February 2018 Archives

News digest | Open Society Information Program | Week ending 9 February 2018

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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: Bits of Freedom, EDRi, EFF.

NEWS

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


Chinese police spot suspects with surveillance glasses

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The BBC reports that police in China have begun using connected sunglasses equipped with facial recognition to scan crowds looking for suspected criminals. In a test at a busy train station in the city of Zhengzhou, police were able to identify and apprehend seven suspects accused of crimes ranging from hit-and-run to human trafficking and identify 26 people using fake IDs, according to the Communist Party's People's Daily Newspaper. The glasses allow police officers to take a photograph of a suspicious individual and compare it to pictures held in an internal database. If the system finds a match, it sends identifying details such as name and address to the officer. China is a world leader in facial recognition and frequently reminds its citizens that it will make escape impossible. The country is thought to have 170 million CCTV cameras already in place, with 400 million more due to be installed between 2018 and 2021. The Verge reports that in December 2017 the digital surveillance manufacturer IC Realtime launched a web and app platform named Ella that uses AI to analyse video feeds and make them instantly searchable, like a Google for CCTV.

BBC: http://bbc.in/2GATEkj

Verge: http://bit.ly/2GAxij4


India: Competition Commission fines Google

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Reuters reports that on February 8, the Competition Commission of India fined Google Rs 136.86 crore ($21.17 million) for "search bias" and abuse of its dominant position; the amount represents nearly 5% of Google's average total revenue in India for the financial years 2013, 2014, and 2015. Google has 60 days to appeal. The case began in 2012, when cases were filed by the consumer organization Consumer Unity and Trust Society and Consim, a matrimonial website and Google AdWords customer.

Reuters: http://reut.rs/2ohNqyX


Russia: Scientists arrested for mining cryptocurrencies at nuclear research facility

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The BBC reports that Russian security officers have arrested several scientists for attempting to mine cryptocurrencies at the top-secret Federal Nuclear Centre in the restricted and tightly guarded area of Sarov. The scientists were caught when they attempted to connect the warhead facility's supercomputer to the internet. The supercomputer is intentionally kept offline to protect its security.

BBC: http://bbc.in/2ELLipp


US: Federal court rules an embedded tweet a copyright infringement

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The EFF reports that a New York federal court has ruled in the case Goldman v. Breitbart that embedding a tweet in a web page can be a copyright infringement. The ruling could apply to all inline linking, up-ending years of settled precedent that only the host, not the linker, is liable for infringement. The judge argued that the "server test" created by the Ninth Circuit's opinion in the 2006 case Perfect 10 v. Amazon and the Seventh Circuit's 2012 opinion in Flava Works v. Gunter did not apply because the defendants in Goldman "took active steps" that resulted in public display of the photos in question. At the Technology and Marketing Law Blog, Eric Goldman explains the ruling and its consequences in more detail. The web's best hope is an appeal.

EFF: http://bit.ly/2FlnbiB

Goldman: http://bit.ly/2EH1Jr8


Chinese regulator rebukes Ant Financial for automatic credit scoring enrollment

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The Wall Street Journal reports that in January the Cyberspace Administration of China rebuked representatives of Alibaba subsidiary Ant Financial Services Group for automatically enrolling its 520 million users in its credit-scoring system, Sesame Credit. Regulators said Ant's Alipay service violated China's new national data protection standard by not properly notifying users that enrolling in the credit-scoring system would permit Ant to share their personal financial data with third parties, including information about their income, savings, and shopping habits. The regulator said the policy broke the pledge the company signed in 2017 to protect this type of information and ordered Ant to ensure it doesn't happen again. Sesame Credit is one of the new rating systems emerging in China, where the government intends to spread social scoring throughout society. The case is also an example of Chinese people's increasing concerns about data privacy, although they reserve their concern for companies rather than government.

Wall Street Journal: http://on.wsj.com/2HDFWyy


Germany: Court rules Facebook's data practices illegal

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The Guardian reports that in a suit brought by the Federation of German Consumer Organizations (VZBV), a Berlin court has ruled that Facebook's privacy settings and personal data use contravene German consumer law. A week later, the company said it would radically overhaul its privacy settings, and that the work would also prepare it for the incoming General Data Protection Regulation. The Guardian also reports that in January Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said at the World Economic Forum in Davos that social networks should be regulated like cigarette companies. In November 2017, the multi-stakeholder UN IGF Dynamic Coalition on Platform Responsibility (FGV) published a book analyzing the online platforms' responsibility to respect human rights and providing guidance for "responsible" terms of service.
Guardian (suit): http://bit.ly/2BII2fO
Guardian (Benioff): http://bit.ly/2HEhrBi
FGV: http://bit.ly/2FkWP02


FEATURES AND ANALYSIS

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For more features and analysis selected by the Program team, visit:

http://pinboard.in/u:osi_info_program/t:oped/


Turkey: How a single line of computer code jailed thousands of innocent Turks

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At CBC News, Nil Köksal explains how a single line of computer code landed thousands of innocent Turks in jail. The story began with the free Bylock messaging app, which was used between 2014 and 2016 and which the Turkish government associated with treason and followers of Fethullah Gülen, the man the Turkish government believe was behind the attempted 2016 coup. Digital forensics expert Tuncay Beşikçi finds that people who have never downloaded or used the app were arrested because a line of code in other apps opened a single-pixel window onto Bylock.net - which Beşikçi believes may have been an attempt at obfuscation. In the Guardian, Owen Bowcott explains the UK legal opinion arguing that the arrests were illegal.

CBC: http://bit.ly/2Ceo7Xh

Guardian: http://bit.ly/2CDTgz6


Break up the big tech companies

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In this article at Esquire, Scott Galloway, founder of several early internet firms and author of The Four, argues that it's time to break up Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon, given their big profits and small paybacks in the form of taxes, their destruction of jobs, and their weaponization during the 2016 US presidential election. He complains that government is handing off responsibilities such as allocating tax money, managing defense, and protecting teenagers to these companies while markets fail. He cites Microsoft as the original model, but Microsoft's power was checked by regulators, a fate the Big Four have so far avoided. Amazon has 4% of US retail - but 34% of the worldwide cloud business; phones are "delivery vehicles for Facebook"; Google owns 92% of the internet search market; and Apple has "the profit margin of Ferrari with the production volume of Toyota". Galloway concludes, "A key part of a healthy economic cycle is pruning firms when they become invasive, cause premature death, and won't let other firms emerge." In a lengthy piece at Wired, Nicholas Thompson and Fred Vogelstein trace Facebook's slow acceptance of responsibility over the news that appears on its platform.

Esquire: http://bit.ly/2BL0QeI

Wired: http://bit.ly/2FlqcQ3


US, UK: Surveilling immigrants

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In the Guardian, Atlanta-based Azadeh Shahshahani, a human rights attorney with Project South, discusses US government spying on immigrants, including naturalized US citizens. The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security already track the internet activity of all visa applicants, visa holders, and legal permanent residents, including social media account information, aliases, and search results from both public search engines and commercial databases. Shahshahani believes these measures, which violate the First Amendment, are intended to fracture and control dissent and keep immigrants marginalized. For many, it is reminiscent of the repression they left their former countries to escape. At the Guardian, MEP Claude Moraes complains that the UK government's proposed data protection rules implementing the incoming General Data Protection Regulation will remove subject access rights relating to immigration procedures from all non-UK nationals, including EU citizens resident in the UK. In a blog posting, Liberty opposes the West Yorkshire Police's roll-out of a system under which they stop people in the street and use a portable scanner to run their fingerprints against both criminal and immigration databases.

Guardian (Shahshahani): http://bit.ly/2EKQcmP
Guardian (Moraes): http://bit.ly/2oooZiB

Liberty: http://bit.ly/2EL8hoC


Stop saying smart cities

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In this article at The Atlantic, science fiction writer Bruce Sterling argues that cities need to be "rich, powerful, and culturally persuasive, with the means, motive, and opportunity to manage their own affairs" - but not necessarily smart. "Smartness," he says, "is just today's means to this well-established end." Sterling goes on to discuss surveillance, the influence of incoming Chinese technology such as AI facial recognition, and a future of "localized, haphazard mash-ups of digital tips, tricks, and hacks. Follow the money, he says, and this isn't about smart cities but about GAFAM (Google-Apple-Facebook-Amazon-Microsoft) disrupting the older technology companies that have been building cities' command and control systems until now.

