News digest | Open Society Information Program | Week ending April 24, 2020 ==================================================== 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 Open Society Foundations. Prepared by Wendy M. Grossman. Current and former grantees featured in this issue: CyberBRICS, HRDAG, mySociety. INDELA FUNDING CALL ===== Indela has opened its second Call for Proposals for projects that seek to advance digital rights in law and policy, as well as support the organizations and ecosystem of actors working to protect those rights, believing that protecting the rights of Internet users will support greater civic participation, and more empowered, inclusive and accountable societies. Indela will consider proposals for projects that include public campaigns, research, public policy advocacy, and litigation. Selected organizations can receive up to $75,000 for projects running over a 12 to 18 month period, as well as opportunities for specialized consultancies and communications support. The extended call deadline is April 30, 2020. http://www.indela.fund NEWS ===== Apple and Google agree collaboration for contact tracing platform ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Apple and Google will collaborate to build an interoperable platform to enable phone-based contact tracing, Russell Brandom and Adi Robertson report at The Verge. Their system will use short-range Bluetooth connections to create a voluntary network, storing on the phone logs of which phones have been in close proximity, only giving access to health authorities if the phone's owner is diagnosed with COVID-19. In a blog posting, Cambridge University security engineer Ross Anderson explains why the technological proposals for contact tracing will not work in the real world; better, he concludes, to redistribute public resources from surveillance to public health. At The Markup, Julia Angwin discusses the benefits and risks inherent in the Apple-Google proposal, including the potential for data exploitation by the advertising industry. At ACLU, Jennifer Granick summarizes the principles that Apple and Google should follow in designing their platform, taken from the new white paper by Granick and Jay Stanley on the limitations of location tracking in a pandemic. At Ars Technica, Tim Bradshaw finds that the Apple/Google plan relies on modern chips and will exclude up to 1 billion older iOS and Android smartphones, plus the 1.5 billion people who run basic "feature" phones, all chiefly older or lower-income segments of society. https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/10/21216484/google-apple-coronavirus-contract-tracing-bluetooth-location-tracking-data-app https://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2020/04/12/contact-tracing-in-the-real-world/ https://themarkup.org/ask-the-markup/2020/04/14/will-googles-and-apples-covid-tracking-plan-protect-privacy https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/apple-and-google-announced-a-coronavirus-tracking-system-how-worried-should-we-be/ https://www.aclu.org/report/aclu-white-paper-limits-location-tracking-epidemic https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/04/2-billion-phones-cannot-use-google-and-apple-contract-tracing-tech/ UNC Chapel Hill ends contract with Elsevier ---------------------------------------------------------------------- After more than a year of trying to negotiate with Elsevier, the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill is ending its instant access subscription package to 2,000 journals, Lindsay McKenzie reports at Inside Higher Ed. UNC says the move will allow it to pay only for the journals it wants. https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2020/04/10/unc-chapel-hill-cancels-big-deal-elsevier California attorney general urges ICANN to block .org sale ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers has delayed deciding whether to approve the Internet Society's planned sale of the .org generic top-level domain, after receiving a letter from California attorney general Xavier Becerra urging it to reject the plan, Kieren McCarthy reports at The Register. Becerra, whose office oversees non-profit organizations registered in California - including ICANN itself - objects to selling .org to the unknown, for-profit privately-owned Ethos Capital and the $300 million debt the plan would place on the registry. He also suggests his office may take action to protect non-profits against ICANN's poor handling of the sale, its unresponsiveness to stakeholders, and its departure from its own stated public interest principles, as well as ISOC's behavior in proposing the sale in the first place. https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/04/17/icann_california_org_sale_delay/ Australia will force social media companies to pay for shared content ---------------------------------------------------------------------- In response to the 2019 Digital Platforms Inquiry final report concluding that Google and Facebook have distorted local media and advertising markets, Australia will force social media companies to pay for content shared on their networks, Simon Sharwood reports at The Register. Even though similar laws have failed in Spain and France, Australian treasurer Josh Frydenberg intends to proceed, with legislation due in July. https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/04/20/australia_to_make_web_media_giants_pay_for_content/ Facial recognition advances to identify people wearing masks ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The coronavirus pandemic has led Chinese AI leader SenseTime to roll out a new version of its facial recognition software in China that can recognize people even though they're wearing face masks, scarves, or fake beards, Masha Borak reports at AbacusNews. The update is based on research into disguised face identification that was published in 2017 by researchers at Stanford. The software works by identifying up to 240 facial feature key points around the eyes, mouth, and nose, using the parts of the face that are visible. Because of the problem of false positives in a larger population, so far the technology is best suited for smaller groups. https://www.abacusnews.com/tech/wearing-mask-wont-stop-facial-recognition-anymore/article/3051388 US pro-gun groups protest lockdowns in multiple states ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Right-wing, pro-gun groups are behind the anti-lockdown protests in US states including Minnesota, Michigan, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, among others, Jason Wilson reports at the Guardian. Some of these are long-time supporters of US president Donald Trump, and one is linked to Trump's Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos. At CNN, Donie O'Sullivan reports that Facebook will remove some posts promoting anti-stay-at-home protests in California, New Jersey, and Nebraska after consulting with officials in those states, but will not remove similar posts in states where the protests do not violate official guidelines. It is seeking guidance from state governments in Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York. At the New York Times, Daisuke Wakabayashi, Davey Alba, and Marc Tracy report that Bill Gates is the biggest Facebook and YouTube target of all conspiracy theories about the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, based on a 2015 speech in which he warned that the greatest risk to humanity was an infectious virus. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/17/far-right-coronavirus-protests-restrictions https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/20/politics/facebook-covid-shutdown-protests/index.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/17/technology/bill-gates-virus-conspiracy-theories.html FEATURES AND ANALYSIS ==================== Julia Reda launches strategic litigation project ---------------------------------------------------------------------- In this blog posting for the Kluwer Copyright blog, former Pirate Party MEP Julia Reda outlines her new collaboration with the German fundamental rights NGO Gesellschaft für Freiheitsrechte, control ©, which will pursue strategic litigation to defend the communications freedoms embedded in the German Basic Law against the requirements of Article 17 of the EU Copyright Directive 2019. Reda hopes the initiative will be replicated in other countries. http://copyrightblog.kluweriplaw.com/2020/04/13/introducing-control-strategic-litigation-for-free-communication/ https://pathwayscommission.bsg.ox.ac.uk/Mariana-Valente-digital-technologies-and-copyright Law proposals seek to safeguard rights in contact tracing apps ---------------------------------------------------------------------- In this LawArXiv preprint, Lilian Edwards and a host of co-authors present a model statute to provide safeguards for symptom tracking and contact tracing apps, as well as immunity certificates, given that these are likely elements of our immediate future. Uptake of the apps and data quality will both be much higher if people have confidence that their rights are being protected, the authors argue. At the Register, Gareth Corfield reports that more than 300 academics from 26 countries have published an open letter asking governments to ensure that contact tracing apps protect their users' privacy, and outlines the risks of the most common approaches. In a white paper for ACLU, Daniel Kahn Gillmor presents principles for technology-assisted contact tracing that call for such systems to be built with public health professionals, narrowly tailored for a specific epidemic, and not displace non-technical measures. https://osf.io/preprints/lawarxiv/yc6xu/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/04/20/coronavirus_contact_tracing_academics_social_graph/ https://www.aclu.org/report/aclu-white-paper-principles-technology-assisted-contact-tracing BRICS countries emphasize data protection ---------------------------------------------------------------------- In this blog posting for the IAPP, Luca Belli describes the first results from CyberBRICS, a project to systematically analyze the digital policies developed by the BRICS grouping of countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa). Data protection has become a key priority for these countries in order to assert "digital sovereignty"; they represent 42% of global population and almost 40% of internet users. https://iapp.org/news/a/data-protection-frameworks-emerging-in-the-brics-countries/ Data trusts and the pandemic ---------------------------------------------------------------------- In this video clip at the Atlantic Council, Tim Clement-Jones, Wendy Hall, and David Bray discuss the role of data trusts and AI in the response to and recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. Clement-Jones believes data trusts can offer greater transparency for organizations like public health systems, while Hall explains the importance of legal and ethical frameworks in creating the public trust needed to make them work. https://atlanticcouncil.org/event/why-data-trusts-could-help-us-better-respond-and-rebuild-from-covid19-globally/ TicTec activists give public participation technology assist ---------------------------------------------------------------------- On this Google Doc, mySociety publishes the agenda for late March's TicTec 2020 with links to session recordings. Of particular interest are sessions on using technology to enable public participation in writing and changing Iceland's constitution; lessons learned from building a database to support democratic activism; and how projects and individuals in civic tech can ensure their longevity, particularly in the face of today's challenges. