News digest | Open Society Information Program | Week ending May 24, 2019 ==================================================== The Information Program NEWS DIGEST, published on 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. Current and former grantees featured in this issue: Article 19, Bits of Freedom, EDRi, EFF, Epicenter.works, La Quadrature du Net, and Ranking Digital Rights. NEWS ===== Facebook bans election-disrupting Israeli company ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Facebook banned an Israeli company that ran a campaign aimed at disrupting and influencing elections in a number of countries and deleted dozens of accounts that were spreading disinformation, the Associated Press reports at the Japan Times. The company linked the campaign to the Tel Aviv-based political consulting and lobbying firm Archimedes. Separately, at Wired Amit Katwala writes that a false rumor of imminent bankruptcy spread via WhatsApp led West London's Tamil community to rush to empty their Metro Bank accounts. In a new report, researchers from the UK's Demos think tank study 39 hostile online information operations and conclude that they use numerous strategies and tactics to selectively amplify mainstream news stories to fit their agenda of exploiting existing cultural and social divisions. Focusing on correcting facts is only a partial solution, and governments should expand their definition of information warfare and be prepared to scale up a response rapidly when needed. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/05/17/business/facebook-busts-israel-based-fake-news-campaign-disrupt-elections-worldwide/ https://www.wired.co.uk/article/metro-bank-share-price-whats-app-hoax https://demos.co.uk/project/warring-songs-information-operations-in-the-digital-age/ Coalition asks EU to ban Deep Packet Inspection ---------------------------------------------------------------------- A coalition of 46 NGOs, academics, and companies from 16 countries, including EFF, Article 19, Bits of Freedom, and La Quadrature du Net, have sent an open letter to European policy makers and regulators urging them to take action against telecoms companies using Deep Packet Inspection (DPI), EDRi reports. A recent Epicenter.works study to map zero-rating offers in Europe finds 186 telecom services that potentially use DPI to enable them to discriminate between different types of internet traffic despite a ban on the practice. https://edri.org/ngos-and-academics-warn-against-deep-packet-inspection/ https://epicenter.works/document/1522 Apple faces consumer lawsuit over App Store monopoly ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The US Supreme Court has ruled that four US iPhone owners are free to sue Apple over the 30% commission it charges developers for sales through its App Store, Kieren McCarthy reports at The Register. Apple argued that the lawsuit is invalid because only app developers should have standing to sue the company over the charges they pay. The Supreme Court's majority opinion held that Apple is using its monopoly on the iOS platform to overcharge customers. The case will now be heard in the district court. https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/05/13/apple_supreme_court/ San Francisco bans facial recognition ---------------------------------------------------------------------- San Francisco is the first city to ban police and other agencies from using facial recognition to identify suspects of crimes both large and small, the New York Times reports. Oakland CA and Boston suburb Somerville MA are considering similar bans, though critics believe it would be better to develop regulations that prohibit abuse but allow cities to reap the benefits of the technology. CNet outlines the workings of Illinois' Biometric Information Privacy Act (2008, amended 2016); the Act bars Sony from selling its Aibo robot dog and means Google turns off facial recognition in its Nest thermostats. At Vox, Sigal Samuel argues that efforts to reduce bias and discrimination in AI-based systems risk harming black, gay, and trans people by making them easier for the surrounding profoundly discriminatory system to identify. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/14/us/facial-recognition-ban-san-francisco.html https://www.cnet.com/news/what-sonys-robot-dog-teaches-us-about-biometric-data-privacy/ https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/4/19/18412674/ai-bias-facial-recognition-black-gay-transgender Indonesia leads the world in open access ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Indonesia leads the world in open access publishing, with 81% of 2017's 20,000 journal entries available to read online for free, Richard van Noorden reports at Nature. Also high on the list are Colombia, Bangladesh, and Brazil, with more than 60% of research articles freely readable. Despite the EU's Plan S, it trails behind. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01536-5 US: State of Georgia and public records campaigner seek Supreme Court ruling ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Long-time campaigner for open access to public information Carl Malamud and his group, public.resource.org, are being accused of "terrorism" for putting the Official Code of Georgia Annotated online, Adam Liptak reports at the New York Times. Both the State of Georgia, which brought the lawsuit and lost in federal appeals court, and Malamud's group are asking the US Supreme Court to rule on whether annotated codes can be copyrighted. Placing state law under the control of legal publishers is a growing trend. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/13/us/politics/georgia-official-code-copyright.html FEATURES AND ANALYSIS ==================== Ghost work ---------------------------------------------------------------------- In this podcast from Data & Society, Mary L. Gray discusses her new book, Ghost Work, written with with Siddharth Suri, which exposes the invisible human workforce that powers the "AI" in services delivered by Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Uber. An estimated 8% of Americans have worked at least once as the raters, proofreaders, and engine parts designers Gray includes in the "ghost economy". Among those workers, Gray has found young mothers, early retirees, recent graduates, minorities who can't get the jobs they want, and some for whom the jobs open opportunities. https://listen.datasociety.net/ghost-work/ Structural disconnects between law and algorithmic decision making ---------------------------------------------------------------------- In this article at Humanitarian Law & Policy, Suresh Venkatasubramanian examines the disconnects between how law works and how algorithmic decision making systems work. Algorithmic systems are judged by the outcome, but the fairness of a legal procedure is judged by the process its implementers follow - for example, in deciding whether someone in a war zone should be detained. In a 2017 talk at the Royal Society, Mireille Hildebrandt discussed the difference between law and regulation, and noted that automation lacks the flexibility required for law and turns it into mere administration. https://blogs.icrc.org/law-and-policy/2019/04/25/structural-disconnects-algorithmic-decision-making-law/ http://downloads.royalsociety.org/events/2017/10/algorithms-society/Hildebrandt.mp3 Delays await in delivering autonomous vehicles and artificial general intelligence ---------------------------------------------------------------------- In this blog posting, the Australian roboticist Rodney Brooks argues that it will be 30 to 50 years before fully autonomous cars will be a common sight on the public roads - and even longer for artificial general intelligence to be developed, despite Ray Kurzweil's long-running insistence that we will see it by 2029 (and a Singularity by 2030). In a podcast at Harvard Business Review, professor Missy Cummings, director of the Humans and Autonomy Lab at Duke University tells journalist-turned-entrepreneur Azeem Azhar that full, level 5 autonomy for vehicles is a long way off. https://rodneybrooks.com/agi-has-been-delayed/ https://hbr.org/podcast/2019/05/the-truth-about-autonomy Free-to-play mobile games closely track users ---------------------------------------------------------------------- In this article at Vox, Kaitlyn Tiffany investigates the data collection aspects of mobile games. Few people remember, but in 2014 Edward Snowden's leaked documents included the 2009 hit Angry Birds on the list of "leaky" apps the NSA used to access private information. Many people do not realize how significant and revealing game play data can be because they don't think of it as personal, like messaging, or sensitive, like credit card numbers. Yet a free-to-play game like Candy Crush may have as many as ten advertising intermediaries tracking players' every move - and these provide its only source of revenue. https://www.vox.com/explainers/2019/5/7/18273355/angry-birds-phone-games-data-collection-candy-crush Microsoft leads 2019 digital rights rankings ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Ranking Digital Rights has rated Microsoft as the leader of 2019's index of internet and mobile ecosystem companies with respect to digital rights. Among telecommunications companies Telefónica has improved the most to take the top spot from Vodafone. The report scores 24 companies on 35 indicators of governance, freedom of expression, and privacy. The