Atlantic: http://theatln.tc/2EL3r6U


The house that spied on me

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In this article at Gizmodo, Kashmir Hill and Surya Mattu discover that the only thing worse than getting a bad night's sleep...is getting a report from the bed afterwards advising that you "missed your sleep goal". Still: the newly "smart" apartment had its conveniences: it gave Hill voice-activated lights, coffee maker, and music, the ability to convey a message to a toddler through a toy, a self-heating bed, and a robot vacuum cleaner. Meanwhile, Mattu built a Raspberry Pi router to monitor what data all these devices collected and where they wanted to send it. They found a steady stream of outward bound data even when the house was empty - and massive annoyances because of the friction involved in getting all the devices to work together and satisfying their demands. Free advice: when you install connected CCTV cameras inside your home, think before you walk around nude. Hill's conclusion: "Smart homes are dumb." Science fiction writer Ray Bradbury foresaw this in his short story "There Will Come Soft Rains", published in 1950.

Gizmodo: http://bit.ly/2CBNrSL

Bradbury: http://bit.ly/2BLp8Fs


Is your software racist?

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At Politico, Raymond Biesinger considers how to solve the problem of bias in software, citing numerous examples from Google Translate and voice-based assistants to recidivism-predicting algorithms. Prospective solutions are less clear than the problem. As one option, New York is appointing a task force to review and test the city's algorithms. Other options include requiring algorithms and data to be open source, industry-wide standards or benchmarks that algorithms need to meet, and a new federal agency to oversee the development of AI.

Politico: http://politi.co/2GxD84H



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DIARY

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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.


Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency

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February 23-24, 2018

New York, NY, USA

FAT* is an international and interdisciplinary peer-reviewed conference that seeks to publish and present work examining the fairness, accountability, and transparency of algorithmic systems. The FAT* conference solicits work from a wide variety of disciplines, including computer science, statistics, the humanities, and law. It intends to bring together the community that has grown through a number of workshops at other conferences.

http://bit.ly/2iHQTUX


PrivacyCon

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February 28, 2018

Washington, DC, USA

Organized by the Federal Trade Commission, the 2018 PrivacyCon will expand collaboration among leading privacy and security researchers, academics, industry representatives, consumer advocates, and the government. As part of this initiative, the FTC sought general research that explores the privacy and security implications of emerging technologies, such as the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence and virtual reality. The 2018 event will focus on the economics of privacy including how to quantify the harms that result from companies' failure to secure consumer information, and how to balance the costs and benefits of privacy-protective technologies and practices.

http://bit.ly/2sL3C0F


Internet Freedom Festival

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March 5-9, 2018

Valencia, Spain

The global unconference of the Internet freedom communities brings together those who defend digital rights around the world - journalists, activists, technologists, policy advocates, digital safety trainers, and designers - with the goals of creating an inclusive space, increasing diversity, and improving the services, strategies, and tools offered to the most vulnerable individuals on the frontlines.

http://bit.ly/2Ds1wn1


ICANN61

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March 10-15, 2018

San Juan, Puerto Rico

ICANN's Community Forum for 2018 will be focused on outreach, capacity building, and showcasing ICANN's work to a broader global audience.

https://go.icann.org/2zwpDBV


IFLA President's Meeting 2018

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May 19, 2018

Barcelona, Spain

By bringing together the biggest brains trust in the library field and gathering the best ideas and experience from outside, this event offers a unique chance to hear how leading players are approaching the future, how libraries can break down barriers and form new partnerships, how they can build sustainable foundations for their work, and how they can use digital tools to achieve the goal of access to information for all.

http://bit.ly/2Fn1tef


We Robot 2018

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April 12-14, 2018

Palo Alto, California, USA

This conference is the annual gathering of academics, policy makers, roboticists, economists, ethicists, entrepreneurs, and lawyers who care about robots and the future of robot law and policy. We Robot fosters conversations between the people designing, building, and deploying robots, and the people who design or influence the legal and social structures in which robots operate.

http://stanford.io/2juk94u


TRILCON18

April 25, 2018

Winchester, UK

The fifth interdisciplinary Winchester conference on Trust, Risk, Information and the Law has as its overall theme "Public Law, Politics and the Constitution: A new battleground between the Law and Technology?"

http://bit.ly/2A1DwrU


Tomorrow's Transactions Forum

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April 24-25, 2018

London, UK

The 21st edition of Tomorrow's Transactions will provide an opportunity to look back at the lessons that have been learned across the past decades and cast an eye toward the future to ask, where will technology and regulation, take our world of transactions? For 2018, topics will include AI, futures, open banking, and conversational and contextual commerce.

http://bit.ly/1Qc84Fx


Internet Freedom Forum

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April 24-26, 2018

Abuja, Nigeria

The sixth edition of the Internet Freedom Forum will present a unique platform for discussions and engagement around current trends and emerging issues affecting internet freedom in Africa. Participants at IFF include civil society organizations, policy actors/makers, legal/policy experts, academics, advocates, tech enthusiasts, industry representatives and active citizens among others.

http://bit.ly/2Aoj0Tr


Open Knowledge Summit 2018

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May 3-6, 2018

Thessaloniki, Greece

For 2018, the Open Knowledge Foundation has replaced the OKFestival with a summit intended to gather the Open Knowledge network to collaboratively build the future of the Open Knowledge Network. The format and programming will be developed as a collaboration between Open Knowledge International, Open Knowledge Greece, and all other groups in the network.

http://bit.ly/2iISyJb


RightsCon

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May 16-18, 2018

Toronto, Ontario, Canada

RightsCon has become one of the world's largest gatherings on human rights and technology, and it's people like you that make it an engine for change. The 2018 event is staged in Canada for a conversation built on the principles of diversity, inclusion, and respect.

http://bit.ly/2rR0IX3


Workshop on Technology and Consumer Protection

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May 24, 2018

San Francisco, CA, USA

ConPro #18 will explore computer science topics with an impact on consumers. This workshop has a strong security and privacy emphasis, 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. Participants will consist heavily of academic and industry researchers but are also expected to include researchers from the Federal Trade Commission - the U.S. government's primary consumer protection body - and other government agencies with a consumer protection mission.

http://bit.ly/2iCUt5r


Privacy Law Scholars

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May 30-31

Washington, DC, USA

PLSC is a paper workshop with the goal of improving and providing support for in-progress scholarship. To achieve this, PLSC assembles a wide array of privacy law scholars and practitioners from around the world to discuss the papers. Scholars from many disciplines (psychology/economics, sociology, philosophy, political science, computer science, and even math) also participate.

http://bit.ly/2zgypRQ


LIBER Annual Conference

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July 4-6, 2018

Lille, France

The 47th annual conference of the Association of European Research Libraries (LIBER) will include plenary sessions with top international speakers, presentations on current research, posters, and an exhibition of products and services for the library sector, as well as a comprehensive social programme.

http://bit.ly/2zFcbbU


The Circle of HOPE

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July 20-22, 2018

New York, NY, USA

Organized by 2600 Magazine, the 12th biennial Hackers on Planet Earth conference celebrates the hacker spirit. Talks typically feature new ways of examining and dissecting technology to reveal inconvenient truths.

http://bit.ly/2BbzJpM


Defcon

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August 9-12, 2018

Las Vegas, NV, USA

The heart of the DEF CON 26 theme is the concept of the counterfuture. The counterfuture is the open-source alternative to totalitarian dystopia; a world where we use tech and ingenuity for empowerment and connection rather than isolation and control.

http://bit.ly/2A2ojUE


World Library and Information Congress

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August 24-30, 2018

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

The 84th edition of the World Library and Information Congress has the theme, "Transform Libraries, Transform Societies" with the additional tagline, "Reaching out to the hard to reach", which was chosen in recognition of the critical role played by libraries in the development of a nation, particularly in their ability to transform societies.

http://bit.ly/2qSXIta


SciELO 20 Years Conference

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September 26-28, 2018

São Paulo, Brazil

In 2018, the SciELO Program will celebrate 20 years of operation, in full alignment with the advances of open science. The conference will address and debate the main political, methodological, and technological issues and trends that define today's state of the art in scholarly communication. These issues will also be shaping the future of the universal openness of scholarly publishing and its relationship with today's Open Access journals, in particular those of the SciELO Network.

https://www.scielo20.org/en/


International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners

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October 22-26, 2018

Brussels, Belgium

The 40th version of this event will be hosted by the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS), Giovanni Buttarelli and the chair of the Commission for Personal Data Protection of the Republic of Bulgaria, Ventsislav Karadjov. The conference is expected to focus on the recently launched international debate on the ethical dimension of data protection in the digital era. Accompanying conference events will also take place in Bulgaria.

http://bit.ly/2B1bX38


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News digest | Open Society Information Program | Week ending 9 February 2018

====================================================

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: Bits of Freedom, EDRi.