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZsGQlfr0ZJ1jmmuZwgOAUJFONJr4W9UGDU4fktxiXnQ/edit Finding good science among the noise ---------------------------------------------------------------------- In this blog posting for the Human Rights Data Analysis Group, founder and CTO Patrick Ball explains how to assess the many visualizations and analyses the media are presenting every day and how to evaluate the many different models and the quality of the underlying science. Ball will follow up with details of how epidemiological models work. https://hrdag.org/2020/04/02/epidemiology-has-theories-we-should-study-them/ *** DIARY ============== *** In light of the coronavirus outbreak, please follow your organization's travel guidelines, and check links to events listed below regularly for participation restrictions and updates as to whether events will go ahead.*** If you would like your event listed in this mail, email info.digest@opensocietyfoundations.org. ONLINE EVENTS Open Rights Group ---------------------------------------- Ongoing The Open Rights Group and its local offshoots are running weekly online presentations and discussions of digital privacy, democracy, and data exploitation. Recent topics have included a proposed law to ensure that contact tracing apps are surrounded with privacy-protecting safeguards, the effect of the pandemic on democratic institutions, and the NHS deal with Palantir. https://www.openrightsgroup.org/events/ Data & Society ---------------------------------------- April-May Data & Society is converting all its weekly Wednesday and Databites programs into online interactive formats. Subscribe to its events newsletter for details. https://datasociety.net/announcements/2020/03/20/march-20-update-covid-19-events-pause-april-2020/ Legal Frontiers in Digital Media 2020 ---------------------------------------- May-June 2020, The Berkeley Center for Law and Technology's online alternative to its annual conference on emerging legal issues at the intersection of digital media, freedom of speech, and law includes live seminars (recorded and available for later playback) on content moderation and the coronavirus (April 15); a series on Chinese law, trade, and intellectual property (beginning April 22 and extending through May); and the right to repair (August 28). https://www.law.berkeley.edu/research/bclt/ Privacy Law Scholars ---------------------------------------- June 4-5, 2020 Organized jointly by BCLT and the George Washington University Law School, the Privacy Law Scholars Conference (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. PLSC brings together privacy law scholars, privacy scholars from other disciplines (economics, philosophy, political science, computer science), and practitioners (industry, legal, advocacy, and government). https://www.law.berkeley.edu/research/bclt/bcltevents/2020-privacy-law-scholars-conference/ PHYSICAL WORLD EVENTS POSTPONED TO SEPTEMBER AI for Good ---------------------------------------- was May 4-8, 2020; rescheduled to September 21-25, 2020 Geneva, Switzerland The AI for Good Global Summit is the leading United Nations platform for global and inclusive dialogue on AI. The Summit is hosted each year in Geneva by the International Telecommunications Union in partnership with sibling UN agencies, the XPRIZE Foundation, and ACM. https://aiforgood.itu.int/ CONSIDERING ALTERNATIVE DATES re:publica 2020 ---------------------------------------- May 6-8, 2020 Berlin, Germany re:publica is Europe's largest internet and digital society conference. More than 19 500 participants from 80 countries came together to discuss current issues of digital society at the three-day festival. Participants represent a cross-section of (digital) society, which include professionals from economics, politics, business, hacker culture, NGOs, media, and marketing, as well as bloggers, activists, artists, and social media experts. https://re-publica.com/en POSTPONED TO SEPTEMBER 11-12 Thotcon ---------------------------------------- May 8-9, 2020 Chicago, IL, USA The 11th Chicago-based Thotcon hacking conference is a non-commercial event intended to combine a top-quality information security conference with a casual and social experience. https://thotcon.org/ CANCELED Creative Commons Global Summit ---------------------------------------- May 14-16, 2020 Lisbon, Portugal The 2019 CC Summit gathered nearly 400 Creative Commoners from across the globe to attend over 130 sessions and seven keynotes. The Summit, comprising discussion, debate, workshops and planning, talks, and community building, is for anyone who's interested in the global movement for the commons as an activist, advocate, artist, librarian, educator, lawyer, or technologist. https://creativecommons.org/2020/03/05/important-cc-global-summit-update/ Festival of AI and Emerging Technology ---------------------------------------- June 8-10, 2020 London, UK CogX draws together speakers from industry, government, and academia to create "a space to learn, discover, and connect with the people and technologies that are shaping the future of humanity". https://cogx.co/ POSTPONED UNTIL 2021 RightsCon ---------------------------------------- June 9-12, 2020 San José, Costa Rica Each year, RightsCon, organized by AccessNow, gathers over 1,000 expert speakers from around the world. https://www.rightscon.org/ Digitising Early Childhood ---------------------------------------- June 11-12, 2010 Milan, Italy Contemporary children and their parents are inventing what it is to have a digital childhood, and in doing so are introducing families, schools and policy makers to new ways of thinking, doing and being. This conference discusses and expands research trajectories through these uncertainties and aims to build bridges across the different disciplines and strands of research in this area. It will forge a new way forward and consolidate the base of what we already know, revealing what we have yet to investigate and address, and what important insights are emerging that must be taken seriously. http://www.digitisingearlychildhood.com/2020-conference.html Workshop on the Economics of Information Security ---------------------------------------- June 15-16, 2020 Brussels, Belgium The annual workshop on the economics of information security is a cross-disciplinary event to develop more effective approaches to information security. https://weis2020.econinfosec.org/ POSTPONED TO 2021 CPDP LatAm 2020 ---------------------------------------- June 23-25, 2020 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil The first Computers, Privacy, and Data Protection Latin America will be held in conjunction with the first Latin American Privacy Law Scholars conference and MyData's first Latin American meeting. The theme will be "Data Protection in Latin America: Democracy, Innovation, and Regulation". The organizers hope it will be a unique opportunity to bring together varied and complementary perspectives on data protection and its impact on democracy, innovation, and regulation in Latin America. https://cpdp.lat/en/ CANCELED Aspen Ideas Festival ---------------------------------------- June 27-July 3, 2020 Aspen Colorado Presented by the Aspen Institute in partnership with The Atlantic, the Aspen Ideas Festival is a public gathering place for leaders from around the globe and across many disciplines to present and discuss the ideas and issues that both shape our lives and challenge our times. Anyone may purchase a pass to attend. https://www.aspenideas.org/pages/register FTC PrivacyCon ---------------------------------------- July 21, 2020 Washington, DC The US Federal Trade Commission's fifth annual PrivacyCon, which is free and open to the public, will focus in particular on the privacy of health data collected, stored, and transmitted by mobile apps. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/events-calendar/privacycon-2020 TBC JUNE 1, 2020 DEF CON 28 ---------------------------------------- August 6-9, 2020 Las Vegas, Nevada, USA DEF CON is one of the oldest and largest continuously running hacker conventions. https://defcon.org/index.html Netroots Nation ---------------------------------------- August 13-15, 2020 Denver, Colorado, USA For more than a decade, Netroots Nation, which began as a convention for the most active members of the DailyKos community, has hosted the largest annual conference for progressives and other organizers and advocacy groups, drawing thousands of attendees from around the country and beyond, to develop their work around topics such as sharing data, developing technology talent, and managing digital campaigns. https://www.netrootsnation.org/ 86th World Library and Information Congress ---------------------------------------- August 15-21, 2020 Dublin, Ireland WLIC is the annual conference of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA). https://2020.ifla.org/ EIFL General Assembly ---------------------------------------- September 24-26, 2020 Vilnius, Lithuania The GA is EIFL's major annual knowledge-sharing and networking event for library professionals in developing and transition economy countries. https://www.eifl.net/events/eifl-general-assembly-2020 Future in Review ---------------------------------------- October 6-9, 2020 La Jolla, CA, USA Future in Review 2019 is a global conference on the intersection of technology and the economy, offering new partnerships, projects, and plans, and the opportunity to analyze and create the future of technology, economics, pure science, the environment, genomics, education, and more. https://www.futureinreview.com International Open Data Conference ---------------------------------------- November 18-20, 2020 Nairobi, Kenya The sixth edition of IODC will be hosted by the government of Kenya with support from the OD4D Network, IDRC, and the World Bank. The conference program will be co-created with the community via an open call for proposals to ensure a diverse agenda of interactive sessions, workshops, and ancillary events. A special focus will be placed on building bridges with the broader data community, exploring how to bring the power of the newest technologies to some of the world's oldest problems, and creating new models for collaboration in order to drive social and economic value from open data in Africa and around the world. https://opendatacon.org/ POSTPONED We Robot 2020 ---------------------------------------- Will update June 1, 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 Privacy Law Forum ---------------------------------------- October 9, 2020 Palo Alto, CA The program will be very similar to the one originally planned, covering all the hot issues in privacy and cybersecurity law. Registration remains open. https://www.law.berkeley.edu/research/bclt/bcltevents/2020bclt-privacy-law-forum/ MozFest 2021 ---------------------------------------- March 2021 Amsterdam, The Netherlands MozFest programs and events are co-created by a group of dynamic, vibrant and varied community collaborators, all working towards one goal: the opportunity for everyone to live a healthy online life. https://www.mozillafestival.org/en/ Wikimania 2021 ---------------------------------------- TBD Bangkok, Thailand Wikimania 2020, now Wikimania 2021, will be the 16th Wikimania conference, an annual event for the international Wikimedia community. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2020 *** This list is now managed by MailChimp. 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Wendy M. Grossman: April 2020 Archives