project concludes that although companies have made meaningful efforts to improve, they have much more to do to respect users' rights and provide transparency. https://rankingdigitalrights.org/2019/05/15/the-2019-rdr-index-is-now-online/ Considering platform regulation ---------------------------------------------------------------------- In this ebook, The Case for the Digital Platform Act, Harold Feld, senior vice president of Public Knowledge, sets out a proposed framework for regulating digital platforms, including competition, content moderation, consumer protections, and law enforcement. He recommends building a toolkit that includes provisions to ensure openness such as data portability, open APIs, interconnection rules, and mandatory fair and reasonable licensing for essential intellectual property; limits on size and vertical integration; and privacy by design. Feld also studies commonly-made proposals such as breaking up Facebook and Google and suggests principles to follow in creating content moderation and consumer protection regimes. http://www.digitalplatformact.com/ *** DIARY ============== If you would like your event listed in this mail, email info.digest@opensocietyfoundations.org. AI for Good Global Summit ---------------------------------------- May 28-31, 2019 Geneva, Switzerland The AI for Good Global Summit is the leading United Nations platform for global and inclusive dialogue on artificial intelligence. The summit is hosted each year in Geneva by the International Telecommunications Union in partnership with UN sister agencies, the XPRIZE Foundation, and ACM. https://aiforgood.itu.int/ Privacy Law Scholars 2019 ---------------------------------------- May 30-31, 2019 Berkeley, California, USA Organized jointly by BCLT and the George Washington University Law School, PLSC assembles a wide array of privacy law scholars and practitioners from around the world to discuss current issues and foster greater connections between academia and practice. https://www.law.berkeley.edu/research/bclt/bcltevents/2019annual-privacy-law-scholars-conference/ 22nd International Conference on Electronic Publishing ---------------------------------------- June 2-4, 2019 Marseille, France In 2019, the Electronic Publishing conference will take as an inspirational starting point the concept of bibliodiversity, a term coined by Chilean publishers in the 1990s. The forum will revisit its definition and explore what it means today, five years after the 2014 adoption by 400 publishers from 45 countries of the International Declaration of Independent Publishers to Promote and Strengthen Bibliodiversity Together. This year's conference aims to bring together the inquiring minds of the academic, professional, and publishing industries to explore the ever-evolving nature of knowledge transmission within human societies. https://elpub2019.sciencesconf.org/ WEIS 2019 ---------------------------------------- June 3-4, 2019 Boston, Massachusetts, USA The Workshop on the Economics of Information Security is is the leading annual forum for interdisciplinary scholarship on information security and privacy, combining expertise from the fields of economics, social science, business, law, policy, and computer science. https://weis2019.econinfosec.org/ 19th TACD Public Forum ---------------------------------------- June 4, 2019 Washington, DC, US The theme of Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue's 19th public forum will be consumer protection in the public sphere. http://tacd.org/events/19th-tacd-public-forum/ Data for Policy ---------------------------------------- June 11-12, 2019 London, UK The fourth international Data for Policy conference has "Digital Trust and Personal Data" as its main theme. The conference will also welcome contributions in the broader data science for government and policy discussions. In particular, the organizers encourage submissions around the value and harm of using data in the public sector, deployment experience in government, "digital ethics" and "ethics engineering" concepts, personal data sharing frameworks and technologies, transparency in machine learning processes, analytics at source, and secure data transaction methodologies. http://dataforpolicy.org/ RightsCon 2019 ---------------------------------------- June 11-14, 2019 Tunis, Tunisia RightsCon Tunis will continue to be a space for civil society, technologists, businesses, startups, public servants, and lawyers to connect, collaborate, build strategies, draft declarations, and move forward real-world change. Whether in provocative plenaries, intimate roundtables, informal meetings, or the lively Community Village, RightsCon Tunis will help shape the future of human rights in the digital age. https://www.rightscon.org/about/ The Web That Was ---------------------------------------- June 19-21, 2019 Amsterdam, Netherlands As the first generation of web users ages, the early web has become simply another object of nostalgia. The third biennial Research Infrastructure for the Study of Archived Web Materials (RESAW) conference will rethink our relationship to the web's past and the past web, and consider how to reconstruct and re-evaluate its history. The conference will host a lecture-performance by Geert Lovink and guests on the history and preservation of Amsterdam's early internet culture. https://thewebthatwas.net Africa Data Protection and Privacy Conference ---------------------------------------- June 24-28, 2019 Accra, Ghana The first Africa Data Protection and Privacy Conference, convened by the Network of African Data Protection Authorities and Ghana Data Protection Commission, will bring together established authorities in Africa and their Global North counterparts for thought leadership, insight, best practice, high level strategic content, and networking, providing a critical platform for promoting Africa's drive for data protection and privacy laws in Africa. https://www.ardppc.com/eng/ LIBER 2019 ---------------------------------------- June 26-28, 2019 Dublin, Ireland The LIBER Conference 2019 will be held in collaboration with CONUL, the Consortium of National and University Libraries for the island of Ireland. The conference brings library directors and their staff together for three days of networking and collaboration. The goal of the conference is to identify the most pressing needs for research libraries, and to share information and ideas for addressing those needs. https://liberconference.eu/dublin2019/ ORGCon ---------------------------------------- July 13, 2019 London, UK Themes for this year's ORGCon are digital privacy; free speech, censorship, and the role of algorithms; mass government surveillance; and data and democracy. https://orgcon.openrightsgroup.org/2019/ PETS 2019 ---------------------------------------- July 16-20, 2019 Stockholm, Sweden The 19th Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium will bring together privacy experts from around the world to present and discuss recent advances and new perspectives on research in privacy technologies. PETS/PoPETs is the premier venue for novel applied and/or theoretical research into the design, analysis, experimentation, or fielding of privacy-enhancing technologies. https://petsymposium.org/ DEF CON 27 ---------------------------------------- August 8-11, 2018 Las Vegas, Nevada, USA DEF CON is one of the oldest continuously running hacker conventions, and also one of the largest. The DEF CON 27 theme, in a way, responds to '1983' with new questions. What does it look like when we make the better choice? What kind of world do we hack together in the sunniest timeline? How does our real best-case scenario compare to the future we've been dreaming of for generations? https://defcon.org/index.html SOUPS 2019 ---------------------------------------- August 11-13, 2019 Santa Clara, California, USA The 2019 Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS) will bring together an interdisciplinary group of researchers and practitioners in human computer interaction, security, and privacy. The program will feature technical papers on aspects of privacy and security such as innovative functionality and design, field studies, usability evaluations of privacy features, and longitudinal studies. https://www.usenix.org/conference/soups2019/call-for-papers Wikimania ---------------------------------------- August 14-18, 2019 Stockholm, Sweden Wikimania 2019 will be the 15th Wikimania conference, an annual event for the international Wikimedia community. https://wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page 85th World Library and Information Congress ---------------------------------------- August 24-30, 2019 Athens, Greece The theme of IFLA's 2019 conference, "Libraries: dialogue for change", invites the library and information science international community to discuss, re-examine, re-think and re-interpret the role of libraries as promoters of change. In an era of rapid changes in the socio-economic-technological sphere, libraries ought to define their role as information providers, promoters of reading, settlers for the community they serve, key players in innovation, and leading actors for changes in society. A constant, open dialectic relationship between libraries and society will lead to well-informed citizens facilitating progress and development, implementing the UN Agenda for Sustainable Development and leading to prosperity in all fields of the democratic society. https://2019.ifla.org/#news Biometrics Congress ---------------------------------------- October 28-30, 2019 London, UK The Biometrics Institute Congress provides an independent platform where the international biometrics community can gather to conduct off-the-record discussion among the institute's multi-stakeholder community. In 2018, representatives from over 30 nations attended. This year's theme is making the world a safer place through the responsible and ethical use of biometrics in an era where laws and regulations are often unable to stay abreast of technology change and the business models based on it. https://www.biometricsinstitute.org/event/biometrics-congress-2019/ Web Summit ---------------------------------------- November 4-7. 