Digital Freedom Fund

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The recently established Digital Freedom Fund, which supports strategic litigation to advance digital rights in Europe, is looking to recruit a part-time, Berlin-based legal officer and a a project-based remote consultant. Deadline for applications is 14 February.
https://digitalfreedomfund.org/vacancies

NEWS

=====

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


Strava fitness app exposes jogging routes around military bases

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The BBC reports that a heat map published by San Francisco-based Strava, maker of a GPS-enabled fitness app, exposes individual jogging routes, including those used by soldiers around military basis. The problem appears to be that although an opt-out mechanism is provided users do not always know to activate it or how to use the app's privacy settings. At Foreign Policy, Jenna McLaughlin gives background to the debate over the use of fitness apps in sensitive areas. The US National Security Agency allows wearable fitness monitors in some localities, but in general such decisions are left up to the special security officer in charge and therefore they are banned in some places.

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-42853072

https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/02/01/how-the-spies-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-fitbit/


App enables video face-swapping

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At Motherboard, Samantha Cole reports that a user-friendly app is fueling an explosion of convincing face-swap pornography. The app, which began in late 2017 with manual efforts by a Reddit user, makes it easy to use machine learning to create convincing fake videos, with the result that people are using the app to create fake porn of their friends and classmates, as well as celebrities. Users only need one or two high-quality videos of the faces they want to fake. In a leader article, the Guardian argues that the technology, which is already expanding to other types of video simulations, will destroy trust within and between communities.

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/bjye8a/reddit-fake-porn-app-daisy-ridley

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/28/the-guardian-view-on-fake-video-a-trick-too-far


UK: Court of Appeal rules data retention illegal

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At ZDNet, Steve Ranger reports that London's Court of Appeal has ruled that parts of the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act (2014) are unlawful; the result will be to require changes to the the Investigatory Powers Act, which replaced it in 2016 and includes many of the same powers. The three judges ruled that the Act was inconsistent with EU law because it granted the government access to retained data without prior independent review and allowed its use in cases that were not limited to fighting serious crime. Engadget reviews the background of the case, and notes that the European Court of Justice has already ruled that new legislation must follow in the spirit of its 2014 ruling that blanket data retention is illegal.

http://www.zdnet.com/google-amp/article/government-mass-surveillance-powers-ruled-unlawful/

https://www.engadget.com/2018/01/30/uk-surveillance-powers-unlawful/


Russia: Kremlin plans to build an independent internet

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At IEEE Spectrum, Tracy Staedter reports that Russia is building its own independent internet. The plan is perfectly possible, in that the internet's protocols and design are open and can be easily copied to create a separate network of interconnected networks if Russia is willing to duplicate the hardware and software currently managing internet traffic. It would need its own domain name system and numbering scheme; the hard part would be getting users to use them. In the meantime, Russia is forcing US companies to store data about its citizens on local servers.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/telecom/internet/could-russia-really-build-its-own-alternate-internet


Canada: Facebook rolls out advertising transparency plan

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At ProPublica, Jennifer Valentino-DeVries reports that Facebook is responding to complaints about the lack of transparency in its political advertising by enabling users outside the advertiser's specified audience to see the ads. The approach is being rolled out now in Canada and will expand to other countries this summer.  Critics complain that the system is still too difficult for users to benefit from, and propose more effective ways of policing ads, such as making information more readily available about who is placing the ads and how they're targeted. Pro Publica believes its own tool, Political Ad Collector, launched in September 2017,  does the same job more accessibly. The Reuters Institute provides a factsheet that measures the reach of fake news and online disinformation in Europe. It finds that although most fake news websites attract smaller and less engaged audiences, on Facebook a few popular fake news sites generate greater interaction than more established news brands. At The Atlantic, Ethan Zuckerman argues that Facebook will only improve if others begin building better alternatives and introduces the gobo.social project, which he describes as a "provocation, not a product".
https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-experiment-ad-transparency-toronto-canada
https://www.propublica.org/article/help-us-monitor-political-ads-online
https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/our-research/measuring-reach-fake-news-and-online-disinformation-europe
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/01/facebook-doesnt-care/551684/

Commercial industry of fraudulent accounts plagues social media

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At the New York Times, Nicholas Confessore, Gabriel J.X. Dance, Richard Harris, and Mark Hansen uncover a multi-layer black market of fake Twitter followers. Celebrities, entertainers, businesses, and social media "experts", under pressure to deliver follower numbers, buy followers by the hundred thousand at relatively modest prices. Many of these are supplied by the Florida-based company Devumi, which itself buys bots for resale, but many are also counterfeit copies of disused accounts that use the real names, profile pictures, and hometown details of real Twitter users, some of them minors.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/01/27/technology/social-media-bots.html



FEATURES AND ANALYSIS

====================

For more features and analysis selected by the Program team, visit:

http://pinboard.in/u:osi_info_program/t:oped/


George Soros: Open societies are in crisis

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In this article in the Financial Times, Peter Wells and Katie Martin summarize the talk given at Davos by Open Society Foundation founder George Soros, who said open societies are in crisis due to the rise of "dictatorships and mafia states" and the obstacles to innovation posed by Facebook and Google, which are causing people to give up their autonomy. At the rate at which Facebook has been adding its billions of users, Soros believes it will run out of newcomers to sign up within three years. An alliance between these data-rich IT monopolies and their corporate surveillance systems with already-developed systems of state-sponsored surveillance could pose an alarming prospect. Soros believes that the platform giants will be broken soon by regulation, taxation, and the activities of EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager. At the Wall Street Journal, Natalia Drozdiak discusses Vestager's increasing concerns about the use of big data to lock competitors out of markets.

https://www.ft.com/content/584c66cc-020f-11e8-9650-9c0ad2d7c5b5
https://www.wsj.com/articles/eu-competition-chief-tracks-how-companies-use-big-data-1514889000

New York: Algorithmic accountability

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In this letter to the mayor of New York City, NYU's AI Now Institute offers recommendations for subject matter expertise, staff, and organizations that should be included in the city's planned Automated Decision System Task Force. Among the less obvious areas of expertise they suggest are ethics, social work, peer review, and operations. They also recommend requiring appointees to publicly disclose any potential conflicts of interest with vendors of automated decision systems used in New York City government. Also at the Times, Dan Hurley inspects a predictive-analytics system in use in Pittsburgh to predict which of the children who come to the attention of social services should be further investigated. After careful study, this system appears to be making better screening decisions than humans can. Hurley gives three reasons: the companies developing the system are transparent about their methods; the criteria used in this case really do appear to be countering some of the historical bias; and the tool is used only for screening. Humans do follow-up investigations and make the final decisions about protecting the children.

https://ainowinstitute.org/announcements/nyc-algorithmic-accountability.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/02/magazine/can-an-algorithm-tell-when-kids-are-in-danger.html


Australia: Austerity is an algorithm

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In this article at Logic, Gillian Terzis recounts the results of Australia's "robo-debt" scandal. In the interests of austerity, Australia turned its largely means-driven welfare system over to an error-prone scoring algorithm that can issue 20,000 debt notices a week. Terzis argues that these commercially-designed systems - a similar one in the US state of Michigan is showing similar results - are deliberately designed to discourage formal complaints, raise money, and make the system as punitive as possible. Using technology to impose "personal responsibility" on citizens is shredding the Australian social contract; means testing proved to be a lucrative opportunity for private firms to capitalize on a new market. A tool, she writes, is only as good as the politics that underpin it.

https://logicmag.io/03-austerity-is-an-algorithm/


Africa: The Silicon Valley-funded quest to educate the world's poorest kids

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In this feature at Quartz Africa, Jenny Anderson compares Silicon Valley-funded private education initiatives in Liberia, Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, and India to each other and to government-provided public education. In developing countries, nearly 600 million children are either not in school or not learning; in some African countries as much as 40% of teachers were not in the classroom or not in school at all. Quartz visited schools in Kenya, Nigeria, and Liberia, and spoke to more than 40 people about Bridge, a highly scripted technology-based system that is currently educating about 100,000 students and losing $12 million a year. It hopes to educate 10 million children by 2025. Bridge and its methods are opposed by a number of civil society organizations and teachers on grounds of efficacy, transparency, and sustainability, but, says Anderson, shows that innovative models can improve education.

https://qz.com/1179738/bridge-school/


Is the target's citizenship a justified basis for different surveillance rules?