News digest | Open Society Information Program | Week ending April 10, 2020 ==================================================== 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 Open Society Foundations. Prepared by Wendy M. Grossman. Current and former grantees featured in this issue: AlgorithmWatch, Citizen Lab, Communia, Creative Commons, Digitale Gesellschaft, EDRi, IFLA, Knowledge Ecology International, medConfidential, mySociety, Open Rights Group, Pt2, Wikimedia. INDELA FUNDING CALL ===== Indela has opened its second Call for Proposals for projects that seek to advance digital rights in law and policy, as well as support the organizations and ecosystem of actors working to protect those rights, believing that protecting the rights of Internet users will support greater civic participation, and more empowered, inclusive and accountable societies. Indela will consider proposals for projects that include public campaigns, research, public policy advocacy, and litigation. Selected organizations can receive up to $75,000 for projects running over a 12 to 18 month period, as well as opportunities for specialized consultancies and communications support. The extended call deadline is April 30, 2020. http://www.indela.fund NEWS ===== Hungarian Parliament Hands Full Control to Viktor Orbán ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The Hungarian parliament has voted to allow prime minister Viktor Orbán to rule by decree during the coronavirus emergency, and has set no time limit, Nick Thorpe reports at the BBC. At The Atlantic, Yasmeen Serhan ponders what the EU can and should do in response; the block cannot unilaterally expel a member state. Suspending some of a country's rights under Article 7 of the Treaty of Lisbon requires the agreement of all other EU members, and referring infringement proceedings to the European Court of Justice would take years. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-52095500 https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/04/europe-hungary-viktor-orban-coronavirus-covid19-democracy/609313/ Attacks on Press Freedom Rise Across the Globe ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Attacks on media freedom are on the rise across many countries during the coronavirus crisis, Index on Censorship reports. The Indian government is pressuring media advertisers and has shut down channels; Myanmar has blocked more than 200 websites; and 400 Spanish journalists have asked their government to revise a policy that requires all questions to be filtered through the press secretary, who controls whether they get asked. The International Center for Journalists has compiled reports from international news outlets regarding the "extinction event" many are facing, along with their struggles to counter misinformation. In its daily newsletter, Poynter argues that newspapers should restore their paywalls for coronavirus-related stories because the collapse in advertising leaves them no other revenue. In a Twitter posting, Tor Books executive editor Beth Meacham explains the pandemic-related supply chain problems that will damage printed-book publishing for at least a year. https://www.indexoncensorship.org/disease-control/ https://www.icfj.org/news/key-quotes-frontline-lessons-international-news-outlets-reporting-pandemic-maria-ressa-ritu https://www.poynter.org/newsletters/2020/put-the-paywalls-back-up-on-coronavirus-coverage/ https://twitter.com/SheckyX/status/1246148311419162624/photo/1 Palantir Provides Data Platform to UK's NHS and US CDC ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The controversial data-mining company Palantir has started work on a data platform for Britain's National Health Service, the Economist reports. Critics are concerned that once embedded, Palantir could be hard to dislodge and that the company has no expertise in managing public health data. However, the crisis is pushing the NHS to improve its analytics in order to better predict the upcoming caseload. At Computing, John Leonard lays out further concerns voiced by the Open Rights Group and the campaigning group medConfidential: does the UK really want a powerful, secretive, foreign company embedded in its health service? At Business Insider, Tyler Sonnemaker finds that Palantir is also providing its software to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to help it monitor the spread of COVID-19 and track resources. At its blog, medConfidential lays out a plan for the longer term to ensure that health privacy is protected in the apps, open standards, and platforms that will be built for future pandemics. https://www.economist.com/britain/2020/03/26/palantir-a-data-firm-loved-by-spooks-teams-up-with-britains-health-service https://www.computing.co.uk/analysis/4013254/palantir-embedded-nhs https://www.businessinsider.com/palantir-providing-cdc-with-coronavirus-tracking-software-report-2020-3 https://medconfidential.org/2020/apps-for-the-next-pandemic/ Twitter Takes Down National Leaders' Tweets for Spreading Misinformation ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Twitter's pledge to take down tweets containing false or misleading information about COVID-19 cures has begun with deleting tweets by the presidents of Brazil and Venezuela and US president Donald Trump's personal lawyer, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, Kim Lyons, reports at The Verge. The removed tweets included Nicolás Maduro's endorsement of a method to "eliminate the infection genes" in the virus and Jair Bolsonaro's videos claiming hydroxychloroquine offers a cure and calling for an end to social distancing; Facebook also removed Bolsonaro's video. https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/30/21199845/twitter-tweets-brazil-venezuela-presidents-covid-19-coronavirus-jair-bolsonaro-maduro NSO Group Offers Governments Tracking Software to Combat Pandemic ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Israel's controversial NSO Group says it is in talks with governments around the world to provide mobile data analysis software that it claims can monitor and predict the spread of the coronavirus, Rory Cellan-Jones reports for the BBC. The company says its software works best if a country's mobile networks provide the records of all of their subscribers. At Vice, Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai quotes Citizen Lab researcher John Scott-Railton, who calls the effort "an extremely cynical attempt from a notorious spyware company to branch out into mass surveillance." At Sky News, Alexander Martin sees a demonstration that NSO Group claims shows that data governments upload will not be accessible by the company. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52134452 https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/epg9jm/nso-covid-19-surveillance-tech-software-tracking-infected-privacy-experts-worried https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-nso-group-attempting-to-woo-west-with-covid-19-tracking-software-11966961 UK: False Coronavirus Connection Leads to Vandalism of Mobile Masts ---------------------------------------------------------------------- At least 20 UK phone masts have been torched or vandalised, mostly in the Liverpool and West Midlands areas of the UK, in the baseless belief that the rollout of 5G is connected to the coronavirus pandemic, Jim Waterson and Alex Hern report at the Guardian. Because the rollout has been slow, many of the attacks damaged existing 3G and 4G equipment. In a second Guardian article, Waterson and Hern outline the paths by which false claims about health risks from 5G have spread and why they're so hard to dislodge. Causes include rapidly growing neighbourhood social media groups, the networks' failure to promote scientific evidence about 5G, a frightened population looking for something to blame, and competing claims that make it hard to know what to debunk. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/apr/06/at-least-20-uk-phone-masts-vandalised-over-false-5g-coronavirus-claims https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/apr/07/how-false-claims-about-5g-health-risks-spread-into-the-mainstream FEATURES AND ANALYSIS ==================== UK: Study Attributes Universal Credit Failures to Flawed Policy Assumptions ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The failures of the UK's digital welfare system, Universal Credit, are not due to IT, but to flawed assumptions and trade-offs the Department of Work and Pensions is making between cost reductions, claimants' needs, and policy intent, says Pt2 in a new report. The policy framework is insufficiently flexible, and the focus on automation prioritizes efficiency for the DWP rather than claimants, meaning that decisions are opaque. Pt2 concludes with many recommendations for reform to make the system more responsive, transparent, and better suited to claimants' needs. https://pt2.works/blog/2020/04/02/universal-credit-report/ Privacy Camp Highlights Activists ---------------------------------------------------------------------- On this YouTube channel, Privacy Camp provides recordings of this January's event, organized by EDRi, VUB, IEE, and Privacy Salon. Of particular note were the panel on the impact of surveillance on today's children featuring DefendDigital.me's Jen Persson; "Actually, in Google We Trust"?, in which activists from Russia explain why they are safer using Google and Facebook than the more arcane tools recommended in the West, and "Stories of Activism", in which activists working on a varied group of causes discuss how they work and how they use technology. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGeR6jS_7N7f_msH4BN-WT64roFWAXfj2 Canada: Implementing Open Educational Resources ---------------------------------------------------------------------- On this episode of the LawBytes podcast, David Porter explains the benefits of open educational resources and open textbooks to Michael Geist as Canada, like many other countries, abruptly shifts to distance or online learning. Porter, who has long been a leader in advocating for OER, explains the copyright and financial arrangements that had to be put in place to make OER a reality in Canada. http://www.michaelgeist.ca/2020/03/lawbytes-podcast-episode-45/ Principles for Guiding Automated Decision Making ---------------------------------------------------------------------- In this blog posting, AlgorithmWatch publishes a set of principles to guide countries in implementing automated decision-making systems to curb the coronavirus outbreak. Successful solutions are grounded in public health policies, as this is not a technological problem.; eEach national context is different; and fundamental rights should be protected - particularly if the surveillance measures being implemented don't actually work as anti-virus strategies. At The Markup, Julia Angwin warns against rushing headlong into massive surveillance while ignoring our post-9/11 lessons: that it's very invasive and doesn't necessarily work. Via FOIA, she is collecting the algorithms that determine who gets tested in US states. https://algorithmwatch.org/en/our-position-on-adms-and-the-fight-against-covid19/ https://www.accessnow.org/releases-recommendations-on-privacy-data-protection-covid-19/ https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/23/technology/coronavirus-surveillance-tracking-privacy.html https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/asia/2020-03-20/how-civic-technology-can-help-stop-pandemic https://www.getrevue.co/profile/themarkup/issues/do-we-need-to-give-up-privacy-to-fight-the-coronavirus-234921 Open Letter Calls for Removing Intellectual Property Impediments in Coronavirus Crisis ---------------------------------------------------------------------- In this open letter, IFLA urges the World Intellectual Property Organization to ensure that IP regimes do not hinder efforts to tackle both the coronavirus outbreak and its consequences. It is co-signed by dozens of other organizations such as India's Centre for Internet and Society, Communia, Creative Commons, Digitale Gesellschaft, Knowledge Ecology International, Public Citizen, and the German, Spanish, and Italian branches of Wikimedia. The letter recommends that rights holders should remove licensing restrictions that inhibit remote education and research, create a global pool of rights in technology related to COVID-19, and support countries' rights to use exceptions in the interests of ensuring equitable access to medicines and medical technologies. At The Register, Kieren McCarthy explains the growing conflict between authors' and publishers' organizations and the Internet Archive, which has stripped restrictions off its Open Library collection of 1.4 million copyrighted books for the duration of the pandemic emergency. McCarthy suggests that authors and publishers fear that if uncontested the move will set a precedent that will be hard to dislodge. https://www.ifla.org/node/92993 https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/04/01/internet_archive_justifies_its_vast/ Ban Adtech ---------------------------------------------------------------------- In this article at Wired, Gilad Edelman asks why we don't simply ban companies from using personal data for targeting advertising, the practice that lies behind most of the problems on the technology platforms. Removing the financial incentive is a lot simpler than cleaning up each issue - abuse, election manipulation, tracking, and so on. The result might including making companies like Google and Facebook less powerful. https://www.wired.com/story/why-dont-we-just-ban-targeted-advertising/ *** DIARY ============== *** In light of the coronavirus outbreak, please follow your organization's travel guidelines, and check links to events listed below regularly for participation restrictions and updates as to whether events will go ahead.