in/u:osi_info_program/t:events/. If you would like your event listed in this mail, email info.digest@opensocietyfoundations.org.

Robots Exhibition
----------------------------------------
February 8 - September 13
London, UK
The Science Museum's 2017 robots exhibition includes robotic artifacts over five centuries, from a 16th century mechanized monk to the latest research developments. Focusing on why they exist rather than on how they work, the exhibition explores the ways robots mirror humanity and the insights they offer into our ambitions, desires and position in a rapidly changing world.
http://bit.ly/2kpgPn2

3D/DC
----------------------------------------
March 2, 2017
Washington, DC, USA
The sixth 3D printing policy event will feature a series of panels on 3D printing and the human body; extreme applications of 3D printing; women in the 3D printing industry; 3D printing and the future of education; and the maker movement in the new administration.
http://bit.ly/2mpgtNE

Internet Freedom Festival
----------------------------------------
March 6-10, 2017
Valencia, Spain
The Internet Freedom Festival gathers the community keeping the Internet open and uncensored for a week of free-form multidisciplinary collaboration intended to help groups achieve their goals. Attendance is free and open to the public.
http://bit.ly/2dI8EV1

Open Education Global 2017
----------------------------------------
March 8-10, 2017
Cape Town, South Africa
This year marks several important milestones in Open Education, including the 15-year anniversary of the term "Open Educational Resources" and the five-year anniversary of the Paris OER Declaration. For those who remember the start of the movement, this conference will provide the opportunity to celebrate and reflect on these and other achievements, reconnect with colleagues and friends, and learn about new ideas and initiatives.
http://bit.ly/2jUcqJp

Human Rights Watch Film Festival
----------------------------------------
March 6-June 18
London, UK; Chicago Illinois; Toronto, Canada; New York, NY
The 16 human rights documentaries included in this peripatetic festival highlight individuals and groups exhibiting courageous resilience in challenging times. Among the human rights topics represented are the integrity of the press; the experience of refugees seeking safety; and factory workers protesting chemical harms from their work in the Chinese electronics industry. Nicholas de Pencier's BLACK CODE, based on Ronald Deibert's book of the same name, follows members of Toronto-based Citizen Lab as they document civil society activism in Tibet, Syria, Brazil, and Pakistan.
http://bit.ly/2mbHEiW

17th TACD Multi-Stakeholder Forum
----------------------------------------
March 21, 2017
Washington, DC
This year's TACD Multi-stakeholder Forum, titled "A consumer agenda for transatlantic markets: safeguarding protections and making progress in times of political change", will bring together participants representing civil society, academics, researchers, as well government, legislators , regulatory authorities and business on both sides of the Atlantic to discuss a pro-consumer agenda for transatlantic markets.
http://bit.ly/2lmVX42

B13
----------------------------------------
March 21-22, 2017
Berlin, Germany
The 13th Berlin Open Access conference will provide a networking and reviewing opportunity in the context of the OA2020 initiative, a proposal for a large-scale transition to open access. Berlin 13 will aim to strengthen the international network and share experience of various stakeholder groups.
http://bit.ly/2lJxFk8

Rightscon 2017
----------------------------------------
March 29-31, 2017
Brussels, Belgium
RightsCon will tackle the most pressing issues at the intersection of technology and human rights. Session proposals are being accepted until November 25, 2016.
http://bit.ly/I2ZAUZ

We Robot
----------------------------------------
March 31-April 1, 2017
New Haven, Connecticut
The sixth annual We Robot will be held at Yale Law School and will focus on the coming legal and policy conflicts as robots and AI become part of daily life.
http://bit.ly/2fVF2SI

ILIDE 2017
----------------------------------------
April 3-5, 2017
Jasna, Slovakia
This year's Innovative Library in the Digital Era conference will discuss repositories and research data archiving, open science, digital humanities and digital scholarship.
http://bit.ly/2luJppU