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In this video clip from January's Computers, Privacy, and Data Protection conference in Brussels, privacy scholar Peter Swire, Stiftung Neue Verantwortgun's Thorsten Wetzling, Mario Oetheimer, Joseph Cannataci, and Access Now's Amie Stepanovich discuss whether nationality should be used as a criterion for surveillance. Swire believes it's justified to place foreigners under greater surveillance than domestic citizens; Wetzling believes that foreigners should have greater protection against surveillance; and Stepanovich argues that greater privacy rights for any group is a public good. In a net.wars posting, Wendy M. Grossman summarizes the discussion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RvjD0x5eUs

http://www.pelicancrossing.net/netwars/2018/02/schrodingers_citizen.html

https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/every-user-neo


Could price manipulation be killing Bitcoin?

----------------------------------------------------------------------

In this blog posting, the fourth in a series on Bitcoin, Tony Arcieri examines Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies for signs of price manipulation. Bitcoin's price peaked at $17,000 in November 2017, and slid as low as $7,178.65 in early February 2018, taking other virtual currencies along with it. Like other early Bitcoin investors, Arcieri desires a cryptocurrency system that delivers real value, but fears that instead some cryptocurrencies are Ponzi schemes. Arcieri begs regulators and journalists to look into Tether, which is pegged to the US dollar and makes specific claims about the reserves it holds and the auditing these undergo. CNBC expresses concerns that Tether may be propping up the rest of the cryptocurrency market. The Washington Post reports that in Kentucky poor, umemployed, and retired people are speculating in cryptocurrencies in the hope of finding better prospects. The South China Morning Post reports that China has announced it will block all websites related to cryptocurrency trading and initial coin offerings, and CNBC reports that the Indian finance minister wants to eliminate the use of digital currencies in criminal activity, suggesting tighter regulation in that country.
https://tonyarcieri.com/the-tether-conundrum

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/02/tether-what-you-need-to-know-about-the-cryptocurrency-worrying-markets.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/bitcoin-is-my-potential-pension-what-is-driving-people-in-kentucky-to-join-the-craze/2018/02/03/aaaea3be-05dc-11e8-b48c-b07fea957bd5_story.html

http://www.scmp.com/business/banking-finance/article/2132009/china-stamp-out-cryptocurrency-trading-completely-ban

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/01/india-wants-to-eliminate-criminal-use-of-cryptocurrencies.html


The right to not be addressed

----------------------------------------------------------------------

In this blog posting at EDRi, Bits of Freedom summarizes a speech given by director Hans de Zwart as part of the Big Brother Awards 2017. Zwart proposes a "right to not be addressed" - that is, a right to advertising-free (and surveillance-free) public spaces. Airports  - "a high-dwell environment, delivering a captive audience" - exploit every available opportunity for both. Advertisers and companies like Facebook, Google, and Amazon steal our attention to their benefit rather than our own. The Dutch version includes images and links.

https://edri.org/enditorial-living-as-if-being-at-an-airport/

https://www.bof.nl/2018/01/17/living-as-if-being-at-an-airport/



***


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.


Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency

----------------------------------------

February 23-24, 2018

New York, NY, USA

FAT* is an international and interdisciplinary peer-reviewed conference that seeks to publish and present work examining the fairness, accountability, and transparency of algorithmic systems. The FAT* conference solicits work from a wide variety of disciplines, including computer science, statistics, the humanities, and law. It intends to bring together the community that has grown through a number of workshops at other conferences.

http://bit.ly/2iHQTUX


Internet Freedom Festival

----------------------------------------

March 5-9, 2018

Valencia, Spain

The global unconference of the Internet freedom communities brings together those who defend digital rights around the world - journalists, activists, technologists, policy advocates, digital safety trainers, and designers - with the goals of creating an inclusive space, increasing diversity, and improving the services, strategies, and tools offered to the most vulnerable individuals on the frontlines.

http://bit.ly/2Ds1wn1


ICANN61

----------------------------------------

March 10-15, 2018

San Juan, Puerto Rico

ICANN's Community Forum for 2018 will be focused on outreach, capacity building, and showcasing ICANN's work to a broader global audience.

https://go.icann.org/2zwpDBV


We Robot 2018

----------------------------------------

April 12-14, 2018

Palo Alto, California, USA

This conference is the annual gathering of academics, policy makers, roboticists, economists, ethicists, entrepreneurs, and lawyers who care about robots and the future of robot law and policy. We Robot fosters conversations between the people designing, building, and deploying robots, and the people who design or influence the legal and social structures in which robots operate.

http://stanford.io/2juk94u


TRILCON18

April 25, 2018

Winchester, UK

The fifth interdisciplinary Winchester conference on Trust, Risk, Information and the Law has as its overall theme "Public Law, Politics and the Constitution: A new battleground between the Law and Technology?"

http://bit.ly/2A1DwrU


Tomorrow's Transactions Forum

----------------------------------------

April 24-25, 2018

London, UK

The 21st edition of Tomorrow's Transactions will provide an opportunity to look back at the lessons that have been learned across the past decades and cast an eye toward the future to ask, where will technology and regulation, take our world of transactions? For 2018, topics will include AI, futures, open banking, and conversational and contextual commerce.

http://bit.ly/1Qc84Fx


Internet Freedom Forum

----------------------------------------

April 24-26, 2018

Abuja, Nigeria

The sixth edition of the Internet Freedom Forum will present a unique platform for discussions and engagement around current trends and emerging issues affecting internet freedom in Africa. Participants at IFF include civil society organizations, policy actors/makers, legal/policy experts, academics, advocates, tech enthusiasts, industry representatives and active citizens among others.

http://bit.ly/2Aoj0Tr


Open Knowledge Summit 2018

----------------------------------------

May 3-6, 2018

Thessaloniki, Greece

For 2018, the Open Knowledge Foundation has replaced the OKFestival with a summit intended to gather the Open Knowledge network to collaboratively build the future of the Open Knowledge Network. The format and programming will be developed as a collaboration between Open Knowledge International, Open Knowledge Greece, and all other groups in the network.

http://bit.ly/2iISyJb


RightsCon

----------------------------------------

May 16-18, 2018

Toronto, Ontario, Canada

RightsCon has become one of the world's largest gatherings on human rights and technology, and it's people like you that make it an engine for change. The 2018 event is staged in Canada for a conversation built on the principles of diversity, inclusion, and respect.

http://bit.ly/2rR0IX3


Workshop on Technology and Consumer Protection

----------------------------------------

May 24, 2018

San Francisco, CA, USA

ConPro #18 will explore computer science topics with an impact on consumers. This workshop has a strong security and privacy emphasis, 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. Participants will consist heavily of academic and industry researchers but are also expected to include researchers from the Federal Trade Commission - the U.S. government's primary consumer protection body - and other government agencies with a consumer protection mission.

http://bit.ly/2iCUt5r


Privacy Law Scholars

----------------------------------------

May 30-31

Washington, DC, USA

PLSC is a paper workshop with the goal of improving and providing support for in-progress scholarship. To achieve this, PLSC assembles a wide array of privacy law scholars and practitioners from around the world to discuss the papers. Scholars from many disciplines (psychology/economics, sociology, philosophy, political science, computer science, and even math) also participate.

http://bit.ly/2zgypRQ


LIBER Annual Conference

----------------------------------------

July 4-6, 2018

Lille, France

The 47th annual conference of the Association of European Research Libraries (LIBER) will include plenary sessions with top international speakers, presentations on current research, posters, and an exhibition of products and services for the library sector, as well as a comprehensive social programme.

http://bit.ly/2zFcbbU


The Circle of HOPE

----------------------------------------

July 20-22, 2018

New York, NY, USA

Organized by 2600 Magazine, the 12th biennial Hackers on Planet Earth conference celebrates the hacker spirit. Talks typically feature new ways of examining and dissecting technology to reveal inconvenient truths.

http://bit.ly/2BbzJpM


Defcon

----------------------------------------

August 9-12, 2018

Las Vegas, NV, USA

The heart of the DEF CON 26 theme is the concept of the counterfuture. The counterfuture is the open-source alternative to totalitarian dystopia; a world where we use tech and ingenuity for empowerment and connection rather than isolation and control.

http://bit.ly/2A2ojUE


World Library and Information Congress

----------------------------------------

August 24-30, 2018

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

The 84th edition of the World Library and Information Congress has the theme, "Transform Libraries, Transform Societies" with the additional tagline, "Reaching out to the hard to reach", which was chosen in recognition of the critical role played by libraries in the development of a nation, particularly in their ability to transform societies.

http://bit.ly/2qSXIta


International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners

----------------------------------------

October 22-26, 2018

Brussels, Belgium

The 40th version of this event will be hosted by the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS), Giovanni Buttarelli and the chair of the Commission for Personal Data Protection of the Republic of Bulgaria, Ventsislav Karadjov. The conference is expected to focus on the recently launched international debate on the ethical dimension of data protection in the digital era. Accompanying conference events will also take place in Bulgaria.

http://bit.ly/2B1bX38


***


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================================

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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 26 January 2018

====================================================

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: Bits of Freedom, Derechos Digitales América Latina, EDRi, EFF, Fundación Karisma, La Quadrature du Net, Panoptykon Foundation.

