Privacy, Infrastructures, Policy

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2020

Media, government, and industry commonly frame Security and Privacy as diametrically opposed: protecting one requires sacrificing the other.

Hosted by Professors Jennifer Whitson and Ian Goldberg on behalf of the Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute and the CrySP Speaker Series on Privacy, this one-day event brought together researchers with international speakers from journalism, national security, academia and the corporate world to challenge these misconceptions. A central thread of each of the talks was the design, implementation, and benefits of privacy-enhancing social and technological infrastructures.

Speakers

Julia Angwin

Data is the New Narrative

Never before has it been possible to collect and distribute so much data. And yet a paradox is that amidst this flood of information, it is increasingly difficult for the public to find meaning amidst all the data they encounter – and people increasingly distrust information they encounter.  Julia will discuss how The Markup, a new nonprofit newsroom that will begin publishing soon, aims to build reader trust by anchoring its narratives in public datasets and peer-reviewed statistical analysis, while also pleading to protect reader’s data from surveillance. See biography. 

Maura Grossman

Bias in Data-Driven Decision-Making

Today, data-driven decisions are used in everything from credit to education to housing to employment to policing and beyond. Maura's talk will address whether such data-driven decisions are objective and fair, or whether they simply perpetuate the status quo. How do we balance the competing considerations of the need for broad, representative data sets with the need to protect individual privacy? What can and should technologists and regulators do to address the challenges and opportunities inherent in data-driven decision-making? See biography. 

Oliver Linow

Using Tor as a Public Broadcaster

From China to Iran, the current restrictions on press freedom also affect international broadcasters such as the BBC, Radio Free Asia or Deutsche Welle. Internet censorship prevents media organizations from distributing their websites in some countries, or from joining in on citizen dialogue on social media in others. Broadcasters are also reliant on information that they receive directly from crisis regions from local staff, where there is no or little freedom of speech. With the Tor Protocol, it is possible to bypass internet blocking to reach people in countries with censorship and protect journalists from surveillance while researching or working on their content. Because of the benefits provided to media outlets by the Tor Protocol, both the BBC and Deutsche Welle recently launched their own onion services. Oliver will speak about how his experience introducing Tor into Deutsche Welle including the conversations that took place with management and the obstacles that we faced on the way. He hopes to spark the question "why is Tor used so rarely by media outlets?” See biography. 

Scott Millar

Trust and Confidence: The Symbiotic Relationship of Privacy Intelligence in Protecting Canada

Scott Millar, Assistant Deputy Minister (Policy and Communications) at the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) will speak to how Canadians and their data are protected in the course of its foreign intelligence operations. In turn, he will speak to how CSE's new Canadian Centre for Cyber Security is delivering on its national mandate to protect Canadian information and associate infrastructures from cyber threat actors. Scott will also address the impact of the scale and pace of emerging technological change on the security of Canadians. See biography. 

Cat Coode

GDPR and CPPA and PIPEDA, Oh my!

Privacy Regulations are often considered a nuisance, but staying compliant ensures that your company is better protected against breaches and that your individual privacy is secured. Cat will explain the basics behind today's regulations and what you need to know to avoid fines, protect users, and continue to innovate while putting privacy first. See biography.