This year’s program seeks to highlight challenges to privacy posed by widespread adoption of machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies. One motivation for this focus stems from goals and provisions of the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), including requirements for privacy and data protection by design, providing notices and information about the logic of automated decision-making, and emphasis on privacy management and accountability structures in organizations that process personal data. Interpreting and operationalizing these requirements for systems that employ machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies is a daunting task.

As engineering is asked to play a larger role in privacy governance, software developers need tools for understanding, systematizing, and embedding privacy into systems and workflows. This work also requires greater engagement with design, legal, and public policy departments. Methods and tools for bridging privacy work across these communities are essential to success. Furthermore, research that focuses on techniques and tools that can aid the translation of legal and normative concepts into systems requirements are of great value.

Organizations also need tools for systematically evaluating whether systems fulfill users’ privacy needs and requirements and for providing necessary technical assurances. Methods that can support organizations and engineers in developing (socio-)technical systems that address these requirements is of increasing value to respond to the existing societal challenges associated with privacy.

In this context, privacy engineering research is emerging as an important topic. Engineers are increasingly expected to build and maintain privacy-preserving and data-protection compliant systems in different ICT domains such as health, energy, transportation, social computing, law enforcement, public services; based on different infrastructures such as cloud, grid, or mobile computing. While there is a consensus on the benefits of an engineering approach to privacy, concrete proposals for models, methods, techniques and tools that support engineers and organizations in this endeavor are few and in need of immediate attention. Also of great relevance are the development and evaluation of approaches that go beyond the one size fits all mantra, and that attend to the ever evolving practice of software engineering in agile service environments across different domains.

To cover this gap, the topics of the International Workshop on Privacy Engineering focus on all the aspects surrounding privacy engineering, ranging from its theoretical foundations, engineering approaches, and support infrastructures, to its practical application in projects of different scale across the software ecosystem.

Specifically, we are seeking the following kinds of papers:
1) technical papers that illustrate the engineering or application of a novel formalism, method or other research finding (e.g., engineering a privacy enhancing protocol) with preliminary evaluation;
2) experience and practice papers that describe a case study, challenge or lessons learned in a specific domain;
3) early evaluations of tools and other infrastructure that support engineering tasks in privacy requirements, design, implementation, testing, etc.;
4) interdisciplinary studies or critical reviews of existing privacy engineering concepts, methods, tools and frameworks;
5) vision papers that take a clear position informed by evidence based on a thorough literature review.

The Program on Economics & Privacy (PEP) at George Mason University Antonin Scalia Law School, will host a scholars conference on the economics of digital information policy on Friday, April 27, 2018. The conference will be open to the public.

The mission of PEP is to promote the sound application of economic analysis to issues surrounding the digital information economy through original research, policy outreach, and education. The annual Digital Information Policy Scholars Conference is intended to further this goal by providing a forum to present original research on this important area of the US economy.

TOPICS:
​Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

SUBMISSIONS:
​Please send your paper or abstract by February 19, 2018, to Jeff T. Smith, Coordinator of PEP, at [email protected]. Preference will be given to completed papers. The selection committee includes Alessandro Acquisti (Carnegie Mellon), Jane Bambauer (University of Arizona, James E. Rogers College of Law), Michael Baye (Indiana University, Kelley School of Business), James Cooper (George Mason University, Antonin Scalia Law School), Sasha Romanosky (RAND), Andrew Stivers (Federal Trade Commission), and Catherine Tucker (MIT, Sloan School of Management). Selections will be made by March 5, 2018.

Selected authors will receive a $300 honorarium and will be provided lodging for the night of April 26, 2018. There will be a dinner for participants on April 26. Selected authors will be responsible for submitting a final version of their paper by April 13, 2017. In addition to presenting their paper, selected authors will be expected to serve as a discussant for one paper at the conference.

In four years, connect:ID, powered by Science Media Partners and the International Biometrics + Identity Association (IBIA),has become the world’s premier event dedicated to all aspects of human identity technology and its implementation in the digital, mobile, and physical domains.

The event has grown as governments, the private sector, and consumers, increasingly recognize the importance of secure identity solutions. The challenge is to understand how these systems can be used in a way that is natural and frictionless, yet is trusted, and sensitive to privacy concerns.

: Our mission…

Secure identity technology can be used in a multitude of ways. From next-generation authentication solutions for accessing digital or mobile infrastructures, to securing transactions, and delivering new, efficient ways to identify citizens.

connect:ID’s mission is to explore how secure identity technology is enhancing authentication, wherever it is used – from aviation and border control, to healthcare, finance, education and countless other markets.

We will also consider challenging issues, such as identity fraud, personal data theft, the intensification of national security threats, and cyber intrusions. Customers, employees, and citizens also need a less frustrating, yet trusted, method to authenticate their identity.

