Professor Felten recently completed a 20-month tour of duty at the White House, where he served as Deputy U.S. Chief Technology Officer. In this talk he will discuss his experience there, describe ongoing policy challenges, and reflect on the role of technology and academic expertise in policymaking.
The Internet, connected personal devices, and networked information systems underpin and mediate a significant and increasing amount of social, economic, and governmental processes. The new technological artifacts are conceptualized by developers, scientists, and engineers who make decisions about the technical design of these applications. Adoption of such technological applications can transform society in a variety of ways. Therefore, design choices are not neutral; they have implications on how these applications can and hopefully will be used in society, for better or for worse. Ben will present his ongoing work with governments, academia, and the private sector, who are increasingly recognizing that the use of networked systems and data science have important ethical implications for society, and should be designed carefully.
This forum will explore digital technologies in the information age, with a careful eye to how different countries and sectors approach the balance between risks, benefits and fundamental rights. Topics include privacy and human rights vs. security; vulnerabilities vs. efficiencies posed by the Internet of Things; communication silos vs. unfiltered information; access (denied) to information; and a vision for global cooperation.
Danny Y. Huang will discuss how to incentivize consumers and device makers toward securing Internet-of-Things devices through ISPs and government regulations.
Information technology researchers often assume that good research will lead to deployment in the internet of new systems based on that research. Universities often assume that the principal barrier to deployment is the transition from research idea to prototype. In this talk, it will be argued that these assumptions are often incorrect, and that deployment based on good information technology research is often stymied by a combination of economic and legal issues that were not considered in the research.
Consumer advocate, Finn Lützow-Holm Myrstad, and his team at the Norwegian Consumer Council (NCC) in the last few years have conducted cutting edge analysis of privacy policies, combined with data and security analysis of apps and connected products, exposing malpractice and achieving some global changes with companies such as Apple, Tinder, Runkeeper and others. More recently, the NCC published a report on how tech companies use dark patterns to discourage us from exercising our right to privacy, focusing mainly on Facebook and Google. Finn is coming to Princeton to present some of their most recent work – and to discuss how to best fix these clear breaches of law and minimum standards.