2019 Lisbon, Portugal The Web Summit gathers the founders and CEOs of technology companies, fast-growing startups, policymakers, and heads of state to ask a simple question: where to next? In 2018, speakers included Margrethe Vestager, Tim Berners-Lee, and Microsoft CEO Brad Smith. https://websummit.com/ 18th Workshop on Privacy in the Electronic Society ---------------------------------------- November 11, 2019 London, UK The goal of this workshop, held in conjunction with the ACM CCS conference, is to discuss and find solutions to the privacy problems that result from the transformation of society brought by the Information Revolution. One of the major implications of this technological shift has been a massive increase in the collection, sharing, and analysis of personal data. The workshop will include academia, government, and industry, as well as communities such as law and business, who will present novel research on all theoretical and practical aspects of electronic privacy, as well as experimental studies of fielded systems. http://wpes.tech/ IGF Global ---------------------------------------- November 25-29, 2019 Berlin, Germany The Internet Governance Forum (IGF) was set up in 2006 as an open discussion platform of the United Nations for key legal, political, social and technical issues relating to the internet. IGF's multi-stakeholder model aims to ensure that all relevant societal groups are equally involved in preparations and implementation: governments, civil society, business, academia, international organizations, and the technical community. This is particularly of note in terms of representatives from developing and newly industrializing countries, which otherwise tend to be under-represented. https://www.igf2019.berlin/ Munin Conference on Scholarly Publishing ---------------------------------------- November 27-29, 2019 Tromsø, Norway The Munin Conference is an annual conference on scholarly publishing and communication, primarily revolving around open access, open data and open science. http://site.uit.no/muninconf/ CPDP 2020 ---------------------------------------- January 22-24, 2020 Brussels, Belgium The 2020 edition of Computers, Privacy, and Data Protection has issued a call for panels in all areas related to technological privacy and data protection. https://www.cpdpconferences.org/call-for-panels FAT* 2020 ---------------------------------------- January 27-30, 2020 Barcelona, Spain ACM FAT* is an annual conference dedicating to bringing together a diverse community to investigate and tackle issues in this emerging area. Topics of interest include the theory and practice of fair machine learning, measurement and auditing of deployed systems, users' experience of algorithms, and the ethical, moral, social, and policy implications of big data and ubiquitous intelligent systems. https://fatconference.org/ Meeting of the Minds Annual Summit ---------------------------------------- February 19-21, 2020 Phoenix, Arizona, USA Attending the Meeting of the Minds Annual Summit is an outstanding opportunity for anyone seeking cross-disciplinary strategies and partnerships that deliver scalable, transferable, and equitable solutions to urban neighborhoods. https://meetingoftheminds.org/events/motm2020 We Robot 2020 ---------------------------------------- April 2-4, 2020 Ottawa, Ontario, Canada We Robot is an interdisciplinary conference on the legal and policy questions relating to robots. The increasing sophistication of robots and their widespread deployment everywhere - from the home, to hospitals, to public spaces, and even to the battlefield - disrupts existing legal regimes and requires new thinking on policy issues. The conference fosters conversations between the people designing, building, and deploying robots, and those who design or influence the legal and social structures in which robots will operate. https://techlaw.uottawa.ca/werobot *** This list is now managed by MailChimp. Hear more from the Information Program! ================================ If you have been forwarded this email by a friend and wish to subscribe to this fortnightly digest, please visit: https://opensocietyfoundations.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=52d98944f5466486ab8567329&id=1c0675de1d. 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May 2019 Archives
News digest | Open Society Information Program | Week ending May 10, 2019 ==================================================== The Information Program NEWS DIGEST, published on 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. Current and former grantees featured in this issue: Bits of Freedom, Digital Rights Ireland, Digitale Gesellschaft, EDRi, EFF, Mozilla, Open Rights Group, and Wikimedia Deutschland. JOB POSTING ============= EDRi seeks Head of Policy and interim Executive Director ----------------------------------------------------------------------- European Digital Rights (EDRi) is looking for a new Head of Policy to provide strategic leadership to the EDRi Policy Team and design policy and advocacy strategies in line with the organization's strategic objectives and in consultation with its member network. EDRi is also looking for an interim Executive Director to cover its current Executive Director's maternity leave (six months from mid-July 2019 to mid-January 2020). https://edri.org/edri-is-looking-for-a-new-head-of-policy/ https://edri.org/edri-is-looking-for-an-interim-executive-director/ NEWS ===== Russian law enables internet isolation ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Russian president Vladimir Putin has signed into law an "internet sovereignty" bill that mandates internet filtering, calls for the creation of a national domain name system, and requires all internet traffic to be routed over domestic servers, Amrita Khalid reports at Engadget. The goal is to keep Russia online if it is ever disconnected from the wider internet by a cyber attack. https://www.engadget.com/2019/05/01/putin-signs-russian-internet-isolation-bill/ China finances data center, smart city, and surveillance in Kenya ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Kenya's Konza Technology City project will include a data center, smart city, and surveillance project, all funded with Chinese state-backed discounted concessional loans and built by Huawei, which has also signed an MoU with Pakistan to build a data center on similar terms, Sebastian Moss reports at DCD. At Bloomberg, Alex Webb argues that Britain's decision to defy US advice and allow the telecoms industry to use Huawei equipment in building 5G networks is an artifact of the country's Brexit-related need not to alienate China as a trading partner. In Ecuador, the New York Times reports, Beijing has spent billions since 2011 to build the country's surveillance system, now copied in 17 other countries including Zimbabwe, UAE, and Uzbekistan. https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/news/huawei-build-konza-data-center-and-smart-city-kenya-chinese-concessional-loan/ https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-04-24/britan-s-embrace-of-huawei-is-really-about-brexit https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/24/technology/ecuador-surveillance-cameras-police-government.html NGOs demand improved EU network neutrality rules ---------------------------------------------------------------------- A large group of NGOs including EDRi, Digital Rights Ireland, Digitale Gesellschaft, Bits of Freedom, Open Rights Group, and Wikimedia Deutschland has written an open letter to the European Commission and the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC) to point out omissions in their recent study of the network neutrality rules adopted in 2015. These include new barriers to market entry and a lack of harmonization among national regulators. https://edri.org/two-years-of-net-neutrality-in-europe-29-ngos-urge-to-guarantee-non-discriminatory-treatment-of-communications/ Sri Lanka blocks social networks after terrorist attacks ---------------------------------------------------------------------- A day after the Easter terrorist attacks that killed nearly 300 people, the Sri Lanka government blocked social networks including Facebook, WhatsApp, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, and Viber, NetBlocks reports. At the New York Times, Kara Swisher notes that her first reaction to the news - "Good" - shocked her as a long-time freedom of speech advocate. At Gizmodo, Patrick Howell O'Neill points out that this is not a simple story of failing social media; instead, Facebook is so deeply intertwined with Southeast Asian economy, society, and polities that it can't be easily turned off - and it was the only medium available for democratic pushback against the failed