Category Archives: Talks & Conferences

I'm speaking this afternoon at the 2009 International Workshop on Privacy Aspects of Data Mining (PADM09). At 3:30 I'll be one of the panelists, speaking on “Privacy in Databases: From Theory to Practice”; my presentation will concentrate on legal rights to be anonymous.

Conveniently, the whole show is coming to town and will be held at the Miami Beach Resort, 4833 Collins Avenue, which sounds like it should be nice.

Had a very good time at the OII, had an especially fun seminar with some of the students.

Now I'm back, wading through huge stacks of things that piled up while I was away. No bloggy substance till I make a dent in the piles.

I gave my Oxford-sponsored talk in London today; people said nice things after, so I guess it was OK. I had forgotten how much more US audiences indicate by noise and body language whether they like talks. A British audience is far more polite, but also far more reserved; words like “stoic” and “immobile” come to mind. There were interesting questions from the audience; I wish there had been time for more.

I'm going to be at the Oxford Internet Institute on Wednesday, then Thursday I head back home.

Let me just say that I am never checking a bag through CDG again.

I had a 1 hour 40 minute connection, which became a little over one hour connection when the plane was late.

I made it. The bag did not. The very very nice and cheerful man at LHR said he was sure it would be on one of the many later flights and I'd have it today. Things used to be slow when they were busy, but they don't have so many travelers this year, so things are quick. (Moral of the story: lose bags in recessions?) Then he gave me a toothbrush and some basic toiletries.

Odds are increasing, though, that he was an optimist. I just spoke to the very perky phone person at BA baggage services. The good news is that the bag has been located. The bad news is that — two more missed flights later — the bag is still in Paris. If it makes the 5pm flight, I just might get it today if UK Customs are fast. Ha. Otherwise, I get it tomorrow. (I hope I get it before I check out.)

Because I'll Be Speaking in London on Nov. 17, I need to be in London.

So I'm currently at MIA (memo to self: never, ever take the terminal D security line no mater how short it looks in order to get to terminal E — longest detour in airport history), “enjoying” free wifi from Google via Boingo. It is very very slow, dialup slow. And unsecured, which makes me unwilling to check my email.

I have to change planes in Paris, because direct flights cost more than I was willing to make my kind hosts, the Oxford Internet Institute, pay. As it is the ticket seems rather expensive by recent transatlantic standards, but it was the best I could do.

I had some hopes I might go to the theater in London on Monday night, but the show I really wanted to see — the Alan Bennett play at the National — has been sold out for more than a month, and I won't land in time to queue for non-student day tickets. The other choices are either plays I've seen a good production of, American, or musicals, which I usually avoid. Back when we lived in London we were real theater hounds, and I miss it. But maybe Monday night I'll be fine tuning my presentation instead.

Tuesday I've lined up a busy day of seeing people and then I sing for my supper.

The Oxford Internet Institute has invited me to give a talk in London in November. I'm calling it, Those Golden Eggs Come From Somewhere: Internet Regulation at a Crossroads.

Location: Hunton & Williams, 30 St. Mary Axe, London, EC3A 8EP. Time: 18:30 – 20:00. A reception will follow. If you would like to attend please email your name and affiliation, if any, to: events@oii.ox.ac.uk.

Here's the abstract:

From its inception, many have recognized the Internet’s potential as a liberating, decentralizing, and, yes, destabilizing technology but also its counter-potential as a controlling and centralizing technology.

Over the last two decades, predictions about the social effects of the Internet have ranged from cybernetic anarchy (both utopian and distopian) to the instantiation of a fascistic regime of surveillance that would make Orwell look like a piker. Some see a winner-take-all economy of massive new monopolies emerging on the back of network effects, others see the growth of a new economy in which intermediaries are replaced by huge open networks of buyers and sellers trading with e-cash on anonymous electronic exchanges – and evading their taxes. Meanwhile enthusiasts of electronic democracy and popular empowerment offer a vision sharply at odds with that of Cassandras of globalization for whom the Internet provides yet another occasion for decision-making authority to seep away towards relatively undemocratic trans-national bodies.

One would think that such contrasting predictions could not possibly all be correct. Yet, for the last decade, to a surprising extent both sets of trends have manifested themselves simultaneously. The question is whether those two trends can continue, or if instead we are witnessing the start of a collision between them.

At present, ‘the Internet’ is neither ‘fraud’s playground’ nor democracy’s. (Indeed, there is more than one ‘Internet’.) Rather, different groups of people doing different things with different objectives have moved down independent paths. Now, however, these trends find themselves meeting at a crossroads: Largely well-intentioned political and legal reactions to the highest-profile risks of communications technology create a danger of at least wounding and perhaps in some areas even killing the goose that is giving us golden eggs of innovation, decentralization, and personal empowerment.

Advances in medical records technology might give patients greater control over their treatment, but are could also further disempower them, and (in the US at least) seem even more likely to become another target for data mining and marketing. E-government holds out the promise of more involved and better informed citizens. The same technologies may, however, also empower nosey neighbors, or the nanny state’s evil sibling Big Sister, who knows what is best for you and has honed predictive profiling to the point where many find their liberty practically encumbered without being formally curtailed.

Most immediately, technologies, practices, and technical standards that may appear benign in a democracy – may in truth be benign in a democracy – may take on a more sinister cast when adopted in more repressive regimes faced with indigenous pressure for reform. For example, the world witnessed via YouTube as Iranian demonstrators marched to protest the theft of an election. The communicative freedom making the sending of those images possible is a fragile thing, and could fall before the creation of standards and practices intended to foil digital piracy half a world away.

London-area friends and readers are invited to contact me directly too if they're going to be there.