OER 17
----------------------------------------
April 5-6, 2017
London, UK
This year's OER will present an opportunity for open practitioners, activists, educators, and policy makers to come together to reflect on 'The Politics of Open'. Up for discussion are questions such as: What are our current key challenges and strengths - locally, nationally, and internationally? What are our priorities - in terms of political governance, organisational and personal politics? What are the changes that we want to effect together? The conference will be chaired by social and educational technologist and Wikimedia UK Trustee Josie Fraser, and Alek Tarkowski, Director of Centrum Cyfrowe, co-founder and coordinator of Creative Commons Poland.
http://bit.ly/2k5V7bC

Personal Democracy Forum 2017
----------------------------------------
April 6-7
Gdansk, Poland
The 5th edition of Personal Democracy Forum will serve as a platform for exchanging ideas and experiences for people using new technologies to work for civic participation and transparency in public life in Central and Eastern Europe.
http://bit.ly/2j7q7HT

TICTeC 2017
----------------------------------------
April 25-26, 2017
Florence, Italy
This will be the third mySociety conference on the impacts of civic technology.
http://bit.ly/2e5NifJ

2017 IFLA International News Media Conference
----------------------------------------
April 27-28, 2017
Reykjavik, Iceland
This conference will examine issues and challenges in collecting and preserving the news and making it available to users. Do access and preservation have different prerequisites? In addition, the conference will explore how news media is used and transformed by researchers and the public. Can we recognize variable user needs? Do we offer the most suitable APIs?
http://bit.ly/2gjYmu2

Creative Commons Global Summit
----------------------------------------
April 28-30, 2017
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
This event will gather a global community of technologists, academics, activists, creatives, and legal experts to work together on the expansion and growth of the commons, open knowledge, and free culture for all.
http://bit.ly/2cO3x0P

IFLA MetLib 2017
----------------------------------------
April 30-May 5, 2017
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
The 2017 programme theme is "Partnerships: Creating a new vision for libraries". Among the subthemes will be discussions of how and why to use, form, and manage partnerships, management tools, and best practices.
http://bit.ly/2ghPOPp

OpenTech
----------------------------------------
May 13, 2017
London, UK
OpenTech 2017 is an informal, low cost, one-day conference on slightly different approaches to technology, experience and democracy. Talks by people who work on things that matter guarantees a day of thoughtful talks leading to conversations with friends.
http://bit.ly/2lmW53w

4th Africa Library Summit and 2nd AfLIA conference
----------------------------------------
May 14-20, 2017
Yaounde, Cameroon
Moved from Ethiopia to the site of the second bidder due to safety concerns, this conference co-locates the fourth Africa Library Sumit and the second African Library and Information Associations and Institutions conference.
http://bit.ly/2hsw64E

Citizen Science Conference 2017
----------------------------------------
May 17-20, 2017
St Paul, Minnesota
The biennial citizen science conference brings together a diverse group of researchers, practitioners, community organizations, and participants.
http://bit.ly/2jspOWl

IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy
----------------------------------------
May 22-24, 2017
San Jose, California
The 38th annual meeting will present developments in computer security and electronic privacy, and for bringing together researchers and practitioners in the field.
http://bit.ly/2hsqUhj

Workshop on Technology and Consumer Protection
----------------------------------------
May 22-24, 2017
San Jose, California
Co-hosted with the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, ConPro will explore computer science topics with an impact on consumers. This workshop has a strong security and privacy slant, with an overall focus on ways in which computer science can prevent, detect, or address the potential for technology to deceive or unfairly harm consumers.
http://bit.ly/2fJ6ShN

Privacy Law Scholars
----------------------------------------
June 1-2
Berkeley, California
The tenth annual Privacy Law Scholars workshop will assemble a wide array of privacy law scholars and practitioners from around the world to discuss papers in progress. Scholars from many disciplines, including psychology, economics, sociology, philosophy, political science, computer science, and mathematics also participate.
http://bit.ly/2ln2Rq3