October 2018 coup. https://netblocks.org/reports/social-media-blocked-in-sri-lanka-following-church-and-hotel-bombings-XaAwlQBM https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/22/opinion/sri-lanka-facebook-bombings.html https://gizmodo.com/why-social-media-going-dark-in-sri-lanka-isnt-as-simple-1834220160 Internet health is under threat ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Openness is under attack, access is still a fundamental challenge for inclusion, investing in web literacy is urgently needed, and too much of the internet is dominated by just eight American and Chinese companies, the Mozilla Foundation reports in the 2019 Internet Health Report. The report asks three questions: how do we demand that AI put human needs above all others; what promising efforts are afoot to remedy targeted advertising and personal data collection; and how can city governments and civil society work together? https://internethealthreport.org/2019/about/ McGraw-Hill and Cengage announce merger plans ---------------------------------------------------------------------- McGraw-Hill and Cengage, two of the US's three biggest textbook publishers, have announced plans to merge in early 2020, Goldie Blumenstyk reports at the Chronicle of Higher Education. Federal antitrust regulators are expected to scrutinize the plan and may require one or both companies to divest some assets. The loss of competition may result in higher prices for the companies' subscription programs. https://www.chronicle.com/article/Planned-Merger-of-Cengage-and/246224 FEATURES AND ANALYSIS ==================== Facebook's role in Brexit - and the threat to democracy ---------------------------------------------------------------------- In this TED talk, Observer journalist Carole Cadwalladr recounts the results of a year's investigation into Facebook and pleads with the "gods of Silicon Valley" to act to restore democracy in the face of illegal cash spent by hidden figures to spread lies across the internet in the service of social disruption. Saying "we must do better in future" is not enough to restore free and fair elections. At Politico, Mark Scott reports that with the European elections two weeks away Facebook's political transparency tools are being circumvented by political groups in Hungary and Spain, and that the company has yet to announce any successes at preventing digital campaigns that intend to mislead voters. At Wired, Matt Burgess finds that no amount of encryption can change Facebook's fundamental privacy-busting dependence on advertising. https://www.ted.com/talks/carole_cadwalladr_facebook_s_role_in_brexit_and_the_threat_to_democracy#t-903286 https://www.politico.eu/article/facebook-european-election-war-room-dublin-political-advertising-misinformation-mark-zuckerberg/ https://www.wired.co.uk/article/facebook-redesign-f8-encryption 5G brings new potential for surveillance and insecurity ---------------------------------------------------------------------- In this article for The New Yorker, Sue Halpern considers the cyber attacks and surveillance that the totally-connected 5G network may bring us. The vastly increased speed and vastly reduced latency coupled with the spread of the Internet of Things will open many more opportunities for disruption - but carriers are building new services on top of the vulnerable existing infrastructure and rolling them out as fast as they can. The market leader is Huawei, which is subject to a Chinese law requiring companies to cooperate with the country's state intelligence agencies. https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-communications/the-terrifying-potential-of-the-5g-network Correcting misperceptions about China's Social Credit ---------------------------------------------------------------------- In this article at Logic, Shazeda Ahmed seeks to set the record straight about the Chinese social credit system. Although it is still capable of causing harm and the Chinese government does maintain a sophisticated and pervasive surveillance system, she says social credit is "a broad policy project for encouraging individuals, business, legal institutions, and government to be more trustworthy that uses both incentives and deterrents to guide behavior. Much criticism, she writes, is Westerners projecting fear of their own governments' surveillance onto Chinese society. https://logicmag.io/07-the-messy-truth-about-social-credit/ NGOs overlook the needs of refugee men ---------------------------------------------------------------------- In this article at Bright, Marta Vidal profiles the efforts of several non-profits in Jordan seeking to reverse the way humanitarian NGOs often overlook the needs of refugee men due to gender stereotyping that sees them as less vulnerable than women and children. Many accordingly have less access to humanitarian services, despite the loss of identity and autonomy associated with being unable to work. https://brightthemag.com/ngos-need-change-how-they-relate-refugee-men-migrant-crisis-human-rights-aid-a4c3927e5e54 Poverty changes privacy ---------------------------------------------------------------------- In this article at the New York Times, Mary Madden explores the many ways in which poor people experience privacy differently, from unfair targeting by law enforcement and higher levels of surveillance to cascading and far more damaging consequences of identity fraud or biased recruitment algorithms. The poor are both far more vulnerable and far less able to afford protections. EFF's Spot the Surveillance VR app is intended to help communities identify the spying technologies deployed by police. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/25/opinion/privacy-poverty.html https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/04/its-now-even-easier-spot-surveillance-updates-effs-vr-app Tesla-obsessed Twitter swarm creates new form of crowd-sourcing ---------------------------------------------------------------------- In this article at the Los Angeles Times, Russ Mitchell documents the crowd-sourced social media research swarm that investigates Tesla via the Twitter hashtag $TslaQ. Singly and collectively, this group of hard-core believers that Tesla is financially unsustainable have flown over parking lots to check the number and age of cars awaiting sale, track Tesla-loaded ships, study customer complaints, and chart the financials Tesla publishes in far more detail than any investment advisor has ever been able to do. https://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-tesla-short-sellers-musk-20190408-story.html *** DIARY ============== If you would like your event listed in this mail, email info.digest@opensocietyfoundations.org. TILTing Perspectives 2019 ---------------------------------------- May 15-17, 2019 Tilburg, Netherlands TILTing Perspectives 2019, "Regulating a world in transition", brings together for the sixth time researchers, practitioners, policy makers, and civil society at the intersection of law and regulation, technology, and society to share insights, exchange ideas and formulate, discuss and suggest answers to contemporary challenges related to technological innovation. The conference will include plenary sessions, parallel sessions, and panel discussions with invited speakers, as well as presentations from respondents to a call for papers. http://www.tilburguniversity.edu/research/institutes-and-research-groups/tilt/events/tilting-perspectives/ Stockholm Internet Forum ---------------------------------------- May 16-17. 2019 Stockholm, Sweden Stockholm Internet Forum (SIF) is a platform for advancing a free, open, and secure internet as a driver of development. The SIF 2019 theme is the shrinking online democratic space. Both online and offline, repressive measures against civil society have grown both in geographic spread and in the diversity of measures that are applied. Despite many worldwide similarities, the expression of threats to democracy and the phenomenon of "shrinking space" varies depending on the regional and national context, the level, and the target actors. Shrinking online space often has negative consequences for not only political rights, but also social and economic rights and development. SIF 2019 will offer an opportunity to explore the shrinking democratic space, share experiences, and identify effective responses. http://www.stockholminternetforum.se/ Privacy Law Scholars 2019 ---------------------------------------- May 23-24, 2019 Berkeley, California, USA Organized jointly by BCLT and the George Washington University Law School, PLSC assembles a wide array of privacy law scholars and practitioners from around the world to discuss current issues and foster greater connections between academia and practice. https://www.law.berkeley.edu/research/bclt/bcltevents/2019annual-privacy-law-scholars-conference/ International Communication Association Conference ---------------------------------------- May 23-27, 2019 Washington, DC, USA The International Communication Association Conference Washington, organized by the International Communication Association (ICA) will take place from 23rd May to the 27th May 2019 in Washington, USA. The conference will cover areas like Digital media and social change, information media and digital journalism, and entertainment media and culture.. https://10times.com/icawashington GigaNet ICA Pre-conference ---------------------------------------- May 24, 2019 Washington, DC, USA Organized by the Internet