Conference on Internet Privacy: March 23, 2012
How many things did you reveal about yourself online today? Your opinion of a colleague? Your credit card number? Your photos from last night? These activities are all common ones, but where does the information we post—even on what seem to be the most private or friendly of forums—truly go? As many individuals have already learned the hard way, the same power of information sharing that can topple governments can also topple a person’s career, marriage, finances, or even his or her future.
As people traverse social networks and the Web, companies collect and compile hundreds of pieces of information about each individual. This digital profile makes advertising vastly more efficient and offers enormous economic gains, but it can lead to weblining, where people are judged and denied opportunities based on their digital self rather than their real world self. Data aggregation concentrates detailed private information about people in the hands of private entities that distribute the benefits and burdens of that information according to their own preferences, often with unacceptable results. Increasingly, decisions about whether a person receives a credit line, a job, insurance, or other benefits depend on analyses of his or her posts on social networks and travels across the Web.
On March 23, 2012, the Center for Information, Society and Policy at Chicago-Kent College of Law will host a one-day conference focused on internet privacy and the problems created by the intersection of social networks and the burgeoning data aggregation industry. The conference, entitled “Internet Privacy, Social Networks, and Data Aggregation,” will analyze how decisions are currently made about the balance between privacy invasion and information processing gains. It will address what control we do and should have over this information, who sets the boundaries of this window into our lives, and how we could and should use technology and the law to reclaim our privacy. Experts will participate in three panel discussions: (1) the economic and personal consequences of the way that social networks blur the lines between socializing and advertising; (2) methods of data collection and technological fixes; and (3) legal remedies: what has worked, what hasn’t, and where we go from here. Participants will create recommendations for consumers, companies, regulators, and courts on how best to protect internet users’ privacy while still fostering the rich flow of information necessary for robust social networks and the dissemination of information in the economy. For more information, contact Molly Brown at mbrown@kentlaw.edu.
About the Center for Information, Society and Policy
IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law has announced the formation of the Center for Information, Society and Policy, a collaboration among public policy experts at Chicago-Kent and technology experts at Chicago-Kent’s parent institution, Illinois Institute of Technology. The center will promote interdisciplinary research into privacy and information security issues raised by developing information technologies.
The new center will pool the expertise of computer scientists, psychologists, lawyers, business experts, and theorists in systems design and human/system interfaces. Emphasis will be placed on forging a shared understanding of the problems at hand and a common language with which to discuss and analyze proposed solutions.
"All too often, policy in the area of information security and privacy has been suggested by attorneys and legislators who lack a sufficient grasp of technological possibilities and limitations," said Chicago-Kent Dean Harold J. Krent. "Conversely, policy advocated by computer scientists generally has been unleavened by legal minds or other public policy analysis.
"Accordingly, prevailing policy analysis often fails to come to grips with either technological or legal constraints, leading to wrong turns in a number of important areas, including regulation of file sharing and regulation of online advertising."
Interdisciplinary task forces will focus on critical, unsolved policy problems that threaten to stymie the full economic potential of the technologies involved. For example, one task force will focus on understanding the psychology of risk assessment in the design of Internet security procedures, combining the expertise of psychologists, computer scientists, and lawyers to assess the ramifications of assigning liability to particular actors once security is compromised.
Another task force will focus on the problem of controlling computer viruses and the challenges of reaching consensus on whether Internet service providers should prevent individuals from accessing the Internet without an updated operating system and virus protection system.
Additional task forces will bring interdisciplinary approaches to problems stemming from cross-border migration of data, the increased ability of governmental and private parties to track usage of mobile electronic services, and the continuing challenges in data mining.
As an engineering-oriented university with top-rated academic units in the relevant areas, IIT brings considerable expertise to this initiative. Indeed, the U.S. Department of Justice some 10 years ago requested that IIT computer scientists and law professors come together to study the operation of the FBI’s Internet wiretap tool, then called "Carnivore." The report helped lay the groundwork for substantial revision of FBI methodology in capturing e-mail traffic.
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