NEWS

=====

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


Apple health app data provides crucial evidence at murder trial

----------------------------------------------------------------------

At Gizmodo, Kristen V. Brown reports that Apple's Health App, which is pre-installed on the iPhone 6S and later models and records steps taken, nutrition and sleep patterns, and other body measurements, has provided crucial evidence at a German trial in which a refugee, known as "Hussein K", has pleaded guilty torape and murder. Police showed that app data suggesting the suspect was climbing stairs could correlate to his dragging his victim down a riverbank and back up by reenacting the movements to produce similar results. Chief of police Peter Egetemaier told the court it was the first time they have been able to correlate health and geodata.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-42663297


India: Authority addresses privacy concerns with Virtual ID

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Rediff Business reports that the Unified Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), the ministry responsible for India's Aadhaar identification system, has introduced Virtual IDs to attempt to counter privacy concerns after a widely reported hack of the numbering system resulted in inexpensive online access to user details. Users can generate these Virtual IDs on its website to use instead of their official 12-digit number for purposes of authentication when opening a new bank or telephone account. Users may generate as many Virtual IDs as they like; old ones get canceled automatically when a new one is created. At the New York Times, Reetika Khera calls the Aadhaar system "a big flub" that has created new problems while failing to solve the ones it was created to fix. In September, an 11-year-old girl died in the poverty-stricken eastern state of Jharkhand when her family was denied benefits after failing to link an Aadhaar number to their ration card. Khera concludes that the system should be returned to voluntary status.

https://m.rediff.com/business/report/uidai-introduces-virtual-id-to-address-privacy-concerns/20180110.htm

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/21/opinion/india-aadhaar-biometric-id.html


Apple's Safari tracking blocker costs publishers millions

----------------------------------------------------------------------

At the Guardian, Alex Hern reports that Apple's September 2017 block on pervasive tracking in its Safari web browser, which has 15% of market share, is costing advertising companies millions; Criteo alone is likely to cut its 2018 revenues by more than a fifth. Things are likely to get worse for these companies: in February 2018 Google will roll out a built-in blocker of "intrusive ads" for Chrome, which has 55% of the global browser market.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jan/09/apple-tracking-block-costs-advertising-companies-millions-dollars-criteo-web-browser-safari


China: Google cross-licenses patents with Tencent

----------------------------------------------------------------------

The South China Morning Post reports that Google and Tencent have agreed to share patents covering a range of products and technologies, including artificial intelligence software, and collaborate on future development. SCMP suggests that the collaboration is Google's way of continuing to expand its presence in the Chinese market even though it withdrew its search engine from the country in 2010. At the Guardian, Mark Sweney profilesTencent, which remains largely unknown in the West despite being a $500 billion company and, with Ali Baba, one of China's two biggest internet companies. Tencent's success rests on three prongs: the messaging app WeChat; its gaming franchies, which are the largest in the world; and its ecosystem, which offers its 1 billion users the services Silicon Valley companies do not operate in China, including Tencent Video (like Netflix), Tencent Music (Apple's iTunes and Spotify). About 40% of the company's revenues come from gaming: it owns Clash of Clans, League of Legends, and Honour of Kings, and has stakes in Epic and Activision Blizzard.

http://www.scmp.com/tech/innovation/article/2129650/google-tencent-agree-share-patents-global-tech-alliance

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/jan/13/tencent-the-500bn-chinese-tech-firm-you-may-never-have-heard-of


Tunisia: Government withdraws biometric ID after protest

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Access Now reports that the country's biometric ID card proposal has officially been withdrawn by the Assembly of the Representatives of the People (ARP). Access Now and local Tunisian NGO AlBawsala proposed amendments to protect citizens' data and their right to consult and correct their information. After nearly all these amendments were adopted by the Consensus Commission, the Ministry of the Interior dropped the proposal.

Indonesia: Central bank bans cryptocurrencies

----------------------------------------------------------------------

The Jakarta Post reports that in mid-January Bank Indonesia (BI), the country's national bank, and the National Police are collaborating to prevent bitcoin transactions in Bali after BI issued regulations declaring that rupieh is the only valid currency in Indonesia. A few days later, the Post also reported that Bank Indonesia is investigating two bitcoin transactions alleged to have been made in Bali, in which two cafes accepted bitcoin invoice payments of more than IDR243,000 ($18.25, or BTC0.001). Each transaction took and hour and a half to process and cost IDR123,000. Earlier, BI banned financial technology companies using cryptocurrencies without prohibiting trading of the currencies themselves.
http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2018/01/21/bi-investigates-use-of-bitcoin-in-bali.html

http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2018/01/15/bank-indonesia-police-prevent-bitcoin-transactions-in-bali.html

http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2018/01/14/indonesia-warns-against-owning-selling-trading-cryptocurrency.html



FEATURES AND ANALYSIS

====================

For more features and analysis selected by the Program team, visit:

http://pinboard.in/u:osi_info_program/t:oped/


Privacy International's amicus brief in support of Microsoft

----------------------------------------------------------------------

In this amicus brief, Privacy International, joined by EDRi, Bits of Freedom, Derechos Digitales América Latina, Fundación Karisma, La Quadrature du Net, Panoptykon Foundation, and numerous other human rights and digital rights organizations, submits arguments to the Supreme Court. PI argues that construing the Stored Communications Act to require Microsoft to turn over email data stored on its Irish servers in contravention of Irish and EU data protection law would create international conflicts that should be avoided. PI believes that instead US law enforcement should use established channels, such as "mutual legal assistance treaties" (MLATs), to accomplish such data transfers.

https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/17/17-2/28354/20180118170547648_17-2%20USA%20v%20Microsoft%20Brief%20of%20Privacy%20International%20Human%20and%20Digital%20Rights%20Organizations%20and%20International%20Legal%20Scholars%20as%20Amici%20Curiae%20in%20Support%20of%20Respondent.pdf


How to fix Facebook before it fixes us

----------------------------------------------------------------------

At Washington Monthly, technology investor Roger McNamee recounts his efforts to get Facebook, Google, and the public to take seriously the threat of bad actors exploiting social media's attention-maximizing business model and his alliance with the Open Markets group, and publishes recommendations for tackling the problem. Among his suggestions: ban bots that pretend to be human; block all new mergers and acquisitions until the platforms have addressed the present damage; force platforms to be more transparent about the sources of their ads and their algorithms; make the contract with users more equitable; require platforms to allow users to opt back to the EULA they accepted when they joined; limit their ability to exploit the data they collect; reopen discussions about market power and antitrust. In the Guardian, John Naughton considers Facebook's recent announcement that the site will change its algorithms to focus on social interactions rather than finding relevant content. Naughton argues that Facebook is acting strategically to avoid further political action against it over fake news. Also at the Guardian, Emily Bell argues that the changes are bad for democracy. At the Economist, Eve Smith drafts an email to the CEOs of Apple, Google, and Amazon warning of the regulatory backlash and antitrust litigation that are likely to hit them in the US in the next few years.

https://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/january-february-march-2018/how-to-fix-facebook-before-it-fixes-us/
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/21/facebook-abandons-news-important-business-of-trivia
https://www.theguardian.com/media/media-blog/2018/jan/21/why-facebook-news-feed-changes-bad-news-democracy
https://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21735026-which-antitrust-remedies-welcome-which-fight-techlash-against-amazon-facebook-and


The Golden Age of (democracy-poisoning) free speech

----------------------------------------------------------------------

In this article for Wired and video-recorded TED talk, Zeynep Tufekci discusses the modern version of censorship: optimization for engagement by a few global-scale advertising companies. Traditionally, censors found the right choke point and then squeezed it; today's version is to meddle with trust and attention. We think of Twitter and Facebook as public spaces, but in fact all posts are targeted and delivered privately, fragmenting the public sphere and creating new forms of censorship that do not obviously breach the US First Amendment or the European Charter of Human Rights. At the Los Angeles Review of Books, John Bell and John Zada review Tim Wu's latest book, The Attention Merchants, and study the way our attention has been turned into a profitable commodity.

https://www.wired.com/story/free-speech-issue-tech-turmoil-new-censorship/

https://www.ted.com/talks/zeynep_tufekci_we_re_building_a_dystopia_just_to_make_people_click_on_ads

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-great-attention-heist/#!