Governance Lab at the American University and the Global Internet Governance Academic Network (GigaNet) and co-sponsored by the ICA Communication Law and Policy and Communication and Technology divisions, this pre-conference aims to bring together ICA participants interested in questions of governance, GigaNet members from other disciplines, and the Washington, DC community of practitioners and policymakers. The goal is to provide a mutual learning process and exchange of ideas and challenges for the further development of internet governance research. https://www.giga-net.org/call-for-papers-ica-pre-conference-washington-dc-usa/ AI for Good Global Summit ---------------------------------------- May 28-31, 2019 Geneva, Switzerland The AI for Good Global Summit is the leading United Nations platform for global and inclusive dialogue on artificial intelligence. The summit is hosted each year in Geneva by the International Telecommunications Union in partnership with UN sister agencies, the XPRIZE Foundation, and ACM. https://aiforgood.itu.int/ 22nd International Conference on Electronic Publishing ---------------------------------------- June 2-4, 2019 Marseille, France In 2019, the Electronic Publishing conference will take as an inspirational starting point the concept of bibliodiversity, a term coined by Chilean publishers in the 1990s. The forum will revisit its definition and explore what it means today, five years after the 2014 adoption by 400 publishers from 45 countries of the International Declaration of Independent Publishers to Promote and Strengthen Bibliodiversity Together. This year's conference aims to bring together the inquiring minds of the academic, professional, and publishing industries to explore the ever-evolving nature of knowledge transmission within human societies. https://elpub2019.sciencesconf.org/ WEIS 2019 ---------------------------------------- June 3-4, 2019 Boston, Massachusetts, USA The Workshop on the Economics of Information Security is is the leading annual forum for interdisciplinary scholarship on information security and privacy, combining expertise from the fields of economics, social science, business, law, policy, and computer science. https://weis2019.econinfosec.org/ 19th TACD Public Forum ---------------------------------------- June 4, 2019 Washington, DC, US The theme of Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue's 19th public forum will be consumer protection in the public sphere. http://tacd.org/events/19th-tacd-public-forum/ Data for Policy ---------------------------------------- June 11-12, 2019 London, UK The fourth international Data for Policy conference has "Digital Trust and Personal Data" as its main theme. The conference will also welcome contributions in the broader data science for government and policy discussions. In particular, the organizers encourage submissions around the value and harm of using data in the public sector, deployment experience in government, "digital ethics" and "ethics engineering" concepts, personal data sharing frameworks and technologies, transparency in machine learning processes, analytics at source, and secure data transaction methodologies. http://dataforpolicy.org/ RightsCon 2019 ---------------------------------------- June 11-14, 2019 Tunis, Tunisia RightsCon Tunis will continue to be a space for civil society, technologists, businesses, startups, public servants, and lawyers to connect, collaborate, build strategies, draft declarations, and move forward real-world change. Whether in provocative plenaries, intimate roundtables, informal meetings, or the lively Community Village, RightsCon Tunis will help shape the future of human rights in the digital age. https://www.rightscon.org/about/ The Web That Was ---------------------------------------- June 19-21, 2019 Amsterdam, Netherlands As the first generation of web users ages, the early web has become simply another object of nostalgia. The third biennial Research Infrastructure for the Study of Archived Web Materials (RESAW) conference will rethink our relationship to the web's past and the past web, and consider how to reconstruct and re-evaluate its history. The conference will host a lecture-performance by Geert Lovink and guests on the history and preservation of Amsterdam's early internet culture. https://thewebthatwas.net Africa Data Protection and Privacy Conference ---------------------------------------- June 24-28, 2019 Accra, Ghana The first Africa Data Protection and Privacy Conference, convened by the Network of African Data Protection Authorities and Ghana Data Protection Commission, will bring together established authorities in Africa and their Global North counterparts for thought leadership, insight, best practice, high level strategic content, and networking, providing a critical platform for promoting Africa's drive for data protection and privacy laws in Africa. https://www.ardppc.com/eng/ LIBER 2019 ---------------------------------------- June 26-28, 2019 Dublin, Ireland The LIBER Conference 2019 will be held in collaboration with CONUL, the Consortium of National and University Libraries for the island of Ireland. The conference brings library directors and their staff together for three days of networking and collaboration. The goal of the conference is to identify the most pressing needs for research libraries, and to share information and ideas for addressing those needs. https://liberconference.eu/dublin2019/ ORGCon ---------------------------------------- July 13, 2019 London, UK Themes for this year's ORGCon are digital privacy; free speech, censorship, and the role of algorithms; mass government surveillance; and data and democracy. https://orgcon.openrightsgroup.org/2019/ DEF CON 27 ---------------------------------------- August 8-11, 2018 Las Vegas, Nevada, USA DEF CON is one of the oldest continuously running hacker conventions, and also one of the largest. The DEF CON 27 theme, in a way, responds to '1983' with new questions. What does it look like when we make the better choice? What kind of world do we hack together in the sunniest timeline? How does our real best-case scenario compare to the future we've been dreaming of for generations? https://defcon.org/index.html Wikimania ---------------------------------------- August 14-18, 2019 Stockholm, Sweden Wikimania 2019 will be the 15th Wikimania conference, an annual event for the international Wikimedia community. https://wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page 85th World Library and Information Congress ---------------------------------------- August 24-30, 2019 Athens, Greece The theme of IFLA's 2019 conference, "Libraries: dialogue for change", invites the library and information science international community to discuss, re-examine, re-think and re-interpret the role of libraries as promoters of change. In an era of rapid changes in the socio-economic-technological sphere, libraries ought to define their role as information providers, promoters of reading, settlers for the community they serve, key players in innovation, and leading actors for changes in society. A constant, open dialectic relationship between libraries and society will lead to well-informed citizens facilitating progress and development, implementing the UN Agenda for Sustainable Development and leading to prosperity in all fields of the democratic society. https://2019.ifla.org/#news Web Summit ---------------------------------------- November 4-7. 2019 Lisbon, Portugal The Web Summit gathers the founders and CEOs of technology companies, fast-growing startups, policymakers, and heads of state to ask a simple question: where to next? In 2018, speakers included Margrethe Vestager, Tim Berners-Lee, and Microsoft CEO Brad Smith. https://websummit.com/ IGF Global ---------------------------------------- November 25-29, 2019 Berlin, Germany The Internet Governance Forum (IGF) was set up in 2006 as an open discussion platform of the United Nations for key legal, political, social and technical issues relating to the internet. IGF's multi-stakeholder model aims to ensure that all relevant societal groups are equally involved in preparations and implementation: governments, civil society, business, academia, international organizations, and the technical community. This is particularly of note in terms of representatives from developing and newly industrializing countries, which otherwise tend to be under-represented. https://www.igf2019.berlin/ Munin Conference on Scholarly Publishing ---------------------------------------- November 27-29, 2019 Tromso, Norway The Munin Conference is an annual conference on scholarly publishing and communication, primarily revolving around open access, open data and open science. http://site.uit.no/muninconf/ CPDP 2020 ---------------------------------------- January 22-24, 2020 Brussels, Belgium The 2020 edition of Computers, Privacy, and Data Protection has issued a call for panels in all areas related to technological privacy and data protection. https://www.cpdpconferences.org/call-for-panels FAT* 2020 ---------------------------------------- January 27-30, 2020 Barcelona, Spain ACM FAT* is an annual conference dedicating to bringing together a diverse community to investigate and tackle issues in this emerging area. Topics of interest include the theory and practice of fair machine learning, measurement and auditing of deployed systems, users' experience of algorithms, and the ethical, moral, social, and policy implications of big data and ubiquitous intelligent systems. https://fatconference.org/ Meeting of the Minds Annual Summit ---------------------------------------- February 19-21, 2020 Phoenix, Arizona, USA Attending the Meeting of the Minds Annual Summit is an outstanding opportunity for anyone seeking cross-disciplinary strategies and partnerships that deliver scalable, transferable, and equitable solutions to urban neighborhoods. https://meetingoftheminds.org/events/motm2020 We Robot 2020 ---------------------------------------- April 2-4, 2020 Ottawa, Ontario, Canada We Robot is an interdisciplinary conference on the legal and policy questions relating to robots. The increasing sophistication of robots and their widespread deployment everywhere - from the home, to hospitals, to public spaces, and even to the battlefield - disrupts existing legal regimes and requires new thinking on policy issues. The conference fosters conversations between the people designing, building, and deploying robots, and those who design or influence the legal and social structures in which robots will operate. https://techlaw.uottawa.ca/werobot *** This list is now managed by MailChimp. Hear more from the Information Program! ================================ If you have been forwarded this email by a friend and wish to subscribe to this fortnightly digest, please visit: https://opensocietyfoundations.