Next Library Festival 2017
----------------------------------------
June 11-14, 2017
Aarhus, Denmark
Next Library 2017 will offer a "patchwork" of co-learning, co-creative, participatory, engaging, pluralistic and interactive meetings, and lots of parallel sessions, keynote speakers, wildcard sessions, demos/exhibitions, gaming, Networking Dinner Party, Get2Gether, Social un-conferences, alternative events and surprises.
http://bit.ly/2hHNt4W

CERN Workshop on Innovations in Scholarly Communication
----------------------------------------
June 21-23, 2017
Geneva, Switzerland
The organizers of the biennial CERN Workshop on Innovations in Scholarly Communication - OAI10 - include representatives from the Open Society Foundations, SPARC, PloS, CERN, UCL, and other academic institutions..
http://bit.ly/2jzXj6X

Open Repositories 2017
----------------------------------------
June 26-30, 2017
Brisbane, Australia
The annual Open Repositories Conference brings together users and developers of open digital repository platforms from higher education, government, galleries, libraries, archives and museums. The Conference provides an interactive forum for delegates from around the world to come together and explore the global challenges and opportunities facing libraries and the broader scholarly information landscape.
http://bit.ly/2aOCiGp

Summer courses on privacy and international copyright laws
----------------------------------------
July 3-7, 2017
Amsterdam, Netherlands
These courses, run by the Institute for Information Law, are intensive post-graduate courses aimed to help professionals stay abreast of changing rules. The first, on privacy law and policy, focuses on recent developments in EU and US privacy law relating to the internet and online media. The second, on international copyright law, comprises nine seminars, each focused on one specific copyright issue.
http://bit.ly/2lmPgim

IFLA World Libraries and Information Congress
----------------------------------------
August 19-25, 2017
Wroclaw, Poland
The theme of the 83rd annual IFLA congress will be "Achieving a healthy future together: diverse and emerging roles for health information professionals".
http://bit.ly/2gErkVa

Privacy + Security Forum
----------------------------------------
October 4-6, 2017
Washington, DC
The conference breaks down the silos of security and privacy by bringing together leaders from both fields.
http://bit.ly/1PZhExo

***

Hear more from the Information Program!
================================
If you want to hear more from the Information Program team each week, consider subscribing to our shared bookmarks on delicious using this RSS feed:
http://feeds.pinboard.in/rss/secret:95194ab804ccccac713b/u:osi_info_program/

You can also read more about our work on the Open Society Foundations website: http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/about/programs/information-program

Hear less from the Information Program!
================================
If you wish to unsubscribe from this weekly digest, please send an email with the subject line "Unsubscribe" to info.digest@opensocietyfoundations.org.

This digest operates under the OSF privacy policy: http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/about/policies/privacy

Additionally, it uses the bit.ly URL shortening service, which operates under the following privacy policy: http://bit.ly/pages/privacy/

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/

Open Society Foundation, part of the Open Society Foundations, is a company limited by guarantee registered in England and Wales (company number 4571628) and a registered charity (charity number 1105069). Its registered office address is 7th Floor, Millbank Tower, 21-24 Millbank, London SW1P 4QP



News digest | Open Society Information Program | Week ending 10 February 2017
====================================================
The Information Program NEWS DIGEST, published the second and fourth Thursdays of each month, aims to update colleagues in the Open Society Foundations and friends further afield about the news, opinions and events the Program team have been watching this fortnight. The views expressed in these stories do not necessarily reflect those of the Information Program or the OSF. Prepared by Wendy M. Grossman.

Our staff, advisers and major grantees tweet at http://bit.ly/13j5fjq. Current and former grantees featured in this issue: Citizen Lab, EFF, Europe v. Facebook, IFLA .