*** If you would like your event listed in this mail, email info.digest@opensocietyfoundations.org. CANCELED Global Privacy Summit ---------------------------------------- April 7-8, 2020 Washington, DC, USA Global Privacy Summit will gather more than 3,600 professionals from around the world for an outstanding program with a truly global focus. https://iapp.org/conference/global-privacy-summit/general-information-gps20/ CANCELED Personal Democracy Forum CEE 2020 ---------------------------------------- April 23-25, 2020 Gdańsk, Poland The eighth PDF CEE is organized by the ePaństwo Foundation together with the City of Gdańsk and the European Solidarity Centre and will be followed by the fourth edition of the Festival of Civic Tech for Democracy. The 2020 conference is inspired by the 21 Demands proposed in 1980 by strikers in the Gdańsk Shipyard, and is expected to attract around 500 democracy activists, civic tech enthusiasts, media, business and academic representatives, public administration officials, opinion makers, influencers, cultural activists, digital media specialists and activists to debate human and digital rights, transparency of governments, cybersecurity, civic technologies and countering disinformation. https://pdfcee.pl/en/ POSTPONED TO SEPTEMBER AI for Good ---------------------------------------- was May 4-8, 2020; rescheduled to September 21-25, 2020 Geneva, Switzerland The AI for Good Global Summit is the leading United Nations platform for global and inclusive dialogue on AI. The Summit is hosted each year in Geneva by the International Telecommunications Union in partnership with sibling UN agencies, the XPRIZE Foundation, and ACM. https://aiforgood.itu.int/ CONSIDERING ALTERNATIVE DATES re:publica 2020 ---------------------------------------- May 6-8, 2020 Berlin, Germany re:publica is Europe's largest internet and digital society conference. More than 19 500 participants from 80 countries came together to discuss current issues of digital society at the three-day festival. Participants represent a cross-section of (digital) society, which include professionals from economics, politics, business, hacker culture, NGOs, media, and marketing, as well as bloggers, activists, artists, and social media experts. https://re-publica.com/en POSTPONED TO SEPTEMBER 11-12 Thotcon ---------------------------------------- May 8-9, 2020 Chicago, IL, USA The 11th Chicago-based Thotcon hacking conference is a non-commercial event intended to combine a top-quality information security conference with a casual and social experience. https://thotcon.org/ CANCELED Creative Commons Global Summit ---------------------------------------- May 14-16, 2020 Lisbon, Portugal The 2019 CC Summit gathered nearly 400 Creative Commoners from across the globe to attend over 130 sessions and seven keynotes. The Summit, comprising discussion, debate, workshops and planning, talks, and community building, is for anyone who's interested in the global movement for the commons as an activist, advocate, artist, librarian, educator, lawyer, or technologist. https://creativecommons.org/2019/08/28/cc-global-summit-lisbon-may-14-16/ MOVING ONLINE Privacy Law Scholars ---------------------------------------- June 4-5, 2020 Washington, DC, USA Organized jointly by BCLT and the George Washington University Law School, the Privacy Law Scholars Conference (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. PLSC brings together privacy law scholars, privacy scholars from other disciplines (economics, philosophy, political science, computer science), and practitioners (industry, legal, advocacy, and government). https://www.law.berkeley.edu/research/bclt/bcltevents/2020-privacy-law-scholars-conference/ Festival of AI and Emerging Technology ---------------------------------------- June 8-10, 2020 London, UK CogX draws together speakers from industry, government, and academia to create "a space to learn, discover, and connect with the people and technologies that are shaping the future of humanity". https://cogx.co/ POSTPONED UNTIL 2021 RightsCon ---------------------------------------- June 9-12, 2020 San José, Costa Rica Each year, RightsCon, organized by AccessNow, gathers over 1,000 expert speakers from around the world. https://www.rightscon.org/ Workshop on the Economics of Information Security ---------------------------------------- June 15-16, 2020 Brussels, Belgium The annual workshop on the economics of information security is a cross-disciplinary event to develop more effective approaches to information security. https://weis2020.econinfosec.org/ POSTPONED TO 2021 CPDP LatAm 2020 ---------------------------------------- June 23-25, 2020 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil The first Computers, Privacy, and Data Protection Latin America will be held in conjunction with the first Latin American Privacy Law Scholars conference and MyData's first Latin American meeting. The theme will be "Data Protection in Latin America: Democracy, Innovation, and Regulation". The organizers hope it will be a unique opportunity to bring together varied and complementary perspectives on data protection and its impact on democracy, innovation, and regulation in Latin America. https://cpdp.lat/en/ CANCELED Aspen Ideas Festival ---------------------------------------- June 27-July 3, 2020 Aspen Colorado Presented by the Aspen Institute in partnership with The Atlantic, the Aspen Ideas Festival is a public gathering place for leaders from around the globe and across many disciplines to present and discuss the ideas and issues that both shape our lives and challenge our times. Anyone may purchase a pass to attend. https://www.aspenideas.org/pages/register FTC PrivacyCon ---------------------------------------- July 21, 2020 Washington, DC The US Federal Trade Commission's fifth annual PrivacyCon, which is free and open to the public, will focus in particular on the privacy of health data collected, stored, and transmitted by mobile apps. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/events-calendar/privacycon-2020 TBC JUNE 1, 2020 DEF CON 28 ---------------------------------------- August 6-9, 2020 Las Vegas, Nevada, USA DEF CON is one of the oldest and largest continuously running hacker conventions. https://defcon.org/index.html Netroots Nation ---------------------------------------- August 13-15, 2020 Denver, Colorado, USA For more than a decade, Netroots Nation, which began as a convention for the most active members of the DailyKos community, has hosted the largest annual conference for progressives and other organizers and advocacy groups, drawing thousands of attendees from around the country and beyond, to develop their work around topics such as sharing data, developing technology talent, and managing digital campaigns. https://www.netrootsnation.org/ 86th World Library and Information Congress ---------------------------------------- August 15-21, 2020 Dublin, Ireland WLIC is the annual conference of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA). https://2020.ifla.org/ EIFL General Assembly ---------------------------------------- September 24-26, 2020 Vilnius, Lithuania The GA is EIFL's major annual knowledge-sharing and networking event for library professionals in developing and transition economy countries. https://www.eifl.net/events/eifl-general-assembly-2020 Future in Review ---------------------------------------- October 6-9, 2020 La Jolla, CA, USA Future in Review 2019 is a global conference on the intersection of technology and the economy, offering new partnerships, projects, and plans, and the opportunity to analyze and create the future of technology, economics, pure science, the environment, genomics, education, and more. https://www.futureinreview.com International Open Data Conference ---------------------------------------- November 18-20, 2020 Nairobi, Kenya The sixth edition of IODC will be hosted by the government of Kenya with support from the OD4D Network, IDRC, and the World Bank. The conference program will be co-created with the community via an open call for proposals to ensure a diverse agenda of interactive sessions, workshops, and ancillary events. A special focus will be placed on building bridges with the broader data community, exploring how to bring the power of the newest technologies to some of the world's oldest problems, and creating new models for collaboration in order to drive social and economic value from open data in Africa and around the world. https://opendatacon.org/ POSTPONED We Robot 2020 ---------------------------------------- Will update June 1, 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 Digitising Early Childhood ---------------------------------------- June 11-12, 2021 Milan, Italy Contemporary children and their parents are inventing what it is to have a digital childhood, and in doing so are introducing families, schools and policy makers to new ways of thinking, doing and being. This conference discusses and expands research trajectories through these uncertainties and aims to build bridges across the different disciplines and strands of research in this area. It will forge a new way forward and consolidate the base of what we already know, revealing what we have yet to investigate and address, and what important insights are emerging that must be taken seriously. http://www.digitisingearlychildhood.com/2020-conference.html MozFest 2021 ---------------------------------------- March 2021 Amsterdam, The Netherlands MozFest programs and events are co-created by a group of dynamic, vibrant and varied community collaborators, all working towards one goal: the opportunity for everyone to live a healthy online life. https://www.mozillafestival.org/en/ Wikimania 2021 ---------------------------------------- TBD Bangkok, Thailand Wikimania 2020, now Wikimania 2021, will be the 16th Wikimania conference, an annual event for the international Wikimedia community. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2020 *** This list is now managed by MailChimp. 