ACM Computers, Freedom and Privacy 2010 Call for Proposals

The 20th annual ACM Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference (CFP 2010) will take place June 15 to 18 in San Jose, California. With the theme "Computers, Freedom, and Privacy in the Networked Society," the conference seeks to address how constant connection in social, communication, information, and physical environments impacts freedom and privacy, and how computers can be used to improve freedom and privacy. A diverse set of panelists and new voices will offer a number of perspectives on challenging issues, and explore cutting-edge technology, legal, and policy issues. Possible topics include social networks, cloud computing, surveillance networks, anonymity in a networked world, ethics and computing, accessibility, open source, and media concentration, advertising, and political campaigning on the Internet. The final program will be assembled partly from the proposals. The final deadline for proposals is January 31, 2010.

Proposal Abstract

The Case for Proactive Personal Information Brokering, or, "even if you aren’t on the internet, I really can find out if you are a dog!”
“The power of hiding ourselves from one another is mercifully given, for men are wild beasts, and would devour one another but for this protection.”
Henry Ward Beecher, "Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit", US abolitionist & clergyman (1813 - 1887)

In the age of digital data, exformation emissions can be asdangerous, problematic and costly as their atomic carbon counterparts. What are exformation emissions? Exformation in its simplest form refers to the infinite set of observable data that is, by definition, explicitly discarded or implicitly not captured, stored or otherwise available for future retrieval or analysis. Paraphrasing Tor Nørretranders, the Danish physicist, exformation is the shared cultural, conceptual or cognitive context without which communication would be impossible.

Today, people, products and places carry or have about them, or sometimes implanted in them, devices capable of of either passively or actively emitting useful data which can be observed with the appropriate means. People carrying items such as computers, cell phones, watches or personal media or gaming devices are often completely unaware of the data transmissions being produced by their digital assistants. Certain types of radio frequency identification cards, contactless credit cards, “smart” passports, security badges and medical devices all all capable of emitting data signals. Some people actually have these “chips” or RFID “tags” implanted in their bodies for tracking and authentication applications very similar to the pets and livestock of modern life. Locations have both external geospatial telematics capabilities like GPS as well as both mobile and fixed networks for a variety of localizability applications.

For the most part, much of this emitted data is harmless noise. However, there is an increasing amount of contextual and individually useful data that, if captured, could become beneficial or harmful depending on the capturer’s intended use. Using readily available off-the-shelf technology, it is possible to create an even more oppressive if not equally frightening view of the future as portrayed in the dystopian future scenarios of such classics as Lucas’ THX 1138, Brazil and Orwell’s 1984. “Joe the Plumber” jokes aside, the notion of “Big Brother” isn’t as scary to this author as is the notion of “Big Database”. All three of these pieces offer great insights into possible misuse of digital data, and this paper seeks to provide a framework for candidate solutions. The notion of portable subscribable personas, brokered credential vaults, and the democratization of the tools of reputation will all be discussed.

A quick search of one’s self on an identity search aggregator like pipl.com will quickly dash any sense of personal privacy, whether one is a digital native, immigrant or a reluctant old-world digital denier. Even those that have never had an email account, never logged into a website or owned a mobile phone can be found.

There is an opportunity for the future defenders and issuers of identity to become the brokers, protectors and defenders of the management of access to one’s personal identity, citizenry, healthcare, financial, educational, vocational, geospatial, association and affiliation, reputational and loyalty information.