PROGRAM NEWS
===========
The Networked Economics program of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) has issued a call to established research organizations for a pilot program of four two-year pilot projects to strengthen cyber policy centers in eligible low, middle, or upper-middle income countries in the following regions: North of Sahara, South of Sahara, Middle East, South Asia, South East Asia, Latin America.
http://bit.ly/2k6xOta


NEWS
=====
For breaking news stories, visit: http://pinboard.in/u:osi_info_program/t:news/

Trump executive order causes debate on Privacy Shield
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Privacy Law Blog reports that US President Donald Trump's Executive Order 13768, "Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States", has caused some discussion within the privacy community about its effect on the EU-US Privacy Shield agreement, which allows the transfer of personal data about EU citizens to the US, which lacks a comparable data protection regime. The conclusion: Privacy Shield stands because the agreement rests on redress promised by the Judicial Redress Act (2015), and executive orders cannot overturn legislation passed by Congress. At the net.wars blog, Wendy M. Grossman summarizes the discussion on the same topic at the Computers, Privacy, and Data Protection conference, where experts largely agreed, with some reservations. At Papers Please, travel data privacy expert Edward Hasbrouck argues, however, that the Executive Order does up-end rights promised to EU citizens under the EU-US PNR Agreement, which allows sharing of passenger name records.
PrivacyLawBlog: http://bit.ly/2k6zQcP
net.wars: http://bit.ly/2lqYupV
Papers Please: http://bit.ly/2lmZG1o

US: Court orders Google to turn over data stored outside the US
----------------------------------------------------------------------
The Washington Post reports that a federal magistrate judge has ordered Google to comply with a search warrant requiring the company to turn over emails stored outside the United States. The ruling is in direct contradiction to the recent Microsoft Ireland case, in which the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled that US law enforcement could not compel the production of emails stored on a foreign (Irish) server. In this case, Google has argued that since it breaks up the emails the company stores across its network, it cannot be sure where in the world the data resides. The judge's view is that the actions required will take place inside the US, no matter where the data is stored.
Washington Post: http://wapo.st/2kKssG5

EU: Vote nears for Marrakesh Treaty
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Intellectual Property Watch reports that a European Parliament vote on the Marrakesh Treaty, which creates copyright exceptions to give visually impaired people access to copyrighted works, is expected to take place in March. The treaty was adopted in 2013, but the EU has yet to ratify it despite being a signatory. In 2016 the Advocate General of the European Court of Justice signalled that the European Commission has the competency to ratify the treaty on behalf of all member states. Rapporteur Max Andersson expects compromise on the 100 amendments that have been put forward. However, both the European Blind Union and the World Blind Union oppose proposals to compensate publishers for accessible copies produced by NGOs and libraries, and the EBU is concerned about the suggestion of limiting the exceptions to works that are not commercially available. Finally, Germany wants the European Parliament to incorporate compensation for secondary rights holders. IFLA has called for the European Parliament to ratify the treaty without these impediments.
IP Watch: http://bit.ly/2k5RqCQ
IFLA: http://bit.ly/2ltQ0iH

Wikipedia community debates undisclosed paid promotional editing
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Motherboard reports that controversy has developed within the Wikipedia community over undisclosed paid promotional editing (UPPE) in violation of community standards that require paid editors to disclose their conflicts of interest on their user pages. However, not all do so, and it's difficult to draw lines between UPPE, other types of undisclosed paid editing, and self-interested unpaid editing, and between fair investigation and persecuting suspected offenders. Finding the right balance remains a challenge.
Motherboard: http://bit.ly/2k61dbU

US: Ohio police use pacemaker data in criminal investigation
----------------------------------------------------------------------
SC Magazine reports that police in Middletown, Ohio used data from a suspect's artificial heart implant to charge a man with setting fire to his own house. A cardiologist who reviewed the data, obtained via a search warrant, concluded that the data was inconsistent with the suspect's story. EFF staff attorney Stephanie Lacambra argues that people should not have to make a choice between health and privacy.
SC: http://bit.ly/2kpkPUC