Canada: Privacy protests and Google's Sidwalk Labs

----------------------------------------------------------------------

In this article at Civicist, John Loring discusses the doubts being expressed by public agencies and participants in Toronto about the privacy implications of Google's Sidewalk Labs' (SWL) pitch to redevelop the city's waterfront. SWL's plan is to leverage data gathered in the public realm to meet public-service goals such as improving traffic flow, reducing emissions, and enabling autonous vehicles on a brownfield site known as Quayside while turning the 12-acre area into a technology hub. SWL has made much of its planned privacy pledge, led by Canadian privacy advocate Ann Cavoukian. Even so, specifics about how the project will use data are scarce.

https://civichall.org/civicist/sidewalk-labs-toronto-project-stirs-privacy-debate/


Global threat actor Dark Caracal's infrastructure of malicious apps

----------------------------------------------------------------------

In this blog posting and report, EFF unveils the results of a collaboration with the cybersecurity company Lookout uncovering Dark Caracal, a global threat actor that spreads malicious fakes to impersonate the Android versions of popular privacy-preserving apps like Signal and WhatsApp. Those who have downloaded their apps from Google's Play Store should be unaffected, but the new infrastructure makes it harder to attribute attacks and malware campaigns to a particular nation or state and exposes the increased danger to the targets of such attacks, typically individuals and entities that a nation-state might target, as well as malware researchers. The researchers are aware of hundreds of gigabytes of exfiltrated data in more than 21 countries across thousands of victims, and believe the infrastructure is being used simultaneously by many groups. 
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/01/dark-caracal-good-news-and-bad-news


Brazil's WhatsApp fake news problem

----------------------------------------------------------------------

In this article in Vice, Noah Kulwin reports on WhatsApp's fake news problem in Brazil, where the service is the dominant messaging platform. Because WhatsApp is closed and private, researchers have little insight into how fake news spreads over it; their primary information comes from lurking in large WhatsApp political groups and studying tiny contextual clues. The secrecy-protecting design also amplifies the toxic aspects of fake news, since nothing is visible enough to be challenged. As a result, Glenn Greenwald reports at The Intercept, a top Brazilian police official has threatened to identify and punish the authors of fake news in the run-up to the 2018 presidential election, similar to a law La Quadrature du Net reports that French president Emmanual Macron proposes to introduce. At the BBC, Kenyan journalist Joseph Warungu identifies six approaches WhatsApp administrators use to run the groups they manage, which may represent local communities, professions, or topics of common interests. Wurungu, who was recently promoted to become the administrator of such a group mobilizing support for development projects in his home village, is disturbed by the power of such administrators to silence others.

https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/mbpkyv/whatsapp-is-causing-a-serious-fake-news-problem-in-brazil

https://theintercept.com/2018/01/10/first-france-now-brazil-unveils-plans-to-empower-the-government-to-censure-the-internet-in-the-name-of-stopping-fake-news/

https://www.laquadrature.net/en/macron_fake_news

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-42653088



***


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.


Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency

----------------------------------------

February 23-24, 2018

New York, NY, USA

FAT* is an international and interdisciplinary peer-reviewed conference that seeks to publish and present work examining the fairness, accountability, and transparency of algorithmic systems. The FAT* conference solicits work from a wide variety of disciplines, including computer science, statistics, the humanities, and law. It intends to bring together the community that has grown through a number of workshops at other conferences.

http://bit.ly/2iHQTUX


Internet Freedom Festival

----------------------------------------

March 5-9, 2018

Valencia, Spain

The global unconference of the Internet freedom communities brings together those who defend digital rights around the world - journalists, activists, technologists, policy advocates, digital safety trainers, and designers - with the goals of creating an inclusive space, increasing diversity, and improving the services, strategies, and tools offered to the most vulnerable individuals on the frontlines.

https://internetfreedomfestival.org/


ICANN61

----------------------------------------

March 10-15, 2018

San Juan, Puerto Rico

ICANN's Community Forum for 2018 will be focused on outreach, capacity building, and showcasing ICANN's work to a broader global audience.

https://go.icann.org/2zwpDBV


We Robot 2018

----------------------------------------

April 12-14, 2018

Palo Alto, California, USA

This conference is the annual gathering of academics, policy makers, roboticists, economists, ethicists, entrepreneurs, and lawyers who care about robots and the future of robot law and policy. We Robot fosters conversations between the people designing, building, and deploying robots, and the people who design or influence the legal and social structures in which robots operate.

http://stanford.io/2juk94u


TRILCON18

April 25, 2018

Winchester, UK

The fifth interdisciplinary Winchester conference on Trust, Risk, Information and the Law has as its overall theme "Public Law, Politics and the Constitution: A new battleground between the Law and Technology?"

http://bit.ly/2A1DwrU


Tomorrow's Transactions Forum

----------------------------------------

April 24-25, 2018

London, UK

The 21st edition of Tomorrow's Transactions will provide an opportunity to look back at the lessons that have been learned across the past decades and cast an eye toward the future to ask, where will technology and regulation, take our world of transactions? For 2018, topics will include AI, futures, open banking, and conversational and contextual commerce.

http://bit.ly/1Qc84Fx


Internet Freedom Forum

----------------------------------------

April 24-26, 2018

Abuja, Nigeria

The sixth edition of the Internet Freedom Forum will present a unique platform for discussions and engagement around current trends and emerging issues affecting internet freedom in Africa. Participants at IFF include civil society organizations, policy actors/makers, legal/policy experts, academics, advocates, tech enthusiasts, industry representatives and active citizens among others.

http://bit.ly/2Aoj0Tr


Open Knowledge Summit 2018

----------------------------------------

May 3-6, 2018

Thessaloniki, Greece

For 2018, the Open Knowledge Foundation has replaced the OKFestival with a summit intended to gather the Open Knowledge network to collaboratively build the future of the Open Knowledge Network. The format and programming will be developed as a collaboration between Open Knowledge International, Open Knowledge Greece, and all other groups in the network.

http://bit.ly/2iISyJb


RightsCon

----------------------------------------

May 16-18, 2018

Toronto, Ontario, Canada

RightsCon has become one of the world's largest gatherings on human rights and technology, and it's people like you that make it an engine for change. The 2018 event is staged in Canada for a conversation built on the principles of diversity, inclusion, and respect.

http://bit.ly/2rR0IX3


Workshop on Technology and Consumer Protection

----------------------------------------

May 24, 2018

San Francisco, CA, USA

ConPro #18 will explore computer science topics with an impact on consumers. This workshop has a strong security and privacy emphasis, 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. Participants will consist heavily of academic and industry researchers but are also expected to include researchers from the Federal Trade Commission - the U.S. government's primary consumer protection body - and other government agencies with a consumer protection mission.

http://bit.ly/2iCUt5r


Privacy Law Scholars

----------------------------------------

May 30-31

Washington, DC, USA

PLSC is a paper workshop with the goal of improving and providing support for in-progress scholarship. To achieve this, PLSC assembles a wide array of privacy law scholars and practitioners from around the world to discuss the papers. Scholars from many disciplines (psychology/economics, sociology, philosophy, political science, computer science, and even math) also participate.

http://bit.ly/2zgypRQ


LIBER Annual Conference

----------------------------------------

July 4-6, 2018

Lille, France

The 47th annual conference of the Association of European Research Libraries (LIBER) will include plenary sessions with top international speakers, presentations on current research, posters, and an exhibition of products and services for the library sector, as well as a comprehensive social programme.

http://bit.ly/2zFcbbU


The Circle of HOPE

----------------------------------------

July 20-22, 2018

New York, NY, USA

Organized by 2600 Magazine, the 12th biennial Hackers on Planet Earth conference celebrates the hacker spirit. Talks typically feature new ways of examining and dissecting technology to reveal inconvenient truths.

http://bit.ly/2BbzJpM


Defcon

----------------------------------------

August 9-12, 2018

Las Vegas, NV, USA

The heart of the DEF CON 26 theme is the concept of the counterfuture. The counterfuture is the open-source alternative to totalitarian dystopia; a world where we use tech and ingenuity for empowerment and connection rather than isolation and control.

http://bit.ly/2A2ojUE


World Library and Information Congress

----------------------------------------

August 24-30, 2018

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

The 84th edition of the World Library and Information Congress has the theme, "Transform Libraries, Transform Societies" with the additional tagline, "Reaching out to the hard to reach", which was chosen in recognition of the critical role played by libraries in the development of a nation, particularly in their ability to transform societies.

http://bit.ly/2qSXIta


International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners

----------------------------------------

October 22-26, 2018

Brussels, Belgium

The 40th version of this event will be hosted by the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS), Giovanni Buttarelli and the chair of the Commission for Personal Data Protection of the Republic of Bulgaria, Ventsislav Karadjov. The conference is expected to focus on the recently launched international debate on the ethical dimension of data protection in the digital era. Accompanying conference events will also take place in Bulgaria.

http://bit.ly/2B1bX38


***


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 12 January 2018

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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: EFF.

