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Computing after the World Trade Center:
Surveillance and Privacy
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An SCS Community discussion with
George Duncan, Professor, Heinz School of Public Policy
Elaine Newton, Ph.D. Student, Engineering and Public Policy
Illah R. Nourbakhsh, Assistant Professor of Robotics
Mike Shamos, Principal Systems Scientist, LTI
Latanya Sweeney, Assistant Professor, Heinz School of Public
Policy
Witold Walczak, Executive Director of the Pittsburgh ACLU
moderated by
Lenore Blum
Thursday, November 1
Wean 7500
4.00 p.m.
CMU Campus
(donuts, of a distinguished variety, at 3.45)
sponsored by the newly revived
Computer Professionals for Social
Responsibility
The events of September 11th have already begun to impact computing.
Congress has passed sweeping new laws enhancing law enforcement
surveillance abilities, in service of the War on Terrorism. How much
safer will they make us, and are they worth the loss of personal privacy?
Please join us in adressing privacy and surveillance with
researchers and policy makers whose work lies at the heart of the issues.
The topics of discussion will include:
- The pros and cons of publicly accessible encryption
- National id cards
- Face recognition technology in airports and sporting events
- The effects of widespread visual surveillance in Britain and Japan
- Data mining (e.g., to detect social interactions)
- Additional topics to be supplied by you
The panelists will be:
- George T. Duncan. George
T. Duncan is Professor of Statistics
in the H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management and the
Department of Statistics at Carnegie Mellon University. He is also a
Visiting Faculty at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He has published more
than fifty papers in such journals as Statistical Science, Management
Science, the Journal of the American Statistical Association,
Econometrica, and Psychometrika. He chaired the Panel on Confidentiality
and Data Access of the National Academy of Sciences (1989-1993), resulting
in the book, Private Lives and Public Policies: Confidentiality and
Accessibility of Government Statistics. He chaired the American
Statistical Association's Committee on Privacy and Confidentiality. He is
a Fellow of the American Statistical Association, an elected member of the
International Statistical Institute, and a Fellow of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science. In 1996 he was elected
Pittsburgh Statistician of the Year by the American Statistical
Association.
- Illah R. Nourbakhsh.
Illah R. Nourbakhsh is an Assistant Professor in The Robotics
Institute. He conducts long-term, theoretical research into robot vision
and planning. He is also a major initiator of educational programs in
Robotics.
- Mike
Shamos. Mike Shamos is Director of the Universal
Library and Principal Systems Scientist in the Language Technologies
Institute at the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon
University. He also holds an adjunct appointment in the Computer Science
Department. He has been affiliated with CMU since 1975, teaching in
the Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science Departments. His research
interests are in digital libraries, language identification, electronic
voting, electronic negotiation, Internet law and policy, and experimental
mathematics.
- Latanya Sweeney. Latanya
Sweeney graduated with a
Ph.D. in computer science from MIT. She is
an Assistant Professor of Computer Science and of Public Policy in the
School of Computer Science and in the Heinz School of Public Policy, both
at Carnegie Mellon University. At CMU, she also started the Laboratory
for International Data Privacy which works on real-world data sharing
problems. Among her recent projects is the development of a bioterrorism
surveillance system. Her work on data privacy has received numerous awards
from various disciplines including the Patient Advocacy Award by the
American Psychiatric Association and First Prize by the American Medical
Informatics Association. She has been invited to speak around the world
and before U.S. congressional committees. More information can be found at
http://sos.heinz.cmu.edu/dataprivacy/
and
http://sweeney.heinz.cmu.edu/.
- Witold Walczak. Witold ("Vic")
Walczak is Executive Director of the Pittsburgh Chapter of the ACLU.
Walczak specializes in First Amendment free speech and religious liberty
issues, and appears frequently as a commentator on civil liberties issues
in the Pittsburgh media. He has focused his attention on
problems of police misconduct, deficiencies in the services provided by the
Allegheny County Public Defender's Office, and, most recently, to the
civil rights and surveillance as they relate to the "War on Terrorism".
For a recent Op-Ed piece he wrote on this matter, see the
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Do you have a question for
the panelists?
Ask it here ...
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