DIALOGUE ON DIVERSITY– 2016 COLLOQUIUM ON INTERNET DATA PRIVACY THE MYRIAD FACES OF PRIVACY – AND PERILS TO MATCH

 Technology   Tue, January 26, 2016 06:51 AM

Washington, DC - Dialogue on Diversity opens its 2016 programing, on January 28th at the Stewart Mott Foundation, 122 Maryland Ave. NE, Washington, DC, with a wide-ranging exploration of the current state of the art in privacy protection on a number of fronts, all in the face of the penetrating reach of contemporary information technology, expedited to every corner of the globe by the increasingly powerful, relentless, ever higher-capacity, ubiquitous internet – the fascinating theme of these annual reviews. 

Ø  Nicol Turner-Lee, long time executive with the Washington-based Multicultural Media Telecom and Internet Council, opens proceedings with an overview of the drama of vulnerable privacy interests compromised by aggressive commercial entities, governmental agencies pushing the envelope of their mandates, and hackers and even criminal interlopers – but being constantly renewed by the hurried, salutary advent of new technologies.  The related theme of “STEM” studies, with emphasis on an imperative of increased numbers of girls and ethnically diverse students, is one that Dialogue on Diversity has strongly supported, as in the Girls Who Code presentation featured in a recent Entrepreneurship conference.

 

Ø  At a midday session, while the audience finishes up a light lunch, speakers hold forth on a variety of special topics.  Aaron Brauer-Rieke of Upturn, the new élite mini shop of IT architects, offers a subtle and instructive disquisition on the theme of a refined technology in the encounter with law and commercial practice – the complex field in which Upturn is advising a growing bill of high-profile business and governmental clients.  The articulate Mr. Brauer-Rieke brings expertise honed in a half dozen years’ work with the D.C. think tank Center for Democracy and Technology and as attorney in the FTC Privacy and Identity Protection division.  Frank Torres, Senior Director for Consume affairs, Privacy, and the Internet at the Microsoft Innovation & Policy Center, is invited to bring the experience of a career in the higher echelons of the law, working with an array of official agencies and leading firms, as he highlights the cutting edge of law in the never ending contest to secure a degree of privacy against the importunities of a restless government and the difficult to appease drive of commercial interests. 

 

Ø  Allison M. Lefrak, Senior Attorney at the FTC, draws the curtain back to detail the mysterious workings of the (curiously named) “Internet of Things”, the systems of automatic monitors and controls, silent and sleepless, that optimally manage the complexities of, say, building (commercial and household as well) maintenance, inclusive of perpetual videos of domestic goings on – a phenomenon that necessarily generates vast arrays of data, each bit very boring but in aggregate sufficient to draw a meticulously detailed portrait of the life and career of the most obscure of individuals.  What is the fate of privacy values in a world of the Internet of Things?

 

Ø  Medical IT, fraught with well-known privacy travails, takes center stage with the opening afternoon agenda segment.  Michelle DeMooy, a veteran of years’ labor in the privacy and consumer affairs battles, since mid-2014 stepping up as Deputy Director for Research on Consumer Privacy with CDT, reviews the latest of the privacy enforcement mechanisms at law and throughout the complex of medical institutions.  Her analysis of current practice and likely future trends segues to a first-hand exposition by Michael E. Beck, technology expert, inventor, and entrepreneur, whose company, MEDOX Technologies, based in NYC, carries a skein of patents for software systems designed to form swift and accurate permissible disclosure determinations for items of medical data hosted in the EHR troves of hospitals and medical offices.

 

Ø  The vexed questions of government data collection, on the one hand through normal data gathering and, again, by methods of observation, verging on “surveillance”, less obtrusive but often deemed the more menacing – are the subject expounded by Jadzia Butler. Ms. Butler, currently working as the Privacy, Surveillance, and Security Fellow at the Center for Democracy and Technology, brings a sharp eye and refined analysis to assess the benefits and harms flowing from these practices, as she zeroes in on the expedient of strong encryption as the shield against many forms of covert observation.  Here an acute assessment of the infamous “back door” demanded by intelligence agencies world wide.  

The colloquium is to be presented at the compact, very elegant conference room of the Stewart R. Mott Foundation, across from the Supreme Court at 122 Maryland Avenue, N.E. in Washington.

Registration for the Colloquium, strongly recommended since seating is very limited, may be made at www.dialogueondiversity.org.  This event is free and open to the public.  Lunch and refreshments provided.

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