NEWS

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


India: Newspaper finds Aadhaar number system access on sale for under $8

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The India-based Tribune reports that shortly after the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) claimed that the Aadhaar number system is safe and secure, the newspaper paid anonymous sellers on WhatsApp Rs500 ($7.90) for a service granting access to the details associated with any of the more than 1 billion Aadhaar numbers so far created. For another Rs300 ($4.75), the agent provided software to facilitate printing Aadhaar cards based on any individual's information. Based on its investigation, the newspaper believes the operation began about six months ago. The newspaper also reports that Jalandhar village-level entrepreneur Bgharat Bhushan Gupta tried to report the problem to the UIDAI at the end of December. When that attempt failed he turned to the newspaper, sparking their investigation. He is now being questioned by police.

http://www.tribuneindia.com/news/nation/rs-500-10-minutes-and-you-have-access-to-billion-aadhaar-details/523361.html

http://www.tribuneindia.com/news/nation/aadhaar-whistleblower-who-first-called-uidai/524050.html


EU: Court of Justice decides Uber is a taxi service

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Bloomberg reports that at the end of December the European Court of Justice ruled that Uber is not a technology platform or information service, as it claims, but a taxi service subject to transportation law. The case began in 2014, when the Barcelona-based Associación Profesional Elite Taxi accused Uber of unfair competition. The case creates a precedent that could place technology companies under regulation in many other sectors such as media (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube) and hotels (Airbnb).

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-12-20/european-ruling-buries-uber-s-platform-myth


Researchers find fundamental flaws in 20 years of processor designs

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At Lawfare, Nicholas Weaver reports that Google researchers have found flaws in the basic design of modern processors that open the way for two new attacks, which they've dubbed Meltdown and Spectre. Meltdown applies to all Intel processors made since 1995; Spectre requires a greater degree of technical sophistication but applies to processors from all vendors. Weaver's best immediate suggestion is to run an ad blocker to protect against these exploits. In an essay, Bruce Schneier argues that the best advice - to replace your hardware - wouldn't be viable for the billions of processors in use, even if there were unaffected replacements available. Schneier believes that further study will reveal worse vulnerabilities that haven't been discovered yet, and that these problems are trivial compared to the already-known risks of the growing Internet of Things. The Register reports that the Meltdown patch will slow Amazon cloud servers (among others).

https://www.lawfareblog.com/spectre-advertising-meltdown-what-you-need-know

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2018/01/spectre_and_mel_1.html

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/04/amazon_ec2_intel_meltdown_performance_hit/


US: California introduces network neutrality legislation

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The EFF reports that, only weeks after the Federal Communications Commission voted to terminate network neutrality rules, Democrats in California have introduced legislation to protect the free and open internet. Introduced by state Senator Scott Wiener, the bill, which is co-authored by ten state assembly and Senate Democrats, will require businesses operating within the state of California that rely on state infrastructure or funding in order to provide their service, to adhere to the network neutrality principles. Similar bills are in progress in the states of Washington and New York, and there is a competing California effort, introduced by state Senator Kevin de León.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/01/california-introduces-its-own-bill-protect-net-neutrality


Facebook deletes accounts to orders from the Israeli and US governments

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At The Intercept, Glenn Greenwald reports that Facebook is deleting accounts at the direction of the US and Israeli governments. Following a meeting of Facebook and Israeli government representatives last September, Facebook began "a censorship rampage" against Palestinian protesters. It's an especial problem because 96% of Palestinians say their primary use of Facebook is to follow news. Now, Greenwald wrote on December 30, the company appears to be admitting it will follow censorship orders from the US government, beginning with the Facebook and Instagram accounts of Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, who had 4 million followers across the two accounts. Facebook's stated reason for deleting the account was not that Kadyrov is a mass murderer but that he had been added to a US sanctions list that the company was legally obliged to follow.

https://theintercept.com/2017/12/30/facebook-says-it-is-deleting-accounts-at-the-direction-of-the-u-s-and-israeli-governments/

US: Kansas man killed in hoax "SWATting" attack

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Security journalist Brian Krebs reports that a 28-year-old man in Kansas was shot and killed by police officers after someone fraudulently reported to police that there was an ongoing hostage situation at his home. The false report is an example of "SWATting", the practice of making such reports with the goal of getting the authorities to respond with deadly force. In this case, the hoax was prompted by a dispute over a $1.50 wager in the online game Call of Duty, though the man who was killed was not party to the dispute. Krebs studies the progress of the dispute, which began and was continuously reported on Twitter. Krebs, himself the victim of such an attack in 2013, believes that as this increasingly common practice needs to be made a felony in all 50 US states, and that police need to become more accountable as well. Often the perpetrators are minors, and even when they are caught the consequences are few.
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/12/kansas-man-killed-in-swatting-attack/



FEATURES AND ANALYSIS

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For more features and analysis selected by the Program team, visit:

http://pinboard.in/u:osi_info_program/t:oped/


Tech's terrible 2017

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In this article at the Guardian, Olivia Solon reviews Silicon Valley's 2017 and the many scandals she says have led the world to turn against it and demand greater social responsibility. Russian fake news operations, Uber, YouTube's profiting from ads running inside extremist videos, and the increased consolidation of power into the hands of a few companies have all led to public distaste. Venture capitalist Om Malik believes regulation is inevitable; the five largest tech companies are now trying to avoid such a future by deploying twice as many lobbyists to Washington as Wall Street.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/dec/22/tech-year-in-review-2017


US: The rising numbers of Customs searches of electronic devices

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In this article at the Washington Post, Nick Miroff discusses statistics newly released by the US Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) showing that border searches of phones and laptops rose by 60% during the US government's fiscal 2017, which ended September 30. The agency says in that time it searched 30,200 devices - or 0.007% of travelers arriving from abroad, including US citizens and claims such searches are essential and justified. At Papers Please, travel privacy specialist Edward Hasbrouck discusses CBP's new policy, which claims the agency has the right to demand passwords and conduct warrantless and suspicionless searches at the border, effectively claiming an exemption to the Fourth Amendment. Hasbrouck argues that existing laws and court precedents prohibit such a policy, and offers practical advice for travelers facing such demands.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-customs-agents-are-searching-more-cellphones--including-those-belonging-to-americans/2018/01/05/0a236202-f247-11e7-b3bf-ab90a706e175_story.html
https://papersplease.org/wp/2018/01/05/new-dhs-policy-on-demands-for-passwords-to-travelers-electronic-devices/#more-12071


US courts tackle 3D-printed guns

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In a pair of postings at Lawfare, David Kimball-Stanley describes and discusses Defense Distributed v. State Department, a case involving the practice of 3D printing firearms. The Supreme Court is considering whether to hear the case, which began when the US State Department invoked the International Traffic in Arms Regulations and instructed Defense Distributed to remove files from its website that allowed users to print parts for guns such as an AR-15 rifle. Defense Distributed claims the order violated the First, Second, and Fifth Amendments. Kimball-Stanley argues that if the Supreme Court opts to hear the case it will have to confront ground-breaking issues surrounding the kind of protection granted to computer files that create tangible objects. If it declines, the case may continue in the Texas district court, which will likely have to consider the constitutional issues.

https://www.lawfareblog.com/3d-printed-guns-hit-courts

https://www.lawfareblog.com/3-d-printed-guns-may-be-headed-supreme-court-update


Inside the world of Brazil's social media cyborgs

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In this article at the BBC, Juliana Gragnani interviews a young man who worked during the 2014 general election as a "cyborg" - that is, someone paid to run fake social media accounts in order to influence public opinion. "Pedro" told Gragnani that he was paid $360 a month by a PR company to run 20 fake accounts on Facebook and Twitter to promote its clients, which include a number of leading politicians. These workers call themselves "cyborgs" because they build personal posting histories and interactions that make the accounts harder to detect as fake.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-42322064?intlink_from_url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/topics/cmj34zmw77wt/brazil&link_location=live-reporting-story