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News digest | Open Society Information Program | Week ending March 27, 2020 ==================================================== 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 Open Society Foundations. Prepared by Wendy M. Grossman. Current and former grantees featured in this issue: Data and Society, EDRi, EFF, EPIC, Open Rights Group, Privacy International, SPARC. INDELA FUNDING CALL ===== Indela has opened its second Call for Proposals for projects that seek to advance digital rights in law and policy, as well as support the organizations and ecosystem of actors working to protect those rights, believing that protecting the rights of Internet users will support greater civic participation, and more empowered, inclusive and accountable societies. Indela will consider proposals for projects that include public campaigns, research, public policy advocacy, and litigation. Selected organizations can receive up to $75,000 for projects running over a 12 to 18 month period, as well as opportunities for specialized consultancies and communications support. The extended call deadline is April 30, 2020. http://www.indela.fund IMPORTANT MESSAGE TO INFORMATION PROGRAM GRANTEES ===== At the Open Society Foundations, it is our responsibility to put the public interest at the center of our response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This means reducing the burden on our healthcare systems by helping prevent the spread of the virus to the extent possible. To help keep colleagues and our communities safe, all Open Society employees are working remotely from now until April 20. This decision will require some adjustments, as we tackle the logistical challenges involved. But we will do our utmost to maintain the momentum of our work, and our support for all of you, whose efforts are all the more vital at a time of crisis. As a funder, we understand that COVID-19 may require shifts in strategy, reprioritization, and adjustments as you encounter unforeseen impacts on you, your organizations, and staff. We stand ready to find flexibility in our grants to help you respond to these challenges wherever possible. Please do not hesitate to contact your program officer with questions or concerns. If you have a grant proposal currently under review, please be assured that we are continuing with business as usual despite working remotely. As we ourselves adapt to these new circumstances, there could be short delays in our consideration and processing of your grant. But we will be doing everything possible to keep things on track. NEWS ===== Privacy and Security for New At-Home Workers ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The move to working from home creates new security and privacy issues, Bruce Schneier warns at his blog. Employees' own systems are less likely to be patched, and it's easy to incorrectly configure hastily-installed VPNs and newly set-up tools such as Zoom. To counter these problems, SANS has made freely available a Work From Home Awareness training kit. At Bloomberg, Crystal Tse and Jonathan Browning discuss the risks that home devices such as smart speakers and other listening and watching devices pose to confidentiality for lawyers and others when speaking to clients. At the New York Times, Taylor Lorenz warns that public Zoom conferences are being disrupted by attackers showing pornography or shock videos. https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2020/03/work-from-home_.html https://www.sans.org/security-awareness-training/sans-security-awareness-work-home-deployment-kit https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-20/locked-down-lawyers-warned-alexa-is-hearing-confidential-calls https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/20/style/zoombombing-zoom-trolling.html Automated Systems Become Humans' Bosses ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The "robot apocalypse" of automating human employment is already here, but instead of replacing low-level workers automated systems are their bosses and managers, dictating how fast they must work, what they say, when they work and for how long, and eliminating "inefficiencies" a human manager would never notice, such as a minute's wait between phone calls, Josh Dzieza reports at The Intercept. The result is stressed-out workers, a rising injury rate, and, increasingly, worker protests. At Wired, Tom Simonite reports on workplace monitoring via technology such as Drishti's machine learning software-enhanced cameras. https://theintercept.com/2020/03/16/tiktok-app-moderators-users-discrimination/ https://www.wired.com/story/when-ai-cant-replace-worker-watches-them-instead/ Patent Suit Attacks COVID-19 Diagnostic Tests ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The law firm Irell & Mandella has asked a court to enjoin the medical diagnostics company BioFire from making the COVID-19 tests it has developed, claiming BioFire is violating patents owned by its client, Softbank-funded Fortress Investment Group. Fortress bought up the patents, which were originally granted to the fraudulent blood testing company Theranos and its founding CEO, Elizabeth Holmes, in 2018 after Theranos went bankrupt. At EFF, Cory Doctorow reports that an engineer who answered a distress call from an Italian hospital to 3D print replacement parts for broken oxygen masks for the hospital's ventilator was unable to get the manufacturer to help by supplying design files. At Vice, Jason Koebler discusses ventilator manufacturers' broad opposition to granting local technicians the information necessary to enable on-site repair. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200316/14584244111/softbank-owned-patent-troll-using-monkey-selfie-law-firm-sues-to-block-covid-19-testing-using-theranos-patents.shtml https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/right-repair-times-pandemic https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wxekgx/hospitals-need-to-repair-ventilators-manufacturers-are-making-that-impossible NGOs Sue US Immigration and Customs Enforcement over "Rigged" Algorithms ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The New York Civil Liberties Union and Bronx Defenders are jointly suing ICE over its "rigged" risk assessment tool, which recommends detaining anyone arrested on suspicion of immigration violations, Sam Biddle reports at The Intercept. EPIC finds that in a 2014 report for former president Barack Obama, the US Department of Justice warned of the dangers of predictive analytics and algorithms in policing, arguing that justice should be dispensed based on each defendant's own conduct and personal history instead of historical data about other people. Obtaining the report took a FOIA request, lawsuit, and negotiated settlement. https://theintercept.com/2020/03/02/ice-algorithm-bias-detention-aclu-lawsuit/ https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/the-government-has-a-secret-plan-to-track-everyones-faces-at-airports-were-suing http://epic.org/2020/03/epic-obtains-doj-report-on-pre.html Bot Study Finds Disproportionate Climate Change Denial ---------------------------------------------------------------------- A draft study by Brown University PhD candidate Thomas Marlow finds that a quarter of all tweets about climate change on any given day are produced by bots and are disproportionately denialist, Oliver Milman reports at the Guardian. At BoingBoing, Xeni Jardin reports that Twitter's first-ever use of the "manipulated media label" it announced in early March was applied to a misleadingly clipped video of US Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, and was posted by White House social media director Dan Scavino and retweeted by US President Donald Trump. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/feb/21/climate-tweets-twitter-bots-analysis https://boingboing.net/2020/03/09/twitter-uses-manipulated-med.html Scotland Votes for Biometrics Oversight ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The Scottish Parliament has voted in favor of creating a Scottish Biometrics Commissioner to ensure that government and police use of biometrics data are underpinned by rules and safeguards, Mark Say reports at UKAuthority. In a press release, the Open Rights Group welcomed the development, which has been the subject of an ORG Scotland campaign for three years. https://www.ukauthority.com/articles/scotland-to-get-biometrics-commissioner/ https://www.openrightsgroup.org/press/releases/2020/campaigners-welcome-the-creation-of-a-commissioner-to-oversee-use-of-biometrics-by-police-in-scotland FEATURES AND ANALYSIS ==================== Tracking the Spread of Health-Driven Surveillance Legislation ---------------------------------------------------------------------- On this page, Privacy International tracks the global response to COVID-19 as governments pass emergency legislation, restrict movement and assembly, try to control misinformation, and implement unprecedented levels of data exploitation and surveillance. Among its examples, the US Department of Justice has asked Congress for the power to detain individuals indefinitely during national emergencies and for one year afterwards, and Israel has granted its security service access to a previously secret cache of cellular phone data to enable contact tracing. In a blog posting, EDRi calls for responses to COVID-19 to take a fundamental rights-based approach and for exceptional measures to be limited to the duration of the crisis. At EFF, Jason Kelley calls for transparency and public access to government decision making. At his blog, Bruce Schneier adds five principles governments should apply. At the Center for Global Development, Michael Pisa discusses how to balance the social good deriving from having good information with the need to protect individual rights. Imperial College's Computational Privacy Group highlights good alternatives to mass surveillance, and says trust is crucial. In an open letter co-signed by numerous privacy scholars and data analysts, former doteveryone director Rachel Coldicutt reminds the UK's NHSx of social inequities and calls for placing ethics, governance, and transparency at the heart of the data technologies it is developing to suppress the coronavirus. https://privacyinternational.org/examples/tracking-global-response-covid-19 https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/21/doj-coronavirus-emergency-powers-140023 https://privacyinternational.org/examples/3423/israel-security-service-may-use-patients-smartphone-data-contact-tracing https://edri.org/covid19-edri-coronavirus-fundamentalrights/ https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/governments-must-commit-transparency-during-covid-19-crisis https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2020/03/emergency_surve.html https://www.cgdev.org/blog/covid-19-information-problems-and-digital-surveillance https://medium.com/@rachelcoldicutt/open-letter-contract-tracking-and-nhsx-e503325b2703 Abolish Big Data ---------------------------------------------------------------------- In this video clip, Data & Society executive director Janet Haven hosts a talk in which Yeshimabeit Milner, the founder and executive director of Data for Black Lives, argues that big data is the latest installment of a historical legacy of "chattel slavery" via scientific and government oppression. Milner calls to "abolish big data" by rejecting its concentration in a few powerful hands. https://datasociety.net/events/abolish-big-data/ Chinese State Media Strategies Seek to Control Narrative ---------------------------------------------------------------------- In this article at the Stanford Cyber Policy Center, Vanessa Molter studies how Chinese state media work to control the narrative around the novel coronavirus and deflect blame. Molter teases out China's approach by comparing Chinese postings on Facebook with those from US media outlets and then turns her attention to how US reporting has evolved over time. https://cyber.fsi.stanford.edu/news/chinese-state-media-shapes-coronavirus-convo Fear of Crime Leads Suburbanites to Enable Surveillance ---------------------------------------------------------------------- In this article at Radical History Review, Matthew Guariglia attributes the suburban proliferation of camera-laden Amazon Ring doorbells to fear of crime, which is leading white suburbanites to willingly invite police, corporations, and bad actors into their homes. The result is that they are voluntarily subjecting themselves to levels of surveillance that black urbanites have long tried to escape. https://www.radicalhistoryreview.org/abusablepast/surveying-the-suburbs-how-amazon-ring-and-a-racialized-fear-of-crime-is-ushering-in-a-new-period-of-mass-surveillance/ Coronavirus Fight Needs Open Access ---------------------------------------------------------------------- In this interview by Canadian law professor Michael Geist for his LawBytes podcast, SPARC executive director Heather Joseph discusses the importance of open access in the global fight against the novel coronavirus to enable scientists to build freely on each other's work. An LSE study found on March 5, however, that more than half of the 13,818 papers published since the 1990s on coronaviruses were behind paywalls even though the