Cameroon: Government clampdown widens to include international journalists
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Deutsche Welle reports that the Cameroonian government, having already cut off the country's English-speaking regions from the internet, is now threatening international journalists with sanctions if they report on the conflict. Both French and English are official languages in Cameroon. The media regulator has threatened to revoke the licenses of media outlets that report favorably on demands from the English-speaking minority.
DW: http://bit.ly/2lr4cYM

US: One hundred-plus technology companies join legal fight against travel ban
----------------------------------------------------------------------
CNN reports that more than 100 technology companies have signed on to support a lawsuit opposing US President Donald Trump's Executive Order , "Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States", which imposes a 90-day ban on admitting travellers from seven countries: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, and Syria (indefinitely). The action was filed with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals by the attorneys general of the states of Washington and Minnesota. The list includes Apple, Google, Intel, Microsoft, Netflix, Facebook, Airbnb, Uber, Paypal, and Tesla. CNN notes some major names are missing: IBM, Palantir, Oracle, and Cisco. According to Engadget, Amazon has expressed its support but hasn't signed the brief as it's a witness in the original case. Policy analyst Marcy Wheeler traces the background of how the seven countries were selected by the Trump administration' for the travel ban. At the Lawfare blog, former FBI analyst Nora Ellingsen studies two years of FBI arrests and finds that nothing in the large body of data we have about real terrorist plots in the United States supports either a focus on barring refugees or a focus on these particular seven countries.
CNN (ban): http://cnnmon.ie/2ltMGUG
CNN (tech companies): http://cnnmon.ie/2lqR3z5
Engadget: http://engt.co/2kVTaNY
Wheeler: http://bit.ly/2lqVqdn
Lawfare: http://bit.ly/2k5PUQW


FEATURES AND ANALYSIS
====================
For more features and analysis selected by the Program team, visit:
http://pinboard.in/u:osi_info_program/t:oped/

The fake news bogeyman
----------------------------------------------------------------------
In this piece for Deutsche Welle, Ethan Zuckerman argues that "fake news" is a bogeyman because it means that people who disagree with us have simply been given the wrong facts. In preliminary analysis from the Media Cloud team at Harvard and MIT, the most influential fake news site ranked only 163rd in their list of most-shared sources. What gives fake news its greatest visibility is mainstream media reports about it. Propaganda and disinformation, he notes, are as old as humanity. More important is finding common ground with people we disagree with. The IFLA blog argues that libraries have a long history of verifying information, and highlights two papers published by IFLA in conjunction with The Wikipedia Library that showcase successful collaborations between the two organizations. In the Guardian, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales argues that transparency and a free and open internet is essential to combating the spread of disinformation.
DW: http://bit.ly/2k6z3Zm
IFLA: http://bit.ly/2k6pud5
Guardian: http://bit.ly/2kKGd7V

Computers, Privacy, and Data Protection
----------------------------------------------------------------------
At this YouTube channel, CPDP has posted videos of the sessions from this year's conference. Of particular note are the closing Caspar Bowden panel on surveillance; the panel on the effect of big data on the insurance industry; and the panel on populist politics and the prospects for privacy.
YouTube (CPDP channel): http://bit.ly/2kRaUuA
YouTube (Bowden): http://bit.ly/2kuCz3u
YouTube (insurance): http://bit.ly/2lqR31W
YouTube (populist): http://bit.ly/2ln0iUK

Data vigilantes
----------------------------------------------------------------------
In this Guardian article, Stephen Buranyi reports on the controversy surrounding Statcheck, a computer program, written by Michèle Nuijten at Tilbert University's Meta-Research Center, that reads scientific papers and checks the mathematics behind every statistical result it encounters. An early target of Statcheck's work was the field of psychology, where researchers found that about half of the papers published in psychology journals contained a statistical error. The controversy began when Hartgerink's colleague, Chris Hartgerink, who modified the program so that it would catalogue the errors and post them online. Scientific fraud is typically estimated at around 2%; the researchers believe that the true rate is far higher.
Guardian: http://bit.ly/2lqZoCR