: Join us

With our comprehensive identity-solutions based exhibition, and a multitrack conference that draws together the world’s leading minds – and pioneers – connect:ID 2018 will offer users practical advice for today, examine current government policies, and provide thought-provoking insights into the future of identity. 

connect:ID brings together leading experts from industry, as well as adopters and government officials, to explore the development and fusion of multiple advanced identity technologies.

Government, commercial and consumer markets are in search of answers to the growing difficulties associated with managing and securing human identity. connect:ID takes up this challenge, exploring, in-depth, these real world requirements.

Members only event that gathers Future of Privacy Forum‘s (FPF) leading academic, advocacy and corporate stakeholders.  By invitation only. For FPF membership information, please contact Barbara Kelly at [email protected].

Hosted by Access Now, RightsCon is where the world’s human rights experts, business leaders, technologists, engineers, investors, activists, and government representatives come together to share ideas, build strategies, showcase new technologies, and create tomorrow’s internet. It is an energizing reminder of the existence of a powerful global digital rights community that is determined to defend human rights and keep the internet open and free.

Convened in locations that are power centers for the internet, RightsCon has begun rotating each year around the world to various global cities. Importantly, our conference programming is shaped by our participants, with an an explicit focus on driving to the outcomes they define. Our goal is to ensure that the RightsCon community affects real and positive change in the world. In March of 2017, we had more than 250 community-led, groundbreaking sessions at RightsCon Brussels. You can find the sessions in our official program.

In 2018, RightsCon will be hosted in Toronto, Canada. To get updates on RightsCon Toronto, be sure to sign up to our newsletter for updates.

The collection and processing of massive amounts of data has become an increasingly contentious issue. Our financial transactions, communications, movements, relationships, all now generate data that are used to profile and sort groups and individuals. With the platformisation of digital media alongside governmental and corporate uses of citizen data, developments in AI, the Internet of Things, smart homes and smart cities, the systematic collection and analysis of massive data sets across our social life is being normalised and entrenched – what has been described as the ‘datafication’ of society.

With the emergence of this data paradigm comes a new set of power dynamics requiring investigation and critique. Whilst promises of value-neutral information and possibilities for prediction are said to advance better responses to a range of social problems, they may also have serious implications for social and economic inclusion, autonomy, basic freedoms, and established notions of ethics, trust, accountability, governance and citizenship.

What are the implications for social justice? How do we understand social justice in an age of datafication? In what way do initiatives around the globe address questions of data in relation to inequality, discrimination, power and control? What is the role of policy reform, technological design and activism? How do we understand and practice ‘data justice’? How does data justice relate to other justice concerns?

This conference will examine the intricate relationship between datafication and social justice by highlighting the politics and impacts of data-driven processes and exploring different responses. Hosted by the Data Justice Lab at Cardiff’s School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies (JOMEC), it will bring together international scholars, practitioners, and activists to engage with data from a social justice perspective. Confirmed speakers include:

Anita Gurumurthy (IT for Change, India)
David Lyon (Queen’s University, Canada)
Evelyn Ruppert (Goldsmiths, University of London, UK)
Rob Kitchin (Maynooth University, Ireland)
Sasha Costanza-Chock (MIT Center for Civic Media, US)
Seeta Peña Gangadharan (London School of Economics, UK)
Solon Barocas (Cornell University, US and FAT/ML)

The conference will combine academic papers with hands-on workshops relating to methods of investigation, policy and design. We welcome submissions of abstracts for both types of sessions.

Themes of the conference include (but are not limited to):

• Social justice and data
• Data governance
• Data discrimination
• Data colonialism
• Data sovereignty
• Digital labour
• Prediction and Preemption
• Data scores and dashboards
• Data ethics
• Data policy and reform
• Social justice-informed design
• Uses of data by social justice groups
• Data activism and advocacy

Submissions

Deadline for 250-word abstracts: 27^th of November, 2017.
Submit via EasyChair: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=dj2018

All submissions must include a title, author name(s), institutional affiliation(s) and full contact information (mailing address, email address). If you propose a workshop or practical demonstration, please provide a clear statement of purpose and a detailed description of activities, as well as any infrastructure requirements.

Information

Cardiff is a 2-hour train journey West of London and Heathrow airport. The closest airports are Cardiff and Bristol.

‘Data Justice’ will take place shortly before the ICA 2018 conference in Prague, 24-28 May. Flights to Prague take 2 hours from Heathrow.

Conference fee:
Full fee: £75 (early bird) / £100
Reduced student fee: £50 (early bird) / £75

Conference organizing committee: Lina Dencik, Arne Hintz, Joanna Redden (Data Justice Lab, Cardiff University, UK)

For information about the Data Justice Lab, see: http://www.datajusticelab.org

Contact for further information