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=52d98944f5466486ab8567329&id=1c0675de1d. You can also read more about our work on the Open Society Foundations website: http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/about/programs/information-program Our mailing address is: Open Society Foundations, 7th Floor, Millbank Tower, 21-24 Millbank, London SW1P 4QP, United Kingdom This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/
News digest | Open Society Information Program | Week ending April 26, 2019 ==================================================== The Information Program NEWS DIGEST, published on 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. Current and former grantees featured in this issue: EDRi, Simon Fraser University. JOB POSTING ============= EDRi seeks Head of Policy and interim Executive Director ----------------------------------------------------------------------- European Digital Rights (EDRi) is looking for a new Head of Policy to provide strategic leadership to the EDRi Policy Team and design policy and advocacy strategies in line with the organization's strategic objectives and in consultation with its member network. EDRi is also looking for an interim Executive Director to cover its current Executive Director's maternity leave (six months from mid-July 2019 to mid-January 2020). https://edri.org/edri-is-looking-for-a-new-head-of-policy/ https://edri.org/edri-is-looking-for-an-interim-executive-director/ NEWS ===== Lawsuit aims to block Toronto "smart city" development ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The Canadian Civil Liberties Association is suing federal, provincial, and municipal governments to obtain court orders blocking the Sidewalk Labs and Waterfront Toronto partnership's plan to redevelop a 12-acre site in Toronto as a "smart city", Jordan Pearson reports at Motherboard. CCLA is also asking the court to declare that the three levels of government and Waterfront Toronto violated Canadians' privacy rights in forming the agreement with Sidewalk Labs, a subsidiary of Alphabet (Google's parent), because Torontonians cannot give consent under the plan to create pervasive surveillance via ubiquitous sensors. https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/gy4bgj/canada-is-getting-sued-over-sidewalk-labs-smart-city-in-toronto EU completes passage of Copyright Directive ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The EU Council of Ministers has passed the Copyright Directive 19 votes to six, with three abstentions, EDRi reports. Member states have two years to translate the directive into national law, which will be the last opportunity to modify the link tax and upload filter provisions. At her blog, German MEP Julia Reda points out the successes won by those protesting the worst aspects of the directive. https://edri.org/eu-member-states-give-green-light-for-copyright-censorship/ https://juliareda.eu/2019/04/not-in-vain/ Facebook's private documents belie its public posture ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Thousands of pages of leaked internal documents show that Facebook enhanced or denied access to user data as a business strategy to retain advertising clients and punish potential rivals while outwardly claiming these moves were intended to protect user privacy, Olivia Solon and Cyrus Farivar report at NBC News. At Mother Jones, Pema Levy and Tonya Riley find that the Cambridge Analytica scandal provided an opening for civil society groups to find some success after years of effort to get Facebook to remediate its systemic discrimination. At Wired, Nicholas Thompson and Fred Vogelstein recount the inside story of Facebook's 2018, when it was under siege from all sides. https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/mark-zuckerberg-leveraged-facebook-user-data-fight-rivals-help-friends-n994706 https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/04/activists-couldnt-get-facebook-to-tackle-its-discrimination-problem-until-the-russia-scandal-hit/ https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-15-months-of-fresh-hell/ Academia continues to overweight journal impact factors ---------------------------------------------------------------------- A new survey of North American institutions finds that 40% of research-intensive universities consider journal impact factors when deciding on promotions, Holly Else reports at Nature. The language institutions use wrongly implies that high impact factors are associated with research quality, even though the metric has been widely criticized. The study, led by the neurophysicist Erin McKiernan, was funded by OSF's Information Program through Simon Fraser University. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01151-4 Chinese success spreads desire for internet control ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Fueled by both the widely-publicized problems of Western social media and the success of Chinese technology companies, China's model of the tightly controlled internet is being widely copied across the world, Lulu Yilun Chen and Yoolim Lee report for Bloomberg. Among the countries interested in adopting a similar walled-off model are Vietnam and Thailand. AFP reports at the Japan Times that the Singaporean government's proposals to combat fake news are being called an "assault on free speech" by critics such as the Asia Internet Coalition. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-14/china-wins-allies-for-web-vision-in-ideological-battle-with-u-s https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/04/07/asia-pacific/social-issues-asia-pacific/singapores-fake-news-laws-upset-tech-giants-stoke-censorship-fears/ Australia passes controversial violent content law ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Australia's newly-passed Sharing of Abhorrent Violent Material bill creates new offenses for content service providers and hosting services that fail to notify the Australian federal police about or rapidly remove videos depicting "abhorrent violent conduct" such as terrorist acts, murders, torture, or rape, Paul Karp reports at the Guardian. Despite its protections for public-interest journalism, the bill was widely opposed by technology companies, media organizations, and legal experts. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/apr/04/australia-passes-social-media-law-penalising-platforms-for-violent-content FEATURES AND ANALYSIS ==================== 3D scans may help restore Notre Dame ---------------------------------------------------------------------- In this posting, Open Culture explains that detailed 3D laser scans taken in 2015 by the late Vassar art historian Andrew Tallon will provide one billion points of data to help accurately restore the fire-damaged Notre Dame cathedral. At National Geographic, Rachel Hartigan Shea gives details of how the project was carried out. At the New York Post, Amanda Woods adds that Ubisoft, publisher of the 2014 game "Assassin's Creed Unity" can also help: incorporated into the game's French Revolution setting is a detailed, brick-by-brick 3D model of the cathedral. http://www.openculture.com/2019/04/how-digital-scans-of-notre-dame-can-help-architects-rebuild-the-burned-cathedral.html https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/06/150622-andrew-tallon-notre-dame-cathedral-laser-scan-art-history-medieval-gothic/ https://nypost.com/2019/04/17/video-game-could-be-key-to-rebuilding-notre-dame/ Wikileaks and the death of internet innocence ---------------------------------------------------------------------- In this posting at Lawfare, Quinta Jurecic re-evaluates Wikileaks in the light of our changing views of the internet during Julian Assange's seven years of sequestration in Ecuador's London embassy. At Politifact, Jon Greenberg finds that the Mueller report attributes to Assange a long-running conspiracy rumor that attributed the source of the Democratic National Committee emails Wikileaks published in 2016 to DNC staffer Seth Rich. The leak's true source was a Russian government