10th IFIP Summer School on Privacy and Identity Management – Time for a Revolution?
The 10th IFIP Summer School on Privacy and Identity Management – Time for a Revolution? will take place on 16-21 August 2015 in Edinburgh, Scotland, U.K. The summer school is organised jointly by the IFIP Working Groups 9.2, 9.5, 9.6/11.7, 11.4, 11.6, Special Interest Group 9.2.2 in co-operation with CRISP (Centre for Research into Information, Surveillance and Privacy), the University of Edinburgh School of Informatics, the EU FP7 projects A4Cloud, FutureID, PrismaCloud, PRISMS and the Privacy-Forum.
Over the last decade privacy has been recognised as being increasingly eroded, and many efforts have been made to protect it: New and better privacy laws and regulations have been made and are still being proposed, such as the European General Data Protection Regulation. Industry initiatives such as “Do Not Track” have been launched. The research community on privacy and data protection has grown in size and covers a wider range of disciplines (such as technical, legal, and social disciplines). An increasing number of privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) – among others for user-controlled identity management and eIDs – are available and have gained in maturity, and the public at large is responding to privacy-related challenges.
Despite these positive developments, privacy is less protected than before:
Rapid technology development and increasing interest in identities and other personal data from commercial or government beneficiaries provide strong incentives for increasing data collection to the detriment of data privacy.
There seems to be no, or much less, financial advantage than previously in protecting privacy. At the same time, laws and regulation seem not to have the effect wanted for various reasons: They have not been implemented, take time to be made operational, are not protecting privacy effectively, or are simply circumvented. Many of them aim at checkbox compliance rather than promoting actual protection of human rights. Finally, the technology and processes behind the scene have become so complex that not even experts – let alone end-users – can tell whether or not privacy is being protected, and hence they have little or no basis on which to take protective measures.
On this basis, user-controlled identity management that has been seen as a panacea for empowering users in their informational self-determination cannot really work.
The 2013 Snowden affair made it very clear that the current electronic infrastructures are very vulnerable, and known protection mechanisms such as encryption are rarely used. Identity information of all Internet or phone users is being collected and analysed by powerful intelligence services in the pursuit of national security. Clearly this lack of protection is problematic not only for maintaining privacy and managing one’s identities, but for the organisation and structure of societies and economies in general. One would hope that this message would be sufficiently clear so that actions are taken to secure infrastructures. Instead, the “crypto debate” is arising again, based on the issue of whether users should be allowed to use proper encryption or not.
This raises questions about what is needed to increase the protection of privacy. Do we need a technological, social, or political revolution? Or are we seeing a number of evolutionary advances of various sorts? Are the available legal, technical, organisational, economic, social, ethical, or psychological instruments for privacy and identity management suitable to improve the protection of privacy? Do we need a revolution in our thinking, a broad movement based on personal initiative – not only for citizens to voice their opinions, but also to implement and maintain solutions as alternatives to those technical infrastructures that have been compromised?
How to emphasise the powerful role that technology offers to members of the public (in terms of awareness, citizen-interaction, community engagement)?
What does this also mean in terms of technology development, social movements, and ethically informed design?
There are many opportunities that may help to achieve better and safer infrastructures for people to communicate freely and without being observed either by commercial or by governmental bodies (user empowerment); to improve the balance between individuals and institutions (especially concerning the privacy protection goals transparency and participation); and to set up democratic processes in which effective oversight over the consequences of new technologies can be exercised.
These questions, as well as current research on privacy and identity management in general, will be addressed by the 2015 IFIP Summer School on Privacy and Identity Management. The Summer School organisation will be a joint effort among IFIP (International Federation for Information Processing, Working Groups 9.2, 9.5, 9.6/11.7, 11.4, 11.6, and Special Interest Group 9.2.2), CRISP (Centre for Research into Information, Surveillance and Privacy), the University of Edinburgh School of Informatics, and several European and national projects. The 2015 IFIP Summer School will bring together junior and senior researchers and practitioners from multiple disciplines to discuss important questions concerning privacy and identity management and related issues in a global environment subject to considerable change.
Important dates
Extended abstracts or short papers (2-4 pages): 1 April 2015
Notification of acceptance for presentation at the school: 1 May 2015
Draft papers for pre-proceedings (page limit is 16 pages): 15 July 2015
Presentation at Summer School, feedback from participants: 16-21 August 2015
Final paper for Springer proceedings: 28 November 2015
Notification of acceptance of the final paper: 29 January 2016
Camera ready copy for proceedings: 26 February 2016
More information can be found in the Call for papers.
