Category Archives: Talks & Conferences

I’m going to an interesting conference in November called Unblinking: New Perspectives on Visual Privacy in the 21st Century (you can see the prelminary abstract for my paper PETs in Public), and there’s room for a few more:

We have space for a very limited number of audience-participants (the speakers were selected some months ago, but this is an interactive format). If you are interested, please send an inquiry to Maryanne McCormick by 10 Oct: a short bio, description of your work/interests in visual privacy, and your availability on these dates, in plain text to:

Maryanne McCormick

best,

Deirdre Mulligan and Pamela Samuelson

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Unblinking: New Perspectives on Visual Privacy in the 21st Century

A Cross-Disciplinary Symposium UC Berkeley, Nov 3-4, 2006 https://www.law.berkeley.edu/bclt/events/unblinking

Co-Chairs: Deirdre K. Mulligan (Law) Pam Samuelson (Law and The Information School) Ken Goldberg (Engineering)

Worldwide demand for security cameras has expanded greatly since 9/11/2001 and the London transport bombings. Over the same period, consumer demand for high resolution digital and cell-phone cameras has increased markedly. Video applications are being incorporated into learning, healthcare, family and work environments. Engineers are responding with new generations of highly sophisticated chips, lenses, robotic platforms, and systems.

In a rapidly evolving environment of unblinking eyes, technologically perfected recollections, and permanent visual records, what will it mean to have privacy? How will the introduction of unblinking eyes alter how we experience and behave in public and private spaces?

Privacy is a complex and often abstract topic: this symposium will address “visual privacy,” a subset of the much broader topic of data privacy, and bring together experts from a range of perspectives: art, law, engineering, public policy, psychology, architecture, urban planning, sociology, human rights and others.

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ICANN has issued its official announcement regarding the work of the ICANN Nominating Committee this weekend.

I was detained in Frankfurt.

Not in the sense of being arrested, but in the sense of being delayed: the plane had some sort of mechanical problem with the pilot’s window, and it took many hours to repair. By the time we arrived in Chicago, the last flight to Miami was long gone, so I am stuck in an airport hotel. And very very tired. And have to get up very early to make the 6:30 am flight to Miami.

On the bright side: since my luggage was lost for more than a day on the way out, I still have a full set of clean clothes…

The ICANN NomCom activities that took me to Frankfurt are covered by a very strict confidentiality agreement; when the official statement issues about this weekend’s meeting (tomorrow?) I’ll post a link to it. The actual results of our deliberations won’t be public for some time.

Given all these travel woes, I do feel I have been suitably punished for this unpaid volunteer activity.

I’m on my way to Frankfurt today, where I will do hush-hush stuff for the ICANN NomCom. It’s possible I will have very limited Internet access for the next few days, especially today and Sunday which are travel days. And even if I do have access, I probably won’t have much time to use it. If I have a chance, however, I will post something about my airport experiences.

Meanwhile, I’ve queued up a few posts to keep things going.

I get invited to some pretty cool events, and even manage to go to some. But I’m not sure I’ve ever been to an event quite like the one my wife and colleague, Caroline Bradley, is going to in Minneapolis: PUSH 2006. Billed as “an experience first, a conference second,” they say it’s about the future,

Well, it’s happened. The dizzying and accelerating changes we’ve experienced over the last 100 years have finally brought us to the brink. It’s no longer sufficient to say we’re undergoing some changes, a few pokey paradigm shifts. Folks, we’re in the process of redefining life itself.

Reality, unreality, creation, spirituality, identity, power and meaning–our basic core human experiences are in a state of flux and redefinition. And what a wild ride it’s going to be.

Speakers from all over the world will gather at PUSH 2006 to discuss reality, its virtual variations, genetics, politics, biological miracles, ethics, emerging forms of social organization, and the questions such change raises for us all.

Caroline’s topic (which is something about money, the new financial order, and virtual worlds) is under the rubric “Social Dances: Networks, Power, and Meaning”. And people are going to pay $1,300 to hear her.

Open Internet Policy “don’t be evil” an albatross around Google’s neck is Danny Weitzner’s excellent account of the highlights of one of the more interesting panels at CFP this year.