Egypt: Civil society under phishing attack
----------------------------------------------------------------------
In this report, the result of research it conducted with the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, Citizen Lab studies recent coordinated phishing attacks on Egyptian NGOs, intended to trick them into giving up their email and other passwords. As Citizen Lab notes, such attacks are common and relatively low-tech, but often effective. The investigators have found strong circumstantial - but not conclusive - evidence to suggest that the attack was mounted by the Egyptian government, which has been cracking down on civil society.
CitizenLab: http://bit.ly/2ltC6Nr

AI comes of age: in cars, healthcare, and journalism
----------------------------------------------------------------------
In this report from the Aspen Institute, "Artificial Intelligence Comes of Age", David Bollier summarizes its round table on artificial intelligence in connected cars, healthcare, and journalism. While the workshop did not reach any firm conclusions, it did identify key questions to ask. How should markets evolve? What are the proper forms of government regulation? What internal governance structures and safeguards should AI adopt? How can social trust in AI technologies be earned? Participants included Joi Ito (MIT Media Lab), Stuart Frankel (Narrative Science), Cynthia Breazeal (MIT Media lab), Mustafa Suleyman (Google DeepMind), David Kenny (IBM Watson), Marc Rotenberg (EPIC), and Fr E. Salobir (OPTIC, Order of Preachers).
Aspen (PDF): http://bit.ly/2k5W4kd

Irish High Court hearings on transatlantic data flows
----------------------------------------------------------------------
On this page and on Twitter (@maxschrems), Max Schrems is posting updates on the Irish High Court hearings in "Data Protection Commissioner v. Facebook ireland Ltd and Maximilian Schrems", which began on February 7 and are expected to last three weeks. The case concerns Facebook's use of standard contractual clauses to allow the company to transfer EU citizens' personal data to the US after the Safe Harbor agreement was voided in an earlier case brought by Schrems. The Irish data protection commissioner argues that the contracts include no provision for allowing it to suspend data flows; Facebook argues that surveillance in the US is no worse than in the EU and so its data transfers should be acceptable. Among those submitting amicus curiae briefs are the US government, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, DigitalEurope, and the British Software Alliance.
Europe v. Facebook: http://bit.ly/2lqQVPU

***

DIARY
==============
To see more events recommended by the Information Program team, visit:
https://pinboard.in/u:osi_info_program/t:events/. If you would like your event listed in this mail, email info.digest@opensocietyfoundations.org.

Robots Exhibition
----------------------------------------
February 8 - September 13
London, UK
The Science Museum's 2017 robots exhibition includes robotic artefacts over five centuries, from a 16th century mechanized monk to the latest research developments. Focusing on why they exist rather than on how they work, the exhibition explores the ways robots mirror humanity and the insights they offer into our ambitions, desires and position in a rapidly changing world.
http://bit.ly/2kpgPn2

Internet Freedom Festival
----------------------------------------
March 6-10, 2017
Valencia, Spain
The Internet Freedom Festival gathers the community keeping the Internet open and uncensored for a week of free-form multidisciplinary collaboration intended to help groups achieve their goals. Attendance is free and open to the public.
http://bit.ly/2dI8EV1

Open Education Global 2017
----------------------------------------
March 8-10, 2017
Cape Town, South Africa
This year marks several important milestones in Open Education, including the 15-year anniversary of the term "Open Educational Resources" and the five-year anniversary of the Paris OER Declaration. For those who remember the start of the movement, this conference will provide the opportunity to celebrate and reflect on these and other achievements, reconnect with colleagues and friends, and learn about new ideas and initiatives.
http://bit.ly/2jUcqJp