underlying work was typically paid for by taxpayers. SPARC Europe reports that the French Open Science Committee has made a record-breaking pledge of €450,000 to OpenCitations, the Public Knowledge Project, and the Directory of Open Access Books. At Wired, Klint Finley reports that government science advisors in a dozen countries including the US have published an open letter calling on scientific publishers asking them to make all research relating to the coronavirus and COVID-19 freely accessible through PubMed Central or through the WHO's COVID database. At Technology Review, Karen Hao reports that under the request of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, researchers at the US National Library of Medicine, the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, and Microsoft have compiled the COVID-19 Open Research Dataset, comprising over 24,000 research papers from bioRxiv, medRxiv, and peer-reviewed journals that cover SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19, and coronaviruses. http://www.michaelgeist.ca/2020/03/lawbytes-podcast-episode-43/ https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2020/03/05/the-coronavirus-covid-19-outbreak-highlights-serious-deficiencies-in-scholarly-communication/ https://sparceurope.org/the-french-open-science-committee-makes-record-breaking-scoss-pledge/ https://www.wired.com/story/global-officials-call-free-access-covid-19-research/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/615367/coronavirus-24000-research-papers-available-open-data End Internet Shutdowns to Save Lives ---------------------------------------------------------------------- In this article, Access Now argues that internet shutdowns will help spread the virus, and asks visitors to tweet its calls on governments in Ethiopia, India, Myanmar, and Bangladesh to restore internet access in the areas of their countries where it's been shut down. https://www.accessnow.org/keepiton-internet-shutdowns-during-covid-19-will-help-spread-the-virus/ *** DIARY ============== *** In light of the coronavirus outbreak, please follow your organization's travel guidelines, and check links to events listed below regularly for participation restrictions and updates as to whether events will go ahead.*** If you would like your event listed in this mail, email info.digest@opensocietyfoundations.org. POSTPONED TO SEPTEMBER 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 CANCELED Global Privacy Summit ---------------------------------------- April 7-8, 2020 Washington, DC, USA Global Privacy Summit will gather more than 3,600 professionals from around the world for an outstanding program with a truly global focus. https://iapp.org/conference/global-privacy-summit/general-information-gps20/ CANCELED Personal Democracy Forum CEE 2020 ---------------------------------------- April 23-25, 2020 Gdańsk, Poland The eighth PDF CEE is organized by the ePaństwo Foundation together with the City of Gdańsk and the European Solidarity Centre and will be followed by the fourth edition of the Festival of Civic Tech for Democracy. The 2020 conference is inspired by the 21 Demands proposed in 1980 by strikers in the Gdańsk Shipyard, and is expected to attract around 500 democracy activists, civic tech enthusiasts, media, business and academic representatives, public administration officials, opinion makers, influencers, cultural activists, digital media specialists and activists to debate human and digital rights, transparency of governments, cybersecurity, civic technologies and countering disinformation. https://pdfcee.pl/en/ POSTPONED TO SEPTEMBER AI for Good ---------------------------------------- was May 4-8, 2020; rescheduled to September 21-25, 2020 Geneva, Switzerland The AI for Good Global Summit is the leading United Nations platform for global and inclusive dialogue on AI. The Summit is hosted each year in Geneva by the International Telecommunications Union in partnership with sibling UN agencies, the XPRIZE Foundation, and ACM. https://aiforgood.itu.int/ CONSIDERING ALTERNATIVE DATES re:publica 2020 ---------------------------------------- May 6-8, 2020 Berlin, Germany re:publica is Europe's largest internet and digital society conference. More than 19 500 participants from 80 countries came together to discuss current issues of digital society at the three-day festival. Participants represent a cross-section of (digital) society, which include professionals from economics, politics, business, hacker culture, NGOs, media, and marketing, as well as bloggers, activists, artists, and social media experts. https://re-publica.com/en POSTPONED TO SEPTEMBER 11-12 Thotcon ---------------------------------------- May 8-9, 2020 Chicago, IL, USA The 11th Chicago-based Thotcon hacking conference is a non-commercial event intended to combine a top-quality information security conference with a casual and social experience. https://thotcon.org/ CANCELED Creative Commons Global Summit ---------------------------------------- May 14-16, 2020 Lisbon, Portugal The 2019 CC Summit gathered nearly 400 Creative Commoners from across the globe to attend over 130 sessions and seven keynotes. The Summit, comprising discussion, debate, workshops and planning, talks, and community building, is for anyone who's interested in the global movement for the commons as an activist, advocate, artist, librarian, educator, lawyer, or technologist. https://creativecommons.org/2020/03/05/important-cc-global-summit-update/ MOVING ONLINE Privacy Law Scholars ---------------------------------------- June 4-5, 2020 Washington, DC, USA Organized jointly by BCLT and the George Washington University Law School, the Privacy Law Scholars Conference (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. PLSC brings together privacy law scholars, privacy scholars from other disciplines (economics, philosophy, political science, computer science), and practitioners (industry, legal, advocacy, and government). https://www.law.berkeley.edu/research/bclt/bcltevents/2020-privacy-law-scholars-conference/ Festival of AI and Emerging Technology ---------------------------------------- June 8-10, 2020 London, UK CogX draws together speakers from industry, government, and academia to create "a space to learn, discover, and connect with the people and technologies that are shaping the future of humanity". https://cogx.co/ POSTPONED UNTIL 2021 RightsCon ---------------------------------------- June 9-12, 2020 San José, Costa Rica Each year, RightsCon, organized by AccessNow, gathers over 1,000 expert speakers from around the world. https://www.rightscon.org/ Digitising Early Childhood ---------------------------------------- June 11-12, 2010 Milan, Italy Contemporary children and their parents are inventing what it is to have a digital childhood, and in doing so are introducing families, schools and policy makers to new ways of thinking, doing and being. This conference discusses and expands research trajectories through these uncertainties and aims to build bridges across the different disciplines and strands of research in this area. It will forge a new way forward and consolidate the base of what we already know, revealing what we have yet to investigate and address, and what important insights are emerging that must be taken seriously. http://www.digitisingearlychildhood.com/2020-conference.html Workshop on the Economics of Information Security ---------------------------------------- June 15-16, 2020 Brussels, Belgium The annual workshop on the economics of information security is a cross-disciplinary event to develop more effective approaches to information security. https://weis2020.econinfosec.org/ POSTPONED TO 2021 CPDP LatAm 2020 ---------------------------------------- June 23-25, 2020 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil The first Computers, Privacy, and Data Protection Latin America will be held in conjunction with the first Latin American Privacy Law Scholars conference and MyData's first Latin American meeting. The theme will be "Data Protection in Latin America: Democracy, Innovation, and Regulation". The organizers hope it will be a unique opportunity to bring together varied and complementary perspectives on data protection and its impact on democracy, innovation, and regulation in Latin America. https://cpdp.lat/en/ Aspen Ideas Festival ---------------------------------------- June 27-July 3, 2020 Aspen, Colorado Presented by the Aspen Institute in partnership with The Atlantic, the Aspen Ideas Festival is a public gathering place for leaders from around the globe and across many disciplines to present and discuss the ideas and issues that both shape our lives and challenge our times. Anyone may purchase a pass to attend. https://www.aspenideas.org/pages/register FTC PrivacyCon ---------------------------------------- July 21, 2020 Washington, DC The US Federal Trade Commission's fifth annual PrivacyCon, which is free and open to the public, will focus in particular on the privacy of health data collected, stored, and transmitted by mobile apps. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/events-calendar/privacycon-2020 POSTPONED TO 2021 Wikimania ---------------------------------------- August 2020 Bangkok, Thailand Wikimania 2020 will be the 16th Wikimania conference, an annual event for the international Wikimedia community. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2020 TBC JUNE 1, 2020 DEF CON 28 ---------------------------------------- August 6-9, 2020 Las Vegas, Nevada, USA DEF CON is one of the oldest and largest continuously running hacker conventions. https://defcon.org/index.html Netroots Nation ---------------------------------------- August 13-15, 2020 Denver, Colorado, USA For more than a decade, Netroots Nation, which began as a convention for the most active members of the DailyKos community, has hosted the largest annual conference for progressives and other organizers and advocacy groups, drawing thousands of attendees from around the country and beyond, to develop their work around topics such as sharing data, developing technology talent, and managing digital campaigns. https://www.netrootsnation.org/ 86th World Library and Information Congress ---------------------------------------- August 15-21, 2020 Dublin, Ireland WLIC is the annual conference of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA). https://2020.ifla.org/ EIFL General Assembly ---------------------------------------- September 24-26, 2020 Vilnius, Lithuania The GA is EIFL's major annual knowledge-sharing and networking event for library professionals in developing and transition economy countries. https://www.eifl.net/events/general-assembly-2020 MozFest 2020 ---------------------------------------- October, 2020 Location TBD MozFest programs and events are co-created by a group of dynamic, vibrant and varied community collaborators, all working towards one goal: the opportunity for everyone to live a healthy online life. https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/initiatives/open-leadership-events/collaborate-with-us-/ Future in Review ---------------------------------------- October 6-9, 2020 La Jolla, CA, USA Future in Review 2019 is a global conference on the intersection of technology and the economy, offering new partnerships, projects, and plans, and the opportunity to analyze and create the future of technology, economics, pure science, the environment, genomics, education, and more. https://www.futureinreview.com International Open Data Conference ---------------------------------------- November 18-20, 2020 Nairobi, Kenya The sixth edition of IODC will be hosted by the government of Kenya with support from the OD4D Network, IDRC, and the World Bank. The conference program will be co-created with the community via an open call for proposals to ensure a diverse agenda of interactive sessions, workshops, and ancillary events. A special focus will be placed on building bridges with the broader data community, exploring how to bring the power of the newest technologies to some of the world's oldest problems, and creating new models for collaboration in order to drive social and economic value from open data in Africa and around the world. https://opendatacon.org/ *** 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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News digest | Open Society Information Program | Week ending March 13, 2020 ==================================================== 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 Open Society Foundations. Prepared by Wendy M. Grossman. Current and former grantees featured in this issue: Citizen Lab, EDRi, La Quadature du Net. NEWS ===== China: Government Surveillance Escalates to Contain the Coronavirus ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Government surveillance has reached a new level in China as part of the country's response to the coronavirus and may become a "new normal", Lily Kuo reports at the Guardian. Security measures include detailed tracking of people's movements, for example requiring them to scan a QR code and write down their name and ID number, temperature, and recent travel history before entering apartment compounds and workplaces. At the New York Times, Paul Mozur, Raymond Zhong, and Aaron Krolik report that the phone app Alipay Health Code, which citizens are required to install, decides in real time whether the individual should be suspected of carrying the COVID-19 virus and whether they should be permitted to use public spaces. The app assigns each person a green, yellow, or red color health status, and appears to share information with the police, but gives users no transparency into its decision making. In a Twitter thread, Mozur has posted video clips showing the app at work in the metro and in some areas only open to those with green codes. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/09/the-new-normal-chinas-excessive-coronavirus-public-monitoring-could-be-here-to-stay https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/01/business/china-coronavirus-surveillance.html https://twitter.com/paulmozur/status/1234310754452434945 France: Administrative Court Strikes Down Facial Recognition in Schools ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The Administrative Court of Marseille has ruled that facial recognition systems are a disproportionate measure for controlling access to two high schools in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region of France, La Quadrature du Net reports on its blog. The Court also found that the system breaches the General Data Protection Regulation because students subject to school rules cannot freely give consent. At AI Regulation, Theodore Christakis gives background on the involvement in the case of the French data protection regulator, CNIL, which told the court that less intrusive means could have been found to achieve the objective of increasing school security. https://www.laquadrature.net/en/2020/02/27/first-success-against-facial-recognition/ https://ai-regulation.com/first-decision-ever-of-a-french-court-applying-gdpr-to-facial-recognition/ Sweden Passes Law Allowing Police Hacking ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The Swedish parliament has passed a law that will allow Swedish law enforcement to apply to the courts for a warrant to hack into devices they believe a suspect might have used to commit a crime that attracts at least a two-year prison sentence, Dataskydd.net reports at EDRi. Critics object that the law permits police to hack into devices that belong to mere acquaintances, and allows prosecutors to issue their own warrants if they think the courts will be too slow. https://edri.org/swedish-law-enforcement-given-the-permission-to-hack/ US Federal Agencies Buy Location History Data ---------------------------------------------------------------------- US federal agencies including Customs and Border Protection, the Secret Service, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement are bypassing warrant requirements by buying location history data from "data-to-knowledge" company Babel Street, Charles Levinson reports at Protocol. Under the terms of use, the agencies are forbidden from using the technology as evidence or mentioning it in legal proceedings. The data enables agents to geofence the area around an investigation site, identify devices that were nearby in the days before the incident, and track their locations through the previous months as well as where they went afterwards. At NBC News, Jon Schuppe reports that after police in Gainesville, FL obtained a geofence warrant, resident Zachary McCoy, who uses the RunKeeper smartphone app to track his bike rides, discovered that riding past a house that had been burgled led police to list him as a suspect and demand access to his Google account. https://www.protocol.com/government-buying-location-data https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/google-tracked-his-bike-ride-past-burglarized-home-made-him-n1151761 Smithsonian Institution Adds 2.8 Million Images to Public Domain ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The Smithsonian Institution has released 2.8 million high-quality images and 3D models into the public domain for free use for any purpose and will continue adding to the database as images, songs, data sets, and other material are digitized and determined to be free of copyright, Mike Masnick reports at TechDirt. As part of the project, the Institution is asking volunteers to work online to help transcribe scans of books and documents. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200225/14150743985/smithsonian-releases-28-million-images-3d-models-into-public-domain.shtml https://transcription.si.edu/browse?sort=latest Australian Government Sues Facebook Over Cambridge Analytica ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The Australian information minister, Angelene Falk, has filed a lawsuit in federal court against Facebook, arguing that it failed to protect Australia's roughly 311,127 users (in 2014-2015) from having their data collected and exploited for the purposes of political profiling by Cambridge Analytica, contrary to their reasonable expectations, Josh Taylor reports at the Guardian. Falk argues that the system's design made it impossible for users to consent or control how their data was used. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/mar/09/facebook-cambridge-analytica-sued-australian-information-watchdog-300000-privacy-breaches FEATURES AND ANALYSIS ==================== Chinese Censors Seek to Control Spread of Coronavirus Information ---------------------------------------------------------------------- In this posting for Citizen Lab, Lotus Ruan, Jeffrey Knockel, and Masashi Crete-Nishihata outline their study of how the Chinese government is controlling information about the coronavirus on WeChat, YY, and other Chinese social media, where early warnings of the epidemic were censored. In early February, the Cyberspace Administration of China announced it would punish websites, platforms, and accounts for "harmful content", and "spreading fear". At the Washington Post, Tony Romm writes that half-truths and outright falsehoods are proliferating on WhatsApp, particularly in African and Asian countries. At Fast Company, Mark Wilson reports that new research from MIT finds that labeling content as fact-checked and disputed leads to the "implied truth effect" - people believe that unlabeled stories are trustworthy. https://citizenlab.ca/2020/03/censored-contagion-how-information-on-the-coronavirus-is-managed-on-chinese-social-media/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/03/02/whatsapp-coronavirus-misinformation/ https://www.fastcompany.com/90471349/study-facebooks-fake-news-labels-have-a-fatal-flaw Uganda Still Awaits Benefits of Data Protection Law ---------------------------------------------------------------------- In this blog posting, Unwanted Witness summarizes the first year in operation of Uganda's data protection law. Although the Ministry of Information Communications Technology and National Guidance is mandated to develop regulations to enforce the new law, it has yet to establish them, and meanwhile the government has expanded mandatory collection of sensitive personal data under the national ID system and agencies such as the police force are planning to integrate their CCTV systems with national ID and immigration data. https://www.unwantedwitness.org/one-year-on-what-has-ugandas-data-protection-law-changed/ Global Freedom Declines for Fourteenth Year ---------------------------------------------------------------------- In this year's report, Freedom House finds that 2019 was the 14th consecutive year of decline in global freedom; citizens in 64 countries have seen their political rights and civil liberties decline and there has only been improvement in 37. Both democratic - the report cites the US and India - and authoritarian leaders are happy to break down institutional safeguards and ignore the rights of minorities and critics. At The Register, Lindsay Clarke profiles new research from Chatham House that studies the role of digital technology in the current crisis for liberal democracy; the authors, who include MEP Marietje Schaake, former MEP Julia Reda, and computer scientist Wendy Hall, conclude that democracy must evolve to meet new conditions, though they admit this may be a challenge for the EU. In an article at Columbia Journalism Review, Ahana Datta describes numerous government-sponsored cyber attacks on journalists, particularly foreign correspondents. In some cases their phone calls to sources are automatically redirected; in others their phones were targeted with fake SMS authentication codes for WhatsApp, Instagram, or Telegram or with downloadable malware. https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2020/leaderless-struggle-democracy https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/03/04/is_technology_undermining_democracy_chatham_house/ https://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/default/files/CHHJ7131-Democracy-Technology-RP-INTS-200228.pdf https://www.cjr.org/first_person/ft-nations-surveillance-attacks.php Data Gathering Creates New Problems for Migrants ---------------------------------------------------------------------- In this blog post at EDRi, Petra Molnar summarizes the impact of biometrics and automated decisions on migrants' journeys. Border guards scrape their social media histories and machines interview them while humanitarian organizations partner with private entities and collect biometrics as a requirement for dispensing food and other aid, placing migrants under persistent and oppressive surveillance. The article is the second in a series on AI and migration. https://edri.org/immigration-iris-scanning-and-iborderctrl/ https://edri.org/the-human-rights-impacts-of-migration-control-technologies/ Cultural Change Brings New Speed to Scientific Collaboration ---------------------------------------------------------------------- In this article at Science, Kai Kupferschmidt discusses the coronavirus-inspired transformation of how scientists communicate with each other, adopting tools like Slack and Twitter, posting viral genomes to the GIDSAID platform for near-instant analysis, and uploading reports and data to preprint servers. Few of these tools existed ten years ago, and their use is enabling research to move faster than in any previous outbreak. However, speed also enhances the risk of spreading misinformation. At the LA Times, Michael Hiltzik attributes the change to open access, surmising that COVID-19 could kill off for-profit journal publication. However, Hiltzik notes, the Trump administration has so far failed to follow through with a plan to make federally-funded research immediately free to the public; currently, it may be kept behind a paywall for a year. Also at Science, H. Holden Thorp counts the global cost when scientists are muzzled. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/02/completely-new-culture-doing-research-coronavirus-outbreak-changes-how-scientists https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-03-03/covid-19-open-science?fbclid=IwAR1WQjLCOlNRzoC9JmTt4MvILk3iIf4jFpk5AKQlfk9vUmFmxg3Sf4JGrFc https://science.sciencemag.org/content/367/6481/959 European Court of Human Rights Rules Against UK DNA Retention ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that UK police breached the privacy rights of Northern Irish citizen Fergus Gaughran, who was convicted of drunk driving in 2008, when they retained his DNA profile, fingerprints, and photograph, Owen Bowcott reports at the Guardian. The UK is one of the few members of the Council of Europe that doesn't time-limit the retention of biometric data. The judgment reverses that of the UK Supreme Court in 2015. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/feb/13/police-keeping-drink-drivers-dna-breached-his-rights-judges-rule *** DIARY ============== *** In light of the coronavirus outbreak, please follow your organization's travel guidelines, and check links to events listed below regularly for participation restrictions and updates as to whether events will go ahead.*** If you would like your event listed in this mail, email info.digest@opensocietyfoundations.org. AI Summit 2020 ---------------------------------------- March 16-17 Brussels, Belgium Politico's AI Summit returns to Brussels to tackle key questions about the future of AI global regulation and the technology's implementation. The conference will consider whether and how AI development should be limited, different cultural interpretations of "trustworthy", and the challenges of implementing a cross-border and coordinated European approach to AI. https://diievents.dii.eu/ai-summit/ CANCELLED: ECogS 2020 ---------------------------------------- March 23-26, 2020 Okinawa, Japan The International Conference on Embodied Cognitive Science (ECogS) will bring together approaches that are theoretically and methodologically diverse yet united in their commitment to an alternative orientation, one in which embodied interaction plays the primary organizing role of life, mind, and consciousness. https://groups.oist.jp/ecogs TICTeC 2020 ---------------------------------------- March 24-25, 2020 Reykjavik, Iceland mySociety created TICTeC to bridge the gap between civic tech and research - to bring two different communities together, to emphasize the importance of being able to demonstrate impact, and to share what those impacts are. Because Reykjavik's city Council has pioneered using digital tools to elicit feedback from citizens on council policies, expenditures, and projects, the 2020 conference will provide a special opportunity to learn from Iceland's extensive civic technology and civic engagement experience. https://www.mysociety.org/2019/09/20/join-us-in-reykjavik-for-tictec-2020/ 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 Global Privacy Summit ---------------------------------------- April 7-8, 2020 Washington, DC, USA Global Privacy Summit will gather more than 3,600 professionals from around the world for an outstanding program with a truly global focus. https://10times.com/global-privacy-summit Personal Democracy Forum CEE 2020 ---------------------------------------- April 23-25, 2020 Gdańsk, Poland The eighth PDF CEE is organized by the ePaństwo Foundation together with the City of Gdańsk and the European Solidarity Centre and will be followed by the fourth edition of the Festival of Civic Tech for Democracy. The 2020 conference is inspired by the 21 Demands proposed in 1980 by strikers in the Gdańsk Shipyard, and is expected to attract around 500 democracy activists, civic tech enthusiasts, media, business and academic representatives, public administration officials, opinion makers, influencers, cultural activists, digital media specialists and activists to debate human and digital rights, transparency of governments, cybersecurity, civic technologies and countering disinformation. https://pdfcee.pl/en/ AI for Good ---------------------------------------- May 4-8, 2020 Geneva, Switzerland The AI for Good Global Summit is the leading United Nations platform for global and inclusive dialogue on AI. The Summit is hosted each year in Geneva by the International Telecommunications Union in partnership with sibling UN agencies, the XPRIZE Foundation, and ACM. https://aiforgood.itu.int/ re:publica 2020 ---------------------------------------- May 6-8, 2020 Berlin, Germany re:publica is Europe's largest internet and digital society conference. More than 19 500 participants from 80 countries came together to discuss current issues of digital society at the three-day festival. Participants represent a cross-section of (digital) society, which include professionals from economics, politics, business, hacker culture, NGOs, media, and marketing, as well as bloggers, activists, artists, and social media experts. https://re-publica.com/en Thotcon ---------------------------------------- May 8-9, 2020 Chicago, IL, USA The 11th Chicago-based Thotcon hacking conference is a non-commercial event intended to combine a top-quality information security conference with a casual and social experience. https://thotcon.org/ CANCELLED: Creative Commons Global Summit ---------------------------------------- May 14-16, 2020 Lisbon, Portugal The 2019 CC Summit gathered nearly 400 Creative Commoners from across the globe to attend over 130 sessions and seven keynotes. The Summit, comprising discussion, debate, workshops and planning, talks, and community building, is for anyone who's interested in the global movement for the commons as an activist, advocate, artist, librarian, educator, lawyer, or technologist. https://creativecommons.org/2019/08/28/cc-global-summit-lisbon-may-14-16/ Privacy Law Scholars ---------------------------------------- June 4-5, 2020 Washington, DC, USA Organized jointly by BCLT and the George Washington University Law School, the Privacy Law Scholars Conference (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. PLSC brings together privacy law scholars, privacy scholars from other disciplines (economics, philosophy, political science, computer science), and practitioners (industry, legal, advocacy, and government). https://www.law.berkeley.edu/research/bclt/bcltevents/2020-privacy-law-scholars-conference/ Festival of AI and Emerging Technology ---------------------------------------- June 8-10, 2020 London, UK CogX draws together speakers from industry, government, and academia to create "a space to learn, discover, and connect with the people and technologies that are shaping the future of humanity". https://cogx.co/ RightsCon ---------------------------------------- June 9-12, 2020 San José, Costa Rica Each year, RightsCon, organized by AccessNow, gathers over 1,000 expert speakers from around the world. https://www.rightscon.org/ Digitising Early Childhood ---------------------------------------- June 11-12, 2010 Milan, Italy Contemporary children and their parents are inventing what it is to have a digital childhood, and in doing so are introducing families, schools and policy makers to new ways of thinking, doing and being. This conference discusses and expands research trajectories through these uncertainties and aims to build bridges across the different disciplines and strands of research in this area. It will forge a new way forward and consolidate the base of what we already know, revealing what we have yet to investigate and address, and what important insights are emerging that must be taken seriously. http://www.digitisingearlychildhood.com/2020-conference.html Workshop on the Economics of Information Security ---------------------------------------- June 15-16, 2020 Brussels, Belgium The annual workshop on the economics of information security is a cross-disciplinary event to develop more effective approaches to information security. https://weis2020.econinfosec.org/ CPDP LatAm 2020 ---------------------------------------- June 23-25, 2020 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil The first Computers, Privacy, and Data Protection Latin America will be held in conjunction with the first Latin American Privacy Law Scholars conference and MyData's first Latin American meeting. The theme will be "Data Protection in Latin America: Democracy, Innovation, and Regulation". The organizers hope it will be a unique opportunity to bring together varied and complementary perspectives on data protection and its impact on democracy, innovation, and regulation in Latin America. https://cpdp.lat/en/ Aspen Ideas Festival ---------------------------------------- June 27-July 3, 2020 Aspen Colorado Presented by the Aspen Institute in partnership with The Atlantic, the Aspen Ideas Festival is a public gathering place for leaders from around the globe and across many disciplines to present and discuss the ideas and issues that both shape our lives and challenge our times. Anyone may purchase a pass to attend. https://www.aspenideas.org/pages/register FTC PrivacyCon ---------------------------------------- July 21, 2020 Washington, DC The US Federal Trade Commission's fifth annual PrivacyCon, which is free and open to the public, will focus in particular on the privacy of health data collected, stored, and transmitted by mobile apps. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/events-calendar/privacycon-2020 Wikimania ---------------------------------------- August 2020 Bangkok, Thailand Wikimania 2020 will be the 16th Wikimania conference, an annual event for the international Wikimedia community. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2020 DEF CON 28 ---------------------------------------- August 6-9, 2020 Las Vegas, Nevada, USA DEF CON is one of the oldest and largest continuously running hacker conventions. https://defcon.org/index.html Netroots Nation ---------------------------------------- August 13-15, 2020 Denver, Colorado, USA For more than a decade, Netroots Nation, which began as a convention for the most active members of the DailyKos community, has hosted the largest annual conference for progressives and other organizers and advocacy groups, drawing thousands of attendees from around the country and beyond, to develop their work around topics such as sharing data, developing technology talent, and managing digital campaigns. https://www.netrootsnation.org/ 86th World Library and Information Congress ---------------------------------------- August 15-21, 2020 Dublin, Ireland WLIC is the annual conference of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA). https://2020.ifla.org/ MozFest 2020 ---------------------------------------- October, 2020 Location TBD MozFest programs and events are co-created by a group of dynamic, vibrant and varied community collaborators, all working towards one goal: the opportunity for everyone to live a healthy online life. https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/initiatives/open-leadership-events/collaborate-with-us-/ Future in Review ---------------------------------------- October 6-9, 2020 La Jolla, CA, USA Future in Review 2019 is a global conference on the intersection of technology and the economy, offering new partnerships, projects, and plans, and the opportunity to analyze and create the future of technology, economics, pure science, the environment, genomics, education, and more. https://www.futureinreview.com International Open Data Conference ---------------------------------------- November 18-20, 2020 Nairobi, Kenya The sixth edition of IODC will be hosted by the government of Kenya with support from the OD4D Network, IDRC, and the World Bank. The conference program will be co-created with the community via an open call for proposals to ensure a diverse agenda of interactive sessions, workshops, and ancillary events. A special focus will be placed on building bridges with the broader data community, exploring how to bring the power of the newest technologies to some of the world's oldest problems, and creating new models for collaboration in order to drive social and economic value from open data in Africa and around the world. https://opendatacon.org/ *** 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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