Registration for the Privacy Camp is now open! If you want to attend the event, please

send an email to registrations(at)edri.org

including your first and last name. If you want to register friends and colleagues, please also include their names.

Make sure to register as soon as possible as places are limited for this free event! A first draft of the programme is following soon.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Join us for the 6th annual Privacy Camp! Privacy Camp will take place on 23 January 2018 in Brussels, Belgium, just before the start of the CPDP conference. Privacy Camp brings together civil society, policy-makers and academia to discuss existing and looming problems for human rights in the digital environment. In the face of a “shrinking civic space” for collective action, the event aims to provide a platform for actors from across these domains to discuss and develop shared principles to address key challenges for digital rights and freedoms of individuals.

Our theme this year is “speech, settings and [in]security by design”. The event will feature two main tracks. The first will discuss the challenges to freedom of speech online and the potential of a digital public sphere and the second track will focus on the security of devices and infrastructure. Altogether, these two tracks will explore whether we can collectively design better data infrastructures and information architecture. Participate!

The first track will focus on the challenging dynamics that we have been facing as we imagine a democratic digital public sphere. The topics covered will include the privacy-invasive measures to censor legitimate speech online as well as the role that algorithms play in curation and governance with sessions on algorithmic decision-making, accountability, fake news and the spread of propaganda.

The second track will include sessions on state hacking and malware, law enforcement access to user data (so-called “e-evidence”) and device security. It will also include hands-on tutorials on how to protect your communications better.

This year, Privacy Camp will also feature the “civil society summit” of the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) with opening remarks by Giovanni Buttarelli.

The event is co-organised by European Digital Rights (EDRi), Privacy Salon, USL-B Institute for European Studies and VUB-LSTS. Participation is free. Registrations will open in early December.

Participate!

We invite you to propose a panel for one of these two tracks:

Track 01 re-imagining the digital public sphere
Topics: #uploadfilters #censorship #algorithms #automation #accountability #fakenews #hackingelections #filterbubbles #propaganda

Track 02 [in]security of devices
Topics: #statehacking #encryption #surveillance #statemalware #Eevidence #security

When submitting your proposal:

• Indicate a clear objective for your session: What would be a good outcome for you?
• Indicate other speakers that could participate in your panel (and let us know which speaker has already confirmed, at least in principle, to participate).
• Make it as participative as possible, think about how to include the audience and diverse actors as much as possible.
• Send us a description of no more than 500 words.
• Deadline for submissions is 20 November.

After the deadline, we will review your submission and let you know by 6 December whether your panel can be included in the programme. It is possible that we suggest to merge proposals if they are very similar.

Please send your proposal via email to Maren <edri.intern3(at)edri(dot)org>!

If you have questions, please contact Kirsten <kirsten.fiedler(at)edri(dot)org> or Imge <imge.ozcan(at)vub(dot)be>.

On 24 January, the fifth annual Privacy Camp, co-organised by European Digital Rights (EDRi), Privacy Salon, Université Saint-Louis (USL-B) and the interdisciplinary Research Group on Law Science Technology & Society of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB-LSTS) took place in Brussels.

Did you miss our #PrivacyCamp17: Controlling data, controlling machines? Now you can watch all the sessions or relive some of the precious moments of insightful debates.

Continue reading →

Accountability, transparency and profiling were the buzzwords of the fifth annual Privacy Camp. The camp, this year entitled “Controlling data, controlling machines: dangers and solutions”, brought together civil society, policy-makers and academia to discuss the problems for human rights in the digital environment. The event is organised every year before the Computers, Privacy & Data Protection (CPDP) conference, and it’s co-organised by European Digital Rights (EDRi), Privacy Salon, Université Saint-Louis (USL-B) and the interdisciplinary Research Group on Law Science Technology & Society of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB-LSTS).

Who controls your data? Who controls the machines? Who is to be held responsible for the security of our data, and how can civil society make sure the message gets through? These questions were at the very centre of the debates surrounding the pending adoption of important EU-wide legislation, such as the review of the e-Privacy Directive, the smart borders package, the draft Regulation on dual-use goods, and the latest filtering proposals in the draft copyright Directive.

The first panels of the morning were “Community Building Workshop: Societal Impacts of Big Data and the Role of Civil Society”, which discussed how civil society can engage in the policy debates on Big Data, and “Owning the Web Together: Peer Production and Sharing”, which pondered on whether it’s possible to create online platforms based on genuine practices of sharing, with different ownership models and fair working conditions, or if the commons-based decentralised digital platforms are a utopian dream.

The next panel “Instant Big Data Targeting: Programmatic Ad Tech & Beyond” explained to the participants the structure of programmatic advertising, and discussed how personal data is treated and for what purposes. Simultaneously, the panel “The Internet of Things, Security and Privacy” discussed the possible effects of the Internet of Things (IoT) to the future of surveillance, and the solutions to legislative approaches and security education.

The afternoon panel on “Surveillance Tech Export and Human Rights Law” shed light on the proposed overhaul of the EU’s export controls for so-called “dual-use items” that can be used to violate fundamental human rights such as the right to privacy and the protection of personal data. The panellists discussed how human rights law could be used to hold the companies and states accountable.

The Lightning Talks presented a number of interesting projects and point-of-views related to online privacy. For example, Alexander Czadilek and Christof Tschohl from EDRi observer Epicenter.works introduced their new Handbook for the Evaluation of Anti-Terrorism legislation (HEAT), and Katarzyna Szymielewicz from EDRi member Panoptykon presented some ideas on how a strong implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) could be ensured in the EU Member States. EDRi presented the guide to Digital Defenders, a booklet to teach kids privacy that was published in October 2016 and proved to be a huge success.

The day of fruitful debates was wrapped up with a bit of fun. An interactive quiz tested the participants’ level of knowledge regarding surveillance. We came reassured that our community excels at mapping surveillance, definitely watches too much TV (but only educative contents, of course!), can separate fact from fiction, reads the news, and surely knows their classics of surveillance related literature.