hack. https://www.lawfareblog.com/wikileaks-and-lost-promise-internet https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2019/apr/18/mueller-report-aims-squash-wikileaks-seth-rich-con/ The Moral Machine monster ---------------------------------------------------------------------- In this video clip from We Robot (start at 1:38), philosopher Abby Jacques exposes the monster at the heart of MIT's Moral Machine, which uses an animated version of the trolley problem to elicit a mass public vote on the values that should be embedded in autonomous vehicles. At MIT Technology Review, experts tell Bobbie Johnson and Gideon Lichfield that Google should replace its cratered AI ethics board and this time focus on transparency, embracing antagonism, and engaging marginalized voices. https://livestream.com/accounts/2263400/WeRobot2019/videos/189954778 https://www.technologyreview.com/s/613281/google-cancels-ateac-ai-ethics-council-what-next/ Big Tech centralizes corporate censorship ---------------------------------------------------------------------- In this article at Wired, Emma Llansó discusses the centralized corporate censorship that platforms like Facebook and YouTube are making public in the wake of the New Zealand Christchurch shooting. Facebook and YouTube, along with Microsoft and Twitter, founded the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism in 2017, which operates a shared database of hashes of files deemed to be "extreme and egregious" terrorist content. The database is available to all participating companies, but lacks accountability and transparency. At the New York Times, Kevin Roose interviews YouTube's chief product officer, Neal Mohan, about the workings of the site's recommendation engine, widely criticized for leading viewers down a "rabbit hole" of increasing extremist videos. https://www.wired.com/story/platforms-centralized-censorship/ https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/29/technology/youtube-online-extremism.html Women's health apps introduce menstrual surveillance ---------------------------------------------------------------------- In this article at the Washington Post, Drew Harwell finds that the intimate data women confide to period- and pregnancy-tracking apps such as Ovia is accessible to their employers under paid arrangements. While the data is anonymized and aggregated, it may still be easy to identify individual women, and employers benefit the most from self-tracking. At the New York Times, Sarah Jeong deplores the insurance industry's increasing surveillance through consumer data. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/04/10/tracking-your-pregnancy-an-app-may-be-more-public-than-you-think/ https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/10/opinion/insurance-ai.html Closed Facebook groups change the face of Welsh politics ---------------------------------------------------------------------- In this article at Tortoise, Xavier Greenwood studies the largely unknown closed social media groups that are changing Welsh politics in the run-up to the UK's May local elections. Where Wales is leading, other parts of the UK are likely to follow; the result in Merthyr has been the rise of independent councilors at the expense of the long-entrenched Labour party. However, what began as a means of opening up Welsh councils to greater scrutiny and accountability is becoming a bubble for circulating misinformation. https://members.tortoisemedia.com/2019/04/14/private-networks/content.html?sig=qWwFx9NuwDG-J0kIcS8lHblCMalgmKLO70pvKeXlYLY *** DIARY ============== If you would like your event listed in this mail, email info.digest@opensocietyfoundations.org. Global Privacy Summit 2019 ---------------------------------------- May 2-3, 2019 Washington, DC, USA The annual conference of the International Association of Privacy Professionals. Intended for anyone who works in privacy anywhere across the globe, whether they work in the public or private sector. https://iapp.org/conference/speak-at-an-iapp-conference/proposals/ re:publica 2019 ---------------------------------------- May 6-8, 2019 Berlin, Germany The re:publica in Berlin is Europe's biggest conference on topics concerning digitization and society while also being one of the world's most exceptional festivals on digital culture. Since its beginnings in 2007 with 700 bloggers in attendance, it has grown into an international society conference. In 2017 it had 9,000 national and international participants from all areas of society. https://re-publica.com/en Creative Commons Summit ---------------------------------------- May 9-11, 2019 Lisbon, Portugal The five tracks at the 2019 Creative Commons Summit will include Creators; Building the Commons; Ethics of Openness; Open Education, Open Science, and Open Access; Galleries; and Legal, Policy, and Copyright Reform. https://summit.creativecommons.org/ TILTing Perspectives 2019 ---------------------------------------- May 15-17, 2019 Tilburg, Netherlands TILTing Perspectives 2019, "Regulating a world in transition", brings together for the sixth time researchers, practitioners, policy makers, and civil society at the intersection of law and regulation, technology, and society to share insights, exchange ideas and formulate, discuss and suggest answers to contemporary challenges related to technological innovation. The conference will include plenary sessions, parallel sessions, and panel discussions with invited speakers, as well as presentations from respondents to a call for papers. http://www.tilburguniversity.edu/research/institutes-and-research-groups/tilt/events/tilting-perspectives/ Stockholm Internet Forum ---------------------------------------- May 16-17. 2019 Stockholm, Sweden Stockholm Internet Forum (SIF) is a platform for advancing a free, open, and secure internet as a driver of development. The SIF 2019 theme is the shrinking online democratic space. Both online and offline, repressive measures against civil society have grown both in geographic spread and in the diversity of measures that are applied. Despite many worldwide similarities, the expression of threats to democracy and the phenomenon of "shrinking space" varies depending on the regional and national context, the level, and the target actors. Shrinking online space often has negative consequences for not only political rights, but also social and economic rights and development. SIF 2019 will offer an opportunity to explore the shrinking democratic space, share experiences, and identify effective responses. http://www.stockholminternetforum.se/ Privacy Law Scholars 2019 ---------------------------------------- May 23-24, 2019 Berkeley, California, USA Organized jointly by BCLT and the George Washington University Law School, PLSC assembles a wide array of privacy law scholars and practitioners from around the world to discuss current issues and foster greater connections between academia and practice. https://www.law.berkeley.edu/research/bclt/bcltevents/2019annual-privacy-law-scholars-conference/ International Communication Association Conference ---------------------------------------- May 23-27, 2019 Washington, DC, USA The International Communication Association Conference Washington, organized by the International Communication Association (ICA) will take place from 23rd May to the 27th May 2019 in Washington, USA. The conference will cover areas like Digital media and social change, information media and digital journalism, and entertainment media and culture.. https://10times.com/icawashington GigaNet ICA Pre-conference ---------------------------------------- May 24, 2019 Washington, DC, USA Organized by the Internet Governance Lab at the American University and the Global Internet Governance Academic Network (GigaNet) and co-sponsored by the ICA Communication Law and Policy and Communication and Technology divisions, this pre-conference aims to bring together ICA participants interested in questions of governance, GigaNet members from other disciplines, and the Washington, DC community of practitioners and policymakers. The goal is to provide a mutual learning process and exchange of ideas and challenges for the further development of internet governance research. https://www.giga-net.org/call-for-papers-ica-pre-conference-washington-dc-usa/ AI for Good Global Summit ---------------------------------------- May 28-31, 2019 Geneva, Switzerland The AI for Good Global Summit is the leading United Nations platform for global and inclusive dialogue on artificial intelligence. The summit is hosted each year in Geneva by the International Telecommunications Union in partnership with UN sister agencies, the XPRIZE Foundation, and ACM. https://aiforgood.itu.int/ 22nd International Conference on Electronic Publishing ---------------------------------------- June 2-4, 2019 Marseille, France In 2019, the Electronic Publishing conference will take as an inspirational starting point the concept of bibliodiversity, a term coined by Chilean publishers in the 1990s. The forum will revisit its definition and explore what it means today, five years after the 2014 adoption by 400 publishers from 45 countries of the International Declaration of Independent Publishers to Promote and Strengthen Bibliodiversity Together. This year's conference aims to bring together the inquiring minds of the academic, professional, and publishing industries to explore the ever-evolving nature of knowledge transmission within human societies. https://elpub2019.sciencesconf.org/ WEIS 2019 ---------------------------------------- June 3-4, 2019 Boston, Massachusetts, USA The Workshop on the Economics of Information Security is is the leading annual forum for interdisciplinary scholarship on information security and privacy, combining expertise from the fields of economics, social science, business, law, policy, and computer science. https://weis2019.econinfosec.org/ 19th TACD Public Forum ---------------------------------------- June 4, 2019 Washington, DC, US The theme of Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue's 19th public forum will be consumer protection in the public sphere. http://tacd.org/events/19th-tacd-public-forum/ Data for Policy ---------------------------------------- June 11-12, 2019 London, UK The fourth international Data for Policy conference has "Digital Trust and Personal Data" as its main theme. The conference will also welcome contributions in the broader data science for government and policy discussions. In particular, the organizers encourage submissions around the value and harm of using data in the public sector, deployment experience in government, "digital ethics" and "ethics engineering" concepts, personal data sharing frameworks and technologies, transparency in machine learning processes, analytics at source, and secure data transaction methodologies. http://dataforpolicy.org/ RightsCon 2019 ---------------------------------------- June 11-14, 2019 Tunis, Tunisia RightsCon Tunis will continue to be a space for civil society, technologists, businesses, startups, public servants, and lawyers to connect, collaborate, build strategies, draft declarations, and move forward real-world change. Whether in provocative plenaries, intimate roundtables, informal meetings, or the lively Community Village, RightsCon Tunis will help shape the future of human rights in the digital age. https://www.rightscon.org/about/ The Web That Was ---------------------------------------- June 19-21, 2019 Amsterdam, Netherlands As the first generation of web users ages, the early web has become simply another object of nostalgia. The third biennial Research Infrastructure for the Study of Archived Web Materials (RESAW) conference will rethink our relationship to the web's past and the past web, and consider how to reconstruct and re-evaluate its history. The conference will host a lecture-performance by Geert Lovink and guests on the history and preservation of Amsterdam's early internet culture. https://thewebthatwas.net Africa Data Protection and Privacy Conference ---------------------------------------- June 24-28, 2019 Accra, Ghana The first Africa Data Protection and Privacy Conference, convened by the Network of African Data Protection Authorities and Ghana Data Protection Commission, will bring together established authorities in Africa and their Global North counterparts for thought leadership, insight, best practice, high level strategic content, and networking, providing a critical platform for promoting Africa's drive for data protection and privacy laws in Africa. https://www.ardppc.com/eng/ LIBER 2019 ---------------------------------------- June 26-28, 2019 Dublin, Ireland The LIBER Conference 2019 will be held in collaboration with CONUL, the Consortium of National and University Libraries for the island of Ireland. The conference brings library directors and their staff together for three days of networking and collaboration. The goal of the conference is to identify the most pressing needs for research libraries, and to share information and ideas for addressing those needs. https://liberconference.eu/dublin2019/ ORGCon ---------------------------------------- July 13, 2019 London, UK Themes for this year's shortly-to-be-announced ORGCon are digital privacy; free speech, censorship, and the role of algorithms; mass government surveillance; and data and democracy. https://orgcon.openrightsgroup.org/2019/ DEF CON 27 ---------------------------------------- August 8-11, 2018 Las Vegas, Nevada, USA DEF CON is one of the oldest continuously running hacker conventions, and also one of the largest. The DEF CON 27 theme, in a way, responds to '1983' with new questions. What does it look like when we make the better choice? What kind of world do we hack together in the sunniest timeline? How does our real best-case scenario compare to the future we've been dreaming of for generations? https://defcon.org/index.html Wikimania ---------------------------------------- August 14-18, 2019 Stockholm, Sweden Wikimania 2019 will be the 15th Wikimania conference, an annual event for the international Wikimedia community. https://wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page 85th World Library and Information Congress ---------------------------------------- August 24-30, 2019 Athens, Greece The theme of IFLA's 2019 conference, "Libraries: dialogue for change", invites the library and information science international community to discuss, re-examine, re-think and re-interpret the role of libraries as promoters of change. In an era of rapid changes in the socio-economic-technological sphere, libraries ought to define their role as information providers, promoters of reading, settlers for the community they serve, key players in innovation, and leading actors for changes in society. A constant, open dialectic relationship between libraries and society will lead to well-informed citizens facilitating progress and development, implementing the UN Agenda for Sustainable Development and leading to prosperity in all fields of the democratic society. https://2019.ifla.org Web Summit ---------------------------------------- November 4-7. 2019 Lisbon, Portugal The Web Summit gathers the founders and CEOs of technology companies, fast-growing startups, policymakers, and heads of state to ask a simple question: where to next? In 2018, speakers included Margrethe Vestager, Tim Berners-Lee, and Microsoft CEO Brad Smith. https://websummit.com/ IGF Global ---------------------------------------- November 25-29, 2019 Berlin, Germany The Internet Governance Forum (IGF) was set up in 2006 as an open discussion platform of the United Nations for key legal, political, social and technical issues relating to the internet. IGF's multi-stakeholder model aims to ensure that all relevant societal groups are equally involved in preparations and implementation: governments, civil society, business, academia, international organizations, and the technical community. This is particularly of note in terms of representatives from developing and newly industrializing countries, which otherwise tend to be under-represented. https://www.igf2019.berlin/ Munin Conference on Scholarly Publishing ---------------------------------------- November 27-29, 2019 Tromsø, Norway The Munin Conference is an annual conference on scholarly publishing and communication, primarily revolving around open access, open data and open science. http://site.uit.no/muninconf/ CPDP 2020 ---------------------------------------- January 22-24, 2020 Brussels, Belgium The 2020 edition of Computers, Privacy, and Data Protection has issued a call for panels in all areas related to technological privacy and data protection. https://www.cpdpconferences.org/call-for-panels FAT* 2020 ---------------------------------------- January 27-30, 2020 Barcelona, Spain ACM FAT* is an annual conference dedicating to bringing together a diverse community to investigate and tackle issues in this emerging area. Topics of interest include the theory and practice of fair machine learning, measurement and auditing of deployed systems, users' experience of algorithms, and the ethical, moral, social, and policy implications of big data and ubiquitous intelligent systems. https://fatconference.org/ Meeting of the Minds Annual Summit ---------------------------------------- February 19-21, 2020 Phoenix, Arizona, USA Attending the Meeting of the Minds Annual Summit is an outstanding opportunity for anyone seeking cross-disciplinary strategies and partnerships that deliver scalable, transferable, and equitable solutions to urban neighborhoods. https://meetingoftheminds.org/events/motm2020 We Robot 2020 ---------------------------------------- April 2-4, 2020 Ottawa, Ontario, Canada We Robot is an interdisciplinary conference on the legal and policy questions relating to robots. The increasing sophistication of robots and their widespread deployment everywhere - from the home, to hospitals, to public spaces, and even to the battlefield - disrupts existing legal regimes and requires new thinking on policy issues. The conference fosters conversations between the people designing, building, and deploying robots, and those who design or influence the legal and social structures in which robots will operate. https://techlaw.uottawa.ca/werobot *** This list is now managed by MailChimp. Hear more from the Information Program! ================================ If you have been forwarded this email by a friend and wish to subscribe to this fortnightly digest, please visit: https://opensocietyfoundations.us1.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=52d98944f5466486ab8567329&id=1c0675de1d. You can also read more about our work on the Open Society Foundations website: http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/about/programs/information-program Our mailing address is: Open Society Foundations, 7th Floor, Millbank Tower, 21-24 Millbank, London SW1P 4QP, United Kingdom This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/