The smart home battle front

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In this article at Forbes, Kalev Leetaru discusses the fragility of smart home designs in the light of a letter, first reported at TorrentFreak, that a relatively small US ISP sent one of its customers warning them that further complaints about copyright infringement would result in their bandwidth being throttled and that reducing the service level might cost the subscriber "the ability to control your thermostat remotely" and monitor security cameras. Leetaru is seeing "local-only" control die off as people get used to operating smart devices over the internet. The risks with such a large attack surface are considerable - a hacker could hold a smart house hostage via ransomware, law enforcement could demand access, or a hostile terrorist or criminal organization could turn it into a weapon. Designers, Leetaru concludes, need to think ahead. TorrentFreak's original report focuses more on the prospective disproportionate consequences of copyright infringement-related disconnection.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2017/12/29/the-smart-home-battle-front-and-can-our-isp-interfere-with-our-heat/

https://torrentfreak.com/piracy-notices-can-mess-with-your-thermostat-isp-warns-171224/


Dude, you broke the future

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In this video and written text, taken from his keynote speech at the 34th Chaos Computer Congress, science fiction writer Charlie Stross discusses the looming consequences of today's advances in artificial intelligence and the hidden agendas of their corporate owners. Imagine, he suggests, "a geolocation-aware, social media-scraping, deep learning application that uses a gamified, competitive interface to reward players for joining in acts of mob violence against whomever the app developer hates" - women seeking abortions, for example, or gay men seeking partners or political activists. In Stross's not-unlikely-enough future, that app developer won't be a nation-state or a group of extremists but just a machine operating as it's been optimized to do.

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2018/01/dude-you-broke-the-future.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmIgJ64z6Y4



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DIARY

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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.


ShmooCon

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January 19-21, 2018

Washington, DC

ShmooCon is an annual east coast hacker convention offering three days of an interesting atmosphere for demonstrating technology exploitation, inventive software and hardware solutions, and open discussions of critical infosec issues. The first day is a single track of speed talks called One Track Mind. The next two days bring three tracks: Build It, Belay It, and Bring It On.

http://bit.ly/2j4hXAX


Privacy Camp

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January 23, 2018

Brussels, Belgium

Privacy Camp brings together civil society, policy-makers and academia to discuss existing and looming problems for human rights in the digital environment. In the face of a "shrinking civic space" for collective action, the event aims to provide a platform for actors from across these domains to discuss and develop shared principles to address key challenges for digital rights and freedoms of individuals. The theme for 2018 is "speech, settings and [in]security by design".

http://bit.ly/2lho8Cb


Computers, Privacy, and Data Protection

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January 24-26, 2018

Brussels, Belgium

The theme of the 11th edition of CPDP is the "Internet of Bodies". Data collection increasingly focuses on the physical body. Bodies are increasingly connected, digitized, and informatized. In turn, the data extracted is reassembled in ways that give rise to significant questions - challenging fundamental assumptions about where the corporeal ends and the informational begins. Biometrics, genetic data processing and the quantified self are only some of the trends and technologies reaching into the depths of our bodies. Emerging technologies such as human enhancement, neural implants, and brain wave technology look likely to soon become a daily reality.

http://bit.ly/2sSQ02x


Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency

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February 23-24, 2018

New York, NY, USA

FAT* is an international and interdisciplinary peer-reviewed conference that seeks to publish and present work examining the fairness, accountability, and transparency of algorithmic systems. The FAT* conference solicits work from a wide variety of disciplines, including computer science, statistics, the humanities, and law. It intends to bring together the community that has grown through a number of workshops at other conferences.

http://bit.ly/2iHQTUX


ICANN61

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March 10-15, 2018

San Juan, Puerto Rico

ICANN's Community Forum for 2018 will be focused on outreach, capacity building, and showcasing ICANN's work to a broader global audience.

https://go.icann.org/2zwpDBV


We Robot 2018

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April 12-14, 2018

Palo Alto, California, USA

This conference is the annual gathering of academics, policy makers, roboticists, economists, ethicists, entrepreneurs, and lawyers who care about robots and the future of robot law and policy. We Robot fosters conversations between the people designing, building, and deploying robots, and the people who design or influence the legal and social structures in which robots operate.

http://stanford.io/2juk94u


TRILCON18

April 25, 2018

Winchester, UK

The fifth interdisciplinary Winchester conference on Trust, Risk, Information and the Law has as its overall theme "Public Law, Politics and the Constitution: A new battleground between the Law and Technology?"

http://bit.ly/2A1DwrU


Tomorrow's Transactions Forum

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April 24-25, 2018

London, UK

The 21st edition of Tomorrow's Transactions will provide an opportunity to look back at the lessons that have been learned across the past decades and cast an eye toward the future to ask, where will technology and regulation, take our world of transactions? For 2018, topics will include AI, futures, open banking, and conversational and contextual commerce.

http://bit.ly/1Qc84Fx


Internet Freedom Forum

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April 24-26, 2018

Abuja, Nigeria

The sixth edition of the Internet Freedom Forum will present a unique platform for discussions and engagement around current trends and emerging issues affecting internet freedom in Africa. Participants at IFF include civil society organizations, policy actors/makers, legal/policy experts, academics, advocates, tech enthusiasts, industry representatives and active citizens among others.

http://bit.ly/2Aoj0Tr


Open Knowledge Summit 2018

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May 3-6, 2018

Thessaloniki, Greece

For 2018, the Open Knowledge Foundation has replaced the OKFestival with a summit intended to gather the Open Knowledge network to collaboratively build the future of the Open Knowledge Network. The format and programming will be developed as a collaboration between Open Knowledge International, Open Knowledge Greece, and all other groups in the network.

http://bit.ly/2iISyJb


RightsCon

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May 16-18, 2018

Toronto, Ontario, Canada

RightsCon has become one of the world's largest gatherings on human rights and technology, and it's people like you that make it an engine for change. The 2018 event is staged in Canada for a conversation built on the principles of diversity, inclusion, and respect.

http://bit.ly/2rR0IX3


Workshop on Technology and Consumer Protection

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May 24, 2018

San Francisco, CA, USA

ConPro #18 will explore computer science topics with an impact on consumers. This workshop has a strong security and privacy emphasis, 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. Participants will consist heavily of academic and industry researchers but are also expected to include researchers from the Federal Trade Commission - the U.S. government's primary consumer protection body - and other government agencies with a consumer protection mission.

http://bit.ly/2iCUt5r


Privacy Law Scholars

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May 30-31

Washington, DC, USA

PLSC is a paper workshop with the goal of improving and providing support for in-progress scholarship. To achieve this, PLSC assembles a wide array of privacy law scholars and practitioners from around the world to discuss the papers. Scholars from many disciplines (psychology/economics, sociology, philosophy, political science, computer science, and even math) also participate.

http://bit.ly/2zgypRQ


LIBER Annual Conference

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July 4-6, 2018

Lille, France

The 47th annual conference of the Association of European Research Libraries (LIBER) will include plenary sessions with top international speakers, presentations on current research, posters, and an exhibition of products and services for the library sector, as well as a comprehensive social programme.

http://bit.ly/2zFcbbU


The Circle of HOPE

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July 20-22, 2018

New York, NY, USA

Organized by 2600 Magazine, the 12th biennial Hackers on Planet Earth conference celebrates the hacker spirit. Talks typically feature new ways of examining and dissecting technology to reveal inconvenient truths.

http://bit.ly/2BbzJpM


Defcon

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August 9-12, 2018

Las Vegas, NV, USA

The heart of the DEF CON 26 theme is the concept of the counterfuture. The counterfuture is the open-source alternative to totalitarian dystopia; a world where we use tech and ingenuity for empowerment and connection rather than isolation and control.

http://bit.ly/2A2ojUE


World Library and Information Congress

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August 24-30, 2018

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

The 84th edition of the World Library and Information Congress has the theme, "Transform Libraries, Transform Societies" with the additional tagline, "Reaching out to the hard to reach", which was chosen in recognition of the critical role played by libraries in the development of a nation, particularly in their ability to transform societies.

https://2018.ifla.org/greetings-from-nc-malaysia


International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners

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October 22-26, 2018

Brussels, Belgium

The 40th version of this event will be hosted by the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS), Giovanni Buttarelli and the chair of the Commission for Personal Data Protection of the Republic of Bulgaria, Ventsislav Karadjov. The conference is expected to focus on the recently launched international debate on the ethical dimension of data protection in the digital era. Accompanying conference events will also take place in Bulgaria.

http://bit.ly/2B1bX38


***


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