17th TACD Multi-Stakeholder Forum
----------------------------------------
March 21, 2017
Washington, DC
This year's TACD Multi-stakeholder Forum, titled "A consumer agenda for transatlantic markets: safeguarding protections and making progress in times of political change", will bring together participants representing civil society, academics, researchers, as well government, legislators , regulatory authorities and business on both sides of the Atlantic to discuss a pro-consumer agenda for transatlantic markets.
http://bit.ly/2lmVX42

Rightscon 2017
----------------------------------------
March 29-31, 2017
Brussels, Belgium
RightsCon will tackle the most pressing issues at the intersection of technology and human rights. Session proposals are being accepted until November 25, 2016.
http://bit.ly/I2ZAUZ

We Robot
----------------------------------------
March 31-April 1, 2017
New Haven, Connecticut
The sixth annual We Robot will be held at Yale Law School and will focus on the coming legal and policy conflicts as robots and AI become part of daily life.
http://bit.ly/2fVF2SI

OER 17
----------------------------------------
April 5-6, 2017
London, UK
This year's OER will present an opportunity for open practitioners, activists, educators, and policy makers to come together to reflect on 'The Politics of Open'. Up for discussion are questions such as: What are our current key challenges and strengths - locally, nationally, and internationally? What are our priorities - in terms of political governance, organisational and personal politics? What are the changes that we want to effect together? The conference will be chaired by social and educational technologist and Wikimedia UK Trustee Josie Fraser, and Alek Tarkowski, Director of Centrum Cyfrowe, co-founder and coordinator of Creative Commons Poland.
http://bit.ly/2k5V7bC

Personal Democracy Forum 2017
----------------------------------------
April 6-7
Gdansk, Poland
The 5th edition of Personal Democracy Forum will serve as a platform for exchanging ideas and experiences for people using new technologies to work for civic participation and transparency in public life in Central and Eastern Europe.
http://bit.ly/2j7q7HT

TICTeC 2017
----------------------------------------
April 25-26, 2017
Florence, Italy
This will be the third mySociety conference on the impacts of civic technology.
http://bit.ly/2e5NifJ

2017 IFLA International News Media Conference
----------------------------------------
April 27-28, 2017
Reykjavik, Iceland
This conference will examine issues and challenges in collecting and preserving the news and making it available to users. Do access and preservation have different prerequisites? In addition, the conference will explore how news media is used and transformed by researchers and the public. Can we recognize variable user needs? Do we offer the most suitable APIs?
http://bit.ly/2gjYmu2

Creative Commons Global Summit
----------------------------------------
April 28-30, 2017
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
This event will gather a global community of technologists, academics, activists, creatives, and legal experts to work together on the expansion and growth of the commons, open knowledge, and free culture for all.
http://bit.ly/2cO3x0P

IFLA MetLib 2017
----------------------------------------
April 30-May 5, 2017
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
The 2017 programme theme is "Partnerships: Creating a new vision for libraries". Among the subthemes will be discussions of how and why to use, form, and manage partnerships, management tools, and best practices.
http://bit.ly/2ghPOPp

OpenTech
----------------------------------------
May 13, 2017
London, UK
OpenTech 2017 is an informal, low cost, one-day conference on slightly different approaches to technology, experience and democracy. Talks by people who work on things that matter guarantees a day of thoughtful talks leading to conversations with friends.
http://bit.ly/2lmW53w

4th Africa Library Summit and 2nd AfLIA conference
----------------------------------------
May 14-20, 2017
Yaounde, Cameroon
Moved from Ethiopia to the site of the second bidder due to safety concerns, this conference co-locates the fourth Africa Library Sumit and the second African Library and Information Associations and Institutions conference.
http://bit.ly/2hsw64E

Citizen Science Conference 2017
----------------------------------------
May 17-20, 2017
St Paul, Minnesota
The biennial citizen science conference brings together a diverse group of researchers, practitioners, community organizations, and participants.
http://bit.ly/2jspOWl

IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy
----------------------------------------
May 22-24, 2017
San Jose, California
The 38th annual meeting will present developments in computer security and electronic privacy, and for bringing together researchers and practitioners in the field.
http://bit.ly/2hsqUhj

Workshop on Technology and Consumer Protection
----------------------------------------
May 22-24, 2017
San Jose, California
Co-hosted with the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, ConPro will explore computer science topics with an impact on consumers. This workshop has a strong security and privacy slant, with an overall focus on ways in which computer science can prevent, detect, or address the potential for technology to deceive or unfairly harm consumers.
http://bit.ly/2fJ6ShN

Privacy Law Scholars
----------------------------------------
June 1-2
Berkeley, California
The tenth annual Privacy Law Scholars workshop will assemble a wide array of privacy law scholars and practitioners from around the world to discuss papers in progress. Scholars from many disciplines, including psychology, economics, sociology, philosophy, political science, computer science, and mathematics also participate.
http://bit.ly/2ln2Rq3

Next Library Festival 2017
----------------------------------------
June 11-14, 2017
Aarhus, Denmark
Next Library 2017 will offer a "patchwork" of co-learning, co-creative, participatory, engaging, pluralistic and interactive meetings, and lots of parallel sessions, keynote speakers, wildcard sessions, demos/exhibitions, gaming, Networking Dinner Party, Get2Gether, Social un-conferences, alternative events and surprises.
http://bit.ly/2hHNt4W

CERN Workshop on Innovations in Scholarly Communication
----------------------------------------
June 21-23, 2017
Geneva, Switzerland
The organizers of the biennial CERN Workshop on Innovations in Scholarly Communication - OAI10 - include representatives from the Open Society Foundations, SPARC, PloS, CERN, UCL, and other academic institutions..
http://bit.ly/2jzXj6X

Open Repositories 2017
----------------------------------------
June 26-30, 2017
Brisbane, Australia
The annual Open Repositories Conference brings together users and developers of open digital repository platforms from higher education, government, galleries, libraries, archives and museums. The Conference provides an interactive forum for delegates from around the world to come together and explore the global challenges and opportunities facing libraries and the broader scholarly information landscape.
http://bit.ly/2aOCiGp

Summer courses on privacy and international copyright laws
----------------------------------------
July 3-7, 2017
Amsterdam, Netherlands
These courses, run by the Institute for Information Law, are intensive post-graduate courses aimed to help professionals stay abreast of changing rules. The first, on privacy law and policy, focuses on recent developments in EU and US privacy law relating to the internet and online media. The second, on international copyright law, comprises nine seminars, each focused on one specific copyright issue.
http://bit.ly/2lmPgim

IFLA World Libraries and Information Congress
----------------------------------------
August 19-25, 2017
Wroclaw, Poland
The theme of the 83rd annual IFLA congress will be "Achieving a healthy future together: diverse and emerging roles for health information professionals".
http://bit.ly/2gErkVa

Privacy + Security Forum
----------------------------------------
October 4-6, 2017
Washington, DC
The conference breaks down the silos of security and privacy by bringing together leaders from both fields.
http://bit.ly/1PZhExo

***

Hear more from the Information Program!
================================
If you want to hear more from the Information Program team each week, consider subscribing to our shared bookmarks on delicious using this RSS feed:
http://feeds.pinboard.in/rss/secret:95194ab804ccccac713b/u:osi_info_program/

You can also read more about our work on the Open Society Foundations website: http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/about/programs/information-program

Hear less from the Information Program!
================================
If you wish to unsubscribe from this weekly digest, please send an email with the subject line "Unsubscribe" to info.digest@opensocietyfoundations.org.

This digest operates under the OSF privacy policy: http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/about/policies/privacy

Additionally, it uses the bit.ly URL shortening service, which operates under the following privacy policy: http://bit.ly/pages/privacy/

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/




About this Archive

This page is an archive of entries from February 2017 listed from newest to oldest.

January 2017 is the previous archive.

